people talking about how google search is bad
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719
Google Search Is Dying
2022-02-15
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 <a href="vote?id=30348204&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me:<p>- "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust."</p><p>This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads. The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now. The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web. The same for trending programmer tools.</p><p>- "It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..."</p><p>What I'm shocked by is that Google somehow maintained a balance on this for so long. Well, at least a good enough balance that people still use it primarily.</p><p>- "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."</p><p>This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.</p><p>- "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..."</p><p>I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351342&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.<p>Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has a distribution monopoly through Android, its deal with Apple on iOS and MacOS, and on desktop through Chrome.</p><p>I'm working on a search engine startup. It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level. And despite being technically possible on desktop with Chrome, it is for all practical purposes beyond what any typical consumer can easily do.</p><p>Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google and clicking ads.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351792&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.<p>On my IOS device, under Settings -&gt; Safari -&gt; Search Engine, I have a drop down with options, including Bing and DuckDuckgo, but defaulted to google.</p><p>On Macos, with Safari running, Safari -&gt; Preferences… -&gt; Search, Search Engine I have a drop down, defaulted to google, with Bing and DuckDuckgo amongst other choices.</p><p>Agreed on google”s effort to get their search engine as the default. However I just don’t understand how changing search engine is impossible given what I’m seeing on my devices? Nor does it seem over the top onerous to my eyes.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351922&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, but you can't add a new search engine at all! So if a search engine isn't one of the tiny number of options in that dropdown, you can't change to it. That applies on both iOS and MacOS. And that option is used for the entire system-wide search, not just Safari.<p>So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list. You can see the search engine I'm working on in my profile if you're interested (I don't want to hijack this thread with self-promotion). I challenge you to change to a new competitive option like it. You simply can't. That is a clear monopoly over distribution.</p><p>On desktop in Chrome, as noted it is not something any typical consumer can do easily. But even if they could, Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engine, even by setting the homepage to one. So every new tab opened on Chrome takes you back to Google search, even if a consumer figures out how to change their homepage. As for changing the nav bar search, no ordinary consumer is going to be able to work out how to change a search URL pattern. That is clearly intended to prevent consumers changing.</p><p>So I stand by my point, especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352432&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I fully understand your point and defaults are very strong.<p>That being said, I try new search engines from time to time and always get back to google, because non of the others have worked for me (in a professional context). I probably do 200 searches per day and google is most likely to give me relevant info on my first query (maybe 80-90% success rate). All others I have tried have been around 40-50% win an avg. of 2-3 search queries to find my result. That is a huge daily time sync on 200 searches per day.</p><p>I will also test your search engine.</p><p>And before having tested it, I have some unsolicited advice ;) At least these are things that would make me switch:
1) you are strong in my vertical. 50% of my daily search queries are professional. Probably 10-20% are programming related. If you were better 20% better than google at delivering results for that subset, I would probably use you.
2) If you had very strong support for my locale. Based in Germany, 50% of my private searches are in German. Most search engines, apart from google, suck in German. My assumption is their market share is so small that they don‘t put effort into any language specific search syntax understanding. German or large language groups like Spanish, Hindi, French come to mind.
3) If you can‘t become a default search engine on safari, maybe you can role your own browser (chromium fork or something) where you are the default. You could package it as: MySearchEngine App. It is actually a fully functional browser, but users really use it because they want to use your search engine. That might give easier access than having to manually navigate to your website in safari.</p><p>&lt;/ end of unsolicited advice /&gt;
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 <a href="vote?id=30352941&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>The ultimate test of any search engine is always the results. While the project I'm working on is definitely still an alpha, I'd love to chat with you when you try it out. I don't want to take the conversation here off-topic. To your general points though, there are definitely opportunities to provide better results within specialist areas of knowledge, and for local markets.<p>I think most of the search startups are doing their own mobile app. On iOS, the system search and browser remains Google/Safari (and the App is essentially just a wrapper on Safari for browsing). But at least it is something. I think you'll see more people doing desktop apps, although the dominance of Google through Chromium forks for this isn't a coincidence. It feels like the bad old days of re-packaging Internet Explorer with a custom homepage all over again.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354240&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Multi-lingual search results in general; Google (and FB) just for some reason cannot comprehend that someone might have reasons to search in multiple languages or even regions. For instance, I at one point was an editor/fact-checker for an academic publisher and one project involved checking a lot of information from official government sources around the world, and Google did not know what to do with that.<p>Hell, I'd love to have the option to make the search results be completely language agnostic.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356337&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Don't you just set the region and language at the bottom?<p>I also search in multiple languages but I also know that's an exception. The majority of the people in the world likely would only use a single language and it's easy to believe that search results are better for those users with languages separated.
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 <a href="vote?id=30360654&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, hence why I'd want an <i>option</i> for language agnostic results. It would be a terrible default.<p>There are cases when I'd even like REGION agnostic results, or least ones not bound by national boundaries. For example, I have an interest in my state history (MI), and there's plenty of relevant articles/commentary from the Canadians.
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 <p>I sometimes have similar issues. But I can understand why Google might not want to cater to the multi-lingual market: perhaps it's just too niche?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30360711&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think it's too niche, I think they're just American.<p>A Canadian/Indian/EU-based Google probably would've ended up with multi-lingual support, whereas a China/UK based one probably wouldn't have.</p><p>By the time Google got big enough for international considerations, there were already a bunch of baked in assumptions about their users, like them being monolingual.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352717&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Have you tried Kagi.com? I switched to it and i'm very happy even with searches in my native language for example</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355113&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Metager.org is my go to google search replacement. I imagine (although my German is non native) that the German search results are quite good. . . it being a German search engine. To be honest it the only search engine to get me off google - DDG is OK, as is searx, but I kept going back to the dirty G until Metager.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355022&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Also a fan of Brave browser here. The more people trying new things the better! I know some people don't like the crypto-angle with it, but I think it is a positive to test new economic models to support online content, personally.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355159&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>How much of the German challenge do you think is due to German being an inflected language? So a search engine that can't figure out the inflected variants of a word are going to potentially miss out on a large number of the relevant search results.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In addition to inflections, another factor may be the tendency to use compound words, so that a relevant word in context might not have a space at each end.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356347&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>In English, Google is pretty good at figuring out when to add spaces in your queries (if you have a typo with your spaces). Similar technology should help it with German?<p>There's nothing magic about putting a space between words or not. Similar to whether you hyphenate or not.
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 <p>Maybe it isn't a big deal; my thought was that if you're crawling a website and trying to associate its contents with search terms, parsing an uncommon compound word into the correct parts is going to come up more often in German than in English, especially if you're smaller than Google and German isn't your main focus. Are search engines good enough now to know that a string like electricovenmonitor is about ovens but not covens or Venmo?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356112&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>At least in part this seems to be due to the profiles that Google has built. Whenever I try to use Google in anonymous mode, the results become noticeably worse.<p>Which, of course, means that it is yet another barrier to entry for any would-be competitors.
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 <a href="vote?id=30361101&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>This could also be a perverse incentive reflected algorithmically (whether on purpose or not). Google has better data and makes more money when users are identified. So they have a vested interest in making users think that they will get worse results in Incognito mode.<p>Personalization is a double-edged sword. @pg once wrote about Google results becoming "what's true for you" rather than what's objectively true. And filter bubbles and subtle "personalization censorship" are also dangers. I think it's possible to have high quality results and privacy/anonymity, and it's not a binary choice. It's a challenge worth figuring out.
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 <p>Totally agree that personalization is a double edged sword. Problem is getting people to actually want to change their personalized feeds/results. Most people have no clue what they’re missing and this issue has huge “Medium is the message” like implications.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30395021&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I disagree about google being the best. For a start, their image search is massively behind bing. They do 0 work to remove pinterest spam. And DDG is way ahead of google on normal adhoc search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353596&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks, just to let you know, yes, it does have an opensearch description. But in practical terms that doesn't help much even if a startup search engine adds it.<p>Unfortunately, while OpenSearch is great where it's supported, outside of Firefox, the only real support is for in-site-search on other platforms (where you type a site name and then a search string), and not for changing your browser search engine. And it doesn't work at all on iOS even for site search.</p><p>So unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem of how a consumer can easily change their search engine to something new on Chrome or Safari or an iPhone.</p><p>I don't want to sidetrack the discussion, but if you want to confirm the opensearch description, you can open our site in Firefox, then click the "..." in the browser address bar and then click "Install Andi Search". Or reach out and very happy to talk you through it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356993&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I am using firefox (windows 10), I don't see the "..." in the browser address bar.<p>Edit: When I click the address bar, I see an small "A" icon in the bottom row. When I hower over it, it shows "install Andi search".
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 <a href="vote?id=30357022&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Depending on the platform, you might need to right-click on the Firefox browser address bar and choose the "Add search engine" option from the dropdown (where a website has it). Do you see an option to add a new search engine when you right-click the browser address bar at all?<p>[Edit: just saw the edit that you found it - thanks again for looking around for it too!]
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 <a href="vote?id=30352345&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I concur. And would add that on Safari and iOS, it suits Google and Microsoft too keep others out; noting all options are Google, Bing or Bing sydnicates). And it suits Apple nicely; $15 bn from Google, pure margin. How much do they get from Microsft/syndicates? Meanwhile all search listed options in Chrome are Google or Microsoft (Bing and Bing syndicates). And, to complete all Edge options are Bing, Bing syndicates or Google. Disclosure: also alternative search engine CEO.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355075&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Presumably you count DuckDuckGo as a "Bing syndicate". I think that doesn't do it justice - many of the things I like about DDG are specific to DDG, and I could not care less whether the underlying crawl was run by Bing or not.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30371698&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Yes, but I'm biased. Your perspective is as valid and I respect it. DDG does have some great features and we stand with them in fighting for user privacy. What benefits us all is a variety of different search engines and search services. It is the search engines that subtly determine our informational pathways, so variety is healthy. For one independent review of search engines and syndicates, including DDG see:
<a href="https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html">https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...</a></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>100% agree. The more people working on this and building different features and trying different approaches the better. The more new search engines, the more everyone innovates, the better for the whole world. It is deeply unhealthy to have a single monopoly with its mono-search have 90%+ of the market. There are billions of search users with many different needs, and there is room for different approaches.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I see your point. I would have sworn that DuckDuckGo was added as a search entry when I installed that app on my ios device, however my memory is hazy from that long ago, so perhaps that search engine was added at a different point, like when it became big enough for Apple to notice them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352330&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I'm a huge fan of DuckDuckGo. My understanding is that it took a significant amount of effort and public lobbying for them to get added to that list, and it was back in 2014 that was announced.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I suspect the big problem is that even if your search engine succeeds, once you get enough traction you'll just sell up to Google and everything slots back to normal 'do some evil' mode.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354744&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I don't want to get too off-topic, but personally I can promise you we will never sell to Google. This problem is very personal. As well as being a programmer, I used to work as a journalist, and I've seen friends in media have their lives and businesses destroyed by Google's ad-tech. And I've seen the Internet turn from a wonderful thing to become a cesspool of content farms, clickbait and seo spam. I can't speak for other search startups, but we will never run ads or use ad-tech or sell user data or invade people's privacy. We're just two people. But we're two people on a mission.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352748&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>We pay nothing so are not included. On the other hand we are happy to provide a one click search from our search engine or eight other search engines/services, currently from our web app [0]. One click for Google (if that's your thing), one click for Bing or Gigablast search engine results, one click for Brave and some of the many Bing and few Google syndicates - DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage.<p>[0] <a href="https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedom-to-seek.html">https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedo...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353275&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>The OpenSearch standard is great and definitely an improvement where it's supported, but unfortunately as far as I'm aware in most browsers that's limited to site-search (in website search after typing a url). It doesn't work at all on iOS.<p>On Firefox it makes it easier to talk a non-technical user through how to change their default search engine, and at least they aren't entering search pattern strings into a settings field as with Chrome.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353748&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>As far as I'm aware and the OpenSearch docs, support is limited to in-site searches on most platforms outside of Firefox (not changing default search option for example using Chrome on iOS). Would be really interested in the steps you followed if you're happy to share them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353878&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>For sure. I added this file at the top level, as opensearch.xml. Sorry if formatting is wrecked.<pre><code> &lt;OpenSearchDescription
 xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
 xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/"
 &gt;
 &lt;ShortName&gt;My Search&lt;/ShortName&gt;
 &lt;Description&gt;Personal Search&lt;/Description&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="text/html"
 method="get"
 template="https://mysite.com/?q={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="application/rss+xml"
 indexOffset="0"
 rel="results"
 template="/results?query={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="application/json"
 rel="suggestions"
 template="/suggest?q={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;InputEncoding&gt;UTF-8&lt;/InputEncoding&gt;
 &lt;Image height="32" width="32" type="image/x-icon"&gt;
 https://yarnpkg.com/favicon.ico
 &lt;/Image&gt;
 &lt;/OpenSearchDescription&gt;
</code></pre>
In the head tag:<p>&lt;link
 rel="search"
 href="/opensearch.xml"
 type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
 title="My Search"
 /&gt;</p><p>I then went to my site on Chrome iOS and it showed up under Settings &gt; Search Engine &gt; Recently visited. I then selected it and now anything I put in my url bar gets sent to my server. It's pretty sick.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354104&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That's interesting, I don't get that option on Chrome on iPhone (Search Engine &gt; Recently visited), except for the officially supported five (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia).<p>I'm wondering do you see that as an option visiting our site (we have an opensearch description for Andi also) or other search engines like You with one?</p><p>Very curious.
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 <p>Thanks for having a look. The opensearch file is <a href="https://andisearch.com/andi.xml">https://andisearch.com/andi.xml</a>, and it's correctly referenced from the "&lt;link rel="search"..." opensearch tag. If you have a look in Firefox you'll see it prompts in the nav bar. So I don't think that would be the issue. Do you see anything for other engines like You with the opensearch head item?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thanks heaps! Will post the outcome here just in case anyone else is trying to make opensearch work on Chrome on iOS once we figure it out!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm thinking maybe Chrome on iOS has its own flavor of implementation and possibly it needs the filename to be "opensearch.xml" rather than looking at the &lt;link&gt; tag. I'm renaming the file to see if that makes a difference. If you had an example of another site where it worked, that would be awesome. At least one more platform where OpenSearch works for setting the default site search would be nice.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354357&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>You have a section in Andi Search which lets you try and set it as the default (in Firefox at least) but it doesn't work. Is that what you mean, or am I doing something wrong/weird?<p>BTW I really like what you're doing, and I'll definitely like to set it as default in Firefox somehow if I could just to try it out. My first tests were surprisingly good, I didn't expect it to deliver results which are accurate and which appear to at least match DDG. Nice one. [slightly unusual page format on desktop though :)]
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 <p>Thanks! I don't want to distract from the main topic too much but would love to chat with you if you're open to it. There's a thread below with @neffity and I made some changes (trying to get Chrome on iOS to use OpenSearch) and broke that for a little. Update is just deploying now. I sincerely appreciate the feedback and you having a look too! :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I tries you search engine with a few queries and I was pleasantly surprised! Keep up the good work!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I didn't want to take the discussion off topic but I appreciate that and thank you! Lots of work to do! Please reach out if you'd like to as well :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Its been a while but when you visited a search engine website it then showed up as an option, not sure which OS / browser that was on though</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Firefox supports an open search standard which is a big improvement, so that's probably where you saw this. It provides an easier experience from the nav bar to add a new search engine to the browser. In practice, while it's a huge improvement, I've found talking with users that it's mostly helpful if someone technical is talking them through the change.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356014&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Hello Jed, that sucks. I understand that custom search engine exclusion is a financial decision by companies that can get away with almost whatever they want to do.<p>For iPhone, iPad, and macOS, you could use Swift and SwiftUI to write a single search app for your service. Flutter is pretty good also, then you could cover Windows and Linux also.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356998&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That's simply not true. Even as a technical user who knows what you're doing, you get a hard-coded choice of exactly five - Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG or Ecosia. You can't add new ones at all. If you wanted to add a new search engine (like the one I'm working on, or any other), there is no way to do it.<p>But let's try it. Go to Safari &gt; Preferences &gt; Search and choose the "Search engine" dropdown, and you'll see you have a dropdown with only five options.</p><p>Google reportedly pays $15B per year for that top spot.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357277&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>A work around is to add a safari extension like "Keyword Search" and associate a key word to your search. Its nothing like setting a default search engine for a normal user, but atleast there is a way for the slightly more technical user.<p>Though, I couldn't add a keyword to your site in firefox with its "Add a keyword" feature. Might be due to the javascript calling some url behind the screen.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356386&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Go to <i>search_engine</i>.com in Safari. Share button. Add to Home Screen.<p>This is not a bad solution; I appreciate your browser rage.
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 <p>Adding a shortcut to a website to the home screen is a nice convenience. Unfortunately, it doesn't add it as a search engine to your iPhone search, or to Safari. Even with a PWA (progressive web app), the App is just a wrapper on Safari. For a startup like us, it is probably the best option currently available, and we've tried to make it a good experience. But it does suffer the same drawbacks as a regular App as a browser replacement. If you swipe down from the home screen and type something into your iPhone's search bar, you're still using Google and Safari.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352975&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list.<p>Well, you can. <i>I</i> just tried it and works. Granted, you need a third party app, but it's doable.
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 <p>I'd be interested in the steps you took. Third-party Apps on iOS can't change the Safari or system-wide options for search engines as far as I'm aware. Installing a third-party App just gives you a wrapper around Safari for browsing while you use that App only. If you swipe down on your home screen to use the system search, or open Safari itself, nothing has changed. I can ask you to install our App or another search provider's App, but it doesn't change your iPhone's search engine or add it to Safari.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357079&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, I found it a few weeks ago. It changes how safari works and improves it quite a lot.<p>I can block elements, and cookies in a site, define custom JavaScript or css, change the default search engine with one in a list o define a new one, and a whole lot of other things. All inside default safari.</p><p>Its name is Hyperweb. You can get it here: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/hyperweb/id1581824571">https://apps.apple.com/app/hyperweb/id1581824571</a>
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 <p>Kagi search has an extension. Maybe you could do something similar. It’s on the iOS store under kagi-search-for-safari.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's interesting. I didn't think an extension could change the search engines available under Settings &gt; Safari &gt; Search Engine on iOS from the defaults (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia), or change the system-wide search used. Do you see different options now under Settings for search engines and did it change your system-wide search too (i.e. swipe down on home screen and then use the built-in Search)?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Swiping down doesn’t work, it’s in-browser only in the address bar. As for in safari, I don’t get options, but if the extension is enabled it redirects the search to Kagi.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Swiping down on my home screen gives search suggestions but no inline results. Clicking on those takes me to Kagi in safari.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>No, it is a hack basically redirecting searches to a custom search engine. Good luck with Andisearch!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352075&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.<p>See my post above about iCabMobile, where there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.</p><p>There are also other browsers than Safari and iCabMobile on iOS, many of which give alternatives to their search engine choices.</p><p>Naturally if you think only users who choose the <i>default</i> browser are interesting as your market, I wonder if those users would take a chance on your alternative search engine?
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 <p>I replied to your duplicate post separately, but it is worth noting that even if you install an alternative browsing App and use it, the iOS system search (swipe down from the top to access the search bar) is still using Google and Safari. And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own options.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own options<p>I duplicated my post because you so pervasively in this thread duplicated your inaccuracies.</p><p>You are wrong about this, iCabMobile allows the user to very easily add search engines:</p><p>Settings &gt; Tools &gt; Search Engines &gt; Add</p><p>Naturally I expect to be plentifully downvoted for this <i>accurate</i> information, just like pointing-out that iCabMobile has <i>25</i> search engines to was also extremely unpopular.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357571&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I may not be following you, but are you saying that when you change search engine in your App, it also changes the default search for iOS and Safari system-wide?<p>Or you are just talking about within your iCabMobile App itself, like anyone can do in their own app?</p><p>As far as I know, all the alternative browser and search Apps (including ours for example) are wrappers on top of Safari on iOS. And they are unable to change the iPhone's system-wide search or browser. That's the search engine accessed, for example, when a user swipes down on their iPhone home screen, and enters a query into the "Search" field that appears. Normally, that's Google and Safari at the iOS system-wide level.</p><p>Or are you saying that you are able to change these including adding alternative search engines under iOS Settings &gt; Safari &gt; Search Engine?</p><p>I'm curious how you're doing this if so, and I'm sure lots of other people would be too. My understanding is that App Store Apps or Extensions can not normally change the iPhone search engines, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353598&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engine<p>Firefox has removed the ability to set a default page for new tabs and requires users to install an extension to restore the functionality, which in fact provides degraded functionality. As originally implemented the new tab would load the new page instantly. With the extension, a new tab is created, focus is given to the URL bar and after a brief but noticeable pause, the chosen page loads.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353821&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google pays Apple for the privilege to be the first.<p>Another way to think it is that Google pays Apple, so that they don't create their own search engine.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355707&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Doesn’t apple already have a search engine? Where do the results for Siri suggestions come from? (I really don’t know)<p>Just this morning I searched “air purifier” in safari and it suggested the wirecutter “best air purifiers” article
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 <a href="vote?id=30354360&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I actually don't think Apple could build a good search engine. They believe in privacy, and will be compared to engines that track you everywhere.<p>Or, it might be possible. But their constraints will make it far harder to build even a comparable search.
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 <p>Apple is operating a search engine right under our noses, hiding behind Siri. Applebot is regularly crawling the web. They’re probably much further along toward a privacy-focused search product than any of us would know.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I thought Siri's web results were returned from tour chosen search engine in settings. Does it use its own search?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>"Web results" are. "Siri Suggested Websites" and "Siri Knowledge" are not — those are fed by Applebot. "Applebot is the web crawler for Apple. Products like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions use Applebot." — Apple's support document about Applebot.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've wondered why no one has bought wolfram alpha and used it to power knowledge bases. Certainly it seems cheaper for Apple to have down that as a start point than to start from scratch. Maybe it's too technical for most users?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>DDG is already a comparable privacy first search engine. Apple would just need to buy them in they cared, but instead they just promote them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356080&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>"Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore."<p>This bluntness does not go far enough. People do not change defaults, no matter how "easy" it may be to do so.</p><p>A default is a pre-made choice by someone other than the consumer. There is no set-up process where the consumer makes a choice. The choice has already been made. Consumers do not make this choice. Even if they could, in practice they don't. That fact may seem insignificant but it is worth billions of dollars.</p><p>If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job. In probably the most important one, Google pays Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine. It was estimated at $10 billion in 2020 and $15 billion in 2021.[1]</p><p>Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does it. $15 billion is too much to pay for something that may or may not change. It does not change. It is money in the bank.</p><p>1. <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/">https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356193&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job.</i><p>I mean you could spend two seconds to search and realize you were in fact mistaken before bothering to write "If I am not mistaken..."
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 <a href="vote?id=30356306&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Sundar Pichai was responsible for the Chrome browser and Android operating system. [1]<p>While the comment might be a little oversimplified, I think it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit. And there's no question that Chrome and Android are the two central planks of Google's search distribution monopoly with consumers, along with the Apple deal.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sundar-pichai-rose-to-become-ceo-of-google-2014-10">https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sundar-pichai-rose-to-be...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30361941&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>While the comment might be a little oversimplified</i><p>let's see:</p><p>&gt; <i>spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job</i></p><p>even if we take your convenient assumption as correct ("it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit"), it's still wouldn't be a true statement. But feel free to point out which part is true if we relax any more assumptions.
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 <a href="vote?id=30362983&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Based on the public record, I don't think the original commenter's statement was unreasonable or mistaken. And they have provided extensive additional documentation on a separate comment supporting the assertion.<p>Based on Pichai being the senior executive at Google responsible for Chrome browser and search defaults, as a matter of public record he held corporate responsibility for getting google search as the default search engine on as many devices as possible.</p><p>You stated that the original commenter was mistaken with no supporting evidence and a high level of acrimony in your phrasing. I'd be interested to see supporting evidence for why you think the commenter was mistaken, in the context of the other resources they provided.
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 <p>Sure, if you're comfortable with your job being described as spending most of your time working on affiliate link deals, we can agree that's a good description of someone working on the Google toolbar plugin and then Chrome OS, Android, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356270&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>If anyone else was curious, Sundar Pichai had not worked on Search prior to becoming CEO, it seems:<p>&gt; Pichai joined Google in 2004,[8] where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. In addition, he went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps. In 2010, Pichai also announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM. The Chromebook was released in 2012. In 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversaw.
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 <p>Consumers don’t want to see the results of their search or find the answer to their question. They want the assurance of being told the answer by an authority. Google has tried to become that authority. It’s true, just Google it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356401&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does it<p>Thinking about when Firefox defaulted to Yahoo. I wonder what switch rate was.
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 <a href="vote?id=30358009&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>More about Pichai's role in making Google the default search on more computers and directing search traffic to Google, by any means necessary.<p>"Pichai started at Google leading product management for the Google toolbar, a critically strategic product that enabled <i>default search queries</i> on different web browsers to go through Google and allow them to track browsing behavior to power the AdWords targeting engine. At the time, Internet Explorer was the "installed by default" incumbent for many users, while Firefox was the alternative browser of choice."</p><p>"Pichai identified a weakness in Google's strategy, and Chrome began as a defensive play against the established browsers <i>to protect and grow Google's search business</i> (which still generates much of the company's revenue)."</p><p><a href="https://www.productplan.com/learn/sundar-pichai-product-manager-to-ceo/">https://www.productplan.com/learn/sundar-pichai-product-mana...</a></p><p>"Sundar Pichai is the one who introduced the toolbar, <i>which led to an increase in user searches</i>. It was later merged with Chrome, which became the most used web browser in the world."</p><p><a href="https://startuptalky.com/sundar-pichai-story/">https://startuptalky.com/sundar-pichai-story/</a></p><p>""Most people here didn't want us to do a browser, so it was a little bit stealthy. Once we had it up and running, I remember showing it to Larry and Sergey - and even then there was a lot of scepticism." But Pichai got his way: Chrome was released in 2008 and now accounts for nearly 60% of the market, according to NetMarketShare, while Internet Explorer languishes on less than 16%."</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-boss-sundar-pichai-tax-gender-equality-data-protection-jemima-kiss">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-bo...</a></p><p>"You know how Google's the <i>default search engine</i> for many Web browsers? That was Pichai's work."</p><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11/seven-quick-facts-about-sundar-pichai-googles-new-ceo/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11...</a></p><p>"Pichai's portfolio includes Chrome, Android, <i>search</i>, ad technology, maps, social,commerce and infrastructure."</p><p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150226215637/http//www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/02/26/exclusive-pichai-on-googles-vision-mobile-revenue-apple-and-china/">https://web.archive.org/web/20150226215637/http//www.forbes....</a></p><p>"Ten years ago, the Indian-born Pichai, 42, was a product manager at Google, and his domain consisted of the <i>search bar</i> in the upper right corner of Web browsers. He then persuaded his bosses to wade into the browser wars with Chrome, which in time became the most popular browser on the Internet and led to the Chrome operating system that runs on a line of cheap laptops called Chromebooks."</p><p>"Android runs on 1.2 billion devices around the world. <i>It drives users to the company's hugely profitable search engine</i> and the ads on its maps service. Google search and maps are available on phones made by Apple and Microsoft, too, but Google pays those companies referral fees. The more people use Android, the more Google can keep that revenue to itself."</p><p>"Google distributes the latest versions free under the agreement that device makers will highlight profitable Google services-<i>especially search</i> and maps-while their own brands and services take a back seat."</p><p>"Pichai joined the small team working on Google's <i>search toolbar</i>. It gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the dominant browsers at the time, easy access to <i>Google search</i>. He proposed that Google build its own browser and won the support of the company's co-founders, though he faced an objection from then-CEO Eric Schmidt, who thought that joining the browser wars would be an expensive distraction."</p><p>"Rubin had introduced it, but Pichai created an <i>interdisciplinary team with the search group</i>, which had voice search technology and algorithms that could discern what information might be most important to users. "Sundar helped me to formalize a relationship," says Johanna Wright, the product manager who runs Google Now. "Because search and Android sit in two different buildings, we ended up doing a people swap.""</p><p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-sundar-pichai-king-of-android-master-of-mobile-profile">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-s...</a>
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 <p>Thank you for putting that together. I knew there was some resistance to doing a browser internally, but it was a brilliant insight that long term Google would need control of distribution for its search results as it became more and more a mass consumer service, especially after becoming ads-focused and moving toward more mainstream users, and with the world moving to mobile after the iPhone launched.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Just tried <a href="https://andisearch.com/">https://andisearch.com/</a> and I like it. Felt like a fresh look on results instead of the same old SEO ones. For example, searched for a few Java queries and found very informative website/results that weren't dominated by Bealdung. Searched for "soccer scores", "chelsea FC", "prince andrew", "WP export" and found things that would never have been on Google's first page, but were excellent returns. Nice work.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thank you. While I don't want to distract from the topic here, I do really appreciate your feedback and you trying it out, and would love to talk more if you'd like to reach out! Speaking generally, the world needs more people working on search, and I think there is a lot of room for completely new approaches.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm pleasantly surprised by the high quality of your top results. That shows the search algorithms (whatever your choice was) are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted. As a fellow software engineer I'm curious about your stack and size of your operations. Are you blogging about this somewhere? You definitely should!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355917&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; That shows the search algorithms ... are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted<p>I doubt this. I'm guessing that 90% of Google Search's development effort is concentrated on defeating SEO, and as soon as a new competitor succeeds well enough to attract SEO attention, their results will suddenly turn to custard.</p><p>The competitor then has to combat the extremely sophisticated SEO practises developed against Google over the years. This is likely to be an even bigger barrier to disruption than building market share against Google.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355981&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>You're assuming here that Google's primary interest is consumers, but their paying customers are the advertisers. The reality is that the worse the organic results are, the more likely a user is to click on the ads instead, and that's how Google makes money.<p>At the least that's a perverse incentive, and at worst it's a corrupting influence.</p><p>Whether it is conscious or not, Google does better financially when there is more SEO spam in results.</p><p>That's why the better Google does financially, the worse the search results are getting.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356096&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I doubt this very much myself too! I little wishful thinking to be honest.<p>However you're arguing as if new competitors had to monetize the same way Google does and that's not the only game available. Imagine a competitor that doesn't monetize clicks but works on donations (like wikipedia does). If results are higher quality than Google's the users will follow. Or maybe a search engine that promotes a particular product like a CRM tool for example.</p><p>Disruption typically doesn't come in obvious ways or else someone else would have done it (including Google and its gazillion dollars).
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 <p>Thank you. I appreciate that very much. We plan to share on HN how we've built it and how it works, and get as much feedback as we can. That really needs its own thread, and I'm conscious of not getting off-topic or promotional here because this is such an interesting thread already, and it wasn't my intention to distract from that because this is one of the big problems in the world right now. Plus, to be honest, we have a few things that are broken and that we're working to fix! So to answer your question, yes! We hear the feedback asking us to share more, and we're going to get a new release up and share with HN soon. And sincerely, thanks for the encouragement to do that. We think it will be interesting to the community here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354862&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I’m impressed! I did a search for ‘Oregon coast gardening’ and bunch of indie sites I’d not see before popped up. Some blogs too!!!!!! Old school.<p>Why don’t you do a show hn so we can have a proper thread I’d love to learn more about the decision making of the AI.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355218&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Hey thank you. Seriously I appreciate the feedback and encouragement to share Andi with HN. I know there have been a few comments and questions, even though I'm trying to not get off-topic because this is such an interesting thread. You're absolutely right that this needs it's own thread where we can answer questions properly.<p>So we're definitely planning to share what we're building with the community here soon. Andi's very much an alpha and a few things are broken, but we're working on a new release that fixes them, and then we're going to share it and learn as much as we can from the feedback and wisdom here.
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 <p>"And I" or "Andy" in terms of pronunciation? I wanted to also mention how impressed I was with the results, well done!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I really like it too, will keep on testing.<p>Small bug I found:</p><pre><code> use the "go" command (e.g. go reddit)
 close the newly opened tab (e.g. reddit)
 click "Learn more about me"
 click the top left icon (Andi)
 =&gt; goes directly to reddit.com
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EDIT: formatting</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30360870&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Thank you! And ugh! I thought we fixed that bug. On it :)<p>One of the secrets with Google is search is that the top searches aren't searches at all. Number one search on google? "facebook" - it's people navigating. So the idea behind that is to let people navigate directly when they want to go somewhere specific, like "go youtube cute cats".
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 <p>Without wanting to go off topic here, may I ask what sort of error did you get? All looks fine from here, although it is an alpha. If you were happy to reach out I can try to help figure it out with you.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356523&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Secure Connection Failed: An error occurred during a connection to andisearch.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR. Also Firefox is flagging it as "Not Secure" in the address bar.<p>Interestingly, once I turned off my VPN, it works again, Firefox doesn't display the message either. Note that other web pages work fine on the VPN.</p><p>update: It work's with MozillaVPN, but not with my University's VPN. Perhaps UC Davis has flagged it from within their firewall.
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 <p>That's weird. The endpoints are on Amazon Cloudfront, so possibly uni VPN didn't like the CDN it is on.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Also, I set it as my default search engine for a trial since my first few searches went well. Is there a place to submit bug reports?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Oh awesome, thank you! Yes just say "/bug" any time and tick the little box to attach details (we don't see what searches are so that let's us know) or just hop on our Discord from Contact Us. We really appreciate you trying it out. It is an alpha and we have lots of work to do, especially performance. I've been trying not to go off topic from the conversation here but wanted to answer your direct question, but we can chat more directly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356931&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I love the HN view option...mostly because I find that form so easy to scan.<p>I've conducted a number of professional searches about neuroscience, obscure R packages, topics on D&amp;D and Pathfinder, and it has done exceptionally well. The one thing my obscure demographic would love is a replacement for Google Scholar, which I use all the time.
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 <a href="vote?id=30360925&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I love the HN view too - it is compact, efficient and information dense. I think it works well for search results. And I love HN so it seemed like a neat homage :)<p>Thank you for trying it out and the great feedback too. There hasn't been too much discussion here about Google Scholar, but better research and academic results is something I hear a lot of people talk about as a growing problem.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357232&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Very cool effort but just the first thing I tried which is a mega common search for everyone. "Denver weather."<p>Took a while to load, and only gave me short text of current conditions.</p><p>When I did "denver weather forecast" it gave a bit more and showed results on the right from Wolfram and others but they don't tell me anything. Wolfram is current conditions and wind tomorrow. Next one just meta description for weather underground.</p><p>It's going to snow tomorrow. That's what people are searching for.</p><p>Google gets this stuff and makes that info super visually accessible.</p><p>I really don't get the hate on their search quality. If it has gone down I haven't experienced this outside of mega spam things like recipes.</p><p>But I still experience the black magic of typing in some vague thing you are trying to remember and somehow they know what it is.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357450&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I've been trying not to be off-topic or self-promotional on this thread because it has so much other great discussion, and it needs a separate thread, but I wanted to answer your question quickly. Thanks sincerely for the feedback and for trying it out. We'd really love to chat more with you about this if you're open to it. The project is still an alpha and we have lots of work to do. We outline some of the good and bad things on our About page, including that it's weak at local searches (like weather or businesses or localizing to region) and there is too much spam in product reviews and ecommerce especially.<p>My own feeling is that the spam and ad problem (and therefore actual result quality) on Google is at its worst for categories like finance, health and travel. Commercial promotion has really taken over there. For many people, ads are essentially spam when they take over the entire screen of results (try, say, "best home loans in the US").</p><p>There is huge variation though. Some searches are still pure. Thanks again and please feel welcome to reach out to chat more about this!
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 <a href="vote?id=30352388&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.</i><p>I disagree. Two to three years ago I could get more what I wanted in a complex search once I tuned it properly. So Google had a twenty year run of good and useful searches. Google also worked to strong arm their monopoly, yes. But I claim they still served some quality after that. It's not that unusual for a monopoly built on quality to maintain their quality for a period of time after it achieves that monopoly status - institutional standards die but they can die over time.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352712&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore...Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google<p>I don't disagree with this as a fact, but I think there are a lot of things that work this way that aren't actually monopolies in the competition-preventing sense. If I wanted to launch a new breakfast cereal, getting my product into grocery stores would be one of the major challenges of starting that business. Competition for shelf space is a core concern of a lot of consumables. This definitely creates a lot of stickiness and barriers, and that comes with its share of downsides, but there are also good reasons that distribution systems work the way they do. Transaction costs are important.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352817&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think competition for shelf space is the right analogy here. Perhaps for Apps within the App Store you could argue that. But when there are only two mobile operating systems with meaningful market share, and when they make it impossible to change to a new search engine at all, and the results all come from only two sources (Google or Bing) that's a straight monopoly over distribution.<p>It's a similar situation with the App Stores also. They are monopolies. We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353324&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.<p>That’s true but at the same time I think most people are pretty happy with it. HN readers aren’t typical in this regard.</p><p>I’ve been writing software as my job since the mid-80’s and it’s only been in the past 4 or 5 years where I realized that I’m finally pretty happy with the tech I use day-to-day.</p><p>If I had any complaint it would be that app stores have made software too inexpensive. When I look at something like Procreate which I think cost something like $10, I’m blown away. This can’t be sustainable.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352841&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>You have a point but shelf space is physically limited. Online real estate is not so limited. In my country there is reasonably healthy competition between supermarkets. Supermarkets do have self-branded products but they don't cross-sell competitors self-branded products.<p>Here we have Apple with Google and Bing on their shelves. Microsoft have Bing and Google on their shelves. And Google have Goggle or Bing. Is that healthy or an oligopoly?
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 <a href="vote?id=30353589&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Online real estate is not so limited.<p>It's limited.</p><p>It's limited by our attention spans.</p><p>There's a reason web designers call specific pages "valuable real estate".</p><p>For example Google's search page, the one with the input, is probably the most valuable web real estate in the world, closely followed by the first page of results once you've typed your query and hit Enter.</p><p>I'm willing to bet $100 that the second page of results probably gets less than 1000th the hits the first one gets. Heck, make that 1 millionth of the hits the first results page gets.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354565&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That's silly. <i>Everything</i> is limited by the scarcity of human attention spans, not just websites.<p>Shelf space refers to the market with which someone competes, not whether people are thinking of a candy bar or finding a bathroom or a facebook post. Your argument commits survivor bias because it's ignoring the millions of other websites that exist and are being used. Being popular does not mean something is a monopoly, nor does it mean there's limited shelf space.</p><p>Following your example, if Google spammed Pixel ads on it's home page, the page would become <i>less</i> popular. One of the reasons it became so popular was it's strict adherence to focusing on utility.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356157&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>If a webpage doesn't show up on Google, it might as well not exist for most practical purposes.<p>Regardless of why exactly this is the case, it's not a healthy state of affairs.
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 <p>Even if true, what does that have to do with shelf space? Search results do not constitute the internet, and there are many more search engines than just Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355386&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>And then there's the problem of the difference between your cereal and the big ones aren't going to be big because cereal is a finished art. The same with search. My outcomes using bing or google are almost the same. The reality is a lot of good conversation is locked within social media discussions and reddit is the only one that allows it all to be public by default, hence google + reddit. We're moving to walled gardens and most of them will simply keep google out. Google is probably as good as it can be, but it just doesn't have access to discussions in places like private facebook groups, discord, etc.<p>Not to mention reddit is terrible outside of tech concerns. It leans conservative, young, male, and white. As a woman, contributing there is an invitation for harassment. Even when I don't contribute I do things like research cars to buy only to see forums dominated by "car guys" who mock safety standards, focus only on performance and the "get laid" aspect of cars, and are dismissive towards groups like "soccer moms." Well, I'm a soccer mom and felt wholly unwelcome in those communities and the advice there is actually terrible advice for parents wanting to buy cars.</p><p>Then there's a whole religion on gaming be it consoles vs consoles or vs pcs, or publishers or franchises and just endless tribalism. Politics is an absolute nightmare as you can imagine. The savvy reader will say "well you have to know how to sort the comments a special way and never visit the sub you want but the 'true' version of the sub you want, etc" which is a million times more hostile to non-technical people than scrolling past some google ads and finding an article about what they want from a reputable newpaper or consumer reports.</p><p>Reddit is just too wild west to be a google replacement. Worse, the good content is almost impossible to find. Google weighs popular discussions more than recent ones so it keeps giving me discussions from many years ago, even if I try to put the year in the search box. It has no idea how to crawl reddit and make it digestible for us and the reddit leadership want nothing to do with google it seems, for capitalistic reasons of keeping out a potential competitor and having their search be really good "any day now."</p><p>Posting to reddit is its own kind of nightmare, full of rules per sub, each different and with an algo that will decide if your question gets any visibility, often only getting mean spirited comments in return, if not harassment. For as far as facebook has fallen, I can still visit my town or neighborhood group and ask people what cars they like and get something of a normal discussion. At reddit, I'll be asked for nudes or just mocked/gatekept.</p><p>If anything if google is an old man at web 1.0 then reddit is an old man at web 2.0. I suspect google with outlast reddit as reddit looks primed to be overtaken, a bit like how myspace, slashdot and digg looked like unstoppable juggernauts during their time. Its "manboy" culture and its super hostile default subs and everyday misogyny, transphobia, and racism scare normal people away. Forums have always been the seedy underbelly of the internet but reddit is seemingly proud of being seedy, with spez coming out to say that he welcomes covid disinformation when reddit was recently called out about how its become the home of covid conspiracy theories.</p><p>If reddit was publicly traded and you asked me between google and reddit, I'd say buy google 100%. I think we'll be reading a lot more "what happened to reddit" articles in the near future, not "what happened to google" articles. Reddit becomes more toxic over time and that's just advertiser poison. Remember, it happily was the home of "jailbait" subs showing sexualized photos of children and "creepshots" showing non-consensual photos of random women until CNN called them out. If there was no call out, then spez would happily be selling those subs as points of pride and growth. "Reddit is the new google" narratives are very echo-chambery, shortsighted, and highly questionable. I think it forever remains this cesspool that chases away advertisers while Google continues to adapt to a new online world and continues to be vastly profitable. Meanwhile, Reddit has yet to make a profit.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355829&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Every time I hear this "Reddit is conservative-biased" I wonder if people are living in the same reality as I am. I just checked /r/all, the first political post is related to the Canadian trucker protest of which support is broadly split down the political divide. Top voted posts there slide as I expected, generally on the left-aligned component against the protests. The same, at least in my experience, applies to all political topics on reddit.<p>Hell, Bernie, and then Biden were both top of reddit during the elections. In what way is that indicative of a "conservative leaning" on reddit. I'll give you young and male, but conservative? You've got to be pulling my leg here.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355940&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>/r/all is just a spam of new items, not a view of its culture.<p>It was the largest Donald Trump fan site in the world (/r/thedonald before it was shut down for being so big its brigading tactics were damaging the site) and now /r/conservative takes that role. Before it was the biggest Ron Paul fan site. Its deeply pro-guns in nearly every comment section and any mention of Hillary or AOC is an invitation for angry comments and downvotes. Random subs are full of transphobic content and misogyny is near everywhere. /r/conspiracy is a right-wing paradise catering to right wing views.</p><p>You cannot talk about money or finance without being yelled at about how bad fiat and the fed are, which are right-wing talking points. You can't have a covid discussion without an army of covid skeptics yelling at everyone. You can't discuss police brutality without dishonest "but both sides" types full of racist dog whistles.</p><p>Its absolutely right leaning and token "liberal" positions like legal pot or better healthcare doesn't really change that. I know GOP voters with those positions but they always vote GOP for culture-war related reasons. Not to mention, being able to do drugs in your home is really neither liberal or conservative, its just in the USA only the liberal party is making any effort to make that happen.</p><p>Covid skepticism, which spez defends, is extremely coded right-wing, so even leadership acknowledges who reddit users really are.</p><p>The few liberal and feminist spaces that exist on reddit have draconian mod rules because of the constant brigading and some of them just give up and lock discussions because mods are exhausted and tired of fighting it. Just running a liberal or feminist or queer sub is a lot of work because reddit conservatives are constantly bridaging. This is not the sign of a liberal community. I mod a few subs and its just a nightmare out there. Just keeping conservatives from trolling and fighting with everyone is a big job. If you see "liberalism" its because the mods are keeping the everyday redditors away and trying to keep up the values and themes of that specific sub and its relatively tiny audience compared to the conservative majority.</p><p>Cherry picking AI spammed Bernie posts doesn't change the culture in the comments or what visitors receive when they post. I'm in a lot of Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc spaces and I can guarantee you reddit is absolutely nothing like those spaces.</p><p>Also you are taking my comment out of context, not only is reddit conservative, but as a hypothetic competitor to google its extremely conservative. I can google for things without being hit with Ron/Rand Paul narratives, Trump worship, pro-gun narratives, covid skepticism, transphobia, or racist dog whistles. So just the idea that Reddit is as welcoming as a Google search is very, very questionable. Google will transparently present you ads. Reddit will drown you in propaganda, culture war politics, and harassment. As the meme says, we are not the same.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356792&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>/r/all sorted by hot is items roughly sorted by popularity. Only if you sort by new, would it be a flood of contents by time.<p>We can take a quick survey of /r/all sorted by "hot" as of this moment. The very first post I see with AoC is literally this:</p><p>"""AOC tells Joe Biden: Cancel more student loans to have "any chance" in 2022"""</p><p>The top posts? All in support. Where is the dominant conservative force that warps conversation around it.</p><p>HermanCainAward, literally a subreddit celebrating the deaths of the unvaccinated tops all regularly. How the hell is that "covid skeptic right dominant"?</p><p>Is your idea of "reddit is conservative" that reddit hosts conservative communities at all? Even if they're smaller than the left-aligned communities there?</p><p>EDIT:</p><p>Some other quick statistics:</p><p>Size of /r/conservative: 923k</p><p>Size of /r/lgbt: 864k</p><p>Size of /r/hermancainaward: 500k</p><p>The "lol antivaxxers died" community is literally half the size of the largest conservative subreddit. The LGBT subreddit is the same size as OP's bugbear /r/conservative. The very much Dem supporting /r/politics is an order of magnitude larger than either of those, at 8 MILLION subscribers.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357829&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, I was waiting for this comment. The OP you're responding to is way way WAY overexagerating the opinions of the body politic of reddit.<p>Reddit is so large that having a potent conservative force is an inevitability - and much as we don't want to admit, for all the nastyness that goes on there, it's still a space that forces conservatives to be relatively speaking on "good behavior" (imagine if gab/voat/parler successfully displaced reddit), and more recently also forces their ideology to be heavily moderated (as in, to become more moderate), and watered down.</p><p>Also LOL at criticism of the car community for being bad at recommending SUVs. Reddits car enthusiast community is made up of people whose favorite car by and large is the Miata. Is the Miata a good car for a soccer mom? No. Is the Miata the car of dudebro conservatives? Uh, HELL NO!</p><p>I hate to say it, but sorry Karen, Reddit is for your son, not you.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356824&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.<p>Your loathing (for lack of a better term) of the discourse on Reddit has me wondering if the differences I perceive between our political and cultural tolerance stems from being on opposite sides of a few gnostic / agnostic boundaries, or if the difference between our demographic pigeon holes has spared me orders of magnitude of relative grief, allowing me the additional advantage of getting less overwhelmed by ambient asshattery.</p><p>I will readily admit that the latter could easily lead to the former; I guess I wonder if the 2 —&gt; 1 causal order holds overwhelmingly in practice, and how to satisfactorily determine that in a way that manages to be honest, systematic, and compassionate.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357157&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.<p>I'm of the opinion that this is fine. Rather, the better approach here might be instead gatekeeping and exclusivity. Now, before you tear my head off for that, let me elaborate a bit.</p><p>Much of the issues of existing communities, seem to me to stem from an inability to deal with scale. A single heretic isn't a problem, but when the heretics outnumber the believers, they can then proceed to dominate the community. One potential solution I've wondered about is entry-restrictions and finer grained restrictions on permissions for a community. For instance, a community might be public view but member-only for posts/comments, with invite-only membership. Or perhaps memberships have to be approved by N randomly selected members.</p><p>The catch of course, is that what I propose is also yet another contributor to the death of the open internet, much like discord is doing.
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 <p>Reddit is not a community; individual subreddits are. There are those that are Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Reddit as a whole is absolutely a community and the default subs and the comments in them reflect that. Its also one that brigades a lot into other subs, so there's a "real reddit" you see and its absolutely right-leaning.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've changed my default search engine to Bing for a while. Before I did that, I did compare the results with Google search and found that the clickbait websites that keep pissing me off are shown only by Google search. Those content farm sites have been on Google search as the top results for years to the extent I think it literally cancels any advantage Google search provides.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>“…almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore”? 6-8 quality leads in the last 14 days (ave. sale at $3,200) on less than $220 spent on ads begs to differ with you. We’ve only started advertising the last two weeks. We’ve had calls and form submissions _all_ from Google and we only launched our site roughly 45 days ago. I’m not a Google fanboy and I think Search does need an overhaul but people are mostly definitely using Google Search. Another client of mine gets 8-12 new customers per month all from Google searches and she doesn’t spend a dime on Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In many ways I think that supports my comment. People use Google search because it's the default and a monopoly, and it has a total monopoly on search ads as a result. But that is not a choice that consumers consciously make to go and use it. It's pre-installed as the only easily accessible default on their phones and computers, and no one ever thinks about what search engine they use or has chosen to use it. If you buy an Apple or Android phone, your search engine is Google, and you just assume it is the only search engine. It's great that it gets good results for your ad spend for you. That's why Google continues to set new records for revenue. Advertisers like you are their true customers. And the people searching are the product being sold.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They were not saying "nobody uses Google search" but rather that people were not consciously choosing to use it over other services, but using it because it is the default on virtually every device and browser, despite the fact that the majority of the results were ads. The fact that people are clicking on your ads doesn't exactly disprove that hypothesis.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357903&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Is there a reason why you've chosen the chat style interface vs the standard search box at the top and results at the bottom layout?<p>This is not a comment on the search results itself - always appreciate the efforts to break out of the standard google results and surface other sources, but I found the interface confusing and the previews were also taking up a lot of space. A compact view would be better - or giving the option to turn the previews on / off.
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 <a href="vote?id=30360820&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks for trying it out. I don't want to take to discussion too off topic, but if I can try to answer in general terms, I think that it is not just that the search results on Google have been getting worse, the user experience has been too. There has been very little real innovation in how search works in the last 20 years, so it is good to try new approaches.<p>With different views like compact vs visual, our feeling is that it's good to give people choices. If you get chance on desktop with Andi, try a search and then under Search Results, click "Change View", and try some of the other views. List view gives straight compact text results, and there is a Hacker view that presents results in the same information dense view as HN. That's my favorite. There is even a view Goggles that has a similar format to Google circa 2000 :)</p><p>I'd love to chat more with you about this, and it is a great topic for when we share what we're building in its own thread here. Just based on feedback, we have two fairly passionate groups of early users on this topic - some love the conversational interface and others just want it to look like Google. So the approach we're taking is to give people choice.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355959&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>"almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore"<p>May I ask how you arrived at this observation? This is the first time I am hearing this. I know of NO ONE who uses any other search engine. The term "Googled" is not yet a proxy for other search sites.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356021&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>People use Google because it's what comes installed on their phones and computers when they first turn them on, and they never actively choose it. So while everyone uses it, few consumers make an active choice to use it. From talking to users a lot, many just assume it's the only option - as you say, Google has become synonymous with search in the same way Xerox became a word for photocopying.<p>Consumers use Google because it's the default and the only visible option when they turn their phones on. Unfortunately, that's what a monopoly on distribution looks like. People no longer make a choice and don't even realize they have one.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352534&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I would think that there'd be an online opportunity for a search engine that only searches humanly curated sites. Those sites would be ones that have quality information rather than spam. Some obvious examples - wikipedia, reddit, hackernews, public domain books, etc.<p>It's easy to game an algorithm, but hard to game a human - humans know garbage when they see it.</p><p>As an aside, whenever I get a prescription, included with it is a dense two page sheet of detailed information about the drug. I see nothing like that online with a search. Why is this sort of thing not online?
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 <p>I would have gotten so excited about something like that 20 years ago, I would have yelled “Yahoo!” from the top of my lungs.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352678&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Maybe Yahoo's time has come again! Maybe Google's decline started when they no longer had competition from Yahoo?<p>The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it. One way might be the <i>users</i> pay for it, either per-search or per-month. This way the incentives to provide good search results align with the interests of the people doing the searching, not the people being searched.</p><p>The people who want to be searched would have an incentive to make a quality site that the search service would believe would please their customers.</p><p>I can think of people willing to pay for quality searches - professionals looking for things they need, like programmers, lawyers, researchers, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355380&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it.<p>Even though I loathe ads, I wouldn't mind one simple, clearly designated ad spawned from keywords in the search. No tracking and no cross site linking. No result promoting, etc...</p><p>And yes, I believe that the current iteration of the web requires human moderation to be usefully searched.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354287&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Honestly, if we're going to go old school, I vote Dogpile.<p>Let's start pitting the searches against each other again.
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 <p>At least France and Belgium have public websites with the information sheets of all authorized drugs. I think at least the French one generally comes up in the first results on Google (when searching from a French connection).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>pretty much what we're building at breezethat.com -- currently launching about one topic / week, and opening door soon so others can curate / moderate a topic</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Humans can also game systems to promote their garbage if they care to. Spammers can hire a click farm to privilege garbage results. Spammers and scammers seem to see enough returns to invest in ways to game the internet’s openness. There would need to be some kind of trust system to make the curation trustworthy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’m not sure what you’re talking about wrt prescriptions. I just googled “diazepam” and got all the information on my pharmacy insert, and more. And often, more clearly presented.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Just tried andisearch and am extremely impressed. It has so far handled all queries I have thrown at it better than brave search and DDG. Will continue to experiment, best of luck and awesome work!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thank you! I really do sincerely appreciate that. If you'd like to, please reach out to us there because we'd love to chat more. It wasn't my intention to take the discussion off-topic here because this thread is so incredibly interesting, but at the same time it's super encouraging to see the unprompted feedback and questions, and we'll share what we're doing properly on HN soon so we can address questions properly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356415&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Firefox on Linux Mint was pointing at something else for a while (DDG I think? Bing? I don't recall).<p>I gave up after a few weeks and had to switch it back to Google. Google's not perfect - it's <i>never</i> been perfect, it was just better than the alternatives - but it's still less bad than others.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357354&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I might be wrong, but they also have a moat I'm the sheer amount of compute required to trawl through the internet?<p>I mean maybe they was true and now they don't... But yeah good luck!
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 <p>Distribution will come if the product is better, but it is a hard problem. I try every new search engine I can and they are always worse/slower than google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I have tried using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, but Firefox changed it back to Google with every update, so eventually I just gave up on that endeavor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's really strange, I've got it set as the default in Firefox on 3 different computers (2 mac 1 windows) and it's stayed the default over several updates. I think something might be wrong with your computer?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355161&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I guess.<p>With the current Mozilla leadership it never even occurred to me that it could be a bug. I just assumed that it was something they do on purpose to get more money from Google.
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 <p>I'll echo that what you are experiencing isn't normal. I've had DDG as my default for a while and it's been preserved throughout updates.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351788&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore<p>Do you have anything substantive to support this? I highly doubt it is true given the fact that the verb "to google" literally means "to search the internet".
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 <p>I think you missed the point here -- people synonymize googling with searching and therefore aren't choosing to google -- they're choosing to search but ending up using google despite having made no conscious effort to do so (it's just there).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352060&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google is the default search on the vast majority of phones and desktop browsers by default.<p>People don't change their search engine from something else to Google, because it is already the default search engine on the devices they buy and the web browsers they use.</p><p>So people do not make a conscious choice to use Google. The vast majority make no choice at all. Google is synonymous with search because it is already the search engine on their phones and computers. They are simply never asked which search engine they want to use.</p><p>Most consumers have no idea that you can even change your search engine. After talking with hundreds of users, they find it's either impossible to change (iPhone/MacOS) or too hard (Chrome).</p><p>If you're Duck Duck Go or Bing, at least you're in a very limited dropdown list if someone does want to try something else. If you're a new search engine startup, you're not an option at all.
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 <p>Your argument supports the original poster. It is no longer a conscious choice, "Do I search for this via Google? Maybe I should use Bing? What about DuckDuckGo?", it is, "Oh, lemme Google that".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356354&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>the other day, on HN i mentioned i was trying to find some relevant meme on DDG, and someone said "try googling 'foo bar baz'" and i thought it was funny.<p>I don't use google search if i can avoid it. I'll try 3 others first, and generally just give up. Google doesn't deserve any money.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352020&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.<p>There are five (very simply accessible) different choices for Safari on iOS.</p><p>But if you switch to iCabMobile on iOS there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352136&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I think it's reasonable to point out that is not something most consumers are going to be able to do. The only meaningful search engine choice is that available within Safari. And you did install another App, they still aren't used from the system search on iOS, or from Safari itself.<p>I think you might as well be asking regular consumers to root their device so they can use whatever Apps from outside the App Store, or whatever search engine they want.</p><p>Also, even for a technical user, there is simply no way on an iPhone to change to a new search engine not already on a tiny list, and from talking with hundreds of consumers, I have not talked with a single non-technical person who could work out themselves how to change their Safari search engine to even one of the 5 limited choices, let alone a new option.
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 <p>Unfortunately, installing an App doesn't let you change the system-wide search on iOS (or Safari browser), so rooting the device would be the only real way. My intended point is that if you're a consumer trying to change your search engine to a new option on an iPhone, there is no way to do it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Do you have a stake in this iCabMobile project? You were spamming its name 35 days ago and you're doing so again here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348296&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.<p>Tons of people don't, though. They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water, even if they're tugging and trying to go in the completely wrong direction. Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people', and that means striving for fixing the complete word soup of search results people type in.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348537&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>A single mediocre experience optimized to work ‘most of the time’ for ‘most people’ is quite contrary to the narrative that has made Google such tremendous amounts of money (“let us surveil you so that you can have a more personalized experience”) though, isn’t it?<p>Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for if their past behavior suggests that they mean what they type? Couldn’t the “search only for &lt;exact query&gt;“ option be a very good data point on making that determination automatically, or enabling a user setting for “give me exact results based on what I actually typed by default”?</p><p>It seems possible to me that this behavior has more to do with the value of ads for “big” keywords than with (poorly) inferring user intent.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348989&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great. Yeah, putting you into a male or female bucket, parent or child, homeowner or renter, that's worth a little bit. But, to find out your name and address and search history and how long your last bowel movement took, just to deliver an ad that's theoretically hyper-optimized to make you buy something... I just don't believe it.<p>I don't believe that it's worth anything near what they are charging for it, except perhaps in the case of politics, which has always been an extremely efficient use of money. And even then, it's not worth a tiny fraction of the real cost it has to society.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353094&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; personalization just isn't that great<p>Data analytics truly feels like a bubble.</p><p>Netflix has achieved the <i>dream</i> of movie studios going back more than a century now. They have the talent, the money, and more than two decades of data. Netflix knows what you watch, when you stop watching, how often you watch, which movie covers work best.</p><p>And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out <i>nothing but</i> hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones.</p><p>Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire. HBO and AMC are running <i>laps</i> around Netflix. Meanwhile, Netflix is making live action Cowboy Bebop and cancelling it before people even know it existed. I'm really curious what the data said about funding that particular project. On one hand, you have the cult following of the anime that will absolutely tear a live action version to shreds. On the other hand, you have to convince the uninitiated into viewing a remake of 23 year old anime.</p><p>Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line. Oh, and, their top 10 feature is currently the biggest recommendation feature on their site. And it's not even personalized! If that's not a complete admission of defeat I don't know what is.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354156&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Netflix has produced a lot of fairly solid content. Not at the level of the all-time great prestige TV shows like the ones you mentioned, but enough to keep a lot of subscribers happy for long periods of time at an accessible price. House of Cards (at least until the Kevin Spacey scandal blew up), Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, etc are a few that come to mind that I watched and enjoyed.<p>I think Netflix has two big issues. The first is the way they drop seasons all at once prevents the natural cycle of pre-episode hype, post-episode interviews, speculation and leaks, fan anticipation, fan arguments (ship wars, etc), etc. Fan culture can't develop around this content as easily because there's never any breathing space for fans to collectively sit with the story so far. The shows that become a cultural force like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones need us to keep coming back to the conversation every week. They have us talking about what happened last week and will happen this week with our colleagues at work and around the dinner table. How can these Netflix IPs enter stable orbit in the cultural zeitgeist when they're once-a-year events? It devalues the work, positioning it more like a movie that you watch and then forget rather than a story you become invested in over a long period of time.</p><p>Full season drops also allow people to binge a whole season of content for a single month's subscription and then immediately churn (ask me how I know). I assume they have some data-driven reasons for doing this, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.</p><p>Besides that, I think they should put more wood behind fewer arrows. They've developed a reputation for aggressively cancelling smaller shows with passionate followings which makes a lot of people not even want to bother until something has become an established mainstream success. I think of them now as the Google of content-creation, putting out a lot of solid (but not amazing) products and then cancelling them once people start to grow attached.
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 <p>Wrote something similar before: 
"The writing has been on the wall for some time:
1. Grading system changed from 1-5 to 1-2 (thumbs up/down). They thought that the users where full of crap when rating. I do believe some bosses just looked "bad" when buying in the next Adam Sandler movie. This started a cozy culture where no one in Netflix was wrong. Recommendation engine becomes comically bad, even with the best and the brightest.
2. They started to buy everything under the sun. South park made an episode about it even. All the comedians got their own stand up specials. It was now way easier to get a top score (thumbs up). Bosses where happy.
3. As they no longer focuses on quality which they no longer can measure (measuring time watched and churn is not that useful!), they start to strive for quantity. Which is expensive, very expensive.
I guess that in the next decade Netflix will become the next Comcast and cost 35 USD per month, and it all started in an innocent change to the grading system."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355115&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits.<p>That's not how the entertainment business works. If I had to guess, Netflix's data-driven approach to content production is like card-counting in blackjack. It only gives them a slight edge on the house. A net positive outcome over hundreds or thousands of hands but offering no guarantee over the outcome of any single hand.</p><p>&gt; HBO and AMC are running laps around Netflix</p><p>Netflix did win the most Emmys in 2021.[1] And they only started producing original content in 2013 or so. That's pretty good.</p><p>1. <a href="https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/netflix-emmys-the-crown-queens-gambit-scorecard-1235068407/">https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/netflix-emmys-the-crown-que...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353716&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line.<p>They may also be optimizing for revenues as opposed to recommendation quality (homegrown content being cheaper than licensed)
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 <a href="vote?id=30354618&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Part of this might just be account switching issues though. If I’m watching for myself I can usually find what I want quickly. The problem comes when I’m trying to browse with my wife to find something we can both live with. At best it gives the my preferences and the Union of me + wife’s preferences (and vice versa on her account.) But what we’d really want is a separate recommendation feed that shows the intercept of me + wife’s preferences.<p>But most people are lazy and won’t account switch for different contexts like that anyway, so there’s just no way they can keep the profile data as clean as it needs to be for a television.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356117&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Netflix is not recommending what they think you'll like, they are recommending what they want you to watch. Once you're a subscriber, they want to keep you there as cheaply as possible.<p>This is exactly what their data analytics has told them to do.</p><p>Have a few popular, quality tv shows with star-studded casts as loss-leaders to bring in new viewers. Otherwise the model is to produce and recommend the shows that get them the most eyeballs per dollar; the bare-minimum to keep their subscribers there:</p><p>- Stand up specials are dirt-cheap, quite popular, and provide never-ending variety.</p><p>- Ditto with 'reality' shows, bake-offs, make-offs, expose documentaries, etc.</p><p>- Old sitcoms and b-movies that have a proven re-watch-rate.</p><p>Throw in a handful of first seasons to keep the FOMO up, and you've got a captive audience on the cheap. Maybe one or two will catch on and become the next loss-leaders.</p><p>They may not have the quality shows that are 'running laps around' HBO and AMC, but by any of the metrics Netflix cares about they are simply running laps around HBO, AMC and everyone else.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355746&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones.<p>I don't follow this argument. Knowing what people like has very little to do with the quality of original creative content; surely you don't expect Goodreads to put out Shakespearean novels, or Spotify to be producing original hits on par with the Rolling Stones? Should ESPN have better pro sports scouting and coaching talent than the professional leagues?</p><p>Knowing what people like, however, _does_ have to do quite a bit with selling those people a product - which Netflix just reported 15% YoY growth to $7.7B yearly revenue, they're clearly very successful to this end. I think you actually have it backwards - if <i>anything</i>, Netflix represents a total fulfillment of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Despite mediocre original content, this is a $200B company with 200M subscribers growing revenues by double digits two decades after IPO.</p><p>If Netflix paid $450k+ salaries to screenwriters instead of engineers, you'd very likely get better movies on a worse streaming platform. And when Netflix <i>has</i> shelled out for Hollywood talent, like Mindhunter which has David Fincher and Charlize Theron, the results are quite good.</p><p>Regardless, to take the fact that Netflix pays for premium engineering and analytics talent, but does <i>not</i> pay for premium filmmaking talent, and then spin that fact into Netflix being "a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization" is a questionable criticism.
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 <p>Strong comment. I agree completely with your negative assessment of the “value” of consumer habits to optimize Netflix recommendation. In my own case I feel trapped in a very shallow local minimum. Yes I watched a revenge flick or two but now I am type-cast for life.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355499&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Netflix really doesn't need to produce something like the wire or mad men or breaking bad. There's no reason to make a show that appeals strongly to 70% of the market when they could make 70 shows that 1% of the market is fanatical about. They don't have only one channel that competes for content and they don't seem budget limited.<p>Ironically, it seems like AmazonPrime is far better at that.</p><p>As for then top ten being bottom barrel stuff, I think you overestimate how popular mad men was vs. something like king of queens.</p><p>I will say, Netflix seems to fail in many cases, and I don't understand how they think content discovery is supposed to work.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354101&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire.<p>There may be others, but off the top of my head: Bojack Horseman.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349310&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Right, people radically overestimate how much a profile is worth. Someone who owns a house in a rich area is somewhat easy to identify, and you target them... along with everyone else who is also trying to reach that rich slice, so you pay more.<p>The very high quality pieces of information can be things like "wants to buy a life insurance policy this week" or "just had a baby" or "just bought a plane ticket to XYZ," or "is in the frequent flyer program and spends more than $20,000 per year on travel."</p><p>However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless and not worth tracking for the most part. You reach those people through traditional mass marketing means.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351711&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It's a great point you have made. I work <i>technically</i> as a data scientist, but my domain is scientific data. I have quite a few GitHub packages and get recruiter calls for data science jobs almost every week, with pretty generous salary offers.<p>And from what it seems to me, there is a giant bubble. The vast majority of companies doing "data science" jobs are things that a smart undergrad can do with a month or two of training. And this is because I believe C-suites have completely gulped down the <i>data is oil</i> mantra. There are entirely charlatan companies with unicorn, even decacorn valuations now being built on this mantra - for example, CRED in India.</p><p>Yet, as you said, and as I believe too, most of the data is worthless.
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 <a href="vote?id=30360493&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Right, but unlike oil, most data is worthless most of the time.<p>For example, I'm about to list my house on the market. The real estate agents who reached out to me last year and the year before that to try to induce me to sell the house had no chance of succeeding. Now is the time if they knew the secret that I'm about the list the house that they should all be competing for my business. The only relevant piece of information is that I'm about to sell the house. That is a valuable lead that many in my region would bid on. My background information is frankly not that relevant to the value of that lead, and isn't something that is readily surfaced by the kind of deep profiling that is supposed to be going on. It can be signaled by me signing up to some kind of list that sells my lead to a zillion people at once, but is never going to be surfaced accurately to the people who can earn the most profits from it by my Youtube habits or whatever.</p><p>Zillow sells the logged in user data in the market I'm buying in to the real estate agents listing the houses, but that again is not something being modeled by some kind of big data operation, but is merely the same kind of "little data" provided on things like dating websites or LinkedIn when people browse your profile. There's no modeling going on there that requires sophistication.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356933&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless...<p>I've had a supposition for a while now that the targeted advertising industry should be closing the consumer cashflow loop by advertising effective self- and employment improvement, with the objective of increasing the disposable income people have so they can then make more brokering traditional sales
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 <a href="vote?id=30352398&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great.<p>Personalized adverts and recommendations can be incredibly, horrendously dumb.</p><p>Here's what I see when I hit amazon's homepage at the moment :
A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago (no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.), USB cables I bought multiples of in the same time frame, a wireless charger (I already bought two before).
An entire line dedicated to showing me backpacks (I bought one less than a year ago)
An entire line dedicated to headphones (I recently bought wireless IEMs)
An entire line dedicated to watches (same)</p><p>I don't get it. Supposedly the best and brightest work at firms like amazon and google to brainwash us to buy stuff, but classic, random, non-targeted advertisement is more likely to make me discover products I'd buy than targeted advertisement because the latter only shows me things after I don't need to buy them anymore!</p><p>Here's what I would expect actually intelligent targeted advertising to do :
After buying a smartphone, recommend accessories (cases, screen protectors, USB-C dongles, chargers, whatever)
Here's what targeted advertisement actually does :
show me smartphones ads everywhere I go after I already selected and BOUGHT a smartphone. No, I don't need to buy another smartphone weeks after a recent replacement, amazon!</p><p>The same sort of phenomenon can happen after google locks on searches I did to buy something. I can't wait to see the internet advertisement industry crash and burn, it's overvalued nonsense.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354825&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.),</i><p>Disagree there. About 75% of the things I buy on Amazon are repeating purchases that I nevertheless don't want to be automatically scheduled. It used to be a real pain in the neck to reorder something manually, so I'm glad they made that easier.</p><p>But yes, in general, Amazon is full of low-hanging fruit that's been neglected on the tree for a decade or more. Buying clothes from Amazon still manages to be a worse experience than going to the mall, for instance, which is really saying something.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350905&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I think the fact that most recommendation algorithms have seemingly converged on what seems like a really poor and naive implementation - fixation on very recent activity - shows that the sort of deep personalization touted is mostly BS.<p>Both YouTube and Amazon heavily personalize by recommending primarily the 3-4 things that I've interacted with in the very recent past.
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 <p>This is not true. For example every time Summoning Salt uploads a video, which happens every few months, it will show up on my recommend feed because YouTube knows I'm willing to watch their ~1 hour documentaries even though I'm not subscribed to them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Youtube seems to be a rare exception here in that people actually feel like its algorithm is useful. However, even then, their algorithm mostly seems to devolve to "what creators have you usually watched videos from" and (usually directly after you watch such a video) "what videos did other people who watched that video watch?" Basically the same principle as PageRank, just with a lot less spam to deal with.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352225&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>This could (probably isn't) be a very quick implementation with a heuristic like 'if percentage of viewed videos from channel x (essentially per channel viewed) &gt; threshold ==&gt; show new video from channel x on homepage next time user appears.<p>Make it fancy and use a multi armed bandit and call it machine learning/AI/data science.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356172&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>What it proves is that despite all that personalized data they have, it's the naive implementation that gets them the most clicks per dollar.<p>So the question is this: if they're not (and never were) using that data for what they say they were, what <i>are</i> they doing with it?
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 <p>I believe YouTube recommendation is most well working one, so some people getting into echo chamber.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351076&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Just anecdote, but...<p>The most common pattern I see relating to personalized advertising as someone being advertised to is that I will often see an ad for something I just bought (or some competitor to it) repeated relentlessly for a couple of days after buying it and this is after not seeing any related ads during the days prior where I was actually doing some research into the product space.</p><p>Maybe I'm an outlier but they seem to miss the window of relevance on me often enough that I notice it as a commonly repeated pattern.
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 <p>I know it seems moronic, but I think it might actually make sense from the advertisers point of view. Some percentage of people who buy a thing are going to return it and buy something similar in the next week. That percentage is almost certainly large compared to the percentage of the overall population who's going to buy that thing in the next week, and it seems plausible to me it's even large compared to the number of people who have been browsing for the thing but haven't bought yet. (Think of it as the ratio of people just browsing vs ready to buy.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Even so, wouldn't it be much smarter if they kept track of what the expected life expectancy of the thing you bought is, and then years later start feeding you ads for a replacement? Or is it too hard to track people over such a long period of time?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't think any advertisers would be able to offer "People who bought a washing machine 3 years ago" as a category that can be targeted without a riot</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Same experience. What's even more mystifying is that often it is for items that no human would be likely to be buying many copies of in a short span of time (high ticket items, or items where you probably don't need more than one).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Just because I bought something doesn't mean I kept it. And those 0.1%, or whatever, returning items are very likely to buy another one of a different brand.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Exactly. If I just bought some power tool for a home improvement project, I am <i>the least likely person in the country</i> to want to buy that exact same power tool the next day.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354985&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Not if you hate it and want to return it. In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill? Because that subset of the population is probably more likely to be looking to buy one than any other.<p>A return rate of say 1% may lead to more people looking to buy a drill who have just bought one in the last week than people looking to buy their first drill.
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 <a href="vote?id=30358576&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill?<p>If that's true, they left something out of their calculation: What percentage of people will install an adblocker as a result of feeling like they're being hounded for a few weeks? This scenario was mentioned specifically by Tim Cook when he introduced the Safari anti-tracking features.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350229&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;to find out your name and address and search history<p>So that you can continue to show me ads for a washing machine for months after I purchased a washing machine.
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 <p>I haven't consumed significant amounts of ads in a long time, only some logos in sports and the occasional visit to family or the rare times adblock fails (YouTube premium user too). So I can only imagine how hilarious that must be.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think you're right. I'd like to see an analysis of the effectiveness of personalised advertising based on tracking versus ads based purely on local context. The latter being if you're on a web page about birds then you get ads for bird seed and bird houses. No tracking involved.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's always fun watching an ad system try to figure out nonbinary people. Spotify ads can't decide whether I'm a successful businessman or Spanish-speaking housewife.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351007&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It's always fun checking Google's ad settings and seeing what they think I'm into.<p>Apparently now I'm into baseball, flowers, boating, celebrities, country music, credit cards, geology, event ticket sales, fishing, and windows OS. Among a couple hundred other things. It even gets some rather basic facts (marital status, company size, education) wrong. I seriously wonder how they generate this profile?
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 <p>Well... It actually got some categories right, but I don't really feel that's very impressive considering that it put me in every category by the looks of it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There's not a lot there for me. Just some generic whether I want to see alcohol and gambling ads on youtube.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It can have this problem even if you are not nonbinary. Buy a few toe rings and have it decide you're a woman...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It fascinates me to see how the ad algorithm responds to people who watch content in multiple languages. I study a lot of languages as a hobby, so I often watch YouTube videos that are in Mandarin, like news broadcasts and niche hobby channels. YouTube has now started showing me ads (in Mandarin) which seem to be targeted to Mandarin-speaking immigrant parents of young children who want a way to teach them Mandarin despite my, and my spouse’s, very busy careers. I find this amusing because I am a single, pasty white man in my 20s.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354761&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That’s just Spotify. Many years ago they had a little tool that actually reported what demographic slots it pegged you at based on your listening preferences. The top two hits for me were 1.) early 20s, college educated, White, woman 2.) 60+, blue collar, African American, male<p>At the time I was a late 20s, college educated, South Asian male. I’m very cis and very straight. And yeah my musical tastes are pretty eclectic, but that was a weird profile to settle me on.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353604&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Some people fit in convenient buckets, but lots of people don't, and assuming all people do, will make the ad system useless to a lot of people. Even if you're not non-binary at all, you could still be a successful businesswoman or a Spanish-speaking houseman (househusband? stay-at-home dad?).<p>Better to just follow people's interests, instead of using their interests to incorrectly pigeonhole them and then drawing incorrect generalisations from that.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351706&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Here's another less harmless aspect of that:<p>Something about my actual interests and activity apparently makes youtube think I'm into Fox news and all the crazy shit found there.</p><p>Now, who else has this same value judgement about me? This assessment that I neither declared for myself nor even ratified.</p><p>It's annoying but ultimately harmless that youtube shows me conservative wackjob stuff.</p><p>But is that same profile in someone else's database that marks me as someone to watch or something? Does it affect my insurance rates, my liklihood to get extra scrutiny when travelling, my ability to purchase or register a firearm, my access to jobs that might be extra sensitive or responsible, basically any of the things where someone either private or the state does any sort of background or credit check on you for any reason, and there are really many of those when you think a out it.</p><p>I'm guessing, today, it's probably not really affecting my life in any real way, but, there is no way it makes any sense to say that will still be true tomorrow.
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 <p>There was that infamous case of a retailer figuring out someone was pregnant before they did based on what they were buying and mailing a customized flyer...to their dad's house. I don't remember the exact situation, but it probably wasn't the only incident.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357904&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That btw is an anecdote from the association mining community.<p>I spent a lot of time learning about association rule mining in my AI courses, including the implementation details of competing ways to mine them. The technique seems extremely useful and fascinating (I jury rigged it for on the fly league of legends champ recommendations to maximize calculated win rate change given limited information), but I almost never see it used in the real world or even see it talked about anymore.</p><p>What happened to association rule mining?
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 <p>I believe you're referring to a rumor (which may be true, I just mean it in the sense that it's out there and not something you or I have verified) about Target.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>And the harm like what I'm saying was that her father was informed of her medical condition through that mechanism rather than from her.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357853&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>My experience working in a similar domain (NLP summarization, which leverages methods like text rank which are identical to pagerank but for text summation) is similar.<p>Personalized page rank is not significantly better at summarization in my experience, even "queryable" summarization, but that also could be a pure implementation problem or a problem of hyperparamater selection...
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 <p>Does it really work so well in politics? I've read in various places that a lot of political advertising in America functions basically as a means for channeling donors' money to a few K Street firms belonging to party insiders.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I agree with you. I highly doubt that our economy has enough (product, message) combinations to justify the need for personalization based on more than a dozen attributes.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351743&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I will buy X, if I need X. And once I buy X, it's done. For example, I wanted a cordless drill last week. Did the "site:reddit.com" thing (I actually have been doing that almost subconsciously now, as Google results are all trash), chose a drill, and ordered one off Amazon.<p>Then, after that, what's the point in showing drill ads to me for two weeks?
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 <a href="vote?id=30352195&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.<p>Probably that's what they are going for if they're doing it on purpose.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353474&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.<p>Do you have a link for further reading on that? That's fascinating if true.
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 <p>Could be - but at least for me it feels intrusive and irritating, not any positive feelings really</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's not supposed to feel good. If 9/10 people have a brief negative thought about the advertising experience and nothing else happens, but 1/10 people happen to have their friend on the phone at the time and makes a referral, then overall that is a win for the brand.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Have you considered consumer reports? I’m of the Reddit persuasion and find it’s a good resource. Bummer everything is polluted these days.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356727&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think it's really a secret.<p>It's pretty straightforward to understand that when the vast majority of your sites income is generated from ad revenue, that data is being used to optimize for generating ad clicks, etc., rather than actually giving users the best/most relevant/useful/desireable information for their purposes.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353144&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>From the behavior of ads (that I imagine are highly optimized), all that knowledge is useful for front-running an specific TV model all over your internet once you decide to buy a TV.<p>It seems to be completely useless for anything else, and specifically harmful for product discovery, that is the one way ads add societal value.
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 <p>Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we found out that personalised advertising actually earned less than just auctioning off the obvious big keywords?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I worked for a healthcare recruitment company in a capital city with some large hospitals and a number of universities. I can't for the life of me understand why they chose to spend so much money on trying to track healthcare professionals online when they could just advertise it on-premise where they actually hang out.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353944&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for...</i><p>You're missing what "personalization" has come to really mean. It means knowing enough about the user to give them an experience you can profit from and which they will accept. If there isn't something you can expect profit from, there's no reason to give them anything.
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 <p>This used to be solved by allowing queries like `Class Inheritance +ruby' to require results to include "ruby". They killed this for Google+ by changing it to quotes, so `Class Inheritance "ruby"' but now they interpret even those. When I use Google, which is less and less, I am not looking for a fight with a computer to express my intent, I'm looking for the answer to a question. That never seemed to be an issue until recently.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I work for Google Search. If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase. Nothing has changed in this. When it happens that people feel it fails, it's often that they don't realize we've matched that word or phrase appearing in ALT text or text that's appearing in a less visible part of the page -- or in a few cases, the page might have changed since we indexed it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353991&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase.<p>I'm sorry to tell you, but this is flat wrong. I commented[1] about this a few months back with a random phrase as an example. I see it often in my day to day also.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356826&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I searched for "eggzackly this" and all 10 results on the first page contain the phrase, although most have punctuation in the middle.<p>Looking at all 22 results (without opening the "omitted results" section or image results), the phrase became harder to find off the first page, but I tended to find it in the source code, or the DOM, or the cached version of the page, or by disabling JS (sometimes requiring a combination of those techniques). I found it in 21 out of the 22. The one page I couldn't find it in (the dolls one) looks like a frequently updating page, and it was highlighted in the snippet, so it looks like it was there at the time of crawling but not now; the cache isn't there for that page.</p><p>Full disclosure I work at Google, but not on Search.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357413&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Punctuation matters. I explained this in another response, and I should have mentioned it as part of my response here. But to repeat, these are typical reasons why it might seem that quoted search isn't matching when it is:<p>1) text appears in ALT text 
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)</p><p>In the [eggzackly this], you found matches of those words separated by punctuation -- which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched.</p><p>I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.
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 <a href="vote?id=30359516&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>The article has been updated with a response from Danny Sullivan, the person you're responding to, which is worth a read.<p>I just tested "eggzackly this" and every result on the first page contains the string "eggzackly this", albeit usually with different punctuation ("Eggzackly. This [...]", "Eggzackly, this.", "Eggzackly! This [...]")
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 <a href="vote?id=30353794&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I'm sorry but this has absolutely changed. I'm not sure why but quite often we are suggested results in queries that ignore quotes. The engine is even telling us that if omitted those terms.<p>We don't have control over this and it's very frustrating.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353865&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>We haven't changed anything. Promise. Honest. Not at all. But we definitely want to look into any cases where people feel this isn't working, so actual examples (if people are comfortable sharing) will really help.<p>What you're talking about is probably a case where there's a quoted word or phrase as well as other words that aren't quoted. In such a case, we're going to absolutely look for content that matches the quoted parts. That's a must. The other words, we'll look for them, but we'll also look for related words and sometimes, we might find content that doesn't match one of them.</p><p>Because those other words aren't quoted, we'll tell you if we find a match that seems helpful but doesn't contain those non-quoted words. That's what the message is about. But it should never be telling you we omitted a quoted word or phrase because we won't -- with one exception.</p><p>If there's literally nothing on the web we know of that matches a quoted word or phrase, then we're not going to show anything at all and say we couldn't match any documents.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355111&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I tried to find a counterexample and I couldn't! I believe you that quotes really are working. What's confusing though is that a quoted word or phrase often doesn't show up in the Google results snippets. This is certainly the reason why people think quotes aren't being respected.<p>Though, why does enabling "Verbatim" (in tools) on a search reduce the number of search results if all my terms are already quoted? Enabling Verbatim often does it make it feels like my queries are interpreted more literally, but if quotes are already being respected I don't understand how Verbatim would reduce the number of search results.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356712&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I agree, it would be easier if it were in the snippet. That's something we're looking at. I believe it used to, but sometimes the quoted part might not have been the best overall snippet to use. But as said, we might revisit that.<p>On the counts -- basically, it's all really rough estimates. We make a rough quick count, you go deeper into the page, we make a fresh estimate. It can change, and it doesn't always make sense and personally, I'd hope we just get rid of counts because of this, perhaps more confusing than helpful.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354488&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks Danny I'll try to whip up some examples.<p>Interestingly I tried my pet peeve search, and it worked for the first time this year! It is for a specific recipe, and I search for 'ocau slow cooked balsamic beef'. I have had to manually find it in the archive of the overclockers.com.au forum for the past year, as Google seemingly forgot it existed no matter what search terms or operators I used.</p><p>The main difference is I am using Firefox on Manjaro and not my historically typical environment for searching. Normally I would either be using Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iOS if I am in the kitchen.</p><p>I will play around on some other devices and see what evidence I can find.</p><p>P.s. I'm being referred in for a role at Google currently, is the Search team only in a specific area like Silicon Valley or is it a global team? Most of the jobs in Australia seem to be commercial facing, not product facing.
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 <p>Glad to hear that works! Search has teams around the world. I'd suggest if you see something relevant, apply even if it's in a particular location. Remote work has changed a lot things.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I hear that g search uses humans to quality check search results. How can I sign up to do this? From what I have read, it is invite only</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30383772&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Hey, thanks for much for this comment. I've personally experienced this and looked myself for an example when I first read your comment, but I couldn't find one.<p>Today I stumbled upon one. Here's a broken example query: linux next hop "[::]"</p><p>Here's the archive of the incorrect query result: <a href="https://archive.md/9WGe7">https://archive.md/9WGe7</a></p><p>The first result (the man pages) does not contain [::] anywhere in the page text, the source, or the cached result. Could you take a look at this one?
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 <a href="vote?id=30353220&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>This is not the case in my experience. I type a query with some parts in quotes and often get lots of results that have in small letters at the bottom something along the lines of “does not include &lt;word in quotes&gt;”, with no in bold highlighted part showing the phrase in the page context. This was not the case in the past and google made sure the word I put in quotes is absolutely mentioned somewhere<p>I’m guessing this happens when there are less results matching my phrase
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 <a href="vote?id=30353667&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I would love if you or anyone who ever has this happen can share an example, if you're comfortable doing so. We'll debug. But if you quote something, we shouldn't show anything but that which matches the quoted material.<p>Now, if you quote something and put in other non-quoted words, then we'll look for stuff that matches the quoted part and the other things are optional. So when you see that strikeout message, it means basically "We found this page that has the exact words you quoted, and it probably has one or more of the other words or related words you didn't quote, but heads-up, it doesn't have one of those non-quoted words at all."</p><p>And we do this because sometimes there might be a useful page that doesn't contain all of your optional non-quoted words.</p><p>Totally agree it would help if we did a better job bolding the sections of a page where the quoted terms apply. Often we do, but sometimes the snippeting won't include them if there's better text to describe the page overall. But we're looking at maybe improving here.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355536&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Unless it's changed in the past 56 minutes, the SERP is pretty up-front that it can't find any pages with all three of those.<p>It literally says `No results found for "kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly".` right at the top, and then shows you the (properly explained) results for the non-quoted version of the query.
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 <p>Mobile doesn't show that, at all. It also doesn't show that bit if you use the brand name "kitchenboss" instead of "kitchen boss", which I originally intended. My phone might have auto-corrected that without me noticing.<p>Anyway, with the terms I posted earlier, on desktop it says:</p><pre><code> Results for kitchen boss g320 disassembly (without quotes):
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search
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Then it goes on to show me lots of unrelated results, instead of showing me the 'not many' great matches for my search. If my search doesn't turn up many good results (let alone great), that fine. Show me what you've got, let me decide how to broaden my search to get more. All of the unrelated results being shown are marketing spam sites. That's not helpful.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356779&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>On mobile and desktop, I'm getting a message saying that when you search for ["kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly"] that we have no results. And there's not much we can do if there are no pages we find that match all those words you required be present. There just aren't the pages.<p>What we can do is try searching for all of the words, so perhaps you'll find something useful that way. But even we can tell when doing this that the results might not be what you want, which is why that automatic warning about maybe these aren't great matches.</p><p>IE: we can't show you what we've got for a query where there are no exact matches. It's impossible. We can show you what we got if we don't require all the word be present. And we can tell you what we're doing. And you always have the choice to restart the query in another way if you don't like that.</p><p>Now here's something else. You probably used the quotes because I'm guessing you figured it was better to tell us exactly what to do than trust us to look at all the words and analyze the context and so on and see if we could make matches generally. If you had done that, just searched for [kitchen boss g320 disassembly], then the first web page result is the instruction manual for your sous vide machine. It has cleaning steps, which I'm guessing also might be what you're after? (It looks like it's just take off the outer casing).</p><p>Those results, doing it directly like that, are different than when we gave them to you after your quoted search failed. and that's probably because when you gave us quotes, and there were no matches, we might have tried some stricter matching to keep closer to the original requirements rather than use our general ranking.</p><p>To wrap up: maybe don't try the quotes at first. It's totally fine to type in a long natural language query like [how do I take apart a kitchen boss g320] and if you do that, the instruction manual is right there.
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 <p>I added the quotes because I wasn't getting what I wanted without them. I don't need the user manual; I already have that and I'm not just trying to clean it. I wanted to find a guide to fully disassembling it, like the videos you find for phones when you want to replace a cracked screen yourself. Knowing that there are no matches at all is good information. (Disappointing, but good.) Trying to give me results for a different query, apparently assuming that I accidentally used the exact-match-only quotes, is not useful and kind of condescending. I think that's what leads people to think the quotes don't work the way they used to. Finally, the wording about not many good matches makes it sound like there are <i>some</i> good matches, but they've been mixed in with these other irrelevant matches. That's probably just a wording issue on the message, trying to soften the "We can't find anything" result.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30375665&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks for the additional information. It really helps understanding the situation.<p>Showing results for non-quoted words isn't intended to be condescending nor an indication that we think someone made a mistake. Apologies that it comes across that way.</p><p>We think we're clearly saying there are no matches with the "No results found" message. If we stopped there, the page would have nothing else. And I get that for you -- and perhaps others -- that might be preferable, a further reinforcement that there's nothing out there.</p><p>For others, not so helpful. They potentially might give up with no real way of going forward, when just losing the quotes perhaps could get them useful information.</p><p>And I get the trade-off concerns. I've seen many comments here that things done to support less "pro" users are annoying. And yet, we do need to find a way to support everyone. I think that's why we've probably gone with the message about no matches with and showing the quotes.</p><p>Perhaps we should consider making that an option -- "Would you like to try this search again without quotes."</p><p>As for the message about not good matches, we always try to show the best stuff we have first. That's the point of our ranking. The warning is meant to indicate that even though we'll list the best we have, for that query, none of it is particularly helpful -- not that here are a bunch of results, and there's some good matches mixed in with poor ones. Ranking that way would make no sense.</p><p>But it might be also that we're so close to it -- that we always try to rank the most useful stuff first -- that we didn't consider the interpretation you had. So thank you again, it's really helpful to get that feedback.</p><p>Sorry the information doesn't appear to be out there. I hope if you disassemble it on your own, you'll post the info out to the open web. I'm pretty sure you'd end up ranking well for that and helping others who might have a similar need.
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 <p>Weird. On a computer, `"kitchenboss" "g320" "disassembly"` returns exactly six results, all of which appear to include the quoted terms. Plus the "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" message at the top. Which sounds like exactly what you want. I wonder why it's different on mobile.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357946&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>So, besides the possibility that you are flat out wrong (as another commentator claims you may be), let's assume that you're right.<p>1. This is still horrific UX/UI 
2. The culture internally at Google seems to have a "we know better than the users" attitude in all things. 
3. Query rewriting is a horrific technique in general with almost zero value to life/society outside of fixing spelling errors. Whatever your A/B testing says about it's purported utility is polluted by Google's own dark patterns and political whims of the managers who run the internal search organizations.</p><p>It helps to actually know better than your users if you want to take the attitude in number 2. I don't believe that you or Google knows better than it's users, for many reasons previously enumerated in this thread and others.</p><p>One day Google search is going to be displaced and it's current utilization of query rewriting techniques will be one of the fundamental reasons for this.</p><p>You should take the absolutely massive amount of recent criticism and the fact that users repeatedly claim it's happening in the face of your claim it's not <i>seriously</i> rather than literally blaming the users writ large for a problem that is fundementally with the behavior of Google search.
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 <p>I routinely see queries with quoted keywords where results don't have them highlighted in the snippets on the results page (but do have other, non-quoted keywords highlighted!).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That doesn't mean the quoted words weren't present in the content. It just means our system didn't think creating a snippet around those words was the most relevant snippet. Which I get, in some cases, actually would be better. It's something we're looking at.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30357976&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Your system for snippet creation is so bad that according to you it's created a situation where many, many users believe that <i>quotes don't work</i> because of how bad it is.<p>Please fix it, like now. Displace your teams current sprint priorities, or the anti-google search backlash will turn into a situation where in 2025 Google is on the <i>defensive</i> for search market share from a Phoenix rising yahoo or something like that.</p><p>The fact that anyone at Google ever okayed this behavior at all in the first place is simply rage inducing and you should see that with the magnitude and persistence of the "actually it really doesn't work bro" kind of comments.
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 <p>If a snippet doesn't contain the words I searched for, I don't click it, because I assume Google has fucked up the search again and given me some irrelevant thing. If that is what has actually changed in the last few years making people think results are bad, the snippet algorithm, please revert that. I want to see the exact context that the words I typed appear in the page.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In <i>some</i> cases? I'm literally asking for a specific word to be included no matter what; how could it be irrelevant to the quote used to describe a page?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Snippets we show tend to focus on full-sentences or enough context to describe what a page is about or relevant to a search. If we have a match that's strongest simply because a quoted term appears in ALT text or some obscure menu item, that probably doesn't generate a compelling snippet in how we normally would measure things. But given that for someone doing that quoting, seeing the quoted area might be the most important thing. So the regularly snippet process isn't as helpful -- and it's something we'll look at.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351284&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I don't have any recent information on how google search works, but years ago it looked at the expertise level of the searcher. So newbies received newbie results, advanced searchers received advanced results (and more visibility into filtering functionality). Today... they're hiding the advanced features and also seem to be reducing personalization of results to save compute resources. It's horrible.<p>You: Class Inheritance +ruby
Google: searching for "cash inheritance..."
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 <p>I work for Google Search -- we never operated like this. We don't know that someone is somehow a "newbie" vs and "advanced" searcher and change (nor did change) the results somehow.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356425&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I as a programmer can't imagine anyone building a search engine like this ?<p>As far as my personal experience(n=1) with Google, I have also have never experience anything remotely like this.
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 <p>This is very helpful if I search for a name I didn't quite pick up or don't know how to spell, or if I only remember fragments of a quote or topic, then I just blurt out my stream of consciousness and Google will mostly point me in the right direction. That being said, I wish I could explicitly tell Google to treat my query more literally. Ideally you would be able specify the search query in some kind of grammar. They have these kinds of prompt mechanics for GPT3, so I doesn't seem too unrealistic, even if it's all ML nowadays.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I work for Google Search. We have several ways for you to do this. The easies is to put quotes around a word or a phrase that you absolutely, positively want to be present in content retrieved. And yes -- it still works. It really really does, but if you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know. We'll debug it. The reasons people sometimes think it's not working is because the text appears in ALT text, or it appears in text that's not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text), or there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat") or sometimes a page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available). You can also use verbatim mode from the toolbar so that we search for only the exact words you provide.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don’t think op meant it literally, but the fact that the results are so keyword stuffed that despite “appearing” on the page they are actually irrelevant to the page and thus useless.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356263&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>What?!<p>Have you <i>tried</i> this? It immediately turns verbatim <i>off</i>. For everyone! It's been like this forever. Years and years. Gaslighting won't help here!</p><p>In terms of quotes, again, this does NOT work like +, like verbatim. If it did, then that term would absolutely show up, just as it is, in search results. Yet, over the years I've seen:</p><p>- aliasing happen from within quotes (EG, bob -&gt; robert)</p><p>- quotes entirely ignored (eg, those terms NOT showing up)</p><p>Yet searching with verbatim on, immediately causes those quoted words to appear!</p><p>You are absolutely gaslighting people on this! Right now, in this thread. And if it isn't intentional, if you aren't gaslighting, then how can you not even notice that verbatim turns off, the second you select a date range?</p><p>I want to say so much more here, but it's filled with such ... vitriol, that I think my terminal would melt.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356822&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not trying to gaslight anyone. And what would be the point? To say something works if it demonstrably doesn't work?<p>Yes, I tried this for some of the presets before I replied. It worked. It still works.</p><p>My sincere apologies for not specifically testing custom date range option as well. I should have; you are correct. That won't work. I'll pass it on to see if there's a way it can. My apologies again.</p><p>If you need to do this another way, what I also said works. Do it in the search bar using the before/after command. Just quote all the words, and that's the same as verbatim.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356867&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That is absolutely <i>not</i> the same as verbatim, and you need to do some empirical tests on your end, before you state things like this.<p>Take a look here:</p><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094</a></p><p>It's like you're just spouting Google propaganda, without validating what you're saying. Just like with vertabim/date range, which has been a thing for close ot a <i>decade</i>, which Google has received <i>endless reports about</i>, this too does <i>not</i> do what you say.</p><p>Your responses are akin to those canned responses one gets when you post a bad review. "So sorry, please contact us here at this email address.", which of course is all about impression, and results in nothing ever happening.</p><p>This has been going on almost a decade, yet <i>oh what, no, haha</i> is your response.
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 <a href="vote?id=30357318&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Verbatim mode means we search for exactly the terms you put into the box. Quoting terms means we search for exactly the quoted terms. That's what I meant by them being them same.<p>So if you did this search in verbatim:
[search for this]</p><p>It's the same as:
["search" "for" "this"]</p><p>in terms of the instructions we're getting on what to <i>retrieve</i> -- look for content that has all of those words and only those words. No spell check. No synonyms. Just those words.</p><p>The <i>ranking</i> of the results might differ, because we probably use slightly different ranking systems when using verbatim versus quoted words. But in either case, the retrieval requirement is the same. Results should have all the required words.</p><p>I don't really see what the link above is saying to somehow refute all this. That link is about a quoted search for ["eggzackly this"] and nothing to do with verbatim mode. And it says that it found those two words in that order with punctuation...</p><p>Which is what I explained elsewhere in this (now huge) thread. But to give it again:</p><p>Typically the reasons people believe quotes are not working when they are is because:</p><p>1) text appears in ALT text 
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)</p><p>In the [eggzackly this] example, that's what was happening as the poster saw -- we found those words separated by punctuation, which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched.</p><p>Personally, I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.</p><p>Most important -- quotes SHOULD work as you and others are expecting. We WANT them to work that way. That's why we spend time looking at these reports saying they're not. I have spent lots of time doing just that. We find the matches. But if anyone believes they aren't working, and the reasons involved above aren't happening, let me know. We'll get on it. We want them to work as expected, and we want everyone to feel they're working that way.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356887&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>For additional clarity, quoting has always, always, always been different than +, and verbatim. When you(Google) removed +, so that 'google+ searches' could work without interference, quoting was already a thing, and people were just told by some airhead googler "Oh, but quoting is the same! Just use that!"<p>It wasn't. It isn't. I never has been. Ever.</p><p>Verbatim was introduced to replicate that lost + functionality, after massive outrage at the inability to find search results. The fact that you, and other Googlers still think "" is the same as verbatim/+, when it doesn't even show the same search results, is highly, highly questionable.</p><p>To be beyond blunt, you're wrong. You are completely and totally wrong. +/verbatim and "" are not the same thing.</p><p>Please go away, and learn how your own product works, before commenting on it, ok?
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 <a href="vote?id=30357382&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I'm pretty familiar with how the + operator used to work and why Google dropped it, having written about it at the time it happened (spoiler, I wasn't happy it was dropped): <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-98189">https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-...</a><p>At the time, + was used to require that something be present. Quotes were used to require words appear in a particular order. You could do a search where you quoted a phrase, but that didn't necessarily require it to be present (as I recall). If you absolutely wanted the quoted phrase to be there, you had to quote and put a + in front of the quoted phrase. So yes, they were different things.</p><p>When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.</p><p>With +, then with quotes and with verbatim, it's about what you retrieve. Verbatim says get these words or words and only those words. Quoting says get these words and only those words (and only those words in a particular order, if you indicate that). Just like + used to mean get these words and only these words.</p><p>The <i>ranking</i> of results might vary when you quote versus verbatim, but what you're asking to be <i>retrieved</i> is the same to us.
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 <a href="vote?id=30358899&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>At the time, + was used to require that something be present</i><p><i>When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.</i></p><p>No, quoting did <i>not</i> take its place. At all. That's why verbatim was introduced, after outrage. Google claimed it did, but it still aliased. It still decided to provide results without quotes.</p><p>Again, this is why verbatim was born. From that "Google no longer gives precise results, ever" angst.
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 <p>I can confirm what bbarnett says about date ranges and verbatim. Turning on a date range toggles verbatim off. Turning on verbatim toggles the date range off. It's impossible to enable them both.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>As for the quoting, it should work. And if you have an example where it's not, please let me know. Quoting is designed to exact match. It shouldn't produce synonym matches, correct misspellings, find content that's not on the page as we saw it when indexed (I think I did say one confusing part is that if there's punctuation, that gets dropped when matching).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356970&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It immediately turns verbatim off. For everyone!<p>I can confirm, one of the reasons I haven't used Google in several years.
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 <p>That's stopped working! Google is just ignoring them from time to time now. Did you even read the article?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I noticed that years ago, and it was one of my first frustrations with Google - the first inkling that the big G had jumped the shark.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I read the article, and the HN comment it links to, but didn't find an example in either, and it doesn't match my experience. Does someone have a concrete example when using quotes results in pages not containing the search terms?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's definitely happened from time to time in my experience. If I had to guess, Google PMs really don't like blank search result pages.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353211&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I work for Google Search, and as I shared elsewhere, quoting still works. It really does. If you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know, and we'll debug. Typically the reasons people believe it is not working is because:<p>1) text appears in ALT text
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text)
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat"
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)
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 <a href="vote?id=30353328&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I believe you! (see my other comment in response to the original one).<p>But it seems people don't (my original comment is being heavily downvoted because of this). And although they can't submit even <i>one</i> example, the fact that they don't believe you is obviously a symptom of a bigger problem.</p><p>For some reason, Google is losing the trust of power users.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352825&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I just checked again. Here's what I get:<p>- no results with or without quotes:</p><pre><code> No results containing all your search terms were found.
</code></pre>
- few results with quotes, not more without quotes:<pre><code> Your search did not match any documents.
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search
 Tip: Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking
 for. For example, "cake recipes" instead of "how to make a cake."
</code></pre>
- no results with quotes, but results without quotes: Google says that the search with quotes didn't find anything, and that they searched without quotes instead.<p>I have yet to find any instance where Google corrects the inside of quotes without any warning.
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 <p>I've hit this many, many times, but I'm not sure I can easily reproduce it. Tends to happen when there are more search terms, in my experience.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google still decides to interpret that however they like. Even the verbatim option in Search Tools doesn’t always help.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google has been regularly ignoring quotes for at least 5 years, probably longer. That was one of the biggest factors for me dropping it as my main search engine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's like speaking to little children, that are learning to talk, reproducing their errors. Some adults believe that it's cute, but it's idiotic, confuses the babies and make their progress more difficult and slow.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349059&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I don’t think this means anything for the point you wanted to make about search results, but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk! It’s not a good analogy.<p>Baby talk (or CDS, child-directed speech) helps engage their attention and provides valuable feedback. Kids who experience less CDS develop language more slowly.</p><p>See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk</a></p><p>(I heard about this research a number of years ago. Although I must admit, now I wonder if it’s affected by the science reproducibility crisis!)
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 <a href="vote?id=30349627&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>N = 3, we intentionally never baby talked to our kids, and spent a lot more time reading them novels and other things without pictures or simplified language than (I'd guess) most people do (we did also do plenty of picture books), and their language development was in all three cases <i>way</i> ahead of schedule.<p>Could just be luck (well, genetics, probably) I guess. Maybe they'd have developed even faster if we'd used baby talk. One shitty thing about parenting is it's really hard to tell what helped, what hurt, and what didn't matter at all.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351029&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;...their language development was in all three cases way ahead of schedule.<p>I would put a lot more of it to having (seemingly) engaged parents. Even a backwards strategy enacted by a loving parent who is consistently trying their best is likely to outperform the result that most can manage (owing to time/money/education/etc).
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 <p>That is my belief as well: being there, listening, interacting lovingly, paying attention is overwhelmingly more important than a particular technique.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've never baby-talked to our son, but I do coach him to say things that are within (or almost) within his speaking capabilities. So for instance, this evening we were reading The Gruffalo, and he pointed to the fox and said, "Fox eat!" I said, "The fox wants to eat the mouse?" He said, "Yeah!" So I tried to coach him to say "Fox eat mouse". He got as far as "Fox eat there"; maybe he'll get to "Fox eat mouse" in a week or two.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I did this as well with the same results (but also have reason to believe genetics played a major part). But I'm not sure we're optimizing for the right thing. I'm far from convinced that accelerated language development is a good thing. I think development may suffer in other areas.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356025&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Why would you believe genetics plays a part? There is minimal evidence for that. You have actual evidence for things like your higher than average time engagement, nutritional indicators, as well as health and dental care. You probably live somewhere with decent air and water quality. Then of course the likely fact that parents have relatively prodigious vocabularies, fluency and articulation. This is why your kids are smart.<p>Genetics are a marginal element approaching none.
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 <p>No doubt when we start looking at impairments and deficits that you can find plenty of situations where a high proportion of the phenotypic variance is heritable. But when you restrict the study to the top 60th to 95th percentile (which we are discussing here) I don't think you will find particularly strong relationships.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355965&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It's not genetics or a language strategy, just engagement.<p>Compare a toddler living in a ghetto concrete jungle to one who takes daily strolls through Central Park or Suburbia. The enrichment of parents teaching about the trucks and the trees and the lady with a purple hat pays massive returns.
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 <p>Yeah, I'm not capable of baby talk. Too weird. I have always talked to my kids like they were adults. They seem fine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I did goo goo gaa gaa for the first 6-8 months since you can tell there’s really nobody home up there yet and it’s cute and engaged my other kids to play with the youngest. But yes. Mine seem fine as well so I doubt CDS is going to make/break a human being.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349915&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>...but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk!</i><p>But, but... I didn't say anything about baby talk!!</p><p>The definition in that Wikipedia page is about something completely different: exaggerating intonation.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351188&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I think this has proven to be false.<p>Fathers descend to "baby talk" when the child is learning and slowly bring them up to par instead of trying to just force perfect talk from the start. They do this instinctively.</p><p>There's some great comments on this from salman khan, I think. He recorded the first years of his kid's life at home and documented this phenomenon
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 <a href="vote?id=30348958&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!" Babies must look at adults doing the googoo gaagaa, and think to themselves that these adults are absolute morons.<p>The sites that Googs returns are basically the internet's version of googoo gaagaa. I look at the websites returned, and often think that the site's owners must be morons. Useless drivel clearly designed to game the Goog search results. I think think about how moronic it is that Googs allows this.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350051&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!"</i><p>I suspect they know the sound they want to make but they don't know how to articulate it. They make an approximation and we can encourage them repeating the correct version, so they realize we understood what they're trying to do: "you're half way" but repeating their approximation is misleading.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352446&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Most people don’t literally say “goo goo ga ga” to babies; what they actually do is echo babies’ nonsense sounds back at them.<p>I subscribe to the theory that this helps babies understand what they sound like, and therefore helps them learn how to produce the sounds they want.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349012&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>"Googoo gaagaa" sounds like happy baby babble to me. Mine would more like "waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh" when they were hungry.<p>Congratulations on recognizing the true morons.
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 <p>In my experience waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh meant wet diaper or something hurts. Leeeeeah, leeeaaaahhh was being hungry. Phonetically is similar to the beginning of a polish word mleko (milk)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I honestly find it pretty helpful. You can type "russian murder painting" into Google and it will come up with Ivan the Terrible and His Son. All that hinting may be annoying if you know exactly what you wanted, but I'm not a specialist in everything I ever search for.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Then again, both DuckDuckGo and Kagi also give that result for that search phrase. As well as being more generally useful for more specific searches as well.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353681&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>What would be nice is if you could toggle this behaviour. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm looking for, sometimes I don't. Assuming I never do is at least as silly as assuming I always do. Just give me the option.<p>I am frankly baffled that after all this focus on "personalised search", they still don't actually allow you to personalise your search like that.
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 <p>You can. Or at least you used to be able to, by putting your query in double quotes. Apparently it no longer works either.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Right. Feels like it's optimized for common voice queries, in sentence form. They've sacrificed technical/HN users to focus on this.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Fortunately, most of those web results give a pretty good rundown on the history of Linux. But yes, this is weird! I'll get it looked at.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349563&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Right, although piping junk into the search box and expecting it to bring back something useful is trained behavior.<p>I've been using DuckDuckGo a lot more recently and the thing that surprises me isn't the kind and quality of the results, it's that I actually need to use my brain to search.</p><p>It's not about whether this is a good or a bad thing—I kind of like the precision in a way, it's just jarring how different it is as an experience.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348457&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>Tons of people don't, though</i><p>Do they? I see this stated all the time, with no references.</p><p><i>They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water</i></p><p>Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches.</p><p>Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food. The same way some cities limit parking at big events so that people have to take mass transit. It's for their own good, but they have to be shown the way.</p><p><i>Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people</i></p><p>This may be Google's goal, but it hasn't happened yet.</p><p>I don't have very many friends or acquaintances in the tech bubble, so I base my observations around real people in the real world. More and more they're giving up on Google entirely.</p><p>Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest, Etsy, Amazon, and other non-Google sources.</p><p>When I ask someone why they're searching Amazon reviews for tech support information, they tell me because it's not on the web. That's Google's failure.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349428&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches.<p>As someone who's been a public librarian, I can tell you that is not how people work.
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 <p>You can only be thoughtful with your search if you know what you are searching for. But oftentimes i'm not really certain what i'm looking for, or i don't know the exact terminology that should be used, so i'll just enter some related terms, in the hope that google leads me in the right direction.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353942&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>At the minimum.<p>A truly thoughtful search requires an understanding of:</p><p>- What you're searching for, which as you mention means terminology and knowing that information exists. (If you don't know that there's a country called Burkina Faso, it's never going to occur to you to search for its capital)</p><p>- How each of your search tools works, its benefits and drawbacks. It's similar to selecting a programming language or framework: If I need to know a holiday date (e.g. I can never remember when the fuck President's Day is), I'll Google it because that's something even a normal person would notice if they screwed up. On the other hand, when I'm looking for current events information, I use a search tool that specializes in news searches for journalists and researchers because I don't want my search results biased by what Google thinks I want to see.</p><p>- The domain in which you're searching, so you can evaluate what the search tools provide for you and use the tools iteratively.</p><p>- Your own abilities and desires, which requires self-knowledge. A search is only a success if it produces something <i>helpful</i> to the searcher, and something they can't understand or won't use = not a successful search</p><p>- What information is and is not available. It sounds like a silly thing, but this is how a lot of scams work: They're testing for people who lack a certain subset of common knowledge. For example, I've seen articles talking about local elections that imply nefarious intent behind some information not being provided online, and they're obviously written by people who don't commonly work with local election data. Because if they did, they'd know that when working with local election data, the default is 'idk we have it in a file cabinet or on a computer somewhere'.</p><p>Search is HARD and Google has figured out one tiny, tiny part. It's just the part that was the easiest to build with what they had and that was easiest to monetize.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351435&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food.<p>Many people already resort to real food, even with plenty of junk food around.</p><p>“Problem” is unfortunately, that it comes at a price, that many are simply not ready or able to pay.</p><p>Who should step in is a good question, and probably governments should make access to information a right and have high quality public service available (in this case a public web search engine). Public libraries used to fulfill this role for centuries.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351124&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest...<p>Why would someone want to search Pinterest? Every time I've gotten a search result to Pinterest it's been some scraped image completely and frustratingly devoid of the context I was originally searching for. Pinterest is one of the worst offenders on the web.
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 <p>I see what you are saying but it seems to me that it used to do a much better job at that. These days I feel like I'm fighting the search engine constantly and it is certainly not magically finding what I want anymore. It feels like some crusty unmaintained tool that I have to know how to use.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's funny to observe my stepson learning his way through Google. It's happening mostly through the assistants on TVs and locked cellphones. But he's learning to do exactly what you said: half-second thoughts and brute forcing many queries for the same subject. He's 7.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>A less charitable interpretation --- and unfortunately one that could be true --- is that Google does <i>not</i> want you to think. It wants to keep you stupid because it's easier to deceive those who can't think and bend their thoughts in the direction that gives G more $$$. I'd say it's not merely optimising for the stupid; it's actively encouraging it. It wants to be your brain, control your thoughts and life.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348944&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google has optimized to whatever sequence of behaviors achieves the most profit. The search results are not chosen for utility to the user but as nudges in a cycle of influence intended to drive you to attend to an ad, purchase something, or consume particular content.<p>They should not be engaged in non-consensual manipulation of social or political behaviors, and the ethics of market manipulation at scale through advertisement are far from clear.
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 <p>I use market manipulation to mean just that, someone manipulating the market in whatever way. I'm not familiar with the legally-oriented meaning of this term.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350089&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Market cornering is classic market manipulation. Google uses every asset at their disposal to maintain their 98%+ death grip on the search markets. The list of competitors bought, stifled, legally crushed, or absorbed is probably endless. The search market is thoroughly cornered.<p>I used the phrase intentionally and specifically. Advertising isn't always market manipulation, but it can be and is used to that purpose.</p><p>Google uses advertisement and content "curation" to manipulate consumers. This results in product preference, purchasing behavior, and market conditions favorable to Google and/or unfavorable to Google's competition. This includes siloing consumers in political bubbles and manipulation of narratives through the deliberate selection, order, and pacing of content exposure based on the intent of Google's shotcallers.</p><p>The reinforcement cycles inherent to their algorithms are used to manage the information made available to vast numbers of people, with highly detailed behavioral profiles used to achieve behavioral outcomes, whether it's buying something, voting, or preferences for or against particular policies or candidates.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351995&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, the phrase they should have used is "influencing the market" rather than the technical economic term.<p>Of course, <i>influencer</i> means something different now too.
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 <p>But isn't Google supposed to know everything about us by now? Surely they know who types correct search queries and who keeps making typos?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348420&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yep. How many bug reports are useful vs how many are "the button didn't work"?<p>Google is optimizing for that.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348788&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Another factor that isn't being fully accounted for is a new SEO/marketing technique where many people are asking scripted questions publicly on sites like reddit and then stealthily providing answers that market a product or service. This leads to reddit results not being exactly authentic as well. Pretty much most online reviews cannot be trusted as we are begged to do positive reviews of companies (and when companies outright purchase positive reviews, which is also very rampant) also as a factor.<p>Though Google is at fault for letting their service falter to the "payola" race, many other factors are in play all across the Internet since data quality has faltered almost totally. For major-cost and non-refundable purchases I need to trust, I go to brick and mortar stores and inspect what I am buying. I am thankful not everything has shifted to an online-only model. It's going to be a very bumpy ride on the Internet until Congress and consumer protection laws wake TF up and do their job.
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 <p>Is Google unique in that, though? Amazon reviews are worthless now because companies pay customers to leave positive reviews or pay review farms to leave positive reviews. Even if someone reports them to Amazon, though, the companies just close their accounts and open new ones with different names and sell the same product. It's so trivial for them to pivot when they get caught that I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351554&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>There is a perfectly good solution, and some people use it: don't buy from unknown vendors. If you buy a product from one of a few well-known companies in that space, they have a big investment in their brand, and are much less likely to engage in behaviors that might diminish the value of that brand.<p>The price is that you pay more -- effectively, you are paying for that branding.</p><p>I've had so many bad experiences on Amazon that I am increasingly doing just that. It doesn't apply to everything, but it is a useful strategy.
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 <p>So how does that apply to the conversation around Google, though? We can't only ingest information from a small group of sources. That's antithetical to the entire concept of the internet.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351923&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Isn't that effectively what limiting a google search to reddit does?<p>Not that I'm convinced it will keep working, since reddit isn't really a vendor in the same sense, and doesn't have those incentives.
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 <p>Not really because the content is coming from a variety of users who are creating the content on the site. Reddit itself is not creating the content in the same way that sellers are trying to sell you their products and Google is trying to serve you their ads.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah, I agree, but reddit also doesn't have the same skin in the game, hence the prior comment.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Reddit does have astroturfing, but a lot of communities are aggressive about identifying and banning shills, so it's not as widespread as in google search results.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>A ton of reddit communities are run by shills themselves. That's why users outright get downvoted and banned when they even are posting potentially winning content. We cannot act like everything is totally normal these days on Reddit. They're hemorrhaging users fast.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354767&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Just look up posts about people getting banned from reddit on Twitter or on black hat forums. There are tons of people complaining about it.<p>The thing about users getting entirely banned from a platform is that they aren't able to complain anywhere near to the forum about unfairness. It's all done in stealth.</p><p>Platform algorithms now often do a lot to keep dissent about platforms themselves and partner companies out of sight. It's pretty crazy how companies that publicly advocate equality and fairness serve to undermine speech when it's about their business.
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 <a href="vote?id=30359722&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>There are such posts about each and every platform out there. In addition to not knowing what's the ban frequency, there's also no info in those complaints if they got banned for a good reason.<p>Last winter people got fed up with antivax-dewormer-nomasker bullshit and a lot of subreddits just took the trash out, so those complaints you saw might just be be those dumbasses.</p><p>I'm not saying there aren't annoying powertripping mods on Reddit, e.g. r/Linux, but there always tends to be an alternative subreddit one can use.
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 <p>There have been some great posts and comments today regarding online content manipulation and censorship</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349612&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>IMHO it's not so much of a problem with google search, but the internet as a whole.<p>Most genuine discussions have moved from open, publicly accessible web to places inaccessible to search engines and general public. Smaller niche forums, blogs and personal websites with no financial incentive have died out. People have moved to Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack, Twitter and other places behind logins. Online newspapers and portals are increasingly using paywalls. Most of the genuine human interactions and quality content is not indexable anymore. Instead we have a million affiliate marketers fighting for the top positions in search results with every possible seo trick.</p><p>Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.
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 <p>It's because private communities are the only ones free from mass abuse. Public forums moved to private discord groups with hard to find invite links / etc because public forums take an army of anti abuse workers to keep alive. While a discord group just needs a few people to kick the trouble makers and maybe revoke the invite link for a while.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354968&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>If that's the entire problem, then why not make these forums read-only by default (while still keeping them publicly viewable) and hand out invite links as in Discord?<p>Lobste.rs, for instance, has an interesting "invite tree" concept where your reputation is bound to people you've invited and who they've invited and so on.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356220&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.<p>There are still some pretty active enthusiast message boards, e.g., <a href="https://www.tacomaworld.com/">https://www.tacomaworld.com</a></p><p>But your overall point is valid, I think. My pointing to a single active forum doesn't change the fact that many of other enthusiast groups have moved to facebook groups and the like.
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 <p>Feature, not bug. If there's no public search, it can't be gamed for money. The problem TFA identifies is one of discerning that the person you're getting your info from is an actual person, who cares. The best way of doing that, until we find some way of creating institutional trust in these matters, is talking to the sort of person that spends all day in talking to a chat room about whatever it is you're asking about.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349782&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I too have found myself searching more in Reddit. Not to throw shade on Reddit, but even if I find exactly what I’m looking for in there, it’s depressing that it’s all bound up inside of another walled garden who will eventually have the same incentive as Google: squeeze every last advertising dollar out of the produc… I mean users. Like Google, it’s just a matter of time before they too lose their balance.<p>A question worth posing to this community: how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers? Secondarily, how can said internet also be much more accessible to content authors so they won’t have to learn a css, html, and JS to publish some stuff? Finally, how can that content be discovered from within this network?
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 <p>I "search" reddit a lot, but all my searches are always through Google. Reddit search is notoriously bad, even after multiple attempts by them to fix it. Suffixing my Google searches with "reddit" though gives all the results I'm looking for.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah. I’ve run into this too. A lot of websites have terrible internal search. Google crushes it, esp when you have a “site:reddit.com” to the query.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351397&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>A factor in there has got to be 'who pays?' If it's hostile to advertisers, then there's got to be money to pay for the infrastructure from somewhere.<p>Maybe a tax on ISPs? I think I'd happily pay $10 extra per month for access to an ad-free interrnet. Maybe $20. But how many of the people that are already happy with the ads and poor google results would do so? Would it be sustainable?
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 <p>I think you're grossly underestimating how much is needed to replace the ad revenue that feeds today's Internet. Remember, majority of people wouldn't pay for getting rid of ads, because they don't have the disposable income. So they're also not really worthwhile to advertisers. You have to divide the revenue by some small fraction of current users.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352736&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Yep. It's really weird if you think about it. The first time I saw a company being upfront about their ad revenue [1] I was surprised.<p>&gt; The Premium fee is basically about $7 per year, which is less than what a free user generates in ad revenue. Thus leagues that pay for Premium and use an ad-blocker are generating less revenue than free users.</p><p>They charge about $20 per user per year to remove ads. I pay for that, so I'm not sure what kind of ads they have, but I'd love to see what they're advertising and what the click through + conversion rates look like.</p><p>What you said makes sense to me. I wonder if advertisers are paying a fortune to acquire users with a lot of disposable income.</p><p>1. <a href="https://www.fantrax.com/forums/general/messages/public/l72mh6ojjlml9mzz/1">https://www.fantrax.com/forums/general/messages/public/l72mh...</a>
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 <p>Agreed, Facebook makes something like 8 dollars a user per year? That's just one of the mega services, imagine replacing that money for all of the players that power your internet.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30368493&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It's very relevant to consider that the value of users is very unequal.<p>IIRC for Facebook <i>American</i> users the average revenue was 50+ dollars per year. Furthermore, if you're the type of person for whom saving a few dollars doesn't matter, you're likely worth more than that average; and for FB to break even on <i>your</i> ads an appropriate price is likely to be closer to $100 per year.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355496&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>There must be a difference between paying for the infrastructure and paying for the content (including the code).<p>It's easy to imagine a future where the infrastructure is something analogous to a public good, like clean water. The infrastructure is agnostic to the content.</p><p>The content, on the other hand, is a product of a massive, churning, never-ending process of intellectual work. Ads, for the most part, provide the underlying economic incentive for that work.</p><p>And the dirty little secret of all that ad-supported creative content? Its value is minimal. Truly minimal. Often low quality, incoherent. If it all went away tomorrow, I would hardly notice.</p><p>That it is nevertheless so popular is something of a paradox. I know I sound ridiculous, but at the core, I'm beginning to believe that the fact that advertising is as powerful an economic force as it is, is a reflection of the fact that people's lives are more boring and devoid of meaning than we often admit.
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 <p>Ads will always exist because they work. Only way is to ban them explicitly but you can do that with AdBlock for example but you still get SEO spam, placed content, inauthentic "recommendations".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351347&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers?<p>You have to reify "trust" into concrete, computer-representable data. Maybe borrow the "web of trust" concept from PGP, but do some sort of multiplicative thing where the amount you trust someone's recommendation online is the product of the trust relationships between you and the recommender. That's really the best you can do - even legislation against online advertising will be subverted by companies that go through layers of proxies to buy influence.
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 <p>One small thought — having the search engine be configurable, so that the user can specify which sources to give priority to (e.g., Reddit, NYT Wirecutter, Wikipedia, etc.), would be an incremental improvement.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I, too, search "&lt;search term&gt; + reddit" often for product reviews and such. Thing is, the results on that front have started to slide as the paid review side of the internet catches on. I'm finding that it's getting harder and harder to trust the reddit search results - lots of shill accounts and obvious junk. That's not a google problem, specifically, but it's another degradation of a workaround for declining search result quality :(</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The only real advantage of reddit is that somebody will usually be insulting the ad account, so you can hopefully glean some truth from the insults.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Unless there's a critical mass of shills, and then anyone who speaks out against them will get banned and/or downvoted to oblivion..</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Usually I trust Reddit threads where users give pros/cons of multiple competing products. Things like running shoes users have usually tried a lot out and liked them for different reasons. If those match with the one pair I've tried out it seems like a useful data point for decision making.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah, a lot of subreddits are clogged with the same bad info that's gotten all over Google's front page. The stickied "list of recommendations" on an enthusiast sub is just the same as you'd get from clicking the top result of "Best X 2022" on Google, complete with affiliate links</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's not the point - the point is that paid shills are astroturfing reddit enthusiast subreddits, so that operator doesn't shield you at all. Once a hobbyist subreddit gets big enough, it attracts a lot of attention from shady types trying to capitalize on the captive audience. I've seen it happen numerous times (only when the offender is caught) in the /r/watches subreddit, the /r/overlanding subreddit, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348443&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low.<p>The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on the website into the articles.</p><p>The result is trashy articles that could well have been written by a bot but aren't. This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work.</p><p>It's people but they work like bots.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349081&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work.<p>It may be becoming borderline. I expect that sentence/paragraph completion is already becoming useful to people who churn out quick content for a living. In any case, the important part isn't whether or not it's bots. The important part is whether or not it's authentic. The precise meaning of authenticity gets squishy, but it exists nonetheless.</p><p>IMO the sentiments are correct, whatever the details. Part of why google sucks is that the internet is worse, for a bunch of the things we use google to search for. The internet becoming a larger, more profitable industry changed it. Instagramming for influencer perks, SEOing, or selling targeted ads like FB do... it does not lead to the same places that earlier iterations of the WWW produced. Times change.
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 <p>It's a pretty clear indication that the once stalwart effort, within Google, to produce a true search experience is effectively dead.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>My friend briefly had a copywriting job writing weed strain descriptions for dispensaries. He was never provided the product he was describing, just told to make it up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350583&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I have the very same feeling concerning electronics. Searching for a particular product does not even popping up 5-10 comparison articles but the content of all seems to be based on technical specifications of the manufacturer only, which I already have a hands on.<p>Significantly more time required for consciously choosing a product to purchase (which in my case is critical because I am like Sheldon Cooper trying to choose between PS4 and XBOX One normally, to the horror of my wife, she wants a new TV and it is months long project based on accurate and quick data, and now this, with Google, which makes our family atmosphere even more tense : ) )
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 <p>In case you haven't encountered it yet: <a href="https://www.rtings.com/">https://www.rtings.com</a> is a good site for TV specs/reviews specifically. I know someone who works there and their methodology seems legit (I like it more than Wirecutter).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353766&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Most reviews are useless from the start because most reviewers are totally dependent on manufacturers or dealers providing samples (yet will generally claim to be "totally independent"). That's before you get to reviewers who can't or don't know how to test the product in question and so end up narrating the manufacturers specs to their faux testing.<p>There are very few exceptions to this.
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 <p>Niche, probably outdated, but indicative: The only way to purchase a laser printer with high printing quality these days is to buy something expensive and hope for the best. Magazines used to do actual reviews of these things.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351855&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Brother MFC laser printers have delivered for me for over 15 years now. I have bought many for various small offices and my home and relatives’ homes, etc, and I have not heard any complaints.<p>I especially like the scan function where brother web connect OCR’s the document and saves it as a pdf directly in your Box/Dropbox/OneDrive/GoogleDrive folder. Just wish it worked with iCloud Drive.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354007&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Your comment is kind of like the "reviews". Yes, they work. I've got one of those.<p>I'm interested in the printing quality though.
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 <p>Oops, my bad, I did not properly take into account high quality printing. It is definitely too cheap to be anything high quality, they just get the job done for everyday printing at a low price.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I look back at the newspaper stories I wrote a few decades back. I could get the score from the coach, find out hits from who and when, and after that 20 second interaction, I could write a news story in maybe three minutes, which told you everything you needed to know.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Somebody who worked at a winery once told me that the flavors they mention on the bottle are actually what the wine is <i>missing,</i> and they name them in the hope that the power of suggestion give you a more balanced impression.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350643&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It would be interesting to see some sort of study, to see the impact on wine labels on: normal people, vs wine "experts", vs sommeliers.<p>I've seen a few of those wine documentaries about sommeliers, and they certainly made it <i>seem</i> like it was a legitimate ability to identify stuff. I'd be interested to see how close they are in a more neutral, measured environment.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353745&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Tasters can't even tell reds from whites with a great deal of accuracy. [2]<p>Actually, <i>this</i> one is bullshit. While it may be true that the average person without blind tasting experience cannot do this, anyone who has actually done blind tasting seriously should be pretty accurate at this. Purely structurally, red wines generally have much more tannin and more alcohol than whites.</p><p>The famous study that led to this claim (which survives because people, especially the HN type, love feeling smug about expertise) doesn't really hold up. See eg <a href="http://sciencesnopes.blogspot.com/2013/05/about-that-wine-experiment.html">http://sciencesnopes.blogspot.com/2013/05/about-that-wine-ex...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353719&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Sommeliers are professionalized, with courses &amp; exams. But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers.<p>Instead Sommelier exams are subjective - candidates are judged by another Sommelier on subjective criteria rather than objective measurement. In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? How does the candidate present themselves? Sommeliers dress in fine suits, but this should have no impact on actual wine tasting ability. Yet I am sure if I showed up in a draggy old t-shirt I would fail regardless.</p><p>The whole industry seems allergic to objective scientific measurement. I am sure Sommelier's do have some ability to identify varieties, but are they actually tasting all those subtle hints they list off? I doubt it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355382&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>What is this comment based on? To me it feels like this is what you imagine the exams are like. The MS exam (the highest and most famous one) has three parts: theory, service, and tasting. The service part is all about presentation, absolutely (that's the whole point). The tasting part is not. In particular...<p>&gt;But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers.</p><p>That is exactly how the tasting portion of the exam works. And</p><p>&gt;In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours?</p><p>This isn't really how it works, especially the "high class" language comment. Actually there are a variety of different things that they are supposed to identify about the wine, known as "the grid" [1]. You can take a look at it yourself. They are essentially judged based on how well their grid matches up with the consensus grid from the master sommeliers.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/Deductive-Tasting-Grid-Dec-2016.pdf">https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/D...</a>
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 <p>This is something I notice in advertising generally: whatever they most emphasize is least likely to be true about the product (e.g., the "great taste" of McDonald's).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I feel like this is how the lobbying and decision making about the legalization is going as well.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The other day I looked up the wordle answer (I know I know). The first result was a site where I had to scroll through about 19 paragraphs of SEO vomit to get to the answer. The page could literally have one word on it and serve it's purpose. If that isn't a sign that the the internet, or at least google search, is dead, I don't know what is.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There's a whole industry of sites like this for NYT crossword answers, to the point that it's often impossible to get any organic results at all for something that's been clued in the Times, which is frustrating because I don't just want the answer (there's a button in the app that does that already), I want to learn about the thing I’m unfamiliar with. Luckily, <i>most</i> topics that come up have some content on Wikipedia so I go there instead.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Ugh yes that’s super annoying! I don’t want the answer spoon-fed to me. The point of searching it is to actually learn a little something which will help me remember in the future</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>lol the same happens with WSJ. It’s very disappointing to try and do a bit of research on a clue and get the answer on a bot site linked to the puzzle you’re doing. Interesting how they do it though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350756&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>It’s like a DDoS attack on your mind (distributed because everyone is doing it). The attention span economy at its finest.<p>Reminds me of those ways to catch spammers or bots by occupying some of their resources with meaningless tasks for as long as possible. Except it’s turned around.</p><p>Sometimes I wonder if there’s even any real money in ads anymore or if it’s just a giant circle jerk that slowly destroys society…
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 <a href="vote?id=30351457&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>For future instances where you give up trying to figure out the wordle, I built a site to make that easier: www.wordlespoiler.com<p>Word of warning: it has the answer to both today and tomorrows wordles.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348969&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Speaking of bots, I'd be interested to know the percentage of articles on major traffic content sites are authored or co-authored by AI.<p>My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a entropic gene pool in nature, but with information.
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 <p>Sports stories are frequently written by bots/AI/whatever you want to call them. Sports stats makes it relatively easy to create written text articles about games. When first rolled out, there were some obvious tells such as an excessive amount of "for the first time this season" or "set a record for the season" in articles about first games of the season. Unusual plays or quirky behavior by participants tend to be missed in these articles but otherwise they're serviceable though somewhat dry and bland.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Stock analysis articles are very commonly generated automatically from templates. The selected template is based on some real characteristics of a described company (whether the stock went up or down recently, what is the P/E etc.), but the content is generic and reused across all companies with similar characteristics.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349509&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Apparently, using a machine translation as a basis and working through correcting it to read or write foreign languages is a growing trend and that’s a form of computer assisted literacy if I were to guess.<p>Bar that, it’s humans outrunning AI in the race to the bottom with a head start. Human people can be forced to be incredibly machine like.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349390&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>~0% right now.<p>I think the quality of searches like “best TV” will improve dramatically once language models are used to generate SEO spam. Anything would be an improvement over what today’s human spam bots produce.
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 <p>Lately, half the results I get are pages that I cant view without paying to some service or signing up for a free trial.. Google literally serves up results that are unreachable ..</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350235&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Can we also talk about how Google allows top organic results to LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook which literally present you with a LOGIN page before you see <i>anything</i> related to your search?<p>Absolute worst UX ever, yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350677&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.<p>At one time, Google used to ban sites for "cloaking": offering one version of the page to the crawler, and another to the user.</p><p>But over time they got into trouble from these sites, getting sued left and right. Being accused of putting up a wall, and abusing their monopoly. Eventually, these sites won out and Google dropped this requirement.
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 <p>Similar story with Image search. "Blah blah something something <i>copyright</i> something". And voila - now you can't get direct access to images on the search results page.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354368&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Ah so that's why Quora no longer shows you the first result before blurring the page most of the time.<p>It's a shame. I've really enjoyed a lot of the well written responses there but I can't be bothered to create another account.
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 <p>At least Quora would show you a small something. Facebook and LinkedIn literally show no content except a login page.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This might be the case for news sites which show limited content until you sign into a paywall, but I don't recall the biggest offenders which show NO relevant content at all (LinkedIn and Facebook) saying anything.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348664&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Classic example of this kind of content... Try searching "How to use X to get stains out of Y".<p>You will find a page for almost any X and Y combination. And they will all have wording like "Put some X on the stained Y... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!".
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 <a href="vote?id=30349164&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>"how to use jet fuel to get stains out of my yak"<p>Nope, nothing relevant. Found a counterexample.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351309&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>This is how to use jet fuel to get stains out of a yak:<p>Put some jet fuel on the stained yak... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!
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 <a href="vote?id=30348928&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That job is probably months away from being automated by GPT-3 and its ilk, supposing it hasn't yet been.<p>Right now, I don't think you can tell it to use some specific terms in the text it generates, but it doesn't sound like a difficult extension.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349282&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I mean then is DIT really a conspiracy theory? I know that people in HN have already started doing replies with AI in some threads. (only because they tell people). Wait a few more years and there will be no way to know if forums are just bots generating content.<p>I guess HN would be a weird outlier, because there are no ads. Except maybe the bots would be useful after all when various "Show HN" or "Launch HN" and have the bots cheer those companies and get random publicity.
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 <p>That's how I know it's not gpt-3, gpt-3 would write better articles. At the very best it's poorly trained Markov chains.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The idea that a genuinely Dead Internet might be an improvement over the current internet experience is a fun one, and one I don't entirely disagree with.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Regardless of automation, there will always be jobs that are so "dumb" but still expensive to automate that people can do cheaper then machines.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Within the last 6 months I’m seeing a rise of very good NLP content farms that almost have what I’m looking for but not quite. I think what they do is start off a transformer based NLP with example queries that others have searched for and it generates a realistic looking answer that’s usually wrong. The scale and breadth of these could only be done by machines.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350303&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Eh, if that's the case, I'm cool to be one of the few remaining humans among billions of wonderful whoever-they-are.<p>Beings so acceptive of others as to make me oblivious there's a difference? That's far more than humans ever accomplished.
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 <p>I would expect an automaton to be able to spell; so perhaps the presence of spelling errors is a mark of an authentic page. Maybe one could force Goo to spit out authentic results by including a strategically-misspelled word in the search terms.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348973&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Totally agree on the reddit point, I've also noticed the same occurring to me. The girlfriend recently got Pokemon Arceus and sometimes asks me to Google something she wants to know.<p>It's completely pointless, you just get a bunch of articles from news sites (??) that transcript the quest but not tell you anything more. I miss a nice community wiki like I'm used to from playing Dark Souls etc.</p><p>I've just started appending site:reddit.com to everything, works a lot better.
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 <p>Yeah, Fextralife saved my ass multiple times while working through the dark souls series. It's a shame that type of community resource isn't more popular.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350439&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google could fix this by making the algorithm take into account searches that often end with "reddit", thus applying more weight to Reddit results to similar searches where the user didn't include Reddit in it. Clearly it's an indicator that those are the better results.<p>Take StackOverflow for example. Almost any programmer will find a SO result as the top result and it's usually exactly what you're looking for. Since there's no money to be made by companies writing blog posts on debugging a compiler error, Google's algorithm works as intended.</p><p>Question is: Why hasn't Google done anything about this? 
It's the organic results that are terrible, so they're not losing ad revenue by placing these garbage sites at the top. Perhaps its to intentionally make better websites pay for ads to get better placement? But those won't be the ones to ever pay to begin with...
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 <p>I think it would be foolish to assume google hasn't spent hundreds of hours in meetings talking about what they can do about everyone having to type reddit. Problem is they are facing an army of SEO experts who are one step ahead of google. As well as legal issues. Imagine if it was found google was artificially boosting reddit in an unfair way.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is Google we're talking about. They could very easily conquer the SEO experts the same way they basically eliminated spam and most web browser exploits.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Working at a marketing agency, I can promise you the Dead Internet Theory really isn't even a conspiracy. It's depressing.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I did software dev at a marketing firm for about a year, and it was pretty soul sucking, so I know what you mean. I won't work at one again unless it's literally my only option.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’ve been there too. The sad thing was that the people I worked with were genuinely great and smart people but you’re spot on about the actual state of the environment being a depressing and soul draining thing. I quit that job on moral grounds, I just couldn’t be a part of that any more.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I agree google is bad, but I think reddit is rapidly becoming equally as inauthentic. I'm sure every major player at this point understands the gains that can be had by astroturfing reddit. The real problem seems to be the internet is inherently untrustworthy and going back to finding people you trust in the real world is the only fix I can see.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>We've also got to address the people and corporations that are gaming the system that google has created. Google is by no means off the hook, but Marketing practices have also taken a very bad turn to deception and in reinforcing a payola systems recently that we may never be able to recover from trust-wise.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348759&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust."<p>Haha, the noobs. I use HN instead <i>sunglasses cool face</i></p><p>A bit more seriously: I fully agree with this. And if HN doesn't have what I'm looking for then I use Reddit as well. But if HN has some info on the topic with a few highly upvoted threads, damn, it always impresses me.
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 <p>When I'm looking into some project or piece of software I'm unfamiliar with, I really do search for HN posts on it. Fastest way to cut through (enough) of the biased material and get something genuine. Even hyped stuff usually has enough contrarian posts to give you an idea of where to look for the skeletons.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351471&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>HN has now been around a while, is really popular, and is starting to catch the attention of ad/marketing companies now, though - how do you know what <i>here</i> is genuine?<p>Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...
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 <a href="vote?id=30351971&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>And it's not just the spammers. Any topic that touches domestic or international politics in any way almost instantly brings out a lot of bad-faith actors, here or anywhere else on the internet.<p>&gt; Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...</p><p>Yikes, I hadn't thought of that angle. That would explain some of the long-dormant accounts on Some Other Place that suddenly start spewing out-of-character garbage, assuming they weren't password-guessed, data-breached, or keylogged by some rando.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356947&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Hmm, I think for now it's relatively easily distinguishable. I've noticed that HN'ers feel "like me". So I look for that specific signal. I look for signals that care about curiosity and an insane hunger for the truth. Also, it's tough to mimic "Oh yea, I was at Xerox Parc programming this language that was posted about, let me give some nuanced insights into what was stated in the article" (that quote was made up for the sake of example).<p>The only marketeer that would be able to consistently fool me might be a marketeer that was a developer. But last time I applied for a junior marketeer position I was asked: given your resume, don't you want to be a developer instead? So devs seem to get pidgeonholed into always being devs.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351882&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Me too I even have a bookmarklet in Firefox so that I can use a prefix (hn) and the search is rewritten as site:news.ycombinator.com, to make sure all results are limited to HN.<p>I also have the same kind of bookmarklet for Reddit and Google Scholar.
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 <p>The reason that the quality on Reddit is higher is because there’s people moderating those quality subreddits. Without those moderators it would all turn to crap and be just as useless as Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351268&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Moderators that are often anonymous/unknown.<p>(This isn't an argument against your point, just a bit of additional context that increasingly is odd to me as Reddit gains more and more social weight)
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 <p>Very true. Fortunately I don't think most moderators want to see their community destroyed. That's exactly what would happen if they started taking money. As a group, people will catch on fast and either force the moderator to step down or just leave for a new subreddit.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353428&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; - "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..."
&gt; I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.<p>I never believed in conspiracy theories, and after I read "Media Control" by Noam Chomsky I understood there is no need for conspiracy theories once you understand how individual incentives are aligned and how individuals always act to maximise profits.</p><p>Someone on HN phrased this and I am not taking credit for it but it explains beautifully whats going on: "Google is not making money by showing you the best search result they can, they make money by keeping you searching."
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 <a href="vote?id=30353466&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That does not make sense. If searches did not result in satisfactory results, then people would stop searching.<p>Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit.</p><p>This is a problem for google, maybe not right this minute as growth might offset dissuaded users, but nevertheless, it does not behoove them in the long run to provide garbage search results to people.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353542&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit.<p>You are right but overestimate the number of people doing these restrictive searches. They should be in the &lt;0.1% range. I personally switched (to duck and latly kagi.com) and know quite some people in tech that did so too, but the non tech-savy person (which are the majority of overall users) doesn't even know other search engines.
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 <p>Eventually, though, even non technical users will stop Google searching if it wastes their time. If they do not find what they want, then they can go back to asking people in person or instagram or whatever, but I would not expect people to keep aimlessly searching.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349024&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I view the Dead Internet Theory as Black Mirror style satire. All it would take is liberal application of GPT-3 style transformer AI to content generation and much of the Internet could be fake. You could have fake political trolls arguing with other fake political trolls from the other side, fake blogs, fake review sites, etc. and it would take me a while to notice. Most of the modern Internet is just that bad.<p>Advertising always creates perverse incentives. It works in traditional media too. Look at what happened to things like Discovery and The Learning Channel when they became subject to advertising based pressure for ratings. They went from having actual educational content to being full of tabloid trash.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352830&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>The death of the authentic web really chimes with me. I have an almost physical reaction when I occasionally come across a page that isn’t trying to sell me something, that is a labour of love.<p>A month or so ago, I was trying to help someone retrieve some very old Wordpress for Mac files. I found <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos">http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos</a> and was so touched, I sent the author a few dollars for a coffee
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 <a href="vote?id=30352367&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google's problem is they've virtually nothing (given their resources) to "commoditizing their complement". <a href="https://www.gwern.net/Complement">https://www.gwern.net/Complement</a><p>Google's compliment is web sites. What have they done to make a web site easier to make?</p><p>They even killed their RSS feed. They have released a bit of web tech, but their offerings are generally a bit sad or only solve Google problems (e.g. Go).</p><p>If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help. If you want to write a blog or make a simple web app, it's unlikely you're going to think "Google has some great stuff to help, and has awesome tools". Mozilla's web resources are better. Microsoft's web resources are better.
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 <a href="vote?id=30359696&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help.<p>You mean having to pay them for the priviledge of not being flagged as "dangerous" by shitty machine learning algorithms?
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 <a href="vote?id=30351001&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."<p>&gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.</p><p>Yeah I remember this being mentioned in a local presentation at university. As a great thing. Google doesn't search for what you write, but what you want.</p><p>The problem is that very often Google don't know what I want. Before they introduced this, I was able to define my query so that I got exactly what I wanted.
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 <p>Dead Internet Theory is totally believable. I remember back in 2006-7 or so, being slightly curious about putting up a food review site because I was really angry at my local X food establishment. I found places were you could buy complete restaurant database ready to be scripted onto the web for maybe 90 a pop. The data was actually pretty good, but I was shocked by the huge community around flipping these dbs into internet spam. For the very high majority these were hungry business types who could barely open a code editor without asking for help. I only expect the problem has gotten exponentially worse since then now that ai generated content has improved in quality.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354414&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I think the OP is weak because it conflates ads and seo spam. Yes, Google went all in with ads, and yes, this hurt its credibility and the quality of its products.<p>But there is no conceivable universe where seo spam isn't the arch enemy of Google. Google needs to fight spam to survive, it knows it and it does. But that's hard. So hard in fact, that nobody else has cracked the problem, and for all the anecdotal evidence of someone switching to Bing, Google's marketshare is still utterly dominant.</p><p>The Dead Internet Theory may have some weight: Google hasn't dropped the ball, but it is slowly drowning into the sea of "content-free content".</p><p>But if that's the case, so is everyone else.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354796&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>SEO is ads Google is failing to monetize.<p>That said, the reason the Reddit trick works is that it uses information Google explicitly excludes when ranking content (engagement signals).</p><p>Google has a bunch of “objective standards” that it uses to paternalistically shape what the web looks like. Many of these are divorced from what users actually want for pieces of content (https, AMP, a life story in front of recipes to demonstrate authorship, etc).
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 <p>I think our statements overlap. “Reddit moderators have better standards.” Is something I’d definitely agree with.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30354519&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I think there’s actually two dimensions to this problem and the article and your comment only address one of them.<p>The other dimension is that, in the past, if you searched for stuff your results were likely to be a blog or a forum thread. Today the bloggers have evolved into instagrammers, TikTokkers, YouTubers, or Podcasters. The Forums and community pages have moved to Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, etc.</p><p>So it’s not just that SEO and botspam has eaten the Google results page, it’s that this is all that’s left of the open internet that needed search to navigate. Much of it truly is a wasteland. Google owns part of the blame for crippling RSS and privileging recent pages and specific domains or AMP pages over evergreen, self-hosted content in search results. But also users have given up on the open internet in droves. Instead of starting a fansite they start fan subreddits or discords instead.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349482&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>That inauthenticity comment really hit home for me, too. I realize that I do not trust the internet at large, and haven't for a long time. That's been the real trigger for my retreat from mass social media into smaller, tigher online communities.<p>Even HN is starting to feel like it wants to sell me something.
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 <p>The latter feeling may be because HN is run by a startup accelerator. They run literal native ads on the front page whenna startup they sponsor goes live.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't think that's where it comes from. It comes from the same places as Google, where people know the value of this community's attention. Posts at the top of HN are designed to get to the top of HN.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351483&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>This fits well with my own worldview. I've been griping about Google results for years, and jumped for DuckDuckGo when it became usable. I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap and someone new will come along to replace it, just as Google replaced AltaVista.<p>Even DDG knows that it can't handle everything, and so it has its bang shortcuts. I've used the !reddit one, and I'd use !w (Wikipedia) except I do those from the Firefox search bar.</p><p>I've heard the "everything's a bot" theory before, but never saw a name put to it before. I'd have to guess that 99% of all SMTP traffic is spam at this point.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352017&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap<p>In terms of direct ads, perhaps. But for SEO spam, in many cases, DDG already seems to be there. For example, things as simple as "python datetime", "python json", or "python datetime.now", where it would seem obvious that the top result would be the documentation for the module/function, have spam sites above the actual Python documentation. Meanwhile, search for "matplotlib", and your screen will fill up with ads.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348970&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.<p>So are reddit-comments and entries. There it's even worse, because most people don't connect the content with manipulation.</p><p>&gt; The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now.</p><p>So, like reddit? I mean every platform has their hive mind, and reddit is even worse, because the hive mind can be manipulated with paid upvotes, not just reposting and comments.</p><p>&gt; The same for trending programmer tools.</p><p>Aren't most of them yet again commercial products from companies?
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 <p>As soon as Google removed Wikipedia as the first result of everything they started dying.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351282&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Except Wikipedia has a reliable place on the page, if a Wikipedia entry exists... they never _removed_ it, just _moved_ it.<p>This is the least of the issues with Google.
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 <a href="vote?id=30354127&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>"It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..."<p>I don’t think this is the problem. The problem is the need for public companies to grow exponentially. If you take away the need to constantly grow exponentially, then ads on search can be both balanced well and make an insane amount of money.
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 <p>Based on some of the April Fools' Day experiments that Reddit has done in the past, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have the same hesitation and mistrust of Reddit posts and comments. So much of the content, even on Reddit, is made by bots or copied by bots from older, legitimate user-generated content.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There’s something sad and ironic about using Google to search Reddit. One, I mostly dislike using Reddit - I only want to see specific discussions very occasionally. Two, what is the state of the internet if I have to use the best search engine to find content on a website I mostly dislike? Haha.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352180&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Reddit's search engine is kind of crap (not terrible, but also not great). That's why I use Google for Reddit, to have a better Reddit search experience.<p>I figured that's why it's so high, is Reddit's UX keeps slowly getting worse so the best way to find stuff on Reddit is by searching outside of it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349931&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is it for me exactly.<p>This is for me exactly too. Search "best XXX for YYY", and I get back two pages of dubious websites that smell like paid ads a mile away.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348772&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Searching Reddit helps but the quality of comments has gotten lower since 2015 or so. It seems to coincide with the wave of subreddit bans and the nakedly politically-driven moderation on subreddits. And with the reflexive attitude—against anything countering the Reddit consensus—that developed during the Trump years. High quality posters seem to have withdrawn from the site (at least in how much they comment) and what's left is mostly ignorant teenagers and bitter millennials with shitty jobs. In turn, that crowd is much less likely to upvote high-quality thoughtful content, so the cycle continues. The decline in quality has trickled even into the less popular subs. Don't get me wrong, the site has always had problems, but the more recent decline in thoughtfulness is dramatic.<p>The worst part is that despite Reddit getting so much worse, there is no other place that's grown to fill the void. This place is great, and I do search HN when it makes sense, but it's small and narrow in scope. Reddit basically crowds out any competing websites by sucking up all the low-level chatter required to sustain a community, but has also pushed away high-quality posters, who now have no place to go. Very tragic but maybe a good case study in shitty network effects.
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 <p>Quality on any non niche popular subreddits were already abysmal long before 2015. Reddit is useless for anything which is not highly specific but there are some diamonds in the rough: great subreddits exists about fashion, knives, gardening, coffee, shaving and plenty of other weird interests.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is true but I find that about 2015 is the inflection point. Even posts about highly technical subjects are not as good if they’re from after that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349483&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I dunno, looking at the growth curve in Paul Graham’s tweet I expect most of the drop in average comment quality can be attributed to the size of the user base. It’s hard to keep high-quality content the norm even in much smaller communities.<p>/r/nfl had a reputation for high-quality content and wasn’t a particular battleground in the Trump Wars. It’s still a good breaking news feed, and the live game threads are fun, but every post is dominated by joke comments and memes.
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 <a href="vote?id=30348986&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>I find the idea that banning Trump supporters killed reddit to be pretty far-fetched.<p>To the extent there is a change in quality, it probably comes from other factors, including having a bigger, broader, and different user base now than in the past (and only a small portion of that change likely came from Trump-related bans).
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 <p>Parent didn't say Trump supporters. And I completely agree with their observation. Quality went completely off a cliff around that time. I think it just officially entrenched the Reddit orthodoxy and that there is a "right way" to think, and that infected even non-political subreddits. Not all though, I know some subs are much better and open to discussion than in the past.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30353790&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust<p>i think that specialised search engines are gaining ground. For example, I am using github search for searching code samples, that works better than google.</p><p>You might want to check my side project that tries to explore the subject. I have a search tool / catalog of duckduckgo !bang operators, i am hoping that it allows for better discoverability of specialized search engines.</p><p><a href="https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html">https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html</a> - (best viewed on a PC).</p><p>The latest addition is a description for each search engine, just hover over the name, and you get a description derived from the sites meta and title tags.</p><p>I think that specialised search engines are gaining ground, it has become easier to set one up, thanks to elasticsearch/lucene. They can be quite good, for a limited domain, and they don't have to invade your privacy in order to find out what you are looking for. I think that what is missing are tools like this, that would aid the discovery and use of these search engines. I hope that this will allow them to eat into the market from the 'low end'.</p><p>The projects source is here: <a href="https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang">https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang</a></p><p>Unfortunately they don't invest too much into !bang operators at duckduckgo, however that's my input data...
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 <a href="vote?id=30349088&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>But I still prefer to use Google to search Reddit or Stack overflow.<p>Reddit especially has horrible search.
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 <p>Google doesn't care about indexing the internet, that's easy. Every other product they have built since search has been about indexing <i>you</i>.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352530&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web<p>This point especially rings true for me, but it also concerns me a bit. Reddit has killed a lot of other forums over the years. If something happens to Reddit, we run the risk of losing a large corpus of information.
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 <a href="vote?id=30355426&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."<p>&gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.</p><p>I hate this too. I do get typos corrected by Google. But I don't need that - if I put a typo in my query and get bad results, I can correct the typo myself. But if Google decides I must not have meant what I actually said, there's no way for me to correct that. It's a ridiculously bad tradeoff - we eliminate errors that are trivially fixed by introducing errors that can't be fixed at all.</p><p>I have similar feelings about phone input autocorrect, which automatically converts typos that are very easy to read into (mostly) correctly spelled words, plus (sometimes) completely unintelligible nonsense.
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 <a href="vote?id=30352666&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Makes sense why they would fuzzy search. Not all users can be expected to know Google fu.<p>So let mainstream use fuzzy and keep power user features. The big issue is power user support is gone for people with Google fu.</p><p>Ads or no ads isn’t really an issue for this because it’s such a small percentage of users that know Google fu.
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 <p>I agree. Often, what I am after online is to see what other <i>real</i> <i>people</i> are saying about something. typing 'reddit' into google is basically a proxy for "please google for the love of good, can you start indexing actual human discussions again?".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349102&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt;- "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."<p>&gt;This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.</p><p>It should do both. And it used to do both.
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 <p>I have a similar habit, I often search "[topic] forum" - I'm not fond of Reddit specifically due to accessibility issues although in some cases I still go there because it's the only good source.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30356490&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;because results on other sites aren't trustworthy<p>Reddit is gamed way more than google. Paid posters, moderation of anything against a narrative. Google search may be dying, but reddit ain't doing much better.
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 <a href="vote?id=30356364&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust.<p>It's only a matter of time before reddit too becomes too inauthentic to trust. Not only is it directly funded by advertising, its audience is mainstream enough for advertisers to invest time and money posting fake opinions in order to make it look like it's coming from real people.</p><p>I seriously hope I never see comments or news about people appending hacker news to searches. I don't want advertisers to kill this site when they catch wind of it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30353345&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Google was boiling the frog really really slow.<p>You can still can get exact searches by google dorks but "normal" people might find "google trying to be smart" actually useful.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350379&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.<p>Nice try. That's totally what a bot would say.
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 <a href="vote?id=30349524&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like?<p>I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past
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 <a href="vote?id=30350876&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>They have filed for an IPO last month with the SEC so they should go public very soon.<p>Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website.</p><p>It happened before and the admins yielded to them so I don't see why it wouldn't happen again, especially since it's not like they can run the website without that weird cabal of (mostly delusional/psychotic) power mods doing their work for free.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351242&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt;<i>is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website</i><p>I have a story about this - and its worse than just mods -- Admins intervene and set narrative on for whom is allowed to mod and make mod decisions...</p><p>I wont reveal the details - but I have seen Admins literally come in and fuck up Mod orders because (my suspicion) is that the Admins have MANY accounts that /appear/ as mods - but are actually Admin shill accounts...</p><p>I had this happen to me first hand and I was appalled.</p><p>Reddit's ethics are absolute garbage in this regard.
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 <p>I've also thought that. The reddit shutdown made the frontpage of (reputable) news sources, I can't imagine that investors aren't going to be asking the admins how much control they really have over the user experience on any given day.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30349978&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Oh, forgot about that... Thanks<p>Are they still under them?</p><p>regardless, what is reddit's current value? (I've been on reddit for 15 years - but I have recently deleted my accounts due to censorship and ban-hammering for the most ridiculous reasons.)
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 <p>It's perhaps a little bit early in its creation to be sharing this but I am working on a new search that should help to fix the problems mentioned in the article, <a href="https://namusearch.com/">https://namusearch.com/</a>. It allows you to build (and share with others) a curated list of websites that you want to use for searches</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yup, when I want to search anything I use a combination of reddit, HN, and Discord. My main use of Google these days is to find a website I forget the name of but roughly know what it's called. In the olden days, I used bookmark aggregation sites like del.icio.us to search for relevant content, which was generally more fruitful than a Google search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Maybe a different kind of terror than Dead Internet Theory: the Internet is "alive", but it acts as if it was dead.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352822&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Dead Internet Theory<p>Reminds me of the "birds aren't real" theory. Its almost more social commentary than a serious theory
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 <p>I didn’t really even think about this properly until just now.. these days I am looking at Reddit, Facebook groups and if needs be, YouTube (videos not by ‘creators’ as far as possible) to find information I used to google. Ads and referral links have totally ruined the usefulness of so much information.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I agree that Reddit remains a good source for info, but I’ve found that Google usually does a good job surfacing Reddit results — usually in the top half. Though this is most notable when I’m googling for esoteric info about TV shows and video games (e.g. “best build mass effect 3”)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30350679&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit<p>Are you a fan of r/mtb or r/mountainbiking?
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 <p>The first review site I go to, to find if the product should be trusted or not is reddit only in the hope that not every comment is a paid ad.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Great take on the topic. I completely agree, love the small communities that form in Reddit and there I can find the experts to ask.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>StackExchange is better for an informed discussion. Reddit has become too much like Yahoo! Answers.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's so funny, because I use Google to search reddit, because Google's search of reddit is better than Reddit's.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355860&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p><i>"The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web."</i><p>I just wanted to mention that a friend of mine made an app for user-reported trail conditions that might be worth taking a look at:
<a href="https://trekko.app/">https://trekko.app/</a>
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 <p>I wish Google would offer two different search products, one assuming Google-fu, and one not.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30355585&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.<p>Oh my sweet summer child. Reddit is absolutely infested with paid shills.
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 <a href="vote?id=30350073&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.<p>There is so much shilling on Reddit if you knew it would blow your mind. I wish more people realized this. Reddit is the best place to shill because not only is it ridiculously simple, people also automatically assume you’re not shilling, and then once you seed the idea, everyone else will do the shilling for you indirectly.</p><p>The healthiest way to use Reddit is like Wikipedia: assume the information you’re reading is highly compromised and biased in one way or another, but use it as a starting point in your further research and it’s a great tool.</p><p>Reddit posts are not your friends. Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.</p><p>Reddit is the best place to shill and the sooner the non-shillers figure that out, the better off the entire internet will be.
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 <a href="vote?id=30351307&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.<p>I increasingly think that upvote/downvote culture is the worst thing to happen to the internet and the world at large.</p><p>The problem is I don't have an alternative solution to propose.</p><p>Your comment is spot-on in my opinion though - I usually <i>start</i> with Reddit results, but try to check against other sources before relying on it.
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 </tbody></table></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30351345&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>Reddit also - in my opinon - actively enables shilling and botposting. Why do they have an API?<p>A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one?</p><p>Also the model of user-created and user-moderated subreddits actively enables the creation of shill accounts. It's trivial to create a subreddit and use it to farm karma with a ton of bots. If you can keep real users from ever entering your walled garden of a subreddit (of which there are many) your bots will never be detected until you wipe their comment history and set them loose on the rest of the site.
 </p></p></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30352351&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one?<p>Third-party clients?
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 <a href="vote?id=30348440&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>reddit's search isn't <i>that</i> helpful though. I often get to reddit from Google, sometimes I even do site:reddit.com, but still using Google's search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30348507&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30347719"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Its not about reddit as a search, it's about using reddit to validate your search because the alternative would likely yield poor results. You could trust the 10 listacles that came up as the first results that all look oddly similar, or you can try and filter through reddit by including it in your search terms</p></div></td></tr>
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</td></div></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login                 
                  

  Google Search Is Dying ( dkb.io )                
 3636 points by dbrereton on Feb 15, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 1561 comments                 
                  
                  
                  
 softwarebeware on Feb 15, 2022 | next [–]                 
                  
 Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me:                 
                  
 - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust."               
                  
 This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads. The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now. The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web. The same for trending programmer tools.           
                  
 - "It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..."                 
                  
 What I'm shocked by is that Google somehow maintained a balance on this for so long. Well, at least a good enough balance that people still use it primarily.               
                  
 - "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."                
                  
 This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.                 
                  
 - "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..."                
                  
 I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.             
                  
 Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has a distribution monopoly through Android, its deal with Apple on iOS and MacOS, and on desktop through Chrome.               
                  
 I'm working on a search engine startup. It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level. And despite being technically possible on desktop with Chrome, it is for all practical purposes beyond what any typical consumer can easily do.             
                  
 Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google and clicking ads.                
                  
                  
 dwighteb on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.                
                  
 On my IOS device, under Settings -> Safari -> Search Engine, I have a drop down with options, including Bing and DuckDuckgo, but defaulted to google.                
                  
 On Macos, with Safari running, Safari -> Preferences… -> Search, Search Engine I have a drop down, defaulted to google, with Bing and DuckDuckgo amongst other choices.               
                  
 Agreed on google”s effort to get their search engine as the default. However I just don’t understand how changing search engine is impossible given what I’m seeing on my devices? Nor does it seem over the top onerous to my eyes.              
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, but you can't add a new search engine at all! So if a search engine isn't one of the tiny number of options in that dropdown, you can't change to it. That applies on both iOS and MacOS. And that option is used for the entire system-wide search, not just Safari.              
                  
 So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list. You can see the search engine I'm working on in my profile if you're interested (I don't want to hijack this thread with self-promotion). I challenge you to change to a new competitive option like it. You simply can't. That is a clear monopoly over distribution.             
                  
 On desktop in Chrome, as noted it is not something any typical consumer can do easily. But even if they could, Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engine, even by setting the homepage to one. So every new tab opened on Chrome takes you back to Google search, even if a consumer figures out how to change their homepage. As for changing the nav bar search, no ordinary consumer is going to be able to work out how to change a search URL pattern. That is clearly intended to prevent consumers changing.          
                  
 So I stand by my point, especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.                
                  
                  
 daanlo on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I fully understand your point and defaults are very strong.                 
                  
 That being said, I try new search engines from time to time and always get back to google, because non of the others have worked for me (in a professional context). I probably do 200 searches per day and google is most likely to give me relevant info on my first query (maybe 80-90% success rate). All others I have tried have been around 40-50% win an avg. of 2-3 search queries to find my result. That is a huge daily time sync on 200 searches per day.           
                  
 I will also test your search engine.                 
                  
 And before having tested it, I have some unsolicited advice ;) At least these are things that would make me switch: 1) you are strong in my vertical. 50% of my daily search queries are professional. Probably 10-20% are programming related. If you were better 20% better than google at delivering results for that subset, I would probably use you. 2) If you had very strong support for my locale. Based in Germany, 50% of my private searches are in German. Most search engines, apart from google, suck in German. My assumption is their market share is so small that they don‘t put effort into any language specific search syntax understanding. German or large language groups like Spanish, Hindi, French come to mind. 3) If you can‘t become a default search engine on safari, maybe you can role your own browser (chromium fork or something) where you are the default. You could package it as: MySearchEngine App. It is actually a fully functional browser, but users really use it because they want to use your search engine. That might give easier access than having to manually navigate to your website in safari.
                  
 </ end of unsolicited advice />                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The ultimate test of any search engine is always the results. While the project I'm working on is definitely still an alpha, I'd love to chat with you when you try it out. I don't want to take the conversation here off-topic. To your general points though, there are definitely opportunities to provide better results within specialist areas of knowledge, and for local markets.            
                  
 I think most of the search startups are doing their own mobile app. On iOS, the system search and browser remains Google/Safari (and the App is essentially just a wrapper on Safari for browsing). But at least it is something. I think you'll see more people doing desktop apps, although the dominance of Google through Chromium forks for this isn't a coincidence. It feels like the bad old days of re-packaging Internet Explorer with a custom homepage all over again.           
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Multi-lingual search results in general; Google (and FB) just for some reason cannot comprehend that someone might have reasons to search in multiple languages or even regions. For instance, I at one point was an editor/fact-checker for an academic publisher and one project involved checking a lot of information from official government sources around the world, and Google did not know what to do with that.           
                  
 Hell, I'd love to have the option to make the search results be completely language agnostic.                
                  
                  
 greggman3 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Don't you just set the region and language at the bottom?                 
                  
 I also search in multiple languages but I also know that's an exception. The majority of the people in the world likely would only use a single language and it's easy to believe that search results are better for those users with languages separated.              
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, hence why I'd want an option for language agnostic results. It would be a terrible default.                
                  
 There are cases when I'd even like REGION agnostic results, or least ones not bound by national boundaries. For example, I have an interest in my state history (MI), and there's plenty of relevant articles/commentary from the Canadians.              
                  
                  
 eru on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I sometimes have similar issues. But I can understand why Google might not want to cater to the multi-lingual market: perhaps it's just too niche?                
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think it's too niche, I think they're just American.                 
                  
 A Canadian/Indian/EU-based Google probably would've ended up with multi-lingual support, whereas a China/UK based one probably wouldn't have.                
                  
 By the time Google got big enough for international considerations, there were already a bunch of baked in assumptions about their users, like them being monolingual.               
                  
                  
 masa331 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Have you tried Kagi.com? I switched to it and i'm very happy even with searches in my native language for example                
                  
                  
 the_one_jay on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Metager.org is my go to google search replacement. I imagine (although my German is non native) that the German search results are quite good. . . it being a German search engine. To be honest it the only search engine to get me off google - DDG is OK, as is searx, but I kept going back to the dirty G until Metager.             
                  
                  
 abecedarius on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 fwiw I use solution #3: the Brave browser, set to Brave search. So that option is not unrealistic now.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Also a fan of Brave browser here. The more people trying new things the better! I know some people don't like the crypto-angle with it, but I think it is a positive to test new economic models to support online content, personally.              
                  
                  
 btilly on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 How much of the German challenge do you think is due to German being an inflected language? So a search engine that can't figure out the inflected variants of a word are going to potentially miss out on a large number of the relevant search results.              
                  
                  
 mbg721 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 In addition to inflections, another factor may be the tendency to use compound words, so that a relevant word in context might not have a space at each end.               
                  
                  
 eru on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 In English, Google is pretty good at figuring out when to add spaces in your queries (if you have a typo with your spaces). Similar technology should help it with German?               
                  
 There's nothing magic about putting a space between words or not. Similar to whether you hyphenate or not.                
                  
                  
 mbg721 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Maybe it isn't a big deal; my thought was that if you're crawling a website and trying to associate its contents with search terms, parsing an uncommon compound word into the correct parts is going to come up more often in German than in English, especially if you're smaller than Google and German isn't your main focus. Are search engines good enough now to know that a string like electricovenmonitor is about ovens but not covens or Venmo?           
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 At least in part this seems to be due to the profiles that Google has built. Whenever I try to use Google in anonymous mode, the results become noticeably worse.               
                  
 Which, of course, means that it is yet another barrier to entry for any would-be competitors.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This could also be a perverse incentive reflected algorithmically (whether on purpose or not). Google has better data and makes more money when users are identified. So they have a vested interest in making users think that they will get worse results in Incognito mode.              
                  
 Personalization is a double-edged sword. @pg once wrote about Google results becoming "what's true for you" rather than what's objectively true. And filter bubbles and subtle "personalization censorship" are also dangers. I think it's possible to have high quality results and privacy/anonymity, and it's not a binary choice. It's a challenge worth figuring out.            
                  
                  
 debschi on Feb 21, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Totally agree that personalization is a double edged sword. Problem is getting people to actually want to change their personalized feeds/results. Most people have no clue what they’re missing and this issue has huge “Medium is the message” like implications.              
                  
                  
 anothernewdude on Feb 19, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I disagree about google being the best. For a start, their image search is massively behind bing. They do 0 work to remove pinterest spam. And DDG is way ahead of google on normal adhoc search.               
                  
                  
 vanviegen on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Your search engine doesn't seem to offer an OpenSearch description. Wouldn't adding one solve the problem for some browsers at least? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks, just to let you know, yes, it does have an opensearch description. But in practical terms that doesn't help much even if a startup search engine adds it.               
                  
 Unfortunately, while OpenSearch is great where it's supported, outside of Firefox, the only real support is for in-site-search on other platforms (where you type a site name and then a search string), and not for changing your browser search engine. And it doesn't work at all on iOS even for site search.             
                  
 So unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem of how a consumer can easily change their search engine to something new on Chrome or Safari or an iPhone.                
                  
 I don't want to sidetrack the discussion, but if you want to confirm the opensearch description, you can open our site in Firefox, then click the "..." in the browser address bar and then click "Install Andi Search". Or reach out and very happy to talk you through it.              
                  
                  
 ssvss on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I am using firefox (windows 10), I don't see the "..." in the browser address bar.                 
                  
 Edit: When I click the address bar, I see an small "A" icon in the bottom row. When I hower over it, it shows "install Andi search".                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Depending on the platform, you might need to right-click on the Firefox browser address bar and choose the "Add search engine" option from the dropdown (where a website has it). Do you see an option to add a new search engine when you right-click the browser address bar at all?              
                  
 [Edit: just saw the edit that you found it - thanks again for looking around for it too!]                
                  
                  
 ColinHayhurst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I concur. And would add that on Safari and iOS, it suits Google and Microsoft too keep others out; noting all options are Google, Bing or Bing sydnicates). And it suits Apple nicely; $15 bn from Google, pure margin. How much do they get from Microsft/syndicates? Meanwhile all search listed options in Chrome are Google or Microsoft (Bing and Bing syndicates). And, to complete all Edge options are Bing, Bing syndicates or Google. Disclosure: also alternative search engine CEO.          
                  
                  
 FabHK on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Presumably you count DuckDuckGo as a "Bing syndicate". I think that doesn't do it justice - many of the things I like about DDG are specific to DDG, and I could not care less whether the underlying crawl was run by Bing or not.              
                  
                  
 ColinHayhurst on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, but I'm biased. Your perspective is as valid and I respect it. DDG does have some great features and we stand with them in fighting for user privacy. What benefits us all is a variety of different search engines and search services. It is the search engines that subtly determine our informational pathways, so variety is healthy. For one independent review of search engines and syndicates, including DDG see: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...          
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 100% agree. The more people working on this and building different features and trying different approaches the better. The more new search engines, the more everyone innovates, the better for the whole world. It is deeply unhealthy to have a single monopoly with its mono-search have 90%+ of the market. There are billions of search users with many different needs, and there is room for different approaches.           
                  
                  
 dwighteb on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I see your point. I would have sworn that DuckDuckGo was added as a search entry when I installed that app on my ios device, however my memory is hazy from that long ago, so perhaps that search engine was added at a different point, like when it became big enough for Apple to notice them.             
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm a huge fan of DuckDuckGo. My understanding is that it took a significant amount of effort and public lobbying for them to get added to that list, and it was back in 2014 that was announced.               
                  
                  
 jaggs on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I suspect the big problem is that even if your search engine succeeds, once you get enough traction you'll just sell up to Google and everything slots back to normal 'do some evil' mode.               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't want to get too off-topic, but personally I can promise you we will never sell to Google. This problem is very personal. As well as being a programmer, I used to work as a journalist, and I've seen friends in media have their lives and businesses destroyed by Google's ad-tech. And I've seen the Internet turn from a wonderful thing to become a cesspool of content farms, clickbait and seo spam. I can't speak for other search startups, but we will never run ads or use ad-tech or sell user data or invade people's privacy. We're just two people. But we're two people on a mission.         
                  
                  
 donnythecroc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Duckduckgo uses Bing and they also pay millions to be included.                 
                  
                  
 ColinHayhurst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 We pay nothing so are not included. On the other hand we are happy to provide a one click search from our search engine or eight other search engines/services, currently from our web app [0]. One click for Google (if that's your thing), one click for Bing or Gigablast search engine results, one click for Brave and some of the many Bing and few Google syndicates - DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage.            
                  
 [0] https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedo...                 
                  
                  
 Angostura on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Source on the ‘pays millions’?                 
                  
                  
 giobox on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Even if DuckDuckGo and Bing pay absolutely nothing, it's good leverage to make Google pay even more, and its already public knowledge Google pays a lot to remain the default search engine on iOS, to the tune of billions of dollars a year:              
                  
 > https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...                 
                  
 > https://www.npr.org/2020/10/22/926290942/google-paid-apple-b...                 
                  
 etc, etc. Given Google pay a lot more for this privilege today than in years past, this may well have been part of the strategy.                
                  
                  
 nefitty on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I use my own server for search. I just had to add an OpenSearch xml file.                 
                  
 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/OpenSearch                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The OpenSearch standard is great and definitely an improvement where it's supported, but unfortunately as far as I'm aware in most browsers that's limited to site-search (in website search after typing a url). It doesn't work at all on iOS.              
                  
 On Firefox it makes it easier to talk a non-technical user through how to change their default search engine, and at least they aren't entering search pattern strings into a settings field as with Chrome.               
                  
                  
 nefitty on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I use it on iOS Chrome.                  
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 As far as I'm aware and the OpenSearch docs, support is limited to in-site searches on most platforms outside of Firefox (not changing default search option for example using Chrome on iOS). Would be really interested in the steps you followed if you're happy to share them.              
                  
                  
 nefitty on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 For sure. I added this file at the top level, as opensearch.xml. Sorry if formatting is wrecked.                
                  
 <OpenSearchDescription                  
 xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"                 
 xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/"                 
 >                  
                  
 <ShortName>My Search</ShortName>                 
                  
 <Description>Personal Search</Description>                 
                  
 <Url                  
 type="text/html"                  
 method="get"                  
 template="https://mysite.com/?q={searchTerms}"                 
 />                  
                  
 <Url                  
 type="application/rss+xml"                 
 indexOffset="0"                  
 rel="results"                  
 template="/results?query={searchTerms}"                 
 />                  
                  
 <Url                  
 type="application/json"                 
 rel="suggestions"                 
 template="/suggest?q={searchTerms}"                 
 />                  
                  
 <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>                 
                  
 <Image height="32" width="32" type="image/x-icon">                 
 https://yarnpkg.com/favicon.ico                 
 </Image>                  
                  
 </OpenSearchDescription>                 
                  
 In the head tag:                  
                  
 <link rel="search" href="/opensearch.xml" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="My Search" />                
                  
 I then went to my site on Chrome iOS and it showed up under Settings > Search Engine > Recently visited. I then selected it and now anything I put in my url bar gets sent to my server. It's pretty sick.               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's interesting, I don't get that option on Chrome on iPhone (Search Engine > Recently visited), except for the officially supported five (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia).               
                  
 I'm wondering do you see that as an option visiting our site (we have an opensearch description for Andi also) or other search engines like You with one?               
                  
 Very curious.                  
                  
                  
 nefitty on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah it didn't work. I checked https://andisearch.com/opensearch.xml but it redirected to that route with a trailing slash: https://andisearch.com/opensearch.xml/               
                  
 That might be part of it.                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks for having a look. The opensearch file is https://andisearch.com/andi.xml , and it's correctly referenced from the "<link rel="search"..." opensearch tag. If you have a look in Firefox you'll see it prompts in the nav bar. So I don't think that would be the issue. Do you see anything for other engines like You with the opensearch head item?            
                  
                  
 nefitty on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I DM'd you on Discord :)                  
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks heaps! Will post the outcome here just in case anyone else is trying to make opensearch work on Chrome on iOS once we figure it out!                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm thinking maybe Chrome on iOS has its own flavor of implementation and possibly it needs the filename to be "opensearch.xml" rather than looking at the <link> tag. I'm renaming the file to see if that makes a difference. If you had an example of another site where it worked, that would be awesome. At least one more platform where OpenSearch works for setting the default site search would be nice.            
                  
                  
 jaggs on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You have a section in Andi Search which lets you try and set it as the default (in Firefox at least) but it doesn't work. Is that what you mean, or am I doing something wrong/weird?               
                  
 BTW I really like what you're doing, and I'll definitely like to set it as default in Firefox somehow if I could just to try it out. My first tests were surprisingly good, I didn't expect it to deliver results which are accurate and which appear to at least match DDG. Nice one. [slightly unusual page format on desktop though :)]             
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks! I don't want to distract from the main topic too much but would love to chat with you if you're open to it. There's a thread below with @neffity and I made some changes (trying to get Chrome on iOS to use OpenSearch) and broke that for a little. Update is just deploying now. I sincerely appreciate the feedback and you having a look too! :)            
                  
                  
 pkz on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I tries you search engine with a few queries and I was pleasantly surprised! Keep up the good work!                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I didn't want to take the discussion off topic but I appreciate that and thank you! Lots of work to do! Please reach out if you'd like to as well :)                
                  
                  
 figers on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Its been a while but when you visited a search engine website it then showed up as an option, not sure which OS / browser that was on though                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Firefox supports an open search standard which is a big improvement, so that's probably where you saw this. It provides an easier experience from the nav bar to add a new search engine to the browser. In practice, while it's a huge improvement, I've found talking with users that it's mostly helpful if someone technical is talking them through the change.            
                  
                  
 mark_l_watson on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Hello Jed, that sucks. I understand that custom search engine exclusion is a financial decision by companies that can get away with almost whatever they want to do.               
                  
 For iPhone, iPad, and macOS, you could use Swift and SwiftUI to write a single search app for your service. Flutter is pretty good also, then you could cover Windows and Linux also.               
                  
                  
 dapids on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It takes approx. 5 seconds to add a new search engine to Safari on macOS.                 
                  
 What?                  
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's simply not true. Even as a technical user who knows what you're doing, you get a hard-coded choice of exactly five - Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG or Ecosia. You can't add new ones at all. If you wanted to add a new search engine (like the one I'm working on, or any other), there is no way to do it.             
                  
 But let's try it. Go to Safari > Preferences > Search and choose the "Search engine" dropdown, and you'll see you have a dropdown with only five options.               
                  
 Google reportedly pays $15B per year for that top spot.                 
                  
                  
 kamokujin on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 A work around is to add a safari extension like "Keyword Search" and associate a key word to your search. Its nothing like setting a default search engine for a normal user, but atleast there is a way for the slightly more technical user.              
                  
 Though, I couldn't add a keyword to your site in firefox with its "Add a keyword" feature. Might be due to the javascript calling some url behind the screen.               
                  
                  
 aj7 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Go to search_engine .com in Safari. Share button. Add to Home Screen.                 
                  
 This is not a bad solution; I appreciate your browser rage.                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Adding a shortcut to a website to the home screen is a nice convenience. Unfortunately, it doesn't add it as a search engine to your iPhone search, or to Safari. Even with a PWA (progressive web app), the App is just a wrapper on Safari. For a startup like us, it is probably the best option currently available, and we've tried to make it a good experience. But it does suffer the same drawbacks as a regular App as a browser replacement. If you swipe down from the home screen and type something into your iPhone's search bar, you're still using Google and Safari.         
                  
                  
 shaky-carrousel on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list.                 
                  
 Well, you can. I just tried it and works. Granted, you need a third party app, but it's doable.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'd be interested in the steps you took. Third-party Apps on iOS can't change the Safari or system-wide options for search engines as far as I'm aware. Installing a third-party App just gives you a wrapper around Safari for browsing while you use that App only. If you swipe down on your home screen to use the system search, or open Safari itself, nothing has changed. I can ask you to install our App or another search provider's App, but it doesn't change your iPhone's search engine or add it to Safari.          
                  
                  
 shaky-carrousel on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, I found it a few weeks ago. It changes how safari works and improves it quite a lot.                
                  
 I can block elements, and cookies in a site, define custom JavaScript or css, change the default search engine with one in a list o define a new one, and a whole lot of other things. All inside default safari.               
                  
 Its name is Hyperweb. You can get it here: https://apps.apple.com/app/hyperweb/id1581824571                
                  
                  
 fearoffish on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Kagi search has an extension. Maybe you could do something similar. It’s on the iOS store under kagi-search-for-safari.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's interesting. I didn't think an extension could change the search engines available under Settings > Safari > Search Engine on iOS from the defaults (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia), or change the system-wide search used. Do you see different options now under Settings for search engines and did it change your system-wide search too (i.e. swipe down on home screen and then use the built-in Search)?           
                  
                  
 fearoffish on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Swiping down doesn’t work, it’s in-browser only in the address bar. As for in safari, I don’t get options, but if the extension is enabled it redirects the search to Kagi.               
                  
                  
 fearoffish on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Swiping down on my home screen gives search suggestions but no inline results. Clicking on those takes me to Kagi in safari.                
                  
                  
 freediver on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 No, it is a hack basically redirecting searches to a custom search engine. Good luck with Andisearch!                
                  
                  
 null_object on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.                
                  
 See my post above about iCabMobile, where there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.                
                  
 There are also other browsers than Safari and iCabMobile on iOS, many of which give alternatives to their search engine choices.                
                  
 Naturally if you think only users who choose the default browser are interesting as your market, I wonder if those users would take a chance on your alternative search engine?               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I replied to your duplicate post separately, but it is worth noting that even if you install an alternative browsing App and use it, the iOS system search (swipe down from the top to access the search bar) is still using Google and Safari. And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own options.            
                  
                  
 null_object on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own options                
                  
 I duplicated my post because you so pervasively in this thread duplicated your inaccuracies.                
                  
 You are wrong about this, iCabMobile allows the user to very easily add search engines:                 
                  
 Settings > Tools > Search Engines > Add                 
                  
 Naturally I expect to be plentifully downvoted for this accurate information, just like pointing-out that iCabMobile has 25 search engines to was also extremely unpopular.               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I may not be following you, but are you saying that when you change search engine in your App, it also changes the default search for iOS and Safari system-wide?               
                  
 Or you are just talking about within your iCabMobile App itself, like anyone can do in their own app?                
                  
 As far as I know, all the alternative browser and search Apps (including ours for example) are wrappers on top of Safari on iOS. And they are unable to change the iPhone's system-wide search or browser. That's the search engine accessed, for example, when a user swipes down on their iPhone home screen, and enters a query into the "Search" field that appears. Normally, that's Google and Safari at the iOS system-wide level.           
                  
 Or are you saying that you are able to change these including adding alternative search engines under iOS Settings > Safari > Search Engine?                
                  
 I'm curious how you're doing this if so, and I'm sure lots of other people would be too. My understanding is that App Store Apps or Extensions can not normally change the iPhone search engines, but I'd love to be wrong about that.              
                  
                  
 RunSet on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engine                 
                  
 Firefox has removed the ability to set a default page for new tabs and requires users to install an extension to restore the functionality, which in fact provides degraded functionality. As originally implemented the new tab would load the new page instantly. With the extension, a new tab is created, focus is given to the URL bar and after a brief but noticeable pause, the chosen page loads.            
                  
                  
 nabla9 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google pays Apple for the privilege to be the first.                 
                  
 Another way to think it is that Google pays Apple, so that they don't create their own search engine.                
                  
                  
 edude03 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Doesn’t apple already have a search engine? Where do the results for Siri suggestions come from? (I really don’t know)                
                  
 Just this morning I searched “air purifier” in safari and it suggested the wirecutter “best air purifiers” article                
                  
                  
 nabla9 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Siri uses Google by default.                 
                  
                  
 HWR_14 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I actually don't think Apple could build a good search engine. They believe in privacy, and will be compared to engines that track you everywhere.                
                  
 Or, it might be possible. But their constraints will make it far harder to build even a comparable search.                
                  
                  
 2muchcoffeeman on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Wouldn’t the search be like the old days of google before they personalised everything?                 
                  
                  
 jmbwell on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Apple is operating a search engine right under our noses, hiding behind Siri. Applebot is regularly crawling the web. They’re probably much further along toward a privacy-focused search product than any of us would know.              
                  
                  
 HWR_14 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I thought Siri's web results were returned from tour chosen search engine in settings. Does it use its own search?                
                  
                  
 jmbwell on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 "Web results" are. "Siri Suggested Websites" and "Siri Knowledge" are not — those are fed by Applebot. "Applebot is the web crawler for Apple. Products like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions use Applebot." — Apple's support document about Applebot.              
                  
                  
 HWR_14 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I've wondered why no one has bought wolfram alpha and used it to power knowledge bases. Certainly it seems cheaper for Apple to have down that as a start point than to start from scratch. Maybe it's too technical for most users?              
                  
                  
 naravara on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 DDG is already a comparable privacy first search engine. Apple would just need to buy them in they cared, but instead they just promote them.                
                  
                  
 lanamo on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 xSearch for Safari makes the search experience on the Apple ecosystem much better. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xsearch-for-safari/id157990206... Makes switching search engines easy and you can use "bangs" like in DuckDuckGo to use other search engines within safari.              
                  
                  
 ummonk on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The drop down options are limited though.                 
                  
                  
 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 "Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore."                
                  
 This bluntness does not go far enough. People do not change defaults, no matter how "easy" it may be to do so.                
                  
 A default is a pre-made choice by someone other than the consumer. There is no set-up process where the consumer makes a choice. The choice has already been made. Consumers do not make this choice. Even if they could, in practice they don't. That fact may seem insignificant but it is worth billions of dollars.             
                  
 If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job. In probably the most important one, Google pays Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine. It was estimated at $10 billion in 2020 and $15 billion in 2021.[1]             
                  
 Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does it. $15 billion is too much to pay for something that may or may not change. It does not change. It is money in the bank.              
                  
 1. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...                 
                  
                  
 magicalist on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job.               
                  
 I mean you could spend two seconds to search and realize you were in fact mistaken before bothering to write "If I am not mistaken..."                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Sundar Pichai was responsible for the Chrome browser and Android operating system. [1]                 
                  
 While the comment might be a little oversimplified, I think it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit. And there's no question that Chrome and Android are the two central planks of Google's search distribution monopoly with consumers, along with the Apple deal.             
                  
 [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sundar-pichai-rose-to-be...                 
                  
                  
 magicalist on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > While the comment might be a little oversimplified                 
                  
 let's see:                  
                  
 > spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job                
                  
 even if we take your convenient assumption as correct ("it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit"), it's still wouldn't be a true statement. But feel free to point out which part is true if we relax any more assumptions.              
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Based on the public record, I don't think the original commenter's statement was unreasonable or mistaken. And they have provided extensive additional documentation on a separate comment supporting the assertion.               
                  
 Based on Pichai being the senior executive at Google responsible for Chrome browser and search defaults, as a matter of public record he held corporate responsibility for getting google search as the default search engine on as many devices as possible.              
                  
 You stated that the original commenter was mistaken with no supporting evidence and a high level of acrimony in your phrasing. I'd be interested to see supporting evidence for why you think the commenter was mistaken, in the context of the other resources they provided.              
                  
                  
 magicalist on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Sure, if you're comfortable with your job being described as spending most of your time working on affiliate link deals, we can agree that's a good description of someone working on the Google toolbar plugin and then Chrome OS, Android, etc.              
                  
                  
 forgotmyoldacc on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If anyone else was curious, Sundar Pichai had not worked on Search prior to becoming CEO, it seems:                
                  
 > Pichai joined Google in 2004,[8] where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. In addition, he went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps. In 2010, Pichai also announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM. The Chromebook was released in 2012. In 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversaw.         
                  
                  
 goodluckchuck on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Consumers don’t want to see the results of their search or find the answer to their question. They want the assurance of being told the answer by an authority. Google has tried to become that authority. It’s true, just Google it.              
                  
                  
 jonathankoren on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does it                
                  
 Thinking about when Firefox defaulted to Yahoo. I wonder what switch rate was.                 
                  
                  
 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Interesting question. Is the switch rate lower after they dropped Yahoo for Google.                 
                  
                  
 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 More about Pichai's role in making Google the default search on more computers and directing search traffic to Google, by any means necessary.                
                  
 "Pichai started at Google leading product management for the Google toolbar, a critically strategic product that enabled default search queries on different web browsers to go through Google and allow them to track browsing behavior to power the AdWords targeting engine. At the time, Internet Explorer was the "installed by default" incumbent for many users, while Firefox was the alternative browser of choice."           
                  
 "Pichai identified a weakness in Google's strategy, and Chrome began as a defensive play against the established browsers to protect and grow Google's search business (which still generates much of the company's revenue)."              
                  
 https://www.productplan.com/learn/sundar-pichai-product-mana...                 
                  
 "Sundar Pichai is the one who introduced the toolbar, which led to an increase in user searches. It was later merged with Chrome, which became the most used web browser in the world."               
                  
 https://startuptalky.com/sundar-pichai-story/                 
                  
 ""Most people here didn't want us to do a browser, so it was a little bit stealthy. Once we had it up and running, I remember showing it to Larry and Sergey - and even then there was a lot of scepticism." But Pichai got his way: Chrome was released in 2008 and now accounts for nearly 60% of the market, according to NetMarketShare, while Internet Explorer languishes on less than 16%."            
                  
 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-bo...                 
                  
 "You know how Google's the default search engine for many Web browsers? That was Pichai's work."                
                  
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11...                 
                  
 "Pichai's portfolio includes Chrome, Android, search, ad technology, maps, social,commerce and infrastructure."                
                  
 https://web.archive.org/web/20150226215637/http//www.forbes....                 
                  
 "Ten years ago, the Indian-born Pichai, 42, was a product manager at Google, and his domain consisted of the search bar in the upper right corner of Web browsers. He then persuaded his bosses to wade into the browser wars with Chrome, which in time became the most popular browser on the Internet and led to the Chrome operating system that runs on a line of cheap laptops called Chromebooks."            
                  
 "Android runs on 1.2 billion devices around the world. It drives users to the company's hugely profitable search engine and the ads on its maps service. Google search and maps are available on phones made by Apple and Microsoft, too, but Google pays those companies referral fees. The more people use Android, the more Google can keep that revenue to itself."            
                  
 "Google distributes the latest versions free under the agreement that device makers will highlight profitable Google services-especially search and maps-while their own brands and services take a back seat."               
                  
 "Pichai joined the small team working on Google's search toolbar. It gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the dominant browsers at the time, easy access to Google search. He proposed that Google build its own browser and won the support of the company's co-founders, though he faced an objection from then-CEO Eric Schmidt, who thought that joining the browser wars would be an expensive distraction."           
                  
 "Rubin had introduced it, but Pichai created an interdisciplinary team with the search group, which had voice search technology and algorithms that could discern what information might be most important to users. "Sundar helped me to formalize a relationship," says Johanna Wright, the product manager who runs Google Now. "Because search and Android sit in two different buildings, we ended up doing a people swap.""           
                  
 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-s...                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you for putting that together. I knew there was some resistance to doing a browser internally, but it was a brilliant insight that long term Google would need control of distribution for its search results as it became more and more a mass consumer service, especially after becoming ads-focused and moving toward more mainstream users, and with the world moving to mobile after the iPhone launched.            
                  
                  
 rhubarbcustard on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Just tried https://andisearch.com/ and I like it. Felt like a fresh look on results instead of the same old SEO ones. For example, searched for a few Java queries and found very informative website/results that weren't dominated by Bealdung. Searched for "soccer scores", "chelsea FC", "prince andrew", "WP export" and found things that would never have been on Google's first page, but were excellent returns. Nice work.           
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you. While I don't want to distract from the topic here, I do really appreciate your feedback and you trying it out, and would love to talk more if you'd like to reach out! Speaking generally, the world needs more people working on search, and I think there is a lot of room for completely new approaches.             
                  
                  
 aconsult1 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm pleasantly surprised by the high quality of your top results. That shows the search algorithms (whatever your choice was) are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted. As a fellow software engineer I'm curious about your stack and size of your operations. Are you blogging about this somewhere? You definitely should!             
                  
                  
 foxylad on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > That shows the search algorithms ... are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted                
                  
 I doubt this. I'm guessing that 90% of Google Search's development effort is concentrated on defeating SEO, and as soon as a new competitor succeeds well enough to attract SEO attention, their results will suddenly turn to custard.              
                  
 The competitor then has to combat the extremely sophisticated SEO practises developed against Google over the years. This is likely to be an even bigger barrier to disruption than building market share against Google.              
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You're assuming here that Google's primary interest is consumers, but their paying customers are the advertisers. The reality is that the worse the organic results are, the more likely a user is to click on the ads instead, and that's how Google makes money.              
                  
 At the least that's a perverse incentive, and at worst it's a corrupting influence.                 
                  
 Whether it is conscious or not, Google does better financially when there is more SEO spam in results.                
                  
 That's why the better Google does financially, the worse the search results are getting.                 
                  
                  
 aconsult1 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I doubt this very much myself too! I little wishful thinking to be honest.                 
                  
 However you're arguing as if new competitors had to monetize the same way Google does and that's not the only game available. Imagine a competitor that doesn't monetize clicks but works on donations (like wikipedia does). If results are higher quality than Google's the users will follow. Or maybe a search engine that promotes a particular product like a CRM tool for example.            
                  
 Disruption typically doesn't come in obvious ways or else someone else would have done it (including Google and its gazillion dollars).                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you. I appreciate that very much. We plan to share on HN how we've built it and how it works, and get as much feedback as we can. That really needs its own thread, and I'm conscious of not getting off-topic or promotional here because this is such an interesting thread already, and it wasn't my intention to distract from that because this is one of the big problems in the world right now. Plus, to be honest, we have a few things that are broken and that we're working to fix! So to answer your question, yes! We hear the feedback asking us to share more, and we're going to get a new release up and share with HN soon. And sincerely, thanks for the encouragement to do that. We think it will be interesting to the community here.      
                  
                  
 jamiek88 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I’m impressed! I did a search for ‘Oregon coast gardening’ and bunch of indie sites I’d not see before popped up. Some blogs too!!!!!! Old school.                
                  
 Why don’t you do a show hn so we can have a proper thread I’d love to learn more about the decision making of the AI.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Hey thank you. Seriously I appreciate the feedback and encouragement to share Andi with HN. I know there have been a few comments and questions, even though I'm trying to not get off-topic because this is such an interesting thread. You're absolutely right that this needs it's own thread where we can answer questions properly.             
                  
 So we're definitely planning to share what we're building with the community here soon. Andi's very much an alpha and a few things are broken, but we're working on a new release that fixes them, and then we're going to share it and learn as much as we can from the feedback and wisdom here.             
                  
                  
 girvo on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 "And I" or "Andy" in terms of pronunciation? I wanted to also mention how impressed I was with the results, well done!                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you so much! And yes! To answer it's pronounced Andi like Andy :)                 
                  
                  
 pacoverdi on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I really like it too, will keep on testing.                 
                  
 Small bug I found:                  
                  
 use the "go" command (e.g. go reddit)                 
 close the newly opened tab (e.g. reddit)                 
 click "Learn more about me"                 
 click the top left icon (Andi)                 
 => goes directly to reddit.com                 
                  
 EDIT: formatting                  
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you! And ugh! I thought we fixed that bug. On it :)                 
                  
 One of the secrets with Google is search is that the top searches aren't searches at all. Number one search on google? "facebook" - it's people navigating. So the idea behind that is to let people navigate directly when they want to go somewhere specific, like "go youtube cute cats".             
                  
                  
 SubiculumCode on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Looks like HN killed it :)                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Without wanting to go off topic here, may I ask what sort of error did you get? All looks fine from here, although it is an alpha. If you were happy to reach out I can try to help figure it out with you.               
                  
                  
 SubiculumCode on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Secure Connection Failed: An error occurred during a connection to andisearch.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR. Also Firefox is flagging it as "Not Secure" in the address bar.               
                  
 Interestingly, once I turned off my VPN, it works again, Firefox doesn't display the message either. Note that other web pages work fine on the VPN.                
                  
 update: It work's with MozillaVPN, but not with my University's VPN. Perhaps UC Davis has flagged it from within their firewall.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's weird. The endpoints are on Amazon Cloudfront, so possibly uni VPN didn't like the CDN it is on.                
                  
                  
 SubiculumCode on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Also, I set it as my default search engine for a trial since my first few searches went well. Is there a place to submit bug reports?                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Oh awesome, thank you! Yes just say "/bug" any time and tick the little box to attach details (we don't see what searches are so that let's us know) or just hop on our Discord from Contact Us. We really appreciate you trying it out. It is an alpha and we have lots of work to do, especially performance. I've been trying not to go off topic from the conversation here but wanted to answer your direct question, but we can chat more directly.           
                  
                  
 SubiculumCode on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I love the HN view option...mostly because I find that form so easy to scan.                 
                  
 I've conducted a number of professional searches about neuroscience, obscure R packages, topics on D&D and Pathfinder, and it has done exceptionally well. The one thing my obscure demographic would love is a replacement for Google Scholar, which I use all the time.              
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I love the HN view too - it is compact, efficient and information dense. I think it works well for search results. And I love HN so it seemed like a neat homage :)               
                  
 Thank you for trying it out and the great feedback too. There hasn't been too much discussion here about Google Scholar, but better research and academic results is something I hear a lot of people talk about as a growing problem.              
                  
                  
 dillondoyle on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Very cool effort but just the first thing I tried which is a mega common search for everyone. "Denver weather."                
                  
 Took a while to load, and only gave me short text of current conditions.                 
                  
 When I did "denver weather forecast" it gave a bit more and showed results on the right from Wolfram and others but they don't tell me anything. Wolfram is current conditions and wind tomorrow. Next one just meta description for weather underground.              
                  
 It's going to snow tomorrow. That's what people are searching for.                 
                  
 Google gets this stuff and makes that info super visually accessible.                 
                  
 I really don't get the hate on their search quality. If it has gone down I haven't experienced this outside of mega spam things like recipes.                
                  
 But I still experience the black magic of typing in some vague thing you are trying to remember and somehow they know what it is.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I've been trying not to be off-topic or self-promotional on this thread because it has so much other great discussion, and it needs a separate thread, but I wanted to answer your question quickly. Thanks sincerely for the feedback and for trying it out. We'd really love to chat more with you about this if you're open to it. The project is still an alpha and we have lots of work to do. We outline some of the good and bad things on our About page, including that it's weak at local searches (like weather or businesses or localizing to region) and there is too much spam in product reviews and ecommerce especially.        
                  
 My own feeling is that the spam and ad problem (and therefore actual result quality) on Google is at its worst for categories like finance, health and travel. Commercial promotion has really taken over there. For many people, ads are essentially spam when they take over the entire screen of results (try, say, "best home loans in the US").             
                  
 There is huge variation though. Some searches are still pure. Thanks again and please feel welcome to reach out to chat more about this!                
                  
                  
 joe_the_user on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.             
                  
 I disagree. Two to three years ago I could get more what I wanted in a complex search once I tuned it properly. So Google had a twenty year run of good and useful searches. Google also worked to strong arm their monopoly, yes. But I claim they still served some quality after that. It's not that unusual for a monopoly built on quality to maintain their quality for a period of time after it achieves that monopoly status - institutional standards die but they can die over time.          
                  
                  
 oconnor663 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore...Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google               
                  
 I don't disagree with this as a fact, but I think there are a lot of things that work this way that aren't actually monopolies in the competition-preventing sense. If I wanted to launch a new breakfast cereal, getting my product into grocery stores would be one of the major challenges of starting that business. Competition for shelf space is a core concern of a lot of consumables. This definitely creates a lot of stickiness and barriers, and that comes with its share of downsides, but there are also good reasons that distribution systems work the way they do. Transaction costs are important.         
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think competition for shelf space is the right analogy here. Perhaps for Apps within the App Store you could argue that. But when there are only two mobile operating systems with meaningful market share, and when they make it impossible to change to a new search engine at all, and the results all come from only two sources (Google or Bing) that's a straight monopoly over distribution.            
                  
 It's a similar situation with the App Stores also. They are monopolies. We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.              
                  
                  
 criddell on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.               
                  
 That’s true but at the same time I think most people are pretty happy with it. HN readers aren’t typical in this regard.                
                  
 I’ve been writing software as my job since the mid-80’s and it’s only been in the past 4 or 5 years where I realized that I’m finally pretty happy with the tech I use day-to-day.               
                  
 If I had any complaint it would be that app stores have made software too inexpensive. When I look at something like Procreate which I think cost something like $10, I’m blown away. This can’t be sustainable.               
                  
                  
 ColinHayhurst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You have a point but shelf space is physically limited. Online real estate is not so limited. In my country there is reasonably healthy competition between supermarkets. Supermarkets do have self-branded products but they don't cross-sell competitors self-branded products.              
                  
 Here we have Apple with Google and Bing on their shelves. Microsoft have Bing and Google on their shelves. And Google have Goggle or Bing. Is that healthy or an oligopoly?               
                  
                  
 oblio on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Online real estate is not so limited.                 
                  
 It's limited.                  
                  
 It's limited by our attention spans.                 
                  
 There's a reason web designers call specific pages "valuable real estate".                 
                  
 For example Google's search page, the one with the input, is probably the most valuable web real estate in the world, closely followed by the first page of results once you've typed your query and hit Enter.               
                  
 I'm willing to bet $100 that the second page of results probably gets less than 1000th the hits the first one gets. Heck, make that 1 millionth of the hits the first results page gets.               
                  
                  
 bduerst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's silly. Everything is limited by the scarcity of human attention spans, not just websites.                
                  
 Shelf space refers to the market with which someone competes, not whether people are thinking of a candy bar or finding a bathroom or a facebook post. Your argument commits survivor bias because it's ignoring the millions of other websites that exist and are being used. Being popular does not mean something is a monopoly, nor does it mean there's limited shelf space.            
                  
 Following your example, if Google spammed Pixel ads on it's home page, the page would become less popular. One of the reasons it became so popular was it's strict adherence to focusing on utility.               
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If a webpage doesn't show up on Google, it might as well not exist for most practical purposes.                
                  
 Regardless of why exactly this is the case, it's not a healthy state of affairs.                 
                  
                  
 bduerst on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Even if true, what does that have to do with shelf space? Search results do not constitute the internet, and there are many more search engines than just Google.               
                  
                  
 drzaiusapelord on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 And then there's the problem of the difference between your cereal and the big ones aren't going to be big because cereal is a finished art. The same with search. My outcomes using bing or google are almost the same. The reality is a lot of good conversation is locked within social media discussions and reddit is the only one that allows it all to be public by default, hence google + reddit. We're moving to walled gardens and most of them will simply keep google out. Google is probably as good as it can be, but it just doesn't have access to discussions in places like private facebook groups, discord, etc.        
                  
 Not to mention reddit is terrible outside of tech concerns. It leans conservative, young, male, and white. As a woman, contributing there is an invitation for harassment. Even when I don't contribute I do things like research cars to buy only to see forums dominated by "car guys" who mock safety standards, focus only on performance and the "get laid" aspect of cars, and are dismissive towards groups like "soccer moms." Well, I'm a soccer mom and felt wholly unwelcome in those communities and the advice there is actually terrible advice for parents wanting to buy cars.         
                  
 Then there's a whole religion on gaming be it consoles vs consoles or vs pcs, or publishers or franchises and just endless tribalism. Politics is an absolute nightmare as you can imagine. The savvy reader will say "well you have to know how to sort the comments a special way and never visit the sub you want but the 'true' version of the sub you want, etc" which is a million times more hostile to non-technical people than scrolling past some google ads and finding an article about what they want from a reputable newpaper or consumer reports.         
                  
 Reddit is just too wild west to be a google replacement. Worse, the good content is almost impossible to find. Google weighs popular discussions more than recent ones so it keeps giving me discussions from many years ago, even if I try to put the year in the search box. It has no idea how to crawl reddit and make it digestible for us and the reddit leadership want nothing to do with google it seems, for capitalistic reasons of keeping out a potential competitor and having their search be really good "any day now."          
                  
 Posting to reddit is its own kind of nightmare, full of rules per sub, each different and with an algo that will decide if your question gets any visibility, often only getting mean spirited comments in return, if not harassment. For as far as facebook has fallen, I can still visit my town or neighborhood group and ask people what cars they like and get something of a normal discussion. At reddit, I'll be asked for nudes or just mocked/gatekept.           
                  
 If anything if google is an old man at web 1.0 then reddit is an old man at web 2.0. I suspect google with outlast reddit as reddit looks primed to be overtaken, a bit like how myspace, slashdot and digg looked like unstoppable juggernauts during their time. Its "manboy" culture and its super hostile default subs and everyday misogyny, transphobia, and racism scare normal people away. Forums have always been the seedy underbelly of the internet but reddit is seemingly proud of being seedy, with spez coming out to say that he welcomes covid disinformation when reddit was recently called out about how its become the home of covid conspiracy theories.        
                  
 If reddit was publicly traded and you asked me between google and reddit, I'd say buy google 100%. I think we'll be reading a lot more "what happened to reddit" articles in the near future, not "what happened to google" articles. Reddit becomes more toxic over time and that's just advertiser poison. Remember, it happily was the home of "jailbait" subs showing sexualized photos of children and "creepshots" showing non-consensual photos of random women until CNN called them out. If there was no call out, then spez would happily be selling those subs as points of pride and growth. "Reddit is the new google" narratives are very echo-chambery, shortsighted, and highly questionable. I think it forever remains this cesspool that chases away advertisers while Google continues to adapt to a new online world and continues to be vastly profitable. Meanwhile, Reddit has yet to make a profit.    
                  
                  
 esyir on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Every time I hear this "Reddit is conservative-biased" I wonder if people are living in the same reality as I am. I just checked /r/all, the first political post is related to the Canadian trucker protest of which support is broadly split down the political divide. Top voted posts there slide as I expected, generally on the left-aligned component against the protests. The same, at least in my experience, applies to all political topics on reddit.           
                  
 Hell, Bernie, and then Biden were both top of reddit during the elections. In what way is that indicative of a "conservative leaning" on reddit. I'll give you young and male, but conservative? You've got to be pulling my leg here.              
                  
                  
 drzaiusapelord on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 /r/all is just a spam of new items, not a view of its culture.                 
                  
 It was the largest Donald Trump fan site in the world (/r/thedonald before it was shut down for being so big its brigading tactics were damaging the site) and now /r/conservative takes that role. Before it was the biggest Ron Paul fan site. Its deeply pro-guns in nearly every comment section and any mention of Hillary or AOC is an invitation for angry comments and downvotes. Random subs are full of transphobic content and misogyny is near everywhere. /r/conspiracy is a right-wing paradise catering to right wing views.          
                  
 You cannot talk about money or finance without being yelled at about how bad fiat and the fed are, which are right-wing talking points. You can't have a covid discussion without an army of covid skeptics yelling at everyone. You can't discuss police brutality without dishonest "but both sides" types full of racist dog whistles.             
                  
 Its absolutely right leaning and token "liberal" positions like legal pot or better healthcare doesn't really change that. I know GOP voters with those positions but they always vote GOP for culture-war related reasons. Not to mention, being able to do drugs in your home is really neither liberal or conservative, its just in the USA only the liberal party is making any effort to make that happen.            
                  
 Covid skepticism, which spez defends, is extremely coded right-wing, so even leadership acknowledges who reddit users really are.                
                  
 The few liberal and feminist spaces that exist on reddit have draconian mod rules because of the constant brigading and some of them just give up and lock discussions because mods are exhausted and tired of fighting it. Just running a liberal or feminist or queer sub is a lot of work because reddit conservatives are constantly bridaging. This is not the sign of a liberal community. I mod a few subs and its just a nightmare out there. Just keeping conservatives from trolling and fighting with everyone is a big job. If you see "liberalism" its because the mods are keeping the everyday redditors away and trying to keep up the values and themes of that specific sub and its relatively tiny audience compared to the conservative majority.      
                  
 Cherry picking AI spammed Bernie posts doesn't change the culture in the comments or what visitors receive when they post. I'm in a lot of Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc spaces and I can guarantee you reddit is absolutely nothing like those spaces.              
                  
 Also you are taking my comment out of context, not only is reddit conservative, but as a hypothetic competitor to google its extremely conservative. I can google for things without being hit with Ron/Rand Paul narratives, Trump worship, pro-gun narratives, covid skepticism, transphobia, or racist dog whistles. So just the idea that Reddit is as welcoming as a Google search is very, very questionable. Google will transparently present you ads. Reddit will drown you in propaganda, culture war politics, and harassment. As the meme says, we are not the same.         
                  
                  
 esyir on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 /r/all sorted by hot is items roughly sorted by popularity. Only if you sort by new, would it be a flood of contents by time.                
                  
 We can take a quick survey of /r/all sorted by "hot" as of this moment. The very first post I see with AoC is literally this:                
                  
 """AOC tells Joe Biden: Cancel more student loans to have "any chance" in 2022"""                 
                  
 The top posts? All in support. Where is the dominant conservative force that warps conversation around it.                
                  
 HermanCainAward, literally a subreddit celebrating the deaths of the unvaccinated tops all regularly. How the hell is that "covid skeptic right dominant"?               
                  
 Is your idea of "reddit is conservative" that reddit hosts conservative communities at all? Even if they're smaller than the left-aligned communities there?               
                  
 EDIT:                  
                  
 Some other quick statistics:                 
                  
 Size of /r/conservative: 923k                 
                  
 Size of /r/lgbt: 864k                  
                  
 Size of /r/hermancainaward: 500k                 
                  
 The "lol antivaxxers died" community is literally half the size of the largest conservative subreddit. The LGBT subreddit is the same size as OP's bugbear /r/conservative. The very much Dem supporting /r/politics is an order of magnitude larger than either of those, at 8 MILLION subscribers.             
                  
                  
 Der_Einzige on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, I was waiting for this comment. The OP you're responding to is way way WAY overexagerating the opinions of the body politic of reddit.                
                  
 Reddit is so large that having a potent conservative force is an inevitability - and much as we don't want to admit, for all the nastyness that goes on there, it's still a space that forces conservatives to be relatively speaking on "good behavior" (imagine if gab/voat/parler successfully displaced reddit), and more recently also forces their ideology to be heavily moderated (as in, to become more moderate), and watered down.           
                  
 Also LOL at criticism of the car community for being bad at recommending SUVs. Reddits car enthusiast community is made up of people whose favorite car by and large is the Miata. Is the Miata a good car for a soccer mom? No. Is the Miata the car of dudebro conservatives? Uh, HELL NO!             
                  
 I hate to say it, but sorry Karen, Reddit is for your son, not you.                 
                  
                  
 ShroudedNight on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.               
                  
 Your loathing (for lack of a better term) of the discourse on Reddit has me wondering if the differences I perceive between our political and cultural tolerance stems from being on opposite sides of a few gnostic / agnostic boundaries, or if the difference between our demographic pigeon holes has spared me orders of magnitude of relative grief, allowing me the additional advantage of getting less overwhelmed by ambient asshattery.           
                  
 I will readily admit that the latter could easily lead to the former; I guess I wonder if the 2 —> 1 causal order holds overwhelmingly in practice, and how to satisfactorily determine that in a way that manages to be honest, systematic, and compassionate.              
                  
                  
 esyir on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.               
                  
 I'm of the opinion that this is fine. Rather, the better approach here might be instead gatekeeping and exclusivity. Now, before you tear my head off for that, let me elaborate a bit.               
                  
 Much of the issues of existing communities, seem to me to stem from an inability to deal with scale. A single heretic isn't a problem, but when the heretics outnumber the believers, they can then proceed to dominate the community. One potential solution I've wondered about is entry-restrictions and finer grained restrictions on permissions for a community. For instance, a community might be public view but member-only for posts/comments, with invite-only membership. Or perhaps memberships have to be approved by N randomly selected members.         
                  
 The catch of course, is that what I propose is also yet another contributor to the death of the open internet, much like discord is doing.                
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Reddit is not a community; individual subreddits are. There are those that are Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc.                
                  
                  
 drzaiusapelord on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Reddit as a whole is absolutely a community and the default subs and the comments in them reflect that. Its also one that brigades a lot into other subs, so there's a "real reddit" you see and its absolutely right-leaning.              
                  
                  
 typ on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I've changed my default search engine to Bing for a while. Before I did that, I did compare the results with Google search and found that the clickbait websites that keep pissing me off are shown only by Google search. Those content farm sites have been on Google search as the top results for years to the extent I think it literally cancels any advantage Google search provides.            
                  
                  
 _HMCB_ on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 “…almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore”? 6-8 quality leads in the last 14 days (ave. sale at $3,200) on less than $220 spent on ads begs to differ with you. We’ve only started advertising the last two weeks. We’ve had calls and form submissions _all_ from Google and we only launched our site roughly 45 days ago. I’m not a Google fanboy and I think Search does need an overhaul but people are mostly definitely using Google Search. Another client of mine gets 8-12 new customers per month all from Google searches and she doesn’t spend a dime on Google.         
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 In many ways I think that supports my comment. People use Google search because it's the default and a monopoly, and it has a total monopoly on search ads as a result. But that is not a choice that consumers consciously make to go and use it. It's pre-installed as the only easily accessible default on their phones and computers, and no one ever thinks about what search engine they use or has chosen to use it. If you buy an Apple or Android phone, your search engine is Google, and you just assume it is the only search engine. It's great that it gets good results for your ad spend for you. That's why Google continues to set new records for revenue. Advertisers like you are their true customers. And the people searching are the product being sold.      
                  
                  
 Jweb_Guru on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 They were not saying "nobody uses Google search" but rather that people were not consciously choosing to use it over other services, but using it because it is the default on virtually every device and browser, despite the fact that the majority of the results were ads. The fact that people are clicking on your ads doesn't exactly disprove that hypothesis.            
                  
                  
 uxcolumbo on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Is there a reason why you've chosen the chat style interface vs the standard search box at the top and results at the bottom layout?                
                  
 This is not a comment on the search results itself - always appreciate the efforts to break out of the standard google results and surface other sources, but I found the interface confusing and the previews were also taking up a lot of space. A compact view would be better - or giving the option to turn the previews on / off.             
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks for trying it out. I don't want to take to discussion too off topic, but if I can try to answer in general terms, I think that it is not just that the search results on Google have been getting worse, the user experience has been too. There has been very little real innovation in how search works in the last 20 years, so it is good to try new approaches.            
                  
 With different views like compact vs visual, our feeling is that it's good to give people choices. If you get chance on desktop with Andi, try a search and then under Search Results, click "Change View", and try some of the other views. List view gives straight compact text results, and there is a Hacker view that presents results in the same information dense view as HN. That's my favorite. There is even a view Goggles that has a similar format to Google circa 2000 :)          
                  
 I'd love to chat more with you about this, and it is a great topic for when we share what we're building in its own thread here. Just based on feedback, we have two fairly passionate groups of early users on this topic - some love the conversational interface and others just want it to look like Google. So the approach we're taking is to give people choice.            
                  
                  
 sriram_malhar on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 "almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore"                 
                  
 May I ask how you arrived at this observation? This is the first time I am hearing this. I know of NO ONE who uses any other search engine. The term "Googled" is not yet a proxy for other search sites.               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 People use Google because it's what comes installed on their phones and computers when they first turn them on, and they never actively choose it. So while everyone uses it, few consumers make an active choice to use it. From talking to users a lot, many just assume it's the only option - as you say, Google has become synonymous with search in the same way Xerox became a word for photocopying.            
                  
 Consumers use Google because it's the default and the only visible option when they turn their phones on. Unfortunately, that's what a monopoly on distribution looks like. People no longer make a choice and don't even realize they have one.              
                  
                  
 WalterBright on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I would think that there'd be an online opportunity for a search engine that only searches humanly curated sites. Those sites would be ones that have quality information rather than spam. Some obvious examples - wikipedia, reddit, hackernews, public domain books, etc.              
                  
 It's easy to game an algorithm, but hard to game a human - humans know garbage when they see it.                
                  
 As an aside, whenever I get a prescription, included with it is a dense two page sheet of detailed information about the drug. I see nothing like that online with a search. Why is this sort of thing not online?               
                  
                  
 scarface74 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I would have gotten so excited about something like that 20 years ago, I would have yelled “Yahoo!” from the top of my lungs.                
                  
                  
 WalterBright on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Maybe Yahoo's time has come again! Maybe Google's decline started when they no longer had competition from Yahoo?                
                  
 The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it. One way might be the users pay for it, either per-search or per-month. This way the incentives to provide good search results align with the interests of the people doing the searching, not the people being searched.             
                  
 The people who want to be searched would have an incentive to make a quality site that the search service would believe would please their customers.                
                  
 I can think of people willing to pay for quality searches - professionals looking for things they need, like programmers, lawyers, researchers, etc.                
                  
                  
 wintermutestwin on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it.                 
                  
 Even though I loathe ads, I wouldn't mind one simple, clearly designated ad spawned from keywords in the search. No tracking and no cross site linking. No result promoting, etc...               
                  
 And yes, I believe that the current iteration of the web requires human moderation to be usefully searched.                
                  
                  
 scarface74 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Like the old goto.com                  
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Honestly, if we're going to go old school, I vote Dogpile.                 
                  
 Let's start pitting the searches against each other again.                 
                  
                  
 seszett on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 At least France and Belgium have public websites with the information sheets of all authorized drugs. I think at least the French one generally comes up in the first results on Google (when searching from a French connection).              
                  
                  
 WalterBright on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This is the kind of public service the FDA should be doing.                 
                  
                  
 aghilmort on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 pretty much what we're building at breezethat.com -- currently launching about one topic / week, and opening door soon so others can curate / moderate a topic               
                  
                  
 naravara on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Humans can also game systems to promote their garbage if they care to. Spammers can hire a click farm to privilege garbage results. Spammers and scammers seem to see enough returns to invest in ways to game the internet’s openness. There would need to be some kind of trust system to make the curation trustworthy.             
                  
                  
 WalterBright on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If the curation is bad, will people keep paying their subscriptions?                 
                  
                  
 batguano on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I’m not sure what you’re talking about wrt prescriptions. I just googled “diazepam” and got all the information on my pharmacy insert, and more. And often, more clearly presented.               
                  
                  
 blakeinate on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Just tried andisearch and am extremely impressed. It has so far handled all queries I have thrown at it better than brave search and DDG. Will continue to experiment, best of luck and awesome work!               
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thank you! I really do sincerely appreciate that. If you'd like to, please reach out to us there because we'd love to chat more. It wasn't my intention to take the discussion off-topic here because this thread is so incredibly interesting, but at the same time it's super encouraging to see the unprompted feedback and questions, and we'll share what we're doing properly on HN soon so we can address questions properly.           
                  
                  
 majormajor on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Firefox on Linux Mint was pointing at something else for a while (DDG I think? Bing? I don't recall).                
                  
 I gave up after a few weeks and had to switch it back to Google. Google's not perfect - it's never been perfect, it was just better than the alternatives - but it's still less bad than others.               
                  
                  
 accountofme on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I might be wrong, but they also have a moat I'm the sheer amount of compute required to trawl through the internet?                
                  
 I mean maybe they was true and now they don't... But yeah good luck!                 
                  
                  
 blairanderson on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Distribution will come if the product is better, but it is a hard problem. I try every new search engine I can and they are always worse/slower than google.               
                  
                  
 chillfox on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I have tried using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, but Firefox changed it back to Google with every update, so eventually I just gave up on that endeavor.               
                  
                  
 CountHackulus on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's really strange, I've got it set as the default in Firefox on 3 different computers (2 mac 1 windows) and it's stayed the default over several updates. I think something might be wrong with your computer?               
                  
                  
 chillfox on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I guess.                  
                  
 With the current Mozilla leadership it never even occurred to me that it could be a bug. I just assumed that it was something they do on purpose to get more money from Google.               
                  
                  
 HWR_14 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'll echo that what you are experiencing isn't normal. I've had DDG as my default for a while and it's been preserved throughout updates.                
                  
                  
 eldaisfish on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore                
                  
 Do you have anything substantive to support this? I highly doubt it is true given the fact that the verb "to google" literally means "to search the internet".               
                  
                  
 kahmeal on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think you missed the point here -- people synonymize googling with searching and therefore aren't choosing to google -- they're choosing to search but ending up using google despite having made no conscious effort to do so (it's just there).              
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google is the default search on the vast majority of phones and desktop browsers by default.                
                  
 People don't change their search engine from something else to Google, because it is already the default search engine on the devices they buy and the web browsers they use.               
                  
 So people do not make a conscious choice to use Google. The vast majority make no choice at all. Google is synonymous with search because it is already the search engine on their phones and computers. They are simply never asked which search engine they want to use.              
                  
 Most consumers have no idea that you can even change your search engine. After talking with hundreds of users, they find it's either impossible to change (iPhone/MacOS) or too hard (Chrome).               
                  
 If you're Duck Duck Go or Bing, at least you're in a very limited dropdown list if someone does want to try something else. If you're a new search engine startup, you're not an option at all.               
                  
                  
 cco on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Your argument supports the original poster. It is no longer a conscious choice, "Do I search for this via Google? Maybe I should use Bing? What about DuckDuckGo?", it is, "Oh, lemme Google that".               
                  
                  
 genewitch on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 the other day, on HN i mentioned i was trying to find some relevant meme on DDG, and someone said "try googling 'foo bar baz'" and i thought it was funny.               
                  
 I don't use google search if i can avoid it. I'll try 3 others first, and generally just give up. Google doesn't deserve any money.                
                  
                  
 null_object on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.                
                  
 There are five (very simply accessible) different choices for Safari on iOS.                 
                  
 But if you switch to iCabMobile on iOS there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.                
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think it's reasonable to point out that is not something most consumers are going to be able to do. The only meaningful search engine choice is that available within Safari. And you did install another App, they still aren't used from the system search on iOS, or from Safari itself.             
                  
 I think you might as well be asking regular consumers to root their device so they can use whatever Apps from outside the App Store, or whatever search engine they want.               
                  
 Also, even for a technical user, there is simply no way on an iPhone to change to a new search engine not already on a tiny list, and from talking with hundreds of consumers, I have not talked with a single non-technical person who could work out themselves how to change their Safari search engine to even one of the 5 limited choices, let alone a new option.            
                  
                  
 Angostura on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don’t think installing an app and rooting a device are fair comparisons                 
                  
                  
 jedwhite on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Unfortunately, installing an App doesn't let you change the system-wide search on iOS (or Safari browser), so rooting the device would be the only real way. My intended point is that if you're a consumer trying to change your search engine to a new option on an iPhone, there is no way to do it.             
                  
                  
 samb1729 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Do you have a stake in this iCabMobile project? You were spamming its name 35 days ago and you're doing so again here.                
                  
                  
 judge2020 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.                 
                  
 Tons of people don't, though. They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water, even if they're tugging and trying to go in the completely wrong direction. Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people', and that means striving for fixing the complete word soup of search results people type in.            
                  
                  
 cml on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 A single mediocre experience optimized to work ‘most of the time’ for ‘most people’ is quite contrary to the narrative that has made Google such tremendous amounts of money (“let us surveil you so that you can have a more personalized experience”) though, isn’t it?              
                  
 Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for if their past behavior suggests that they mean what they type? Couldn’t the “search only for <exact query>“ option be a very good data point on making that determination automatically, or enabling a user setting for “give me exact results based on what I actually typed by default”?           
                  
 It seems possible to me that this behavior has more to do with the value of ads for “big” keywords than with (poorly) inferring user intent.                
                  
                  
 svachalek on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great. Yeah, putting you into a male or female bucket, parent or child, homeowner or renter, that's worth a little bit. But, to find out your name and address and search history and how long your last bowel movement took, just to deliver an ad that's theoretically hyper-optimized to make you buy something... I just don't believe it.           
                  
 I don't believe that it's worth anything near what they are charging for it, except perhaps in the case of politics, which has always been an extremely efficient use of money. And even then, it's not worth a tiny fraction of the real cost it has to society.              
                  
                  
 deckard1 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > personalization just isn't that great                 
                  
 Data analytics truly feels like a bubble.                 
                  
 Netflix has achieved the dream of movie studios going back more than a century now. They have the talent, the money, and more than two decades of data. Netflix knows what you watch, when you stop watching, how often you watch, which movie covers work best.              
                  
 And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones.              
                  
 Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire. HBO and AMC are running laps around Netflix. Meanwhile, Netflix is making live action Cowboy Bebop and cancelling it before people even know it existed. I'm really curious what the data said about funding that particular project. On one hand, you have the cult following of the anime that will absolutely tear a live action version to shreds. On the other hand, you have to convince the uninitiated into viewing a remake of 23 year old anime.         
                  
 Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line. Oh, and, their top 10 feature is currently the biggest recommendation feature on their site. And it's not even personalized! If that's not a complete admission of defeat I don't know what is.         
                  
                  
 jurassic on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Netflix has produced a lot of fairly solid content. Not at the level of the all-time great prestige TV shows like the ones you mentioned, but enough to keep a lot of subscribers happy for long periods of time at an accessible price. House of Cards (at least until the Kevin Spacey scandal blew up), Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, etc are a few that come to mind that I watched and enjoyed.           
                  
 I think Netflix has two big issues. The first is the way they drop seasons all at once prevents the natural cycle of pre-episode hype, post-episode interviews, speculation and leaks, fan anticipation, fan arguments (ship wars, etc), etc. Fan culture can't develop around this content as easily because there's never any breathing space for fans to collectively sit with the story so far. The shows that become a cultural force like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones need us to keep coming back to the conversation every week. They have us talking about what happened last week and will happen this week with our colleagues at work and around the dinner table. How can these Netflix IPs enter stable orbit in the cultural zeitgeist when they're once-a-year events? It devalues the work, positioning it more like a movie that you watch and then forget rather than a story you become invested in over a long period of time.    
                  
 Full season drops also allow people to binge a whole season of content for a single month's subscription and then immediately churn (ask me how I know). I assume they have some data-driven reasons for doing this, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.              
                  
 Besides that, I think they should put more wood behind fewer arrows. They've developed a reputation for aggressively cancelling smaller shows with passionate followings which makes a lot of people not even want to bother until something has become an established mainstream success. I think of them now as the Google of content-creation, putting out a lot of solid (but not amazing) products and then cancelling them once people start to grow attached.           
                  
                  
 danielscrubs on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Wrote something similar before: "The writing has been on the wall for some time: 1. Grading system changed from 1-5 to 1-2 (thumbs up/down). They thought that the users where full of crap when rating. I do believe some bosses just looked "bad" when buying in the next Adam Sandler movie. This started a cozy culture where no one in Netflix was wrong. Recommendation engine becomes comically bad, even with the best and the brightest. 2. They started to buy everything under the sun. South park made an episode about it even. All the comedians got their own stand up specials. It was now way easier to get a top score (thumbs up). Bosses where happy. 3. As they no longer focuses on quality which they no longer can measure (measuring time watched and churn is not that useful!), they start to strive for quantity. Which is expensive, very expensive. I guess that in the next decade Netflix will become the next Comcast and cost 35 USD per month, and it all started in an innocent change to the grading system."  
                  
                  
 triceratops on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits.                 
                  
 That's not how the entertainment business works. If I had to guess, Netflix's data-driven approach to content production is like card-counting in blackjack. It only gives them a slight edge on the house. A net positive outcome over hundreds or thousands of hands but offering no guarantee over the outcome of any single hand.             
                  
 > HBO and AMC are running laps around Netflix                 
                  
 Netflix did win the most Emmys in 2021.[1] And they only started producing original content in 2013 or so. That's pretty good.                
                  
 1. https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/netflix-emmys-the-crown-que...                 
                  
                  
 htrp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line.            
                  
 They may also be optimizing for revenues as opposed to recommendation quality (homegrown content being cheaper than licensed)                
                  
                  
 naravara on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Part of this might just be account switching issues though. If I’m watching for myself I can usually find what I want quickly. The problem comes when I’m trying to browse with my wife to find something we can both live with. At best it gives the my preferences and the Union of me + wife’s preferences (and vice versa on her account.) But what we’d really want is a separate recommendation feed that shows the intercept of me + wife’s preferences.           
                  
 But most people are lazy and won’t account switch for different contexts like that anyway, so there’s just no way they can keep the profile data as clean as it needs to be for a television.               
                  
                  
 earth_walker on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Netflix is not recommending what they think you'll like, they are recommending what they want you to watch. Once you're a subscriber, they want to keep you there as cheaply as possible.               
                  
 This is exactly what their data analytics has told them to do.                 
                  
 Have a few popular, quality tv shows with star-studded casts as loss-leaders to bring in new viewers. Otherwise the model is to produce and recommend the shows that get them the most eyeballs per dollar; the bare-minimum to keep their subscribers there:              
                  
 - Stand up specials are dirt-cheap, quite popular, and provide never-ending variety.                 
                  
 - Ditto with 'reality' shows, bake-offs, make-offs, expose documentaries, etc.                 
                  
 - Old sitcoms and b-movies that have a proven re-watch-rate.                 
                  
 Throw in a handful of first seasons to keep the FOMO up, and you've got a captive audience on the cheap. Maybe one or two will catch on and become the next loss-leaders.               
                  
 They may not have the quality shows that are 'running laps around' HBO and AMC, but by any of the metrics Netflix cares about they are simply running laps around HBO, AMC and everyone else.               
                  
                  
 oarabbus_ on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones.              
                  
 I don't follow this argument. Knowing what people like has very little to do with the quality of original creative content; surely you don't expect Goodreads to put out Shakespearean novels, or Spotify to be producing original hits on par with the Rolling Stones? Should ESPN have better pro sports scouting and coaching talent than the professional leagues?            
                  
 Knowing what people like, however, _does_ have to do quite a bit with selling those people a product - which Netflix just reported 15% YoY growth to $7.7B yearly revenue, they're clearly very successful to this end. I think you actually have it backwards - if anything, Netflix represents a total fulfillment of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Despite mediocre original content, this is a $200B company with 200M subscribers growing revenues by double digits two decades after IPO.          
                  
 If Netflix paid $450k+ salaries to screenwriters instead of engineers, you'd very likely get better movies on a worse streaming platform. And when Netflix has shelled out for Hollywood talent, like Mindhunter which has David Fincher and Charlize Theron, the results are quite good.             
                  
 Regardless, to take the fact that Netflix pays for premium engineering and analytics talent, but does not pay for premium filmmaking talent, and then spin that fact into Netflix being "a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization" is a questionable criticism.             
                  
                  
 robwwilliams on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Strong comment. I agree completely with your negative assessment of the “value” of consumer habits to optimize Netflix recommendation. In my own case I feel trapped in a very shallow local minimum. Yes I watched a revenge flick or two but now I am type-cast for life.              
                  
                  
 HWR_14 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Netflix really doesn't need to produce something like the wire or mad men or breaking bad. There's no reason to make a show that appeals strongly to 70% of the market when they could make 70 shows that 1% of the market is fanatical about. They don't have only one channel that competes for content and they don't seem budget limited.             
                  
 Ironically, it seems like AmazonPrime is far better at that.                 
                  
 As for then top ten being bottom barrel stuff, I think you overestimate how popular mad men was vs. something like king of queens.                
                  
 I will say, Netflix seems to fail in many cases, and I don't understand how they think content discovery is supposed to work.                
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”                 
                  
                  
 Pxtl on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire.                
                  
 There may be others, but off the top of my head: Bojack Horseman.                 
                  
                  
 emadabdulrahim on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Mindhunter and House of Cards are incredible shows. I agree with your full sentiment though.                
                  
                  
 mountainb on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Right, people radically overestimate how much a profile is worth. Someone who owns a house in a rich area is somewhat easy to identify, and you target them... along with everyone else who is also trying to reach that rich slice, so you pay more.              
                  
 The very high quality pieces of information can be things like "wants to buy a life insurance policy this week" or "just had a baby" or "just bought a plane ticket to XYZ," or "is in the frequent flyer program and spends more than $20,000 per year on travel."              
                  
 However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless and not worth tracking for the most part. You reach those people through traditional mass marketing means.              
                  
                  
 N1H1L on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's a great point you have made. I work technically as a data scientist, but my domain is scientific data. I have quite a few GitHub packages and get recruiter calls for data science jobs almost every week, with pretty generous salary offers.              
                  
 And from what it seems to me, there is a giant bubble. The vast majority of companies doing "data science" jobs are things that a smart undergrad can do with a month or two of training. And this is because I believe C-suites have completely gulped down the data is oil mantra. There are entirely charlatan companies with unicorn, even decacorn valuations now being built on this mantra - for example, CRED in India.           
                  
 Yet, as you said, and as I believe too, most of the data is worthless.                 
                  
                  
 mountainb on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Right, but unlike oil, most data is worthless most of the time.                 
                  
 For example, I'm about to list my house on the market. The real estate agents who reached out to me last year and the year before that to try to induce me to sell the house had no chance of succeeding. Now is the time if they knew the secret that I'm about the list the house that they should all be competing for my business. The only relevant piece of information is that I'm about to sell the house. That is a valuable lead that many in my region would bid on. My background information is frankly not that relevant to the value of that lead, and isn't something that is readily surfaced by the kind of deep profiling that is supposed to be going on. It can be signaled by me signing up to some kind of list that sells my lead to a zillion people at once, but is never going to be surfaced accurately to the people who can earn the most profits from it by my Youtube habits or whatever.    
                  
 Zillow sells the logged in user data in the market I'm buying in to the real estate agents listing the houses, but that again is not something being modeled by some kind of big data operation, but is merely the same kind of "little data" provided on things like dating websites or LinkedIn when people browse your profile. There's no modeling going on there that requires sophistication.            
                  
                  
 ShroudedNight on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless...                
                  
 I've had a supposition for a while now that the targeted advertising industry should be closing the consumer cashflow loop by advertising effective self- and employment improvement, with the objective of increasing the disposable income people have so they can then make more brokering traditional sales             
                  
                  
 sbcd on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great.                
                  
 Personalized adverts and recommendations can be incredibly, horrendously dumb.                 
                  
 Here's what I see when I hit amazon's homepage at the moment : A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago (no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.), USB cables I bought multiples of in the same time frame, a wireless charger (I already bought two before). An entire line dedicated to showing me backpacks (I bought one less than a year ago) An entire line dedicated to headphones (I recently bought wireless IEMs) An entire line dedicated to watches (same)          
                  
 I don't get it. Supposedly the best and brightest work at firms like amazon and google to brainwash us to buy stuff, but classic, random, non-targeted advertisement is more likely to make me discover products I'd buy than targeted advertisement because the latter only shows me things after I don't need to buy them anymore!             
                  
 Here's what I would expect actually intelligent targeted advertising to do : After buying a smartphone, recommend accessories (cases, screen protectors, USB-C dongles, chargers, whatever) Here's what targeted advertisement actually does : show me smartphones ads everywhere I go after I already selected and BOUGHT a smartphone. No, I don't need to buy another smartphone weeks after a recent replacement, amazon!           
                  
 The same sort of phenomenon can happen after google locks on searches I did to buy something. I can't wait to see the internet advertisement industry crash and burn, it's overvalued nonsense.               
                  
                  
 CamperBob2 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.),                
                  
 Disagree there. About 75% of the things I buy on Amazon are repeating purchases that I nevertheless don't want to be automatically scheduled. It used to be a real pain in the neck to reorder something manually, so I'm glad they made that easier.              
                  
 But yes, in general, Amazon is full of low-hanging fruit that's been neglected on the tree for a decade or more. Buying clothes from Amazon still manages to be a worse experience than going to the mall, for instance, which is really saying something.              
                  
                  
 ryanbrunner on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think the fact that most recommendation algorithms have seemingly converged on what seems like a really poor and naive implementation - fixation on very recent activity - shows that the sort of deep personalization touted is mostly BS.              
                  
 Both YouTube and Amazon heavily personalize by recommending primarily the 3-4 things that I've interacted with in the very recent past.                
                  
                  
 charcircuit on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This is not true. For example every time Summoning Salt uploads a video, which happens every few months, it will show up on my recommend feed because YouTube knows I'm willing to watch their ~1 hour documentaries even though I'm not subscribed to them.              
                  
                  
 Jweb_Guru on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Youtube seems to be a rare exception here in that people actually feel like its algorithm is useful. However, even then, their algorithm mostly seems to devolve to "what creators have you usually watched videos from" and (usually directly after you watch such a video) "what videos did other people who watched that video watch?" Basically the same principle as PageRank, just with a lot less spam to deal with.           
                  
                  
 sdoering on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This could (probably isn't) be a very quick implementation with a heuristic like 'if percentage of viewed videos from channel x (essentially per channel viewed) > threshold ==> show new video from channel x on homepage next time user appears.              
                  
 Make it fancy and use a multi armed bandit and call it machine learning/AI/data science.                 
                  
                  
 earth_walker on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 What it proves is that despite all that personalized data they have, it's the naive implementation that gets them the most clicks per dollar.                
                  
 So the question is this: if they're not (and never were) using that data for what they say they were, what are they doing with it?                
                  
                  
 fomine3 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I believe YouTube recommendation is most well working one, so some people getting into echo chamber.                
                  
                  
 georgemcbay on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Just anecdote, but...                  
                  
 The most common pattern I see relating to personalized advertising as someone being advertised to is that I will often see an ad for something I just bought (or some competitor to it) repeated relentlessly for a couple of days after buying it and this is after not seeing any related ads during the days prior where I was actually doing some research into the product space.            
                  
 Maybe I'm an outlier but they seem to miss the window of relevance on me often enough that I notice it as a commonly repeated pattern.                
                  
                  
 scott00 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I know it seems moronic, but I think it might actually make sense from the advertisers point of view. Some percentage of people who buy a thing are going to return it and buy something similar in the next week. That percentage is almost certainly large compared to the percentage of the overall population who's going to buy that thing in the next week, and it seems plausible to me it's even large compared to the number of people who have been browsing for the thing but haven't bought yet. (Think of it as the ratio of people just browsing vs ready to buy.)         
                  
                  
 mcv on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Even so, wouldn't it be much smarter if they kept track of what the expected life expectancy of the thing you bought is, and then years later start feeding you ads for a replacement? Or is it too hard to track people over such a long period of time?              
                  
                  
 tomcatfish on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think any advertisers would be able to offer "People who bought a washing machine 3 years ago" as a category that can be targeted without a riot                
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Same experience. What's even more mystifying is that often it is for items that no human would be likely to be buying many copies of in a short span of time (high ticket items, or items where you probably don't need more than one).              
                  
                  
 treis on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Just because I bought something doesn't mean I kept it. And those 0.1%, or whatever, returning items are very likely to buy another one of a different brand.               
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Valid. I'm skeptical that this makes it a winning strategy, but it's conceivable.                 
                  
                  
 gwd on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Exactly. If I just bought some power tool for a home improvement project, I am the least likely person in the country to want to buy that exact same power tool the next day.               
                  
                  
 jamiek88 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Not if you hate it and want to return it. In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill? Because that subset of the population is probably more likely to be looking to buy one than any other.              
                  
 A return rate of say 1% may lead to more people looking to buy a drill who have just bought one in the last week than people looking to buy their first drill.               
                  
                  
 gwd on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill?                
                  
 If that's true, they left something out of their calculation: What percentage of people will install an adblocker as a result of feeling like they're being hounded for a few weeks? This scenario was mentioned specifically by Tim Cook when he introduced the Safari anti-tracking features.             
                  
                  
 DebtDeflation on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >to find out your name and address and search history                 
                  
 So that you can continue to show me ads for a washing machine for months after I purchased a washing machine.                
                  
                  
 artificial on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Surely you mean your new washing machine buying hobby?                 
                  
                  
 carlhjerpe on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I haven't consumed significant amounts of ads in a long time, only some logos in sports and the occasional visit to family or the rare times adblock fails (YouTube premium user too). So I can only imagine how hilarious that must be.              
                  
                  
 IMSAI8080 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think you're right. I'd like to see an analysis of the effectiveness of personalised advertising based on tracking versus ads based purely on local context. The latter being if you're on a web page about birds then you get ads for bird seed and bird houses. No tracking involved.             
                  
                  
 Kye on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's always fun watching an ad system try to figure out nonbinary people. Spotify ads can't decide whether I'm a successful businessman or Spanish-speaking housewife.               
                  
                  
 foxfluff on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's always fun checking Google's ad settings and seeing what they think I'm into.                 
                  
 Apparently now I'm into baseball, flowers, boating, celebrities, country music, credit cards, geology, event ticket sales, fishing, and windows OS. Among a couple hundred other things. It even gets some rather basic facts (marital status, company size, education) wrong. I seriously wonder how they generate this profile?             
                  
                  
 hnburnsy on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Check your Google ad settings here...                 
                  
 https://adssettings.google.com/                 
                  
                  
 chillfox on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Well... It actually got some categories right, but I don't really feel that's very impressive considering that it put me in every category by the looks of it.               
                  
                  
 mcv on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There's not a lot there for me. Just some generic whether I want to see alcohol and gambling ads on youtube.                
                  
                  
 arvinsim on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 With these many categories, it is bound to match me somewhat.                 
                  
                  
 tomrod on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I seriously wonder how they generate this profile                 
                  
 Poorly!                  
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It can have this problem even if you are not nonbinary. Buy a few toe rings and have it decide you're a woman...                
                  
                  
 evanbubniak on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It fascinates me to see how the ad algorithm responds to people who watch content in multiple languages. I study a lot of languages as a hobby, so I often watch YouTube videos that are in Mandarin, like news broadcasts and niche hobby channels. YouTube has now started showing me ads (in Mandarin) which seem to be targeted to Mandarin-speaking immigrant parents of young children who want a way to teach them Mandarin despite my, and my spouse’s, very busy careers. I find this amusing because I am a single, pasty white man in my 20s.          
                  
                  
 naravara on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That’s just Spotify. Many years ago they had a little tool that actually reported what demographic slots it pegged you at based on your listening preferences. The top two hits for me were 1.) early 20s, college educated, White, woman 2.) 60+, blue collar, African American, male              
                  
 At the time I was a late 20s, college educated, South Asian male. I’m very cis and very straight. And yeah my musical tastes are pretty eclectic, but that was a weird profile to settle me on.               
                  
                  
 mcv on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Some people fit in convenient buckets, but lots of people don't, and assuming all people do, will make the ad system useless to a lot of people. Even if you're not non-binary at all, you could still be a successful businesswoman or a Spanish-speaking houseman (househusband? stay-at-home dad?).             
                  
 Better to just follow people's interests, instead of using their interests to incorrectly pigeonhole them and then drawing incorrect generalisations from that.               
                  
                  
 Brian_K_White on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Here's another less harmless aspect of that:                 
                  
 Something about my actual interests and activity apparently makes youtube think I'm into Fox news and all the crazy shit found there.                
                  
 Now, who else has this same value judgement about me? This assessment that I neither declared for myself nor even ratified.                
                  
 It's annoying but ultimately harmless that youtube shows me conservative wackjob stuff.                 
                  
 But is that same profile in someone else's database that marks me as someone to watch or something? Does it affect my insurance rates, my liklihood to get extra scrutiny when travelling, my ability to purchase or register a firearm, my access to jobs that might be extra sensitive or responsible, basically any of the things where someone either private or the state does any sort of background or credit check on you for any reason, and there are really many of those when you think a out it.          
                  
 I'm guessing, today, it's probably not really affecting my life in any real way, but, there is no way it makes any sense to say that will still be true tomorrow.               
                  
                  
 Kye on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There was that infamous case of a retailer figuring out someone was pregnant before they did based on what they were buying and mailing a customized flyer...to their dad's house. I don't remember the exact situation, but it probably wasn't the only incident.              
                  
                  
 Der_Einzige on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That btw is an anecdote from the association mining community.                 
                  
 I spent a lot of time learning about association rule mining in my AI courses, including the implementation details of competing ways to mine them. The technique seems extremely useful and fascinating (I jury rigged it for on the fly league of legends champ recommendations to maximize calculated win rate change given limited information), but I almost never see it used in the real world or even see it talked about anymore.           
                  
 What happened to association rule mining?                 
                  
                  
 tomcatfish on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I believe you're referring to a rumor (which may be true, I just mean it in the sense that it's out there and not something you or I have verified) about Target.               
                  
                  
 Brian_K_White on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 And the harm like what I'm saying was that her father was informed of her medical condition through that mechanism rather than from her.                
                  
                  
 Der_Einzige on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 My experience working in a similar domain (NLP summarization, which leverages methods like text rank which are identical to pagerank but for text summation) is similar.               
                  
 Personalized page rank is not significantly better at summarization in my experience, even "queryable" summarization, but that also could be a pure implementation problem or a problem of hyperparamater selection...               
                  
                  
 xhevahir on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Does it really work so well in politics? I've read in various places that a lot of political advertising in America functions basically as a means for channeling donors' money to a few K Street firms belonging to party insiders.              
                  
                  
 dboreham on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 And to Rupert Murdoch.                  
                  
                  
 politician on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree with you. I highly doubt that our economy has enough (product, message) combinations to justify the need for personalization based on more than a dozen attributes.               
                  
                  
 N1H1L on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I will buy X, if I need X. And once I buy X, it's done. For example, I wanted a cordless drill last week. Did the "site:reddit.com" thing (I actually have been doing that almost subconsciously now, as Google results are all trash), chose a drill, and ordered one off Amazon.              
                  
 Then, after that, what's the point in showing drill ads to me for two weeks?                 
                  
                  
 bdamm on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.              
                  
 Probably that's what they are going for if they're doing it on purpose.                 
                  
                  
 _dain_ on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.              
                  
 Do you have a link for further reading on that? That's fascinating if true.                 
                  
                  
 N1H1L on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Could be - but at least for me it feels intrusive and irritating, not any positive feelings really                
                  
                  
 bdamm on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's not supposed to feel good. If 9/10 people have a brief negative thought about the advertising experience and nothing else happens, but 1/10 people happen to have their friend on the phone at the time and makes a referral, then overall that is a win for the brand.              
                  
                  
 artificial on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Have you considered consumer reports? I’m of the Reddit persuasion and find it’s a good resource. Bummer everything is polluted these days.                
                  
                  
 DryLabRebel on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think it's really a secret.                 
                  
 It's pretty straightforward to understand that when the vast majority of your sites income is generated from ad revenue, that data is being used to optimize for generating ad clicks, etc., rather than actually giving users the best/most relevant/useful/desireable information for their purposes.             
                  
                  
 marcosdumay on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 From the behavior of ads (that I imagine are highly optimized), all that knowledge is useful for front-running an specific TV model all over your internet once you decide to buy a TV.               
                  
 It seems to be completely useless for anything else, and specifically harmful for product discovery, that is the one way ads add societal value.                
                  
                  
 suzzer99 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It works great for negative political ads though.                 
                  
                  
 the_other on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we found out that personalised advertising actually earned less than just auctioning off the obvious big keywords?                
                  
                  
 ThalesX on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I worked for a healthcare recruitment company in a capital city with some large hospitals and a number of universities. I can't for the life of me understand why they chose to spend so much money on trying to track healthcare professionals online when they could just advertise it on-premise where they actually hang out.             
                  
                  
 scim-knox-twox on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 We already know that “personalized ads” aren't much netter than context one: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/31/targeted-ads-offer-little-...                
                  
 Also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2020/06/03/those-b...                 
                  
 I can't understand why every company want me offer “personalized” service. It never works, and if I can't manually set preferences, then it's not personalized (because “personalization” means exactly that).               
                  
                  
 joe_the_user on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for...               
                  
 You're missing what "personalization" has come to really mean. It means knowing enough about the user to give them an experience you can profit from and which they will accept. If there isn't something you can expect profit from, there's no reason to give them anything.              
                  
                  
 ultrarunner on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This used to be solved by allowing queries like `Class Inheritance +ruby' to require results to include "ruby". They killed this for Google+ by changing it to quotes, so `Class Inheritance "ruby"' but now they interpret even those. When I use Google, which is less and less, I am not looking for a fight with a computer to express my intent, I'm looking for the answer to a question. That never seemed to be an issue until recently.           
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I work for Google Search. If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase. Nothing has changed in this. When it happens that people feel it fails, it's often that they don't realize we've matched that word or phrase appearing in ALT text or text that's appearing in a less visible part of the page -- or in a few cases, the page might have changed since we indexed it.           
                  
                  
 vdqtp3 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase.                
                  
 I'm sorry to tell you, but this is flat wrong. I commented[1] about this a few months back with a random phrase as an example. I see it often in my day to day also.               
                  
 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094                 
                  
                  
 Thorrez on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I searched for "eggzackly this" and all 10 results on the first page contain the phrase, although most have punctuation in the middle.                
                  
 Looking at all 22 results (without opening the "omitted results" section or image results), the phrase became harder to find off the first page, but I tended to find it in the source code, or the DOM, or the cached version of the page, or by disabling JS (sometimes requiring a combination of those techniques). I found it in 21 out of the 22. The one page I couldn't find it in (the dolls one) looks like a frequently updating page, and it was highlighted in the snippet, so it looks like it was there at the time of crawling but not now; the cache isn't there for that page.         
                  
 Full disclosure I work at Google, but not on Search.                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Punctuation matters. I explained this in another response, and I should have mentioned it as part of my response here. But to repeat, these are typical reasons why it might seem that quoted search isn't matching when it is:              
                  
 1) text appears in ALT text 2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)              
                  
 In the [eggzackly this], you found matches of those words separated by punctuation -- which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched.                
                  
 I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.                
                  
                  
 alickz on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The article has been updated with a response from Danny Sullivan, the person you're responding to, which is worth a read.                
                  
 I just tested "eggzackly this" and every result on the first page contains the string "eggzackly this", albeit usually with different punctuation ("Eggzackly. This [...]", "Eggzackly, this.", "Eggzackly! This [...]")               
                  
                  
 primax on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm sorry but this has absolutely changed. I'm not sure why but quite often we are suggested results in queries that ignore quotes. The engine is even telling us that if omitted those terms.               
                  
 We don't have control over this and it's very frustrating.                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 We haven't changed anything. Promise. Honest. Not at all. But we definitely want to look into any cases where people feel this isn't working, so actual examples (if people are comfortable sharing) will really help.               
                  
 What you're talking about is probably a case where there's a quoted word or phrase as well as other words that aren't quoted. In such a case, we're going to absolutely look for content that matches the quoted parts. That's a must. The other words, we'll look for them, but we'll also look for related words and sometimes, we might find content that doesn't match one of them.            
                  
 Because those other words aren't quoted, we'll tell you if we find a match that seems helpful but doesn't contain those non-quoted words. That's what the message is about. But it should never be telling you we omitted a quoted word or phrase because we won't -- with one exception.             
                  
 If there's literally nothing on the web we know of that matches a quoted word or phrase, then we're not going to show anything at all and say we couldn't match any documents.               
                  
                  
 varenc on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I tried to find a counterexample and I couldn't! I believe you that quotes really are working. What's confusing though is that a quoted word or phrase often doesn't show up in the Google results snippets. This is certainly the reason why people think quotes aren't being respected.             
                  
 Though, why does enabling "Verbatim" (in tools) on a search reduce the number of search results if all my terms are already quoted? Enabling Verbatim often does it make it feels like my queries are interpreted more literally, but if quotes are already being respected I don't understand how Verbatim would reduce the number of search results.             
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree, it would be easier if it were in the snippet. That's something we're looking at. I believe it used to, but sometimes the quoted part might not have been the best overall snippet to use. But as said, we might revisit that.              
                  
 On the counts -- basically, it's all really rough estimates. We make a rough quick count, you go deeper into the page, we make a fresh estimate. It can change, and it doesn't always make sense and personally, I'd hope we just get rid of counts because of this, perhaps more confusing than helpful.             
                  
                  
 ryantgtg on Feb 21, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Side note: I recently complained that DDG doesn’t respect quotes, and I provided examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30236102                
                  
 Thank you, Google, for continuing to respect quotes!                 
                  
                  
 primax on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks Danny I'll try to whip up some examples.                 
                  
 Interestingly I tried my pet peeve search, and it worked for the first time this year! It is for a specific recipe, and I search for 'ocau slow cooked balsamic beef'. I have had to manually find it in the archive of the overclockers.com.au forum for the past year, as Google seemingly forgot it existed no matter what search terms or operators I used.            
                  
 The main difference is I am using Firefox on Manjaro and not my historically typical environment for searching. Normally I would either be using Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iOS if I am in the kitchen.               
                  
 I will play around on some other devices and see what evidence I can find.                 
                  
 P.s. I'm being referred in for a role at Google currently, is the Search team only in a specific area like Silicon Valley or is it a global team? Most of the jobs in Australia seem to be commercial facing, not product facing.              
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Glad to hear that works! Search has teams around the world. I'd suggest if you see something relevant, apply even if it's in a particular location. Remote work has changed a lot things.               
                  
                  
 geoduck14 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I hear that g search uses humans to quality check search results. How can I sign up to do this? From what I have read, it is invite only                
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's not really an open invite thing. And it's definitely not that rating is done for direct ranking purposes. These explain more about the process:                
                  
 https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/ https://blog.google/products/search/overview-our-rater-guide... https://blog.google/products/search/raters-experiments-impro...               
                  
                  
 8192kjshad09- on Feb 18, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Hey, thanks for much for this comment. I've personally experienced this and looked myself for an example when I first read your comment, but I couldn't find one.               
                  
 Today I stumbled upon one. Here's a broken example query: linux next hop "[::]"                 
                  
 Here's the archive of the incorrect query result: https://archive.md/9WGe7                 
                  
 The first result (the man pages) does not contain [::] anywhere in the page text, the source, or the cached result. Could you take a look at this one?                
                  
                  
 artdigital on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is not the case in my experience. I type a query with some parts in quotes and often get lots of results that have in small letters at the bottom something along the lines of “does not include <word in quotes>”, with no in bold highlighted part showing the phrase in the page context. This was not the case in the past and google made sure the word I put in quotes is absolutely mentioned somewhere            
                  
 I’m guessing this happens when there are less results matching my phrase                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I would love if you or anyone who ever has this happen can share an example, if you're comfortable doing so. We'll debug. But if you quote something, we shouldn't show anything but that which matches the quoted material.              
                  
 Now, if you quote something and put in other non-quoted words, then we'll look for stuff that matches the quoted part and the other things are optional. So when you see that strikeout message, it means basically "We found this page that has the exact words you quoted, and it probably has one or more of the other words or related words you didn't quote, but heads-up, it doesn't have one of those non-quoted words at all."           
                  
 And we do this because sometimes there might be a useful page that doesn't contain all of your optional non-quoted words.                
                  
 Totally agree it would help if we did a better job bolding the sections of a page where the quoted terms apply. Often we do, but sometimes the snippeting won't include them if there's better text to describe the page overall. But we're looking at maybe improving here.              
                  
                  
 DougWebb on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I want to disassemble my sous vide device, because I broke it today.                 
                  
 "kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly"                 
                  
 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22kitchen+boss%22+%22g320%2...                 
                  
 Nothing useful at all. Nothing mentioning disassembly. Not even a YouTube link.                 
                  
                  
 timdev2 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Unless it's changed in the past 56 minutes, the SERP is pretty up-front that it can't find any pages with all three of those.                
                  
 It literally says `No results found for "kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly".` right at the top, and then shows you the (properly explained) results for the non-quoted version of the query.               
                  
                  
 DougWebb on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Mobile doesn't show that, at all. It also doesn't show that bit if you use the brand name "kitchenboss" instead of "kitchen boss", which I originally intended. My phone might have auto-corrected that without me noticing.              
                  
 Anyway, with the terms I posted earlier, on desktop it says:                 
                  
 Results for kitchen boss g320 disassembly (without quotes):                 
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search                 
                  
 Then it goes on to show me lots of unrelated results, instead of showing me the 'not many' great matches for my search. If my search doesn't turn up many good results (let alone great), that fine. Show me what you've got, let me decide how to broaden my search to get more. All of the unrelated results being shown are marketing spam sites. That's not helpful.            
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 On mobile and desktop, I'm getting a message saying that when you search for ["kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly"] that we have no results. And there's not much we can do if there are no pages we find that match all those words you required be present. There just aren't the pages.             
                  
 What we can do is try searching for all of the words, so perhaps you'll find something useful that way. But even we can tell when doing this that the results might not be what you want, which is why that automatic warning about maybe these aren't great matches.              
                  
 IE: we can't show you what we've got for a query where there are no exact matches. It's impossible. We can show you what we got if we don't require all the word be present. And we can tell you what we're doing. And you always have the choice to restart the query in another way if you don't like that.             
                  
 Now here's something else. You probably used the quotes because I'm guessing you figured it was better to tell us exactly what to do than trust us to look at all the words and analyze the context and so on and see if we could make matches generally. If you had done that, just searched for [kitchen boss g320 disassembly], then the first web page result is the instruction manual for your sous vide machine. It has cleaning steps, which I'm guessing also might be what you're after? (It looks like it's just take off the outer casing).          
                  
 Those results, doing it directly like that, are different than when we gave them to you after your quoted search failed. and that's probably because when you gave us quotes, and there were no matches, we might have tried some stricter matching to keep closer to the original requirements rather than use our general ranking.             
                  
 To wrap up: maybe don't try the quotes at first. It's totally fine to type in a long natural language query like [how do I take apart a kitchen boss g320] and if you do that, the instruction manual is right there.               
                  
                  
 DougWebb on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I added the quotes because I wasn't getting what I wanted without them. I don't need the user manual; I already have that and I'm not just trying to clean it. I wanted to find a guide to fully disassembling it, like the videos you find for phones when you want to replace a cracked screen yourself. Knowing that there are no matches at all is good information. (Disappointing, but good.) Trying to give me results for a different query, apparently assuming that I accidentally used the exact-match-only quotes, is not useful and kind of condescending. I think that's what leads people to think the quotes don't work the way they used to. Finally, the wording about not many good matches makes it sound like there are some good matches, but they've been mixed in with these other irrelevant matches. That's probably just a wording issue on the message, trying to soften the "We can't find anything" result.    
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks for the additional information. It really helps understanding the situation.                 
                  
 Showing results for non-quoted words isn't intended to be condescending nor an indication that we think someone made a mistake. Apologies that it comes across that way.               
                  
 We think we're clearly saying there are no matches with the "No results found" message. If we stopped there, the page would have nothing else. And I get that for you -- and perhaps others -- that might be preferable, a further reinforcement that there's nothing out there.              
                  
 For others, not so helpful. They potentially might give up with no real way of going forward, when just losing the quotes perhaps could get them useful information.               
                  
 And I get the trade-off concerns. I've seen many comments here that things done to support less "pro" users are annoying. And yet, we do need to find a way to support everyone. I think that's why we've probably gone with the message about no matches with and showing the quotes.              
                  
 Perhaps we should consider making that an option -- "Would you like to try this search again without quotes."                
                  
 As for the message about not good matches, we always try to show the best stuff we have first. That's the point of our ranking. The warning is meant to indicate that even though we'll list the best we have, for that query, none of it is particularly helpful -- not that here are a bunch of results, and there's some good matches mixed in with poor ones. Ranking that way would make no sense.            
                  
 But it might be also that we're so close to it -- that we always try to rank the most useful stuff first -- that we didn't consider the interpretation you had. So thank you again, it's really helpful to get that feedback.              
                  
 Sorry the information doesn't appear to be out there. I hope if you disassemble it on your own, you'll post the info out to the open web. I'm pretty sure you'd end up ranking well for that and helping others who might have a similar need.              
                  
                  
 timdev2 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Weird. On a computer, `"kitchenboss" "g320" "disassembly"` returns exactly six results, all of which appear to include the quoted terms. Plus the "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" message at the top. Which sounds like exactly what you want. I wonder why it's different on mobile.             
                  
                  
 Der_Einzige on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 So, besides the possibility that you are flat out wrong (as another commentator claims you may be), let's assume that you're right.                
                  
 1. This is still horrific UX/UI 2. The culture internally at Google seems to have a "we know better than the users" attitude in all things. 3. Query rewriting is a horrific technique in general with almost zero value to life/society outside of fixing spelling errors. Whatever your A/B testing says about it's purported utility is polluted by Google's own dark patterns and political whims of the managers who run the internal search organizations.           
                  
 It helps to actually know better than your users if you want to take the attitude in number 2. I don't believe that you or Google knows better than it's users, for many reasons previously enumerated in this thread and others.              
                  
 One day Google search is going to be displaced and it's current utilization of query rewriting techniques will be one of the fundamental reasons for this.               
                  
 You should take the absolutely massive amount of recent criticism and the fact that users repeatedly claim it's happening in the face of your claim it's not seriously rather than literally blaming the users writ large for a problem that is fundementally with the behavior of Google search.             
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I routinely see queries with quoted keywords where results don't have them highlighted in the snippets on the results page (but do have other, non-quoted keywords highlighted!).               
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That doesn't mean the quoted words weren't present in the content. It just means our system didn't think creating a snippet around those words was the most relevant snippet. Which I get, in some cases, actually would be better. It's something we're looking at.              
                  
                  
 Der_Einzige on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Your system for snippet creation is so bad that according to you it's created a situation where many, many users believe that quotes don't work because of how bad it is.               
                  
 Please fix it, like now. Displace your teams current sprint priorities, or the anti-google search backlash will turn into a situation where in 2025 Google is on the defensive for search market share from a Phoenix rising yahoo or something like that.              
                  
 The fact that anyone at Google ever okayed this behavior at all in the first place is simply rage inducing and you should see that with the magnitude and persistence of the "actually it really doesn't work bro" kind of comments.              
                  
                  
 blindmute on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If a snippet doesn't contain the words I searched for, I don't click it, because I assume Google has fucked up the search again and given me some irrelevant thing. If that is what has actually changed in the last few years making people think results are bad, the snippet algorithm, please revert that. I want to see the exact context that the words I typed appear in the page.            
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 18, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 In some cases? I'm literally asking for a specific word to be included no matter what; how could it be irrelevant to the quote used to describe a page?                
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 22, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Snippets we show tend to focus on full-sentences or enough context to describe what a page is about or relevant to a search. If we have a match that's strongest simply because a quoted term appears in ALT text or some obscure menu item, that probably doesn't generate a compelling snippet in how we normally would measure things. But given that for someone doing that quoting, seeing the quoted area might be the most important thing. So the regularly snippet process isn't as helpful -- and it's something we'll look at.          
                  
                  
 siliconescapee on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't have any recent information on how google search works, but years ago it looked at the expertise level of the searcher. So newbies received newbie results, advanced searchers received advanced results (and more visibility into filtering functionality). Today... they're hiding the advanced features and also seem to be reducing personalization of results to save compute resources. It's horrible.            
                  
 You: Class Inheritance +ruby Google: searching for "cash inheritance..."                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I work for Google Search -- we never operated like this. We don't know that someone is somehow a "newbie" vs and "advanced" searcher and change (nor did change) the results somehow.               
                  
                  
 rawoke083600 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I as a programmer can't imagine anyone building a search engine like this ?                 
                  
 As far as my personal experience(n=1) with Google, I have also have never experience anything remotely like this.                
                  
                  
 arketyp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is very helpful if I search for a name I didn't quite pick up or don't know how to spell, or if I only remember fragments of a quote or topic, then I just blurt out my stream of consciousness and Google will mostly point me in the right direction. That being said, I wish I could explicitly tell Google to treat my query more literally. Ideally you would be able specify the search query in some kind of grammar. They have these kinds of prompt mechanics for GPT3, so I doesn't seem too unrealistic, even if it's all ML nowadays.          
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I work for Google Search. We have several ways for you to do this. The easies is to put quotes around a word or a phrase that you absolutely, positively want to be present in content retrieved. And yes -- it still works. It really really does, but if you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know. We'll debug it. The reasons people sometimes think it's not working is because the text appears in ALT text, or it appears in text that's not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text), or there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat") or sometimes a page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available). You can also use verbatim mode from the toolbar so that we search for only the exact words you provide.     
                  
                  
 boatsie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don’t think op meant it literally, but the fact that the results are so keyword stuffed that despite “appearing” on the page they are actually irrelevant to the page and thus useless.               
                  
                  
 johnny22 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 why can't verbatim mode be combined with time frame limits?                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You should be able to. I can. Tools, then change All results to Verbatim. Then change Any Time to one of the presets of custom range.                
                  
 Or just quote the words in regular mode then use our before/after commands: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1115706765088182272                
                  
                  
 bbarnett on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 What?!                  
                  
 Have you tried this? It immediately turns verbatim off. For everyone! It's been like this forever. Years and years. Gaslighting won't help here!                
                  
 In terms of quotes, again, this does NOT work like +, like verbatim. If it did, then that term would absolutely show up, just as it is, in search results. Yet, over the years I've seen:               
                  
 - aliasing happen from within quotes (EG, bob -> robert)                 
                  
 - quotes entirely ignored (eg, those terms NOT showing up)                 
                  
 Yet searching with verbatim on, immediately causes those quoted words to appear!                 
                  
 You are absolutely gaslighting people on this! Right now, in this thread. And if it isn't intentional, if you aren't gaslighting, then how can you not even notice that verbatim turns off, the second you select a date range?              
                  
 I want to say so much more here, but it's filled with such ... vitriol, that I think my terminal would melt.                
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm not trying to gaslight anyone. And what would be the point? To say something works if it demonstrably doesn't work?                
                  
 Yes, I tried this for some of the presets before I replied. It worked. It still works.                 
                  
 My sincere apologies for not specifically testing custom date range option as well. I should have; you are correct. That won't work. I'll pass it on to see if there's a way it can. My apologies again.               
                  
 If you need to do this another way, what I also said works. Do it in the search bar using the before/after command. Just quote all the words, and that's the same as verbatim.               
                  
                  
 bbarnett on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That is absolutely not the same as verbatim, and you need to do some empirical tests on your end, before you state things like this.                
                  
 Take a look here:                  
                  
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094                 
                  
 It's like you're just spouting Google propaganda, without validating what you're saying. Just like with vertabim/date range, which has been a thing for close ot a decade, which Google has received endless reports about, this too does not do what you say.              
                  
 Your responses are akin to those canned responses one gets when you post a bad review. "So sorry, please contact us here at this email address.", which of course is all about impression, and results in nothing ever happening.              
                  
 This has been going on almost a decade, yet oh what, no, haha is your response.                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Verbatim mode means we search for exactly the terms you put into the box. Quoting terms means we search for exactly the quoted terms. That's what I meant by them being them same.               
                  
 So if you did this search in verbatim: [search for this]                 
                  
 It's the same as: ["search" "for" "this"]                 
                  
 in terms of the instructions we're getting on what to retrieve -- look for content that has all of those words and only those words. No spell check. No synonyms. Just those words.               
                  
 The ranking of the results might differ, because we probably use slightly different ranking systems when using verbatim versus quoted words. But in either case, the retrieval requirement is the same. Results should have all the required words.              
                  
 I don't really see what the link above is saying to somehow refute all this. That link is about a quoted search for ["eggzackly this"] and nothing to do with verbatim mode. And it says that it found those two words in that order with punctuation...              
                  
 Which is what I explained elsewhere in this (now huge) thread. But to give it again:                 
                  
 Typically the reasons people believe quotes are not working when they are is because:                 
                  
 1) text appears in ALT text 2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)              
                  
 In the [eggzackly this] example, that's what was happening as the poster saw -- we found those words separated by punctuation, which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched.               
                  
 Personally, I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.                
                  
 Most important -- quotes SHOULD work as you and others are expecting. We WANT them to work that way. That's why we spend time looking at these reports saying they're not. I have spent lots of time doing just that. We find the matches. But if anyone believes they aren't working, and the reasons involved above aren't happening, let me know. We'll get on it. We want them to work as expected, and we want everyone to feel they're working that way.           
                  
                  
 bbarnett on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 For additional clarity, quoting has always, always, always been different than +, and verbatim. When you(Google) removed +, so that 'google+ searches' could work without interference, quoting was already a thing, and people were just told by some airhead googler "Oh, but quoting is the same! Just use that!"             
                  
 It wasn't. It isn't. I never has been. Ever.                 
                  
 Verbatim was introduced to replicate that lost + functionality, after massive outrage at the inability to find search results. The fact that you, and other Googlers still think "" is the same as verbatim/+, when it doesn't even show the same search results, is highly, highly questionable.             
                  
 To be beyond blunt, you're wrong. You are completely and totally wrong. +/verbatim and "" are not the same thing.                
                  
 Please go away, and learn how your own product works, before commenting on it, ok?                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm pretty familiar with how the + operator used to work and why Google dropped it, having written about it at the time it happened (spoiler, I wasn't happy it was dropped): https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-...              
                  
 At the time, + was used to require that something be present. Quotes were used to require words appear in a particular order. You could do a search where you quoted a phrase, but that didn't necessarily require it to be present (as I recall). If you absolutely wanted the quoted phrase to be there, you had to quote and put a + in front of the quoted phrase. So yes, they were different things.            
                  
 When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.              
                  
 With +, then with quotes and with verbatim, it's about what you retrieve. Verbatim says get these words or words and only those words. Quoting says get these words and only those words (and only those words in a particular order, if you indicate that). Just like + used to mean get these words and only these words.             
                  
 The ranking of results might vary when you quote versus verbatim, but what you're asking to be retrieved is the same to us.                
                  
                  
 bbarnett on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 At the time, + was used to require that something be present                 
                  
 When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.              
                  
 No, quoting did not take its place. At all. That's why verbatim was introduced, after outrage. Google claimed it did, but it still aliased. It still decided to provide results without quotes.               
                  
 Again, this is why verbatim was born. From that "Google no longer gives precise results, ever" angst.                
                  
                  
 aceazzameen on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I can confirm what bbarnett says about date ranges and verbatim. Turning on a date range toggles verbatim off. Turning on verbatim toggles the date range off. It's impossible to enable them both.               
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 As for the quoting, it should work. And if you have an example where it's not, please let me know. Quoting is designed to exact match. It shouldn't produce synonym matches, correct misspellings, find content that's not on the page as we saw it when indexed (I think I did say one confusing part is that if there's punctuation, that gets dropped when matching).            
                  
                  
 scim-knox-twox on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It immediately turns verbatim off. For everyone!                 
                  
 I can confirm, one of the reasons I haven't used Google in several years.                 
                  
                  
 robotresearcher on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Ideally you would be able specify the search query in some kind of grammar.                 
                  
 The query syntax:                  
                  
 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en                 
                  
                  
 KaoruAoiShiho on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You can though, put quotes around it.                 
                  
                  
 amptorn on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's stopped working! Google is just ignoring them from time to time now. Did you even read the article?                
                  
                  
 flyinghamster on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I noticed that years ago, and it was one of my first frustrations with Google - the first inkling that the big G had jumped the shark.                
                  
                  
 KaoruAoiShiho on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Well, no the premise doesn't match with my experience at all.                 
                  
 Quoting works perfectly for me dunno.                 
                  
                  
 bambax on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I read the article, and the HN comment it links to, but didn't find an example in either, and it doesn't match my experience. Does someone have a concrete example when using quotes results in pages not containing the search terms?              
                  
                  
 allochthon on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's definitely happened from time to time in my experience. If I had to guess, Google PMs really don't like blank search result pages.                
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I work for Google Search, and as I shared elsewhere, quoting still works. It really does. If you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know, and we'll debug. Typically the reasons people believe it is not working is because:              
                  
 1) text appears in ALT text 2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)              
                  
                  
 bambax on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I believe you! (see my other comment in response to the original one).                 
                  
 But it seems people don't (my original comment is being heavily downvoted because of this). And although they can't submit even one example, the fact that they don't believe you is obviously a symptom of a bigger problem.              
                  
 For some reason, Google is losing the trust of power users.                 
                  
                  
 bambax on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I just checked again. Here's what I get:                 
                  
 - no results with or without quotes:                 
                  
 No results containing all your search terms were found.                 
                  
 - few results with quotes, not more without quotes:                 
                  
 Your search did not match any documents.                 
                  
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search                 
 Tip: Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking                 
 for. For example, "cake recipes" instead of "how to make a cake."                 
                  
 - no results with quotes, but results without quotes: Google says that the search with quotes didn't find anything, and that they searched without quotes instead.               
                  
 I have yet to find any instance where Google corrects the inside of quotes without any warning.                
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I've hit this many, many times, but I'm not sure I can easily reproduce it. Tends to happen when there are more search terms, in my experience.                
                  
                  
 layer8 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google still decides to interpret that however they like. Even the verbatim option in Search Tools doesn’t always help.                
                  
                  
 rurp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google has been regularly ignoring quotes for at least 5 years, probably longer. That was one of the biggest factors for me dropping it as my main search engine.               
                  
                  
 mtizim on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 As per the article, not anymore                 
                  
                  
 narag on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That's like speaking to little children, that are learning to talk, reproducing their errors. Some adults believe that it's cute, but it's idiotic, confuses the babies and make their progress more difficult and slow.               
                  
                  
 iainmerrick on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don’t think this means anything for the point you wanted to make about search results, but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk! It’s not a good analogy.               
                  
 Baby talk (or CDS, child-directed speech) helps engage their attention and provides valuable feedback. Kids who experience less CDS develop language more slowly.               
                  
 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk                 
                  
 (I heard about this research a number of years ago. Although I must admit, now I wonder if it’s affected by the science reproducibility crisis!)                
                  
                  
 brimble on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 N = 3, we intentionally never baby talked to our kids, and spent a lot more time reading them novels and other things without pictures or simplified language than (I'd guess) most people do (we did also do plenty of picture books), and their language development was in all three cases way ahead of schedule.             
                  
 Could just be luck (well, genetics, probably) I guess. Maybe they'd have developed even faster if we'd used baby talk. One shitty thing about parenting is it's really hard to tell what helped, what hurt, and what didn't matter at all.              
                  
                  
 db65edfc7996 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >...their language development was in all three cases way ahead of schedule.                 
                  
 I would put a lot more of it to having (seemingly) engaged parents. Even a backwards strategy enacted by a loving parent who is consistently trying their best is likely to outperform the result that most can manage (owing to time/money/education/etc).              
                  
                  
 rdtsc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That is my belief as well: being there, listening, interacting lovingly, paying attention is overwhelmingly more important than a particular technique.                
                  
                  
 gwd on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I've never baby-talked to our son, but I do coach him to say things that are within (or almost) within his speaking capabilities. So for instance, this evening we were reading The Gruffalo, and he pointed to the fox and said, "Fox eat!" I said, "The fox wants to eat the mouse?" He said, "Yeah!" So I tried to coach him to say "Fox eat mouse". He got as far as "Fox eat there"; maybe he'll get to "Fox eat mouse" in a week or two.           
                  
                  
 KerrAvon on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I did this as well with the same results (but also have reason to believe genetics played a major part). But I'm not sure we're optimizing for the right thing. I'm far from convinced that accelerated language development is a good thing. I think development may suffer in other areas.             
                  
                  
 erosenbe0 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Why would you believe genetics plays a part? There is minimal evidence for that. You have actual evidence for things like your higher than average time engagement, nutritional indicators, as well as health and dental care. You probably live somewhere with decent air and water quality. Then of course the likely fact that parents have relatively prodigious vocabularies, fluency and articulation. This is why your kids are smart.           
                  
 Genetics are a marginal element approaching none.                 
                  
                  
 matthewterhune on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Lots of evidence that genetics have a large influence on early language development, especially speech, if you care to look. E.g. this study finds genetics contributing over 60% of variance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3851292/              
                  
                  
 erosenbe0 on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 No doubt when we start looking at impairments and deficits that you can find plenty of situations where a high proportion of the phenotypic variance is heritable. But when you restrict the study to the top 60th to 95th percentile (which we are discussing here) I don't think you will find particularly strong relationships.             
                  
                  
 erosenbe0 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's not genetics or a language strategy, just engagement.                 
                  
 Compare a toddler living in a ghetto concrete jungle to one who takes daily strolls through Central Park or Suburbia. The enrichment of parents teaching about the trucks and the trees and the lady with a purple hat pays massive returns.              
                  
                  
 nsxwolf on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, I'm not capable of baby talk. Too weird. I have always talked to my kids like they were adults. They seem fine.                
                  
                  
 flatiron on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I did goo goo gaa gaa for the first 6-8 months since you can tell there’s really nobody home up there yet and it’s cute and engaged my other kids to play with the youngest. But yes. Mine seem fine as well so I doubt CDS is going to make/break a human being.              
                  
                  
 narag on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 ...but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk!                 
                  
 But, but... I didn't say anything about baby talk!!                 
                  
 The definition in that Wikipedia page is about something completely different: exaggerating intonation.                
                  
                  
 cptaj on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think this has proven to be false.                 
                  
 Fathers descend to "baby talk" when the child is learning and slowly bring them up to par instead of trying to just force perfect talk from the start. They do this instinctively.               
                  
 There's some great comments on this from salman khan, I think. He recorded the first years of his kid's life at home and documented this phenomenon                
                  
                  
 recursive on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's not idiotic if it's what the people (generally) want.                 
                  
                  
 dylan604 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!" Babies must look at adults doing the googoo gaagaa, and think to themselves that these adults are absolute morons.              
                  
 The sites that Googs returns are basically the internet's version of googoo gaagaa. I look at the websites returned, and often think that the site's owners must be morons. Useless drivel clearly designed to game the Goog search results. I think think about how moronic it is that Googs allows this.             
                  
                  
 narag on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!"                
                  
 I suspect they know the sound they want to make but they don't know how to articulate it. They make an approximation and we can encourage them repeating the correct version, so they realize we understood what they're trying to do: "you're half way" but repeating their approximation is misleading.             
                  
                  
 iainmerrick on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Most people don’t literally say “goo goo ga ga” to babies; what they actually do is echo babies’ nonsense sounds back at them.                
                  
 I subscribe to the theory that this helps babies understand what they sound like, and therefore helps them learn how to produce the sounds they want.                
                  
                  
 recursive on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 "Googoo gaagaa" sounds like happy baby babble to me. Mine would more like "waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh" when they were hungry.                
                  
 Congratulations on recognizing the true morons.                 
                  
                  
 kuboble on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 In my experience waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh meant wet diaper or something hurts. Leeeeeah, leeeaaaahhh was being hungry. Phonetically is similar to the beginning of a polish word mleko (milk)               
                  
                  
 emodendroket on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I honestly find it pretty helpful. You can type "russian murder painting" into Google and it will come up with Ivan the Terrible and His Son. All that hinting may be annoying if you know exactly what you wanted, but I'm not a specialist in everything I ever search for.              
                  
                  
 kelnos on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Then again, both DuckDuckGo and Kagi also give that result for that search phrase. As well as being more generally useful for more specific searches as well.               
                  
                  
 mcv on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 What would be nice is if you could toggle this behaviour. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm looking for, sometimes I don't. Assuming I never do is at least as silly as assuming I always do. Just give me the option.               
                  
 I am frankly baffled that after all this focus on "personalised search", they still don't actually allow you to personalise your search like that.                
                  
                  
 betwixthewires on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You can. Or at least you used to be able to, by putting your query in double quotes. Apparently it no longer works either.                
                  
                  
 emodendroket on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Don't you just put words or phrases in double quotes when you want to tell it you know what you want?                
                  
                  
 Tempest1981 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Right. Feels like it's optimized for common voice queries, in sentence form. They've sacrificed technical/HN users to focus on this.                
                  
                  
 lubujackson on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Ask Jeeves is back, baby!                 
                  
                  
 some_furry on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Here's a perfect example of this phenomenon.                 
                  
 https://archive.md/wwMY3                  
                  
 https://www.google.com/search?q=how+old+is+linux&oq=how+old+...                 
                  
                  
 dannysullivan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Fortunately, most of those web results give a pretty good rundown on the history of Linux. But yes, this is weird! I'll get it looked at.                
                  
                  
 some_furry on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If you can publish a postmortem I'd be really fascinated to read what happened to produce this result                
                  
                  
 beerandt on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 No, because they broke quotes. That's going out of the way to try and tell me what I think.                
                  
                  
 coffeefirst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Right, although piping junk into the search box and expecting it to bring back something useful is trained behavior.                
                  
 I've been using DuckDuckGo a lot more recently and the thing that surprises me isn't the kind and quality of the results, it's that I actually need to use my brain to search.               
                  
 It's not about whether this is a good or a bad thing—I kind of like the precision in a way, it's just jarring how different it is as an experience.                
                  
                  
 reaperducer on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Tons of people don't, though                 
                  
 Do they? I see this stated all the time, with no references.                 
                  
 They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water                
                  
 Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches.                
                  
 Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food. The same way some cities limit parking at big events so that people have to take mass transit. It's for their own good, but they have to be shown the way.               
                  
 Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people                 
                  
 This may be Google's goal, but it hasn't happened yet.                 
                  
 I don't have very many friends or acquaintances in the tech bubble, so I base my observations around real people in the real world. More and more they're giving up on Google entirely.               
                  
 Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest, Etsy, Amazon, and other non-Google sources.                
                  
 When I ask someone why they're searching Amazon reviews for tech support information, they tell me because it's not on the web. That's Google's failure.                
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches.                
                  
 As someone who's been a public librarian, I can tell you that is not how people work.                 
                  
                  
 ako on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You can only be thoughtful with your search if you know what you are searching for. But oftentimes i'm not really certain what i'm looking for, or i don't know the exact terminology that should be used, so i'll just enter some related terms, in the hope that google leads me in the right direction.             
                  
                  
 Mezzie on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 At the minimum.                  
                  
 A truly thoughtful search requires an understanding of:                 
                  
 - What you're searching for, which as you mention means terminology and knowing that information exists. (If you don't know that there's a country called Burkina Faso, it's never going to occur to you to search for its capital)              
                  
 - How each of your search tools works, its benefits and drawbacks. It's similar to selecting a programming language or framework: If I need to know a holiday date (e.g. I can never remember when the fuck President's Day is), I'll Google it because that's something even a normal person would notice if they screwed up. On the other hand, when I'm looking for current events information, I use a search tool that specializes in news searches for journalists and researchers because I don't want my search results biased by what Google thinks I want to see.         
                  
 - The domain in which you're searching, so you can evaluate what the search tools provide for you and use the tools iteratively.                
                  
 - Your own abilities and desires, which requires self-knowledge. A search is only a success if it produces something helpful to the searcher, and something they can't understand or won't use = not a successful search               
                  
 - What information is and is not available. It sounds like a silly thing, but this is how a lot of scams work: They're testing for people who lack a certain subset of common knowledge. For example, I've seen articles talking about local elections that imply nefarious intent behind some information not being provided online, and they're obviously written by people who don't commonly work with local election data. Because if they did, they'd know that when working with local election data, the default is 'idk we have it in a file cabinet or on a computer somewhere'.         
                  
 Search is HARD and Google has figured out one tiny, tiny part. It's just the part that was the easiest to build with what they had and that was easiest to monetize.               
                  
                  
 freediver on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food.                 
                  
 Many people already resort to real food, even with plenty of junk food around.                 
                  
 “Problem” is unfortunately, that it comes at a price, that many are simply not ready or able to pay.                
                  
 Who should step in is a good question, and probably governments should make access to information a right and have high quality public service available (in this case a public web search engine). Public libraries used to fulfill this role for centuries.              
                  
                  
 mejutoco on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Probably junk food should be taxed (as alcohol is) for the related health externalities.                 
                  
                  
 tdeck on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest...                 
                  
 Why would someone want to search Pinterest? Every time I've gotten a search result to Pinterest it's been some scraped image completely and frustratingly devoid of the context I was originally searching for. Pinterest is one of the worst offenders on the web.              
                  
                  
 charcircuit on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Because if you want to find an image pintrist hosts many images.                 
                  
                  
 datavirtue on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I see what you are saying but it seems to me that it used to do a much better job at that. These days I feel like I'm fighting the search engine constantly and it is certainly not magically finding what I want anymore. It feels like some crusty unmaintained tool that I have to know how to use.             
                  
                  
 ravishi on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's funny to observe my stepson learning his way through Google. It's happening mostly through the assistants on TVs and locked cellphones. But he's learning to do exactly what you said: half-second thoughts and brute forcing many queries for the same subject. He's 7.              
                  
                  
 userbinator on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 A less charitable interpretation --- and unfortunately one that could be true --- is that Google does not want you to think. It wants to keep you stupid because it's easier to deceive those who can't think and bend their thoughts in the direction that gives G more $$$. I'd say it's not merely optimising for the stupid; it's actively encouraging it. It wants to be your brain, control your thoughts and life.           
                  
                  
 robbedpeter on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google has optimized to whatever sequence of behaviors achieves the most profit. The search results are not chosen for utility to the user but as nudges in a cycle of influence intended to drive you to attend to an ad, purchase something, or consume particular content.              
                  
 They should not be engaged in non-consensual manipulation of social or political behaviors, and the ethics of market manipulation at scale through advertisement are far from clear.               
                  
                  
 samhw on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Advertising is not 'market manipulation': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation . This dialect of 'Substackspeak' is starting to feel like SEO for HN readers.               
                  
                  
 selfhoster11 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I use market manipulation to mean just that, someone manipulating the market in whatever way. I'm not familiar with the legally-oriented meaning of this term.               
                  
                  
 robbedpeter on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Market cornering is classic market manipulation. Google uses every asset at their disposal to maintain their 98%+ death grip on the search markets. The list of competitors bought, stifled, legally crushed, or absorbed is probably endless. The search market is thoroughly cornered.              
                  
 I used the phrase intentionally and specifically. Advertising isn't always market manipulation, but it can be and is used to that purpose.                
                  
 Google uses advertisement and content "curation" to manipulate consumers. This results in product preference, purchasing behavior, and market conditions favorable to Google and/or unfavorable to Google's competition. This includes siloing consumers in political bubbles and manipulation of narratives through the deliberate selection, order, and pacing of content exposure based on the intent of Google's shotcallers.           
                  
 The reinforcement cycles inherent to their algorithms are used to manage the information made available to vast numbers of people, with highly detailed behavioral profiles used to achieve behavioral outcomes, whether it's buying something, voting, or preferences for or against particular policies or candidates.             
                  
                  
 bduerst on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, the phrase they should have used is "influencing the market" rather than the technical economic term.                
                  
 Of course, influencer means something different now too.                 
                  
                  
 mcv on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 But isn't Google supposed to know everything about us by now? Surely they know who types correct search queries and who keeps making typos?                
                  
                  
 MattGaiser on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yep. How many bug reports are useful vs how many are "the button didn't work"?                 
                  
 Google is optimizing for that.                 
                  
                  
 winternett on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Another factor that isn't being fully accounted for is a new SEO/marketing technique where many people are asking scripted questions publicly on sites like reddit and then stealthily providing answers that market a product or service. This leads to reddit results not being exactly authentic as well. Pretty much most online reviews cannot be trusted as we are begged to do positive reviews of companies (and when companies outright purchase positive reviews, which is also very rampant) also as a factor.          
                  
 Though Google is at fault for letting their service falter to the "payola" race, many other factors are in play all across the Internet since data quality has faltered almost totally. For major-cost and non-refundable purchases I need to trust, I go to brick and mortar stores and inspect what I am buying. I am thankful not everything has shifted to an online-only model. It's going to be a very bumpy ride on the Internet until Congress and consumer protection laws wake TF up and do their job.          
                  
                  
 dkonofalski on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Is Google unique in that, though? Amazon reviews are worthless now because companies pay customers to leave positive reviews or pay review farms to leave positive reviews. Even if someone reports them to Amazon, though, the companies just close their accounts and open new ones with different names and sell the same product. It's so trivial for them to pivot when they get caught that I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem.           
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There is a perfectly good solution, and some people use it: don't buy from unknown vendors. If you buy a product from one of a few well-known companies in that space, they have a big investment in their brand, and are much less likely to engage in behaviors that might diminish the value of that brand.             
                  
 The price is that you pay more -- effectively, you are paying for that branding.                 
                  
 I've had so many bad experiences on Amazon that I am increasingly doing just that. It doesn't apply to everything, but it is a useful strategy.                
                  
                  
 dkonofalski on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 So how does that apply to the conversation around Google, though? We can't only ingest information from a small group of sources. That's antithetical to the entire concept of the internet.               
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Isn't that effectively what limiting a google search to reddit does?                 
                  
 Not that I'm convinced it will keep working, since reddit isn't really a vendor in the same sense, and doesn't have those incentives.                
                  
                  
 dkonofalski on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Not really because the content is coming from a variety of users who are creating the content on the site. Reddit itself is not creating the content in the same way that sellers are trying to sell you their products and Google is trying to serve you their ads.              
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, I agree, but reddit also doesn't have the same skin in the game, hence the prior comment.                
                  
                  
 winternett on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's not really us who can resolve the issues...                 
                  
 I just wrote my own "rant" on the matter and posted it here along with the start to fixing them:                
                  
 Yes, your frustration with the Internet and modern business is real                 
                  
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30350322                 
                  
                  
 CuriouslyC on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Reddit does have astroturfing, but a lot of communities are aggressive about identifying and banning shills, so it's not as widespread as in google search results.               
                  
                  
 winternett on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 A ton of reddit communities are run by shills themselves. That's why users outright get downvoted and banned when they even are posting potentially winning content. We cannot act like everything is totally normal these days on Reddit. They're hemorrhaging users fast.              
                  
                  
 nusaru on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > They're hemorrhaging users fast.                 
                  
 This isn't obvious to me. How do you know this?                 
                  
                  
 winternett on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Just look up posts about people getting banned from reddit on Twitter or on black hat forums. There are tons of people complaining about it.                
                  
 The thing about users getting entirely banned from a platform is that they aren't able to complain anywhere near to the forum about unfairness. It's all done in stealth.               
                  
 Platform algorithms now often do a lot to keep dissent about platforms themselves and partner companies out of sight. It's pretty crazy how companies that publicly advocate equality and fairness serve to undermine speech when it's about their business.              
                  
                  
 Avamander on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There are such posts about each and every platform out there. In addition to not knowing what's the ban frequency, there's also no info in those complaints if they got banned for a good reason.               
                  
 Last winter people got fed up with antivax-dewormer-nomasker bullshit and a lot of subreddits just took the trash out, so those complaints you saw might just be be those dumbasses.               
                  
 I'm not saying there aren't annoying powertripping mods on Reddit, e.g. r/Linux, but there always tends to be an alternative subreddit one can use.                
                  
                  
 Yawnzy on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There have been some great posts and comments today regarding online content manipulation and censorship                
                  
                  
 mad182 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 IMHO it's not so much of a problem with google search, but the internet as a whole.                 
                  
 Most genuine discussions have moved from open, publicly accessible web to places inaccessible to search engines and general public. Smaller niche forums, blogs and personal websites with no financial incentive have died out. People have moved to Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack, Twitter and other places behind logins. Online newspapers and portals are increasingly using paywalls. Most of the genuine human interactions and quality content is not indexable anymore. Instead we have a million affiliate marketers fighting for the top positions in search results with every possible seo trick.        
                  
 Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.                
                  
                  
 Gigachad on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's because private communities are the only ones free from mass abuse. Public forums moved to private discord groups with hard to find invite links / etc because public forums take an army of anti abuse workers to keep alive. While a discord group just needs a few people to kick the trouble makers and maybe revoke the invite link for a while.            
                  
                  
 throwamon on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If that's the entire problem, then why not make these forums read-only by default (while still keeping them publicly viewable) and hand out invite links as in Discord?               
                  
 Lobste.rs, for instance, has an interesting "invite tree" concept where your reputation is bound to people you've invited and who they've invited and so on.               
                  
                  
 chestervonwinch on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.                
                  
 There are still some pretty active enthusiast message boards, e.g., https://www.tacomaworld.com                
                  
 But your overall point is valid, I think. My pointing to a single active forum doesn't change the fact that many of other enthusiast groups have moved to facebook groups and the like.               
                  
                  
 pie_flavor on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Feature, not bug. If there's no public search, it can't be gamed for money. The problem TFA identifies is one of discerning that the person you're getting your info from is an actual person, who cares. The best way of doing that, until we find some way of creating institutional trust in these matters, is talking to the sort of person that spends all day in talking to a chat room about whatever it is you're asking about.           
                  
                  
 bradgessler on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I too have found myself searching more in Reddit. Not to throw shade on Reddit, but even if I find exactly what I’m looking for in there, it’s depressing that it’s all bound up inside of another walled garden who will eventually have the same incentive as Google: squeeze every last advertising dollar out of the produc… I mean users. Like Google, it’s just a matter of time before they too lose their balance.           
                  
 A question worth posing to this community: how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers? Secondarily, how can said internet also be much more accessible to content authors so they won’t have to learn a css, html, and JS to publish some stuff? Finally, how can that content be discovered from within this network?             
                  
                  
 ehsankia on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I "search" reddit a lot, but all my searches are always through Google. Reddit search is notoriously bad, even after multiple attempts by them to fix it. Suffixing my Google searches with "reddit" though gives all the results I'm looking for.              
                  
                  
 bradgessler on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah. I’ve run into this too. A lot of websites have terrible internal search. Google crushes it, esp when you have a “site:reddit.com” to the query.                
                  
                  
 niccl on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 A factor in there has got to be 'who pays?' If it's hostile to advertisers, then there's got to be money to pay for the infrastructure from somewhere.                
                  
 Maybe a tax on ISPs? I think I'd happily pay $10 extra per month for access to an ad-free interrnet. Maybe $20. But how many of the people that are already happy with the ads and poor google results would do so? Would it be sustainable?              
                  
                  
 lrem on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think you're grossly underestimating how much is needed to replace the ad revenue that feeds today's Internet. Remember, majority of people wouldn't pay for getting rid of ads, because they don't have the disposable income. So they're also not really worthwhile to advertisers. You have to divide the revenue by some small fraction of current users.            
                  
                  
 ryan29 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yep. It's really weird if you think about it. The first time I saw a company being upfront about their ad revenue [1] I was surprised.                
                  
 > The Premium fee is basically about $7 per year, which is less than what a free user generates in ad revenue. Thus leagues that pay for Premium and use an ad-blocker are generating less revenue than free users.               
                  
 They charge about $20 per user per year to remove ads. I pay for that, so I'm not sure what kind of ads they have, but I'd love to see what they're advertising and what the click through + conversion rates look like.               
                  
 What you said makes sense to me. I wonder if advertisers are paying a fortune to acquire users with a lot of disposable income.                
                  
 1. https://www.fantrax.com/forums/general/messages/public/l72mh...                 
                  
                  
 kaesar14 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Agreed, Facebook makes something like 8 dollars a user per year? That's just one of the mega services, imagine replacing that money for all of the players that power your internet.               
                  
                  
 PeterisP on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's very relevant to consider that the value of users is very unequal.                 
                  
 IIRC for Facebook American users the average revenue was 50+ dollars per year. Furthermore, if you're the type of person for whom saving a few dollars doesn't matter, you're likely worth more than that average; and for FB to break even on your ads an appropriate price is likely to be closer to $100 per year.             
                  
                  
 jordanpg on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There must be a difference between paying for the infrastructure and paying for the content (including the code).                
                  
 It's easy to imagine a future where the infrastructure is something analogous to a public good, like clean water. The infrastructure is agnostic to the content.               
                  
 The content, on the other hand, is a product of a massive, churning, never-ending process of intellectual work. Ads, for the most part, provide the underlying economic incentive for that work.               
                  
 And the dirty little secret of all that ad-supported creative content? Its value is minimal. Truly minimal. Often low quality, incoherent. If it all went away tomorrow, I would hardly notice.               
                  
 That it is nevertheless so popular is something of a paradox. I know I sound ridiculous, but at the core, I'm beginning to believe that the fact that advertising is as powerful an economic force as it is, is a reflection of the fact that people's lives are more boring and devoid of meaning than we often admit.             
                  
                  
 machiaweliczny on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Ads will always exist because they work. Only way is to ban them explicitly but you can do that with AdBlock for example but you still get SEO spam, placed content, inauthentic "recommendations".               
                  
                  
 throw10920 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers?                 
                  
 You have to reify "trust" into concrete, computer-representable data. Maybe borrow the "web of trust" concept from PGP, but do some sort of multiplicative thing where the amount you trust someone's recommendation online is the product of the trust relationships between you and the recommender. That's really the best you can do - even legislation against online advertising will be subverted by companies that go through layers of proxies to buy influence.           
                  
                  
 allochthon on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 One small thought — having the search engine be configurable, so that the user can specify which sources to give priority to (e.g., Reddit, NYT Wirecutter, Wikipedia, etc.), would be an incremental improvement.               
                  
                  
 zucked on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I, too, search "<search term> + reddit" often for product reviews and such. Thing is, the results on that front have started to slide as the paid review side of the internet catches on. I'm finding that it's getting harder and harder to trust the reddit search results - lots of shill accounts and obvious junk. That's not a google problem, specifically, but it's another degradation of a workaround for declining search result quality :(           
                  
                  
 bee_rider on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The only real advantage of reddit is that somebody will usually be insulting the ad account, so you can hopefully glean some truth from the insults.                
                  
                  
 Firmwarrior on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Unless there's a critical mass of shills, and then anyone who speaks out against them will get banned and/or downvoted to oblivion..                
                  
                  
 tartuffe78 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Usually I trust Reddit threads where users give pros/cons of multiple competing products. Things like running shoes users have usually tried a lot out and liked them for different reasons. If those match with the one pair I've tried out it seems like a useful data point for decision making.             
                  
                  
 Firmwarrior on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, a lot of subreddits are clogged with the same bad info that's gotten all over Google's front page. The stickied "list of recommendations" on an enthusiast sub is just the same as you'd get from clicking the top result of "Best X 2022" on Google, complete with affiliate links             
                  
                  
 propter_hoc on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Use "<search term> site:reddit.com". That will exclusively restrict you to results from reddit.                
                  
                  
 zucked on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's not the point - the point is that paid shills are astroturfing reddit enthusiast subreddits, so that operator doesn't shield you at all. Once a hobbyist subreddit gets big enough, it attracts a lot of attention from shady types trying to capitalize on the captive audience. I've seen it happen numerous times (only when the offender is caught) in the /r/watches subreddit, the /r/overlanding subreddit, etc.           
                  
                  
 eloeffler on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low.             
                  
 The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on the website into the articles.                
                  
 The result is trashy articles that could well have been written by a bot but aren't. This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work.              
                  
 It's people but they work like bots.                 
                  
                  
 netcan on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >> This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work.               
                  
 It may be becoming borderline. I expect that sentence/paragraph completion is already becoming useful to people who churn out quick content for a living. In any case, the important part isn't whether or not it's bots. The important part is whether or not it's authentic. The precise meaning of authenticity gets squishy, but it exists nonetheless.            
                  
 IMO the sentiments are correct, whatever the details. Part of why google sucks is that the internet is worse, for a bunch of the things we use google to search for. The internet becoming a larger, more profitable industry changed it. Instagramming for influencer perks, SEOing, or selling targeted ads like FB do... it does not lead to the same places that earlier iterations of the WWW produced. Times change.           
                  
                  
 RationPhantoms on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's a pretty clear indication that the once stalwart effort, within Google, to produce a true search experience is effectively dead.                
                  
                  
 PoignardAzur on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 No. Google is just playing the Red Queen's race, and losing.                 
                  
                  
 ghostly_s on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 My friend briefly had a copywriting job writing weed strain descriptions for dispensaries. He was never provided the product he was describing, just told to make it up.               
                  
                  
 mihaaly on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I have the very same feeling concerning electronics. Searching for a particular product does not even popping up 5-10 comparison articles but the content of all seems to be based on technical specifications of the manufacturer only, which I already have a hands on.              
                  
 Significantly more time required for consciously choosing a product to purchase (which in my case is critical because I am like Sheldon Cooper trying to choose between PS4 and XBOX One normally, to the horror of my wife, she wants a new TV and it is months long project based on accurate and quick data, and now this, with Google, which makes our family atmosphere even more tense : ) )            
                  
                  
 ghostly_s on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 In case you haven't encountered it yet: https://www.rtings.com is a good site for TV specs/reviews specifically. I know someone who works there and their methodology seems legit (I like it more than Wirecutter).               
                  
                  
 mihaaly on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 thanks!                  
                  
                  
 formerly_proven on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Most reviews are useless from the start because most reviewers are totally dependent on manufacturers or dealers providing samples (yet will generally claim to be "totally independent"). That's before you get to reviewers who can't or don't know how to test the product in question and so end up narrating the manufacturers specs to their faux testing.            
                  
 There are very few exceptions to this.                 
                  
                  
 tpmx on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Niche, probably outdated, but indicative: The only way to purchase a laser printer with high printing quality these days is to buy something expensive and hope for the best. Magazines used to do actual reviews of these things.              
                  
                  
 lotsofpulp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Brother MFC laser printers have delivered for me for over 15 years now. I have bought many for various small offices and my home and relatives’ homes, etc, and I have not heard any complaints.               
                  
 I especially like the scan function where brother web connect OCR’s the document and saves it as a pdf directly in your Box/Dropbox/OneDrive/GoogleDrive folder. Just wish it worked with iCloud Drive.               
                  
                  
 tpmx on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Your comment is kind of like the "reviews". Yes, they work. I've got one of those.                 
                  
 I'm interested in the printing quality though.                 
                  
                  
 lotsofpulp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Oops, my bad, I did not properly take into account high quality printing. It is definitely too cheap to be anything high quality, they just get the job done for everyday printing at a low price.               
                  
                  
 Blackthorn on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 A trick to find not-scam reviews is to put -amazon in the search query.                 
                  
                  
 smm11 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I look back at the newspaper stories I wrote a few decades back. I could get the score from the coach, find out hits from who and when, and after that 20 second interaction, I could write a news story in maybe three minutes, which told you everything you needed to know.              
                  
                  
 falcor84 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I assume this is exactly how they come up with the descriptions on most wine bottles                 
                  
                  
 TheFlyingFish on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Somebody who worked at a winery once told me that the flavors they mention on the bottle are actually what the wine is missing, and they name them in the hope that the power of suggestion give you a more balanced impression.              
                  
                  
 registeredcorn on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It would be interesting to see some sort of study, to see the impact on wine labels on: normal people, vs wine "experts", vs sommeliers.                
                  
 I've seen a few of those wine documentaries about sommeliers, and they certainly made it seem like it was a legitimate ability to identify stuff. I'd be interested to see how close they are in a more neutral, measured environment.              
                  
                  
 ghostly_s on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's mostly bullshit[1]. Tasters can't even tell reds from whites with a great deal of accuracy. [2]                
                  
 1. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-ta... 2. http://www.morssglobalfinance.com/the-ultimate-wine-tasting-...                
                  
                  
 woeriud on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >Tasters can't even tell reds from whites with a great deal of accuracy. [2]                 
                  
 Actually, this one is bullshit. While it may be true that the average person without blind tasting experience cannot do this, anyone who has actually done blind tasting seriously should be pretty accurate at this. Purely structurally, red wines generally have much more tannin and more alcohol than whites.             
                  
 The famous study that led to this claim (which survives because people, especially the HN type, love feeling smug about expertise) doesn't really hold up. See eg http://sciencesnopes.blogspot.com/2013/05/about-that-wine-ex...              
                  
                  
 ghostly_s on Feb 19, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Did you look at my link? There's data, and it's not from that study.                 
                  
                  
 initplus on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Sommeliers are professionalized, with courses & exams. But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers.              
                  
 Instead Sommelier exams are subjective - candidates are judged by another Sommelier on subjective criteria rather than objective measurement. In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? How does the candidate present themselves? Sommeliers dress in fine suits, but this should have no impact on actual wine tasting ability. Yet I am sure if I showed up in a draggy old t-shirt I would fail regardless.         
                  
 The whole industry seems allergic to objective scientific measurement. I am sure Sommelier's do have some ability to identify varieties, but are they actually tasting all those subtle hints they list off? I doubt it.               
                  
                  
 woeriud on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 What is this comment based on? To me it feels like this is what you imagine the exams are like. The MS exam (the highest and most famous one) has three parts: theory, service, and tasting. The service part is all about presentation, absolutely (that's the whole point). The tasting part is not. In particular...             
                  
 >But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers.              
                  
 That is exactly how the tasting portion of the exam works. And                 
                  
 >In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours?               
                  
 This isn't really how it works, especially the "high class" language comment. Actually there are a variety of different things that they are supposed to identify about the wine, known as "the grid" [1]. You can take a look at it yourself. They are essentially judged based on how well their grid matches up with the consensus grid from the master sommeliers.            
                  
 [1] https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/D...                 
                  
                  
 lethologica on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There’s been some studies that are somewhat related!                 
                  
 https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-ta...                 
                  
 https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/37328                 
                  
                  
 adamc on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is something I notice in advertising generally: whatever they most emphasize is least likely to be true about the product (e.g., the "great taste" of McDonald's).               
                  
                  
 posterboy on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I feel like this is how the lobbying and decision making about the legalization is going as well.                
                  
                  
 vlunkr on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The other day I looked up the wordle answer (I know I know). The first result was a site where I had to scroll through about 19 paragraphs of SEO vomit to get to the answer. The page could literally have one word on it and serve it's purpose. If that isn't a sign that the the internet, or at least google search, is dead, I don't know what is.             
                  
                  
 ghostly_s on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There's a whole industry of sites like this for NYT crossword answers, to the point that it's often impossible to get any organic results at all for something that's been clued in the Times, which is frustrating because I don't just want the answer (there's a button in the app that does that already), I want to learn about the thing I’m unfamiliar with. Luckily, most topics that come up have some content on Wikipedia so I go there instead.           
                  
                  
 ziml77 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Ugh yes that’s super annoying! I don’t want the answer spoon-fed to me. The point of searching it is to actually learn a little something which will help me remember in the future               
                  
                  
 justinhj on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 lol the same happens with WSJ. It’s very disappointing to try and do a bit of research on a clue and get the answer on a bot site linked to the puzzle you’re doing. Interesting how they do it though.               
                  
                  
 eproxus on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It’s like a DDoS attack on your mind (distributed because everyone is doing it). The attention span economy at its finest.                
                  
 Reminds me of those ways to catch spammers or bots by occupying some of their resources with meaningless tasks for as long as possible. Except it’s turned around.               
                  
 Sometimes I wonder if there’s even any real money in ads anymore or if it’s just a giant circle jerk that slowly destroys society…                
                  
                  
 KoftaBob on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 For future instances where you give up trying to figure out the wordle, I built a site to make that easier: www.wordlespoiler.com                
                  
 Word of warning: it has the answer to both today and tomorrows wordles.                 
                  
                  
 monkeynotes on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Speaking of bots, I'd be interested to know the percentage of articles on major traffic content sites are authored or co-authored by AI.                
                  
 My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a entropic gene pool in nature, but with information.             
                  
                  
 Mountain_Skies on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Sports stories are frequently written by bots/AI/whatever you want to call them. Sports stats makes it relatively easy to create written text articles about games. When first rolled out, there were some obvious tells such as an excessive amount of "for the first time this season" or "set a record for the season" in articles about first games of the season. Unusual plays or quirky behavior by participants tend to be missed in these articles but otherwise they're serviceable though somewhat dry and bland.          
                  
                  
 mixedbit on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Stock analysis articles are very commonly generated automatically from templates. The selected template is based on some real characteristics of a described company (whether the stock went up or down recently, what is the P/E etc.), but the content is generic and reused across all companies with similar characteristics.             
                  
                  
 elihu on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, I see a lot of those via Google Finance.                 
                  
                  
 jonathankoren on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Probably zero. People are really cheap.                 
                  
                  
 numpad0 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Apparently, using a machine translation as a basis and working through correcting it to read or write foreign languages is a growing trend and that’s a form of computer assisted literacy if I were to guess.               
                  
 Bar that, it’s humans outrunning AI in the race to the bottom with a head start. Human people can be forced to be incredibly machine like.                
                  
                  
 technofiend on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Human people can be forced to be incredibly machine like.                 
                  
 Amazon has a site for humans to pick up small tasks and get paid for them called mechanical turk [1], which is a reference to a fake chess playing machine with a human inside [2]. With the great resignation and the workforce otherwise pushing for a reasonable standard of living, I'm not sure how heavily mturk is still used as depending on tasks and speed it's really sub-minimum wage work for many people. [3] But as The Atlantic article says, sometimes it's the only work people can get.          
                  
 [1] https://www.mturk.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/amazon-...                
                  
                  
 NavinF on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 ~0% right now.                  
                  
 I think the quality of searches like “best TV” will improve dramatically once language models are used to generate SEO spam. Anything would be an improvement over what today’s human spam bots produce.               
                  
                  
 mike10921 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Lately, half the results I get are pages that I cant view without paying to some service or signing up for a free trial.. Google literally serves up results that are unreachable ..               
                  
                  
 TheKarateKid on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Can we also talk about how Google allows top organic results to LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook which literally present you with a LOGIN page before you see anything related to your search?               
                  
 Absolute worst UX ever, yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.                 
                  
                  
 1024core on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.                 
                  
 At one time, Google used to ban sites for "cloaking": offering one version of the page to the crawler, and another to the user.                
                  
 But over time they got into trouble from these sites, getting sued left and right. Being accused of putting up a wall, and abusing their monopoly. Eventually, these sites won out and Google dropped this requirement.               
                  
                  
 zo1 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Similar story with Image search. "Blah blah something something copyright something". And voila - now you can't get direct access to images on the search results page.               
                  
                  
 annadane on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, thank Getty for that one                 
                  
                  
 bluehex on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Ah so that's why Quora no longer shows you the first result before blurring the page most of the time.                
                  
 It's a shame. I've really enjoyed a lot of the well written responses there but I can't be bothered to create another account.                
                  
                  
 TheKarateKid on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 At least Quora would show you a small something. Facebook and LinkedIn literally show no content except a login page.                
                  
                  
 TheKarateKid on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This might be the case for news sites which show limited content until you sign into a paywall, but I don't recall the biggest offenders which show NO relevant content at all (LinkedIn and Facebook) saying anything.               
                  
                  
 londons_explore on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Classic example of this kind of content... Try searching "How to use X to get stains out of Y".                
                  
 You will find a page for almost any X and Y combination. And they will all have wording like "Put some X on the stained Y... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!".               
                  
                  
 api on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 "how to use jet fuel to get stains out of my yak"                 
                  
 Nope, nothing relevant. Found a counterexample.                 
                  
                  
 divs1210 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This is how to use jet fuel to get stains out of a yak:                 
                  
 Put some jet fuel on the stained yak... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!                
                  
                  
 iggldiggl on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I asked a neural network and got this crazy 44-step guide:                 
                  
 https://www.buttercookie.de/temp/AI/GPT-J%20stained%20yak.tx...                 
                  
                  
 divs1210 on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Weirdly captivating                  
                  
                  
 useto075 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Nothing relevant yet                  
                  
                  
 bryanrasmussen on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 how to use blood to get stains out of my heart, I had hoped I'd at least find a country song with that as a lyric.                
                  
                  
 Al-Khwarizmi on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That job is probably months away from being automated by GPT-3 and its ilk, supposing it hasn't yet been.                
                  
 Right now, I don't think you can tell it to use some specific terms in the text it generates, but it doesn't sound like a difficult extension.                
                  
                  
 rhacker on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I mean then is DIT really a conspiracy theory? I know that people in HN have already started doing replies with AI in some threads. (only because they tell people). Wait a few more years and there will be no way to know if forums are just bots generating content.              
                  
 I guess HN would be a weird outlier, because there are no ads. Except maybe the bots would be useful after all when various "Show HN" or "Launch HN" and have the bots cheer those companies and get random publicity.               
                  
                  
 malka on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I sometime use GPT-3 to help me write stuff on forum. It writes better than me :/                 
                  
                  
 DragonL80 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That's how I know it's not gpt-3, gpt-3 would write better articles. At the very best it's poorly trained Markov chains.                
                  
                  
 evilduck on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The idea that a genuinely Dead Internet might be an improvement over the current internet experience is a fun one, and one I don't entirely disagree with.               
                  
                  
 hef19898 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Regardless of automation, there will always be jobs that are so "dumb" but still expensive to automate that people can do cheaper then machines.                
                  
                  
 cjbgkagh on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Within the last 6 months I’m seeing a rise of very good NLP content farms that almost have what I’m looking for but not quite. I think what they do is start off a transformer based NLP with example queries that others have searched for and it generates a realistic looking answer that’s usually wrong. The scale and breadth of these could only be done by machines.            
                  
                  
 hombre_fatal on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Writing SEO content isn't necessarily one of them anymore. Check out AI content services like https://www.frase.io/ . You can also generate things like product descriptions inside the GPT-3 playground.               
                  
                  
 ballenf on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 How can you be sure that you're not a bot?                 
                  
                  
 jonathankoren on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Reminds me of an old The Parking Lot Is Full comic.                 
                  
 > Little-known Fact #839: There are only twenty-three people alive today, and you're one of them; everyone else you know just looks human to lull vou into not searching for the other twenty-two. Lonely? You should be.              
                  
 https://images.app.goo.gl/aSexFX2Gy4hdAnYh9                 
                  
                  
 romwell on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Eh, if that's the case, I'm cool to be one of the few remaining humans among billions of wonderful whoever-they-are.                
                  
 Beings so acceptive of others as to make me oblivious there's a difference? That's far more than humans ever accomplished.                
                  
                  
 IIAOPSW on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I pay rent therefore I am.                 
                  
                  
 ClumsyPilot on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Nice                  
                  
                  
 technothrasher on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Because I'm nervous my neighbors will realize my sheep is electric?                 
                  
                  
 fsflover on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 By solving a captcha obviously.                 
                  
                  
 rhacker on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 42                  
                  
                  
 JKCalhoun on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Article agrees:                  
                  
 > Whether they’re a bot or human, they are decidedly fake.                 
                  
 Fake plastic trees.                  
                  
                  
 jpicard on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Bloomberg and other news orgs publish bot-assisted articles, for example to summarize financial reports the moment they appear.                
                  
 https://archive.fo/1EjSu                  
                  
                  
 denton-scratch on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I would expect an automaton to be able to spell; so perhaps the presence of spelling errors is a mark of an authentic page. Maybe one could force Goo to spit out authentic results by including a strategically-misspelled word in the search terms.              
                  
                  
 JimBlackwood on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Totally agree on the reddit point, I've also noticed the same occurring to me. The girlfriend recently got Pokemon Arceus and sometimes asks me to Google something she wants to know.               
                  
 It's completely pointless, you just get a bunch of articles from news sites (??) that transcript the quest but not tell you anything more. I miss a nice community wiki like I'm used to from playing Dark Souls etc.               
                  
 I've just started appending site:reddit.com to everything, works a lot better.                 
                  
                  
 TimLeland on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I've been adding this to my searches for years. Check out this site that will save you a few keystrokes: https://gooreddit.com/                
                  
                  
 throwamon on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Or you could just add a custom search keyword directly in your browser...                 
                  
 https://zapier.com/blog/add-search-engine-to-chrome/                 
                  
 https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...                 
                  
                  
 salt-thrower on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, Fextralife saved my ass multiple times while working through the dark souls series. It's a shame that type of community resource isn't more popular.               
                  
                  
 TheKarateKid on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google could fix this by making the algorithm take into account searches that often end with "reddit", thus applying more weight to Reddit results to similar searches where the user didn't include Reddit in it. Clearly it's an indicator that those are the better results.              
                  
 Take StackOverflow for example. Almost any programmer will find a SO result as the top result and it's usually exactly what you're looking for. Since there's no money to be made by companies writing blog posts on debugging a compiler error, Google's algorithm works as intended.              
                  
 Question is: Why hasn't Google done anything about this? It's the organic results that are terrible, so they're not losing ad revenue by placing these garbage sites at the top. Perhaps its to intentionally make better websites pay for ads to get better placement? But those won't be the ones to ever pay to begin with...             
                  
                  
 Gigachad on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think it would be foolish to assume google hasn't spent hundreds of hours in meetings talking about what they can do about everyone having to type reddit. Problem is they are facing an army of SEO experts who are one step ahead of google. As well as legal issues. Imagine if it was found google was artificially boosting reddit in an unfair way.            
                  
                  
 TheKarateKid on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This is Google we're talking about. They could very easily conquer the SEO experts the same way they basically eliminated spam and most web browser exploits.               
                  
                  
 oldstrangers on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Working at a marketing agency, I can promise you the Dead Internet Theory really isn't even a conspiracy. It's depressing.                
                  
                  
 salt-thrower on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I did software dev at a marketing firm for about a year, and it was pretty soul sucking, so I know what you mean. I won't work at one again unless it's literally my only option.               
                  
                  
 lethologica on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I’ve been there too. The sad thing was that the people I worked with were genuinely great and smart people but you’re spot on about the actual state of the environment being a depressing and soul draining thing. I quit that job on moral grounds, I just couldn’t be a part of that any more.             
                  
                  
 lpcvoid on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Be the change you want to see!                 
                  
                  
 Xeronate on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree google is bad, but I think reddit is rapidly becoming equally as inauthentic. I'm sure every major player at this point understands the gains that can be had by astroturfing reddit. The real problem seems to be the internet is inherently untrustworthy and going back to finding people you trust in the real world is the only fix I can see.            
                  
                  
 winternett on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 We've also got to address the people and corporations that are gaming the system that google has created. Google is by no means off the hook, but Marketing practices have also taken a very bad turn to deception and in reinforcing a payola systems recently that we may never be able to recover from trust-wise.             
                  
                  
 moffkalast on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Meanwhile you still need Google to search reddit as reddit's built in search remains trash.                
                  
                  
 mettamage on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust."               
                  
 Haha, the noobs. I use HN instead sunglasses cool face                 
                  
 A bit more seriously: I fully agree with this. And if HN doesn't have what I'm looking for then I use Reddit as well. But if HN has some info on the topic with a few highly upvoted threads, damn, it always impresses me.              
                  
                  
 brimble on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 When I'm looking into some project or piece of software I'm unfamiliar with, I really do search for HN posts on it. Fastest way to cut through (enough) of the biased material and get something genuine. Even hyped stuff usually has enough contrarian posts to give you an idea of where to look for the skeletons.             
                  
                  
 throw10920 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 HN has now been around a while, is really popular, and is starting to catch the attention of ad/marketing companies now, though - how do you know what here is genuine?               
                  
 Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...               
                  
                  
 flyinghamster on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 And it's not just the spammers. Any topic that touches domestic or international politics in any way almost instantly brings out a lot of bad-faith actors, here or anywhere else on the internet.               
                  
 > Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...               
                  
 Yikes, I hadn't thought of that angle. That would explain some of the long-dormant accounts on Some Other Place that suddenly start spewing out-of-character garbage, assuming they weren't password-guessed, data-breached, or keylogged by some rando.              
                  
                  
 mettamage on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Hmm, I think for now it's relatively easily distinguishable. I've noticed that HN'ers feel "like me". So I look for that specific signal. I look for signals that care about curiosity and an insane hunger for the truth. Also, it's tough to mimic "Oh yea, I was at Xerox Parc programming this language that was posted about, let me give some nuanced insights into what was stated in the article" (that quote was made up for the sake of example).           
                  
 The only marketeer that would be able to consistently fool me might be a marketeer that was a developer. But last time I applied for a junior marketeer position I was asked: given your resume, don't you want to be a developer instead? So devs seem to get pidgeonholed into always being devs.             
                  
                  
 nextos on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Me too I even have a bookmarklet in Firefox so that I can use a prefix (hn) and the search is rewritten as site:news.ycombinator.com, to make sure all results are limited to HN.               
                  
 I also have the same kind of bookmarklet for Reddit and Google Scholar.                 
                  
                  
 ziml77 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The reason that the quality on Reddit is higher is because there’s people moderating those quality subreddits. Without those moderators it would all turn to crap and be just as useless as Google.               
                  
                  
 Klonoar on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Moderators that are often anonymous/unknown.                 
                  
 (This isn't an argument against your point, just a bit of additional context that increasingly is odd to me as Reddit gains more and more social weight)                
                  
                  
 ziml77 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Very true. Fortunately I don't think most moderators want to see their community destroyed. That's exactly what would happen if they started taking money. As a group, people will catch on fast and either force the moderator to step down or just leave for a new subreddit.              
                  
                  
 littlecranky67 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > - "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..." > I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.               
                  
 I never believed in conspiracy theories, and after I read "Media Control" by Noam Chomsky I understood there is no need for conspiracy theories once you understand how individual incentives are aligned and how individuals always act to maximise profits.              
                  
 Someone on HN phrased this and I am not taking credit for it but it explains beautifully whats going on: "Google is not making money by showing you the best search result they can, they make money by keeping you searching."              
                  
                  
 lotsofpulp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That does not make sense. If searches did not result in satisfactory results, then people would stop searching.                
                  
 Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit.                 
                  
 This is a problem for google, maybe not right this minute as growth might offset dissuaded users, but nevertheless, it does not behoove them in the long run to provide garbage search results to people.               
                  
                  
 littlecranky67 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit.                 
                  
 You are right but overestimate the number of people doing these restrictive searches. They should be in the <0.1% range. I personally switched (to duck and latly kagi.com) and know quite some people in tech that did so too, but the non tech-savy person (which are the majority of overall users) doesn't even know other search engines.             
                  
                  
 lotsofpulp on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Eventually, though, even non technical users will stop Google searching if it wastes their time. If they do not find what they want, then they can go back to asking people in person or instagram or whatever, but I would not expect people to keep aimlessly searching.              
                  
                  
 api on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I view the Dead Internet Theory as Black Mirror style satire. All it would take is liberal application of GPT-3 style transformer AI to content generation and much of the Internet could be fake. You could have fake political trolls arguing with other fake political trolls from the other side, fake blogs, fake review sites, etc. and it would take me a while to notice. Most of the modern Internet is just that bad.           
                  
 Advertising always creates perverse incentives. It works in traditional media too. Look at what happened to things like Discovery and The Learning Channel when they became subject to advertising based pressure for ratings. They went from having actual educational content to being full of tabloid trash.             
                  
                  
 Angostura on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The death of the authentic web really chimes with me. I have an almost physical reaction when I occasionally come across a page that isn’t trying to sell me something, that is a labour of love.               
                  
 A month or so ago, I was trying to help someone retrieve some very old Wordpress for Mac files. I found http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos and was so touched, I sent the author a few dollars for a coffee               
                  
                  
 wisty on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google's problem is they've virtually nothing (given their resources) to "commoditizing their complement". https://www.gwern.net/Complement                
                  
 Google's compliment is web sites. What have they done to make a web site easier to make?                 
                  
 They even killed their RSS feed. They have released a bit of web tech, but their offerings are generally a bit sad or only solve Google problems (e.g. Go).               
                  
 If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help. If you want to write a blog or make a simple web app, it's unlikely you're going to think "Google has some great stuff to help, and has awesome tools". Mozilla's web resources are better. Microsoft's web resources are better.             
                  
                  
 account42 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help.                
                  
 You mean having to pay them for the priviledge of not being flagged as "dangerous" by shitty machine learning algorithms?                
                  
                  
 takeda on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >> "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."                
                  
 > This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.                 
                  
 Yeah I remember this being mentioned in a local presentation at university. As a great thing. Google doesn't search for what you write, but what you want.               
                  
 The problem is that very often Google don't know what I want. Before they introduced this, I was able to define my query so that I got exactly what I wanted.               
                  
                  
 userbinator on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Google knows what it wants. Its job is to convince you to agree with it.                 
                  
                  
 smrtinsert on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Dead Internet Theory is totally believable. I remember back in 2006-7 or so, being slightly curious about putting up a food review site because I was really angry at my local X food establishment. I found places were you could buy complete restaurant database ready to be scripted onto the web for maybe 90 a pop. The data was actually pretty good, but I was shocked by the huge community around flipping these dbs into internet spam. For the very high majority these were hungry business types who could barely open a code editor without asking for help. I only expect the problem has gotten exponentially worse since then now that ai generated content has improved in quality.       
                  
                  
 bambax on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think the OP is weak because it conflates ads and seo spam. Yes, Google went all in with ads, and yes, this hurt its credibility and the quality of its products.               
                  
 But there is no conceivable universe where seo spam isn't the arch enemy of Google. Google needs to fight spam to survive, it knows it and it does. But that's hard. So hard in fact, that nobody else has cracked the problem, and for all the anecdotal evidence of someone switching to Bing, Google's marketshare is still utterly dominant.             
                  
 The Dead Internet Theory may have some weight: Google hasn't dropped the ball, but it is slowly drowning into the sea of "content-free content".                
                  
 But if that's the case, so is everyone else.                 
                  
                  
 wilde on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 SEO is ads Google is failing to monetize.                 
                  
 That said, the reason the Reddit trick works is that it uses information Google explicitly excludes when ranking content (engagement signals).                
                  
 Google has a bunch of “objective standards” that it uses to paternalistically shape what the web looks like. Many of these are divorced from what users actually want for pieces of content (https, AMP, a life story in front of recipes to demonstrate authorship, etc).              
                  
                  
 bambax on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 As explained in another comment [0], the real reason the Reddit trick works is that Reddit content is hand-curated by humans who are dedicated and passionate (and, I think, also work for free). It's a garden in the jungle.              
                  
 [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349460                 
                  
                  
 wilde on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think our statements overlap. “Reddit moderators have better standards.” Is something I’d definitely agree with.                
                  
                  
 naravara on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think there’s actually two dimensions to this problem and the article and your comment only address one of them.                
                  
 The other dimension is that, in the past, if you searched for stuff your results were likely to be a blog or a forum thread. Today the bloggers have evolved into instagrammers, TikTokkers, YouTubers, or Podcasters. The Forums and community pages have moved to Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, etc.             
                  
 So it’s not just that SEO and botspam has eaten the Google results page, it’s that this is all that’s left of the open internet that needed search to navigate. Much of it truly is a wasteland. Google owns part of the blame for crippling RSS and privileging recent pages and specific domains or AMP pages over evergreen, self-hosted content in search results. But also users have given up on the open internet in droves. Instead of starting a fansite they start fan subreddits or discords instead.          
                  
                  
 madrox on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That inauthenticity comment really hit home for me, too. I realize that I do not trust the internet at large, and haven't for a long time. That's been the real trigger for my retreat from mass social media into smaller, tigher online communities.              
                  
 Even HN is starting to feel like it wants to sell me something.                 
                  
                  
 selfhoster11 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The latter feeling may be because HN is run by a startup accelerator. They run literal native ads on the front page whenna startup they sponsor goes live.               
                  
                  
 madrox on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think that's where it comes from. It comes from the same places as Google, where people know the value of this community's attention. Posts at the top of HN are designed to get to the top of HN.               
                  
                  
 flyinghamster on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This fits well with my own worldview. I've been griping about Google results for years, and jumped for DuckDuckGo when it became usable. I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap and someone new will come along to replace it, just as Google replaced AltaVista.             
                  
 Even DDG knows that it can't handle everything, and so it has its bang shortcuts. I've used the !reddit one, and I'd use !w (Wikipedia) except I do those from the Firefox search bar.               
                  
 I've heard the "everything's a bot" theory before, but never saw a name put to it before. I'd have to guess that 99% of all SMTP traffic is spam at this point.               
                  
                  
 cge on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap                 
                  
 In terms of direct ads, perhaps. But for SEO spam, in many cases, DDG already seems to be there. For example, things as simple as "python datetime", "python json", or "python datetime.now", where it would seem obvious that the top result would be the documentation for the module/function, have spam sites above the actual Python documentation. Meanwhile, search for "matplotlib", and your screen will fill up with ads.           
                  
                  
 slightwinder on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.               
                  
 So are reddit-comments and entries. There it's even worse, because most people don't connect the content with manipulation.                
                  
 > The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now.                 
                  
 So, like reddit? I mean every platform has their hive mind, and reddit is even worse, because the hive mind can be manipulated with paid upvotes, not just reposting and comments.               
                  
 > The same for trending programmer tools.                 
                  
 Aren't most of them yet again commercial products from companies?                 
                  
                  
 dheera on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 As soon as Google removed Wikipedia as the first result of everything they started dying.                
                  
                  
 Klonoar on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Except Wikipedia has a reliable place on the page, if a Wikipedia entry exists... they never _removed_ it, just _moved_ it.                
                  
 This is the least of the issues with Google.                 
                  
                  
 jshen on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 "It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..."                 
                  
 I don’t think this is the problem. The problem is the need for public companies to grow exponentially. If you take away the need to constantly grow exponentially, then ads on search can be both balanced well and make an insane amount of money.              
                  
                  
 dkonofalski on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Based on some of the April Fools' Day experiments that Reddit has done in the past, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have the same hesitation and mistrust of Reddit posts and comments. So much of the content, even on Reddit, is made by bots or copied by bots from older, legitimate user-generated content.             
                  
                  
 steve_adams_86 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There’s something sad and ironic about using Google to search Reddit. One, I mostly dislike using Reddit - I only want to see specific discussions very occasionally. Two, what is the state of the internet if I have to use the best search engine to find content on a website I mostly dislike? Haha.             
                  
                  
 cableshaft on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Reddit's search engine is kind of crap (not terrible, but also not great). That's why I use Google for Reddit, to have a better Reddit search experience.               
                  
 I figured that's why it's so high, is Reddit's UX keeps slowly getting worse so the best way to find stuff on Reddit is by searching outside of it.                
                  
                  
 JacobThreeThree on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >Reviews are secretly paid ads.                 
                  
 So are a lot of Reddit comments.                 
                  
                  
 hintymad on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > This is it for me exactly.                 
                  
 This is for me exactly too. Search "best XXX for YYY", and I get back two pages of dubious websites that smell like paid ads a mile away.                
                  
                  
 legalcorrection on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Searching Reddit helps but the quality of comments has gotten lower since 2015 or so. It seems to coincide with the wave of subreddit bans and the nakedly politically-driven moderation on subreddits. And with the reflexive attitude—against anything countering the Reddit consensus—that developed during the Trump years. High quality posters seem to have withdrawn from the site (at least in how much they comment) and what's left is mostly ignorant teenagers and bitter millennials with shitty jobs. In turn, that crowd is much less likely to upvote high-quality thoughtful content, so the cycle continues. The decline in quality has trickled even into the less popular subs. Don't get me wrong, the site has always had problems, but the more recent decline in thoughtfulness is dramatic.      
                  
 The worst part is that despite Reddit getting so much worse, there is no other place that's grown to fill the void. This place is great, and I do search HN when it makes sense, but it's small and narrow in scope. Reddit basically crowds out any competing websites by sucking up all the low-level chatter required to sustain a community, but has also pushed away high-quality posters, who now have no place to go. Very tragic but maybe a good case study in shitty network effects.          
                  
                  
 WastingMyTime89 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Quality on any non niche popular subreddits were already abysmal long before 2015. Reddit is useless for anything which is not highly specific but there are some diamonds in the rough: great subreddits exists about fashion, knives, gardening, coffee, shaving and plenty of other weird interests.             
                  
                  
 legalcorrection on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This is true but I find that about 2015 is the inflection point. Even posts about highly technical subjects are not as good if they’re from after that.                
                  
                  
 code_duck on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Subs about specific medical conditions have been really helpful for me.                 
                  
                  
 fallingknife on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 With quality comes success. With success comes popularity. With popularity comes idiots.                 
                  
                  
 twoodfin on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I dunno, looking at the growth curve in Paul Graham’s tweet I expect most of the drop in average comment quality can be attributed to the size of the user base. It’s hard to keep high-quality content the norm even in much smaller communities.              
                  
 /r/nfl had a reputation for high-quality content and wasn’t a particular battleground in the Trump Wars. It’s still a good breaking news feed, and the live game threads are fun, but every post is dominated by joke comments and memes.              
                  
                  
 D13Fd on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I find the idea that banning Trump supporters killed reddit to be pretty far-fetched.                 
                  
 To the extent there is a change in quality, it probably comes from other factors, including having a bigger, broader, and different user base now than in the past (and only a small portion of that change likely came from Trump-related bans).              
                  
                  
 jasonladuke0311 on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Parent didn't say Trump supporters. And I completely agree with their observation. Quality went completely off a cliff around that time. I think it just officially entrenched the Reddit orthodoxy and that there is a "right way" to think, and that infected even non-political subreddits. Not all though, I know some subs are much better and open to discussion than in the past.            
                  
                  
 legalcorrection on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yep. These days you’ll even get banned from fandom subreddits if you criticize the tv show/movie/book too heavily.                
                  
                  
 PaulHoule on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I like this conspiracy theory                 
                  
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis                 
                  
                  
 MichaelMoser123 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust                 
                  
 i think that specialised search engines are gaining ground. For example, I am using github search for searching code samples, that works better than google.               
                  
 You might want to check my side project that tries to explore the subject. I have a search tool / catalog of duckduckgo !bang operators, i am hoping that it allows for better discoverability of specialized search engines.              
                  
 https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html - (best viewed on a PC).                 
                  
 The latest addition is a description for each search engine, just hover over the name, and you get a description derived from the sites meta and title tags.               
                  
 I think that specialised search engines are gaining ground, it has become easier to set one up, thanks to elasticsearch/lucene. They can be quite good, for a limited domain, and they don't have to invade your privacy in order to find out what you are looking for. I think that what is missing are tools like this, that would aid the discovery and use of these search engines. I hope that this will allow them to eat into the market from the 'low end'.           
                  
 The projects source is here: https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang                 
                  
 Unfortunately they don't invest too much into !bang operators at duckduckgo, however that's my input data...                
                  
                  
 mouzogu on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 But I still prefer to use Google to search Reddit or Stack overflow.                 
                  
 Reddit especially has horrible search.                 
                  
                  
 irthomasthomas on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google doesn't care about indexing the internet, that's easy. Every other product they have built since search has been about indexing you .                
                  
                  
 nluken on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web                
                  
 This point especially rings true for me, but it also concerns me a bit. Reddit has killed a lot of other forums over the years. If something happens to Reddit, we run the risk of losing a large corpus of information.               
                  
                  
 thaumasiotes on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >> "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."                
                  
 > This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.                 
                  
 I hate this too. I do get typos corrected by Google. But I don't need that - if I put a typo in my query and get bad results, I can correct the typo myself. But if Google decides I must not have meant what I actually said, there's no way for me to correct that. It's a ridiculously bad tradeoff - we eliminate errors that are trivially fixed by introducing errors that can't be fixed at all.            
                  
 I have similar feelings about phone input autocorrect, which automatically converts typos that are very easy to read into (mostly) correctly spelled words, plus (sometimes) completely unintelligible nonsense.               
                  
                  
 shane_b on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Makes sense why they would fuzzy search. Not all users can be expected to know Google fu.                
                  
 So let mainstream use fuzzy and keep power user features. The big issue is power user support is gone for people with Google fu.                
                  
 Ads or no ads isn’t really an issue for this because it’s such a small percentage of users that know Google fu.                
                  
                  
 TrevorJ on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree. Often, what I am after online is to see what other real people are saying about something. typing 'reddit' into google is basically a proxy for "please google for the love of good, can you start indexing actual human discussions again?".              
                  
                  
 rhino369 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >>- "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."                
                  
 >This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.                 
                  
 It should do both. And it used to do both.                 
                  
                  
 mastazi on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I have a similar habit, I often search "[topic] forum" - I'm not fond of Reddit specifically due to accessibility issues although in some cases I still go there because it's the only good source.               
                  
                  
 malthuswaswrong on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >because results on other sites aren't trustworthy                 
                  
 Reddit is gamed way more than google. Paid posters, moderation of anything against a narrative. Google search may be dying, but reddit ain't doing much better.               
                  
                  
 matheusmoreira on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust.                 
                  
 It's only a matter of time before reddit too becomes too inauthentic to trust. Not only is it directly funded by advertising, its audience is mainstream enough for advertisers to invest time and money posting fake opinions in order to make it look like it's coming from real people.             
                  
 I seriously hope I never see comments or news about people appending hacker news to searches. I don't want advertisers to kill this site when they catch wind of it.               
                  
                  
 ozim on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google was boiling the frog really really slow.                 
                  
 You can still can get exact searches by google dorks but "normal" people might find "google trying to be smart" actually useful.                
                  
                  
 kingcharles on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.                
                  
 Nice try. That's totally what a bot would say.                 
                  
                  
 samstave on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like?                 
                  
 I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past                
                  
                  
 mardifoufs on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 They have filed for an IPO last month with the SEC so they should go public very soon.                 
                  
 Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website.             
                  
 It happened before and the admins yielded to them so I don't see why it wouldn't happen again, especially since it's not like they can run the website without that weird cabal of (mostly delusional/psychotic) power mods doing their work for free.              
                  
                  
 samstave on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >> is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website              
                  
 I have a story about this - and its worse than just mods -- Admins intervene and set narrative on for whom is allowed to mod and make mod decisions...                
                  
 I wont reveal the details - but I have seen Admins literally come in and fuck up Mod orders because (my suspicion) is that the Admins have MANY accounts that /appear/ as mods - but are actually Admin shill accounts...              
                  
 I had this happen to me first hand and I was appalled.                 
                  
 Reddit's ethics are absolute garbage in this regard.                 
                  
                  
 Lascaille on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I've also thought that. The reddit shutdown made the frontpage of (reputable) news sources, I can't imagine that investors aren't going to be asking the admins how much control they really have over the user experience on any given day.              
                  
                  
 technothrasher on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 They were acquired by Condé Nast in 2006.                 
                  
                  
 samstave on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Oh, forgot about that... Thanks                 
                  
 Are they still under them?                 
                  
 regardless, what is reddit's current value? (I've been on reddit for 15 years - but I have recently deleted my accounts due to censorship and ban-hammering for the most ridiculous reasons.)               
                  
                  
 samstave on Feb 17, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 AHHHHH... i figured it out...                 
                  
                  
 astonex on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's perhaps a little bit early in its creation to be sharing this but I am working on a new search that should help to fix the problems mentioned in the article, https://namusearch.com/ . It allows you to build (and share with others) a curated list of websites that you want to use for searches             
                  
                  
 orangepurple on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 More info about the Dead Internet Theory (DIT)                 
                  
 https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-...                 
                  
 Archive: https://archive.ph/VoaxV                 
                  
                  
 nvarsj on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yup, when I want to search anything I use a combination of reddit, HN, and Discord. My main use of Google these days is to find a website I forget the name of but roughly know what it's called. In the olden days, I used bookmark aggregation sites like del.icio.us to search for relevant content, which was generally more fruitful than a Google search.            
                  
                  
 rackjack on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Maybe a different kind of terror than Dead Internet Theory: the Internet is "alive", but it acts as if it was dead.                
                  
                  
 Havoc on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >Dead Internet Theory                  
                  
 Reminds me of the "birds aren't real" theory. Its almost more social commentary than a serious theory                
                  
                  
 rogy on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I didn’t really even think about this properly until just now.. these days I am looking at Reddit, Facebook groups and if needs be, YouTube (videos not by ‘creators’ as far as possible) to find information I used to google. Ads and referral links have totally ruined the usefulness of so much information.             
                  
                  
 danso on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree that Reddit remains a good source for info, but I’ve found that Google usually does a good job surfacing Reddit results — usually in the top half. Though this is most notable when I’m googling for esoteric info about TV shows and video games (e.g. “best build mass effect 3”)             
                  
                  
 eternauta3k on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks, I hadn't realized I can use site:reddit.com also for recipes!                 
                  
                  
 robbyking on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit                
                  
 Are you a fan of r/mtb or r/mountainbiking?                 
                  
                  
 jarrenae on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Search Reddit Via Google: https://www.searchbettr.com/                 
                  
                  
 cosmosgenius on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The first review site I go to, to find if the product should be trusted or not is reddit only in the hope that not every comment is a paid ad.                
                  
                  
 gkkirilov on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Great take on the topic. I completely agree, love the small communities that form in Reddit and there I can find the experts to ask.                
                  
                  
 dtemkin on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 StackExchange is better for an informed discussion. Reddit has become too much like Yahoo! Answers.                
                  
                  
 _lb7x on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That's so funny, because I use Google to search reddit, because Google's search of reddit is better than Reddit's.                
                  
                  
 itsjustme2 on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 "The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web."                
                  
 I just wanted to mention that a friend of mine made an app for user-reported trail conditions that might be worth taking a look at: https://trekko.app/                
                  
                  
 acchow on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I wish Google would offer two different search products, one assuming Google-fu, and one not.                
                  
                  
 grndzro on Feb 25, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Oh come on you type 15 letters by accident all the time :)                 
                  
                  
 rubyist5eva on Feb 16, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.                
                  
 Oh my sweet summer child. Reddit is absolutely infested with paid shills.                 
                  
                  
 coolso on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.                
                  
 There is so much shilling on Reddit if you knew it would blow your mind. I wish more people realized this. Reddit is the best place to shill because not only is it ridiculously simple, people also automatically assume you’re not shilling, and then once you seed the idea, everyone else will do the shilling for you indirectly.             
                  
 The healthiest way to use Reddit is like Wikipedia: assume the information you’re reading is highly compromised and biased in one way or another, but use it as a starting point in your further research and it’s a great tool.              
                  
 Reddit posts are not your friends. Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.                
                  
 Reddit is the best place to shill and the sooner the non-shillers figure that out, the better off the entire internet will be.                
                  
                  
 Klonoar on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.                 
                  
 I increasingly think that upvote/downvote culture is the worst thing to happen to the internet and the world at large.                
                  
 The problem is I don't have an alternative solution to propose.                 
                  
 Your comment is spot-on in my opinion though - I usually start with Reddit results, but try to check against other sources before relying on it.                
                  
                  
 Lascaille on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Reddit also - in my opinon - actively enables shilling and botposting. Why do they have an API?                
                  
 A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one?                
                  
 Also the model of user-created and user-moderated subreddits actively enables the creation of shill accounts. It's trivial to create a subreddit and use it to farm karma with a ton of bots. If you can keep real users from ever entering your walled garden of a subreddit (of which there are many) your bots will never be detected until you wipe their comment history and set them loose on the rest of the site.           
                  
                  
 Seattle3503 on Feb 16, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I write moderation bots. Without an API, moderation would be difficult if not impossible.                
                  
                  
 hnburnsy on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one?                
                  
 Third-party clients?                  
                  
                  
 est31 on Feb 15, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 reddit's search isn't that helpful though. I often get to reddit from Google, sometimes I even do site:reddit.com, but still using Google's search.                
                  
                  
 chucksta on Feb 15, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Its not about reddit as a search, it's about using reddit to validate your search because the alternative would likely yield poor results. You could trust the 10 listacles that came up as the first results that all look oddly similar, or you can try and filter through reddit by including it in your search terms             
                  
                  
                  
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Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me:- "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads. The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now. The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web. The same for trending programmer tools. - "It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..." What I'm shocked by is that Google somehow maintained a balance on this for so long. Well, at least a good enough balance that people still use it primarily. - "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..." This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. - "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..." I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.
    
    
        
     There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers.Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has a distribution monopoly through Android, its deal with Apple on iOS and MacOS, and on desktop through Chrome. I'm working on a search engine startup. It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level. And despite being technically possible on desktop with Chrome, it is for all practical purposes beyond what any typical consumer can easily do. Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google and clicking ads.
    
    
        
     &gt; It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.On my IOS device, under Settings -&gt; Safari -&gt; Search Engine, I have a drop down with options, including Bing and DuckDuckgo, but defaulted to google. On Macos, with Safari running, Safari -&gt; Preferences… -&gt; Search, Search Engine I have a drop down, defaulted to google, with Bing and DuckDuckgo amongst other choices. Agreed on google”s effort to get their search engine as the default. However I just don’t understand how changing search engine is impossible given what I’m seeing on my devices? Nor does it seem over the top onerous to my eyes.
    
    
        
     Yes, but you can't add a new search engine at all! So if a search engine isn't one of the tiny number of options in that dropdown, you can't change to it. That applies on both iOS and MacOS. And that option is used for the entire system-wide search, not just Safari.So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list. You can see the search engine I'm working on in my profile if you're interested (I don't want to hijack this thread with self-promotion). I challenge you to change to a new competitive option like it. You simply can't. That is a clear monopoly over distribution. On desktop in Chrome, as noted it is not something any typical consumer can do easily. But even if they could, Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engine, even by setting the homepage to one. So every new tab opened on Chrome takes you back to Google search, even if a consumer figures out how to change their homepage. As for changing the nav bar search, no ordinary consumer is going to be able to work out how to change a search URL pattern. That is clearly intended to prevent consumers changing. So I stand by my point, especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.
    
    
        
     I fully understand your point and defaults are very strong.That being said, I try new search engines from time to time and always get back to google, because non of the others have worked for me (in a professional context). I probably do 200 searches per day and google is most likely to give me relevant info on my first query (maybe 80-90% success rate). All others I have tried have been around 40-50% win an avg. of 2-3 search queries to find my result. That is a huge daily time sync on 200 searches per day. I will also test your search engine. And before having tested it, I have some unsolicited advice ;) At least these are things that would make me switch:
1) you are strong in my vertical. 50% of my daily search queries are professional. Probably 10-20% are programming related. If you were better 20% better than google at delivering results for that subset, I would probably use you.
2) If you had very strong support for my locale. Based in Germany, 50% of my private searches are in German. Most search engines, apart from google, suck in German. My assumption is their market share is so small that they don‘t put effort into any language specific search syntax understanding. German or large language groups like Spanish, Hindi, French come to mind.
3) If you can‘t become a default search engine on safari, maybe you can role your own browser (chromium fork or something) where you are the default. You could package it as: MySearchEngine App. It is actually a fully functional browser, but users really use it because they want to use your search engine. That might give easier access than having to manually navigate to your website in safari. &lt;/ end of unsolicited advice /&gt;
    
    
        
     The ultimate test of any search engine is always the results. While the project I'm working on is definitely still an alpha, I'd love to chat with you when you try it out. I don't want to take the conversation here off-topic. To your general points though, there are definitely opportunities to provide better results within specialist areas of knowledge, and for local markets.I think most of the search startups are doing their own mobile app. On iOS, the system search and browser remains Google/Safari (and the App is essentially just a wrapper on Safari for browsing). But at least it is something. I think you'll see more people doing desktop apps, although the dominance of Google through Chromium forks for this isn't a coincidence. It feels like the bad old days of re-packaging Internet Explorer with a custom homepage all over again.
    
    
        
     Multi-lingual search results in general; Google (and FB) just for some reason cannot comprehend that someone might have reasons to search in multiple languages or even regions. For instance, I at one point was an editor/fact-checker for an academic publisher and one project involved checking a lot of information from official government sources around the world, and Google did not know what to do with that.Hell, I'd love to have the option to make the search results be completely language agnostic.
    
    
        
     Don't you just set the region and language at the bottom?I also search in multiple languages but I also know that's an exception. The majority of the people in the world likely would only use a single language and it's easy to believe that search results are better for those users with languages separated.
    
    
        
     Yes, hence why I'd want an option for language agnostic results. It would be a terrible default.There are cases when I'd even like REGION agnostic results, or least ones not bound by national boundaries. For example, I have an interest in my state history (MI), and there's plenty of relevant articles/commentary from the Canadians.
    
    
        
      
 I sometimes have similar issues. But I can understand why Google might not want to cater to the multi-lingual market: perhaps it's just too niche?   
    
        
     I don't think it's too niche, I think they're just American.A Canadian/Indian/EU-based Google probably would've ended up with multi-lingual support, whereas a China/UK based one probably wouldn't have. By the time Google got big enough for international considerations, there were already a bunch of baked in assumptions about their users, like them being monolingual.
    
    
        
      
 Have you tried Kagi.com? I switched to it and i'm very happy even with searches in my native language for example   
    
        
      
 Metager.org is my go to google search replacement. I imagine (although my German is non native) that the German search results are quite good. . . it being a German search engine. To be honest it the only search engine to get me off google - DDG is OK, as is searx, but I kept going back to the dirty G until Metager.   
    
    
        
      
 Also a fan of Brave browser here. The more people trying new things the better! I know some people don't like the crypto-angle with it, but I think it is a positive to test new economic models to support online content, personally.   
    
        
      
 How much of the German challenge do you think is due to German being an inflected language? So a search engine that can't figure out the inflected variants of a word are going to potentially miss out on a large number of the relevant search results.   
    
        
      
 In addition to inflections, another factor may be the tendency to use compound words, so that a relevant word in context might not have a space at each end.   
    
        
     In English, Google is pretty good at figuring out when to add spaces in your queries (if you have a typo with your spaces). Similar technology should help it with German?There's nothing magic about putting a space between words or not. Similar to whether you hyphenate or not.
    
    
        
      
 Maybe it isn't a big deal; my thought was that if you're crawling a website and trying to associate its contents with search terms, parsing an uncommon compound word into the correct parts is going to come up more often in German than in English, especially if you're smaller than Google and German isn't your main focus. Are search engines good enough now to know that a string like electricovenmonitor is about ovens but not covens or Venmo?   
    
        
     At least in part this seems to be due to the profiles that Google has built. Whenever I try to use Google in anonymous mode, the results become noticeably worse.Which, of course, means that it is yet another barrier to entry for any would-be competitors.
    
    
        
     This could also be a perverse incentive reflected algorithmically (whether on purpose or not). Google has better data and makes more money when users are identified. So they have a vested interest in making users think that they will get worse results in Incognito mode.Personalization is a double-edged sword. @pg once wrote about Google results becoming "what's true for you" rather than what's objectively true. And filter bubbles and subtle "personalization censorship" are also dangers. I think it's possible to have high quality results and privacy/anonymity, and it's not a binary choice. It's a challenge worth figuring out.
    
    
        
      
 Totally agree that personalization is a double edged sword. Problem is getting people to actually want to change their personalized feeds/results. Most people have no clue what they’re missing and this issue has huge “Medium is the message” like implications.   
    
        
      
 I disagree about google being the best. For a start, their image search is massively behind bing. They do 0 work to remove pinterest spam. And DDG is way ahead of google on normal adhoc search.   
    
    
        
     Thanks, just to let you know, yes, it does have an opensearch description. But in practical terms that doesn't help much even if a startup search engine adds it.Unfortunately, while OpenSearch is great where it's supported, outside of Firefox, the only real support is for in-site-search on other platforms (where you type a site name and then a search string), and not for changing your browser search engine. And it doesn't work at all on iOS even for site search. So unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem of how a consumer can easily change their search engine to something new on Chrome or Safari or an iPhone. I don't want to sidetrack the discussion, but if you want to confirm the opensearch description, you can open our site in Firefox, then click the "..." in the browser address bar and then click "Install Andi Search". Or reach out and very happy to talk you through it.
    
    
        
     I am using firefox (windows 10), I don't see the "..." in the browser address bar.Edit: When I click the address bar, I see an small "A" icon in the bottom row. When I hower over it, it shows "install Andi search".
    
    
        
     Depending on the platform, you might need to right-click on the Firefox browser address bar and choose the "Add search engine" option from the dropdown (where a website has it). Do you see an option to add a new search engine when you right-click the browser address bar at all?[Edit: just saw the edit that you found it - thanks again for looking around for it too!]
    
    
        
      
 I concur. And would add that on Safari and iOS, it suits Google and Microsoft too keep others out; noting all options are Google, Bing or Bing sydnicates). And it suits Apple nicely; $15 bn from Google, pure margin. How much do they get from Microsft/syndicates? Meanwhile all search listed options in Chrome are Google or Microsoft (Bing and Bing syndicates). And, to complete all Edge options are Bing, Bing syndicates or Google. Disclosure: also alternative search engine CEO.   
    
        
      
 Presumably you count DuckDuckGo as a "Bing syndicate". I think that doesn't do it justice - many of the things I like about DDG are specific to DDG, and I could not care less whether the underlying crawl was run by Bing or not.   
    
        
      
 Yes, but I'm biased. Your perspective is as valid and I respect it. DDG does have some great features and we stand with them in fighting for user privacy. What benefits us all is a variety of different search engines and search services. It is the search engines that subtly determine our informational pathways, so variety is healthy. For one independent review of search engines and syndicates, including DDG see:
https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...    
    
        
      
 100% agree. The more people working on this and building different features and trying different approaches the better. The more new search engines, the more everyone innovates, the better for the whole world. It is deeply unhealthy to have a single monopoly with its mono-search have 90%+ of the market. There are billions of search users with many different needs, and there is room for different approaches.   
    
        
      
 I see your point. I would have sworn that DuckDuckGo was added as a search entry when I installed that app on my ios device, however my memory is hazy from that long ago, so perhaps that search engine was added at a different point, like when it became big enough for Apple to notice them.   
    
        
      
 I'm a huge fan of DuckDuckGo. My understanding is that it took a significant amount of effort and public lobbying for them to get added to that list, and it was back in 2014 that was announced.   
    
        
      
 I suspect the big problem is that even if your search engine succeeds, once you get enough traction you'll just sell up to Google and everything slots back to normal 'do some evil' mode.   
    
        
      
 I don't want to get too off-topic, but personally I can promise you we will never sell to Google. This problem is very personal. As well as being a programmer, I used to work as a journalist, and I've seen friends in media have their lives and businesses destroyed by Google's ad-tech. And I've seen the Internet turn from a wonderful thing to become a cesspool of content farms, clickbait and seo spam. I can't speak for other search startups, but we will never run ads or use ad-tech or sell user data or invade people's privacy. We're just two people. But we're two people on a mission.   
    
    
        
     We pay nothing so are not included. On the other hand we are happy to provide a one click search from our search engine or eight other search engines/services, currently from our web app [0]. One click for Google (if that's your thing), one click for Bing or Gigablast search engine results, one click for Brave and some of the many Bing and few Google syndicates - DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage.[0] https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedo...
    
    
    
    
    
        
     The OpenSearch standard is great and definitely an improvement where it's supported, but unfortunately as far as I'm aware in most browsers that's limited to site-search (in website search after typing a url). It doesn't work at all on iOS.On Firefox it makes it easier to talk a non-technical user through how to change their default search engine, and at least they aren't entering search pattern strings into a settings field as with Chrome.
    
    
    
        
      
 As far as I'm aware and the OpenSearch docs, support is limited to in-site searches on most platforms outside of Firefox (not changing default search option for example using Chrome on iOS). Would be really interested in the steps you followed if you're happy to share them.   
    
        
     For sure. I added this file at the top level, as opensearch.xml. Sorry if formatting is wrecked.  &lt;OpenSearchDescription
 xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
 xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/"
 &gt;
 &lt;ShortName&gt;My Search&lt;/ShortName&gt;
 &lt;Description&gt;Personal Search&lt;/Description&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="text/html"
 method="get"
 template="https://mysite.com/?q={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="application/rss+xml"
 indexOffset="0"
 rel="results"
 template="/results?query={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;Url
 type="application/json"
 rel="suggestions"
 template="/suggest?q={searchTerms}"
 /&gt;
 &lt;InputEncoding&gt;UTF-8&lt;/InputEncoding&gt;
 &lt;Image height="32" width="32" type="image/x-icon"&gt;
 https://yarnpkg.com/favicon.ico
 &lt;/Image&gt;
 &lt;/OpenSearchDescription&gt;
 
In the head tag:&lt;link
 rel="search"
 href="/opensearch.xml"
 type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
 title="My Search"
 /&gt; I then went to my site on Chrome iOS and it showed up under Settings &gt; Search Engine &gt; Recently visited. I then selected it and now anything I put in my url bar gets sent to my server. It's pretty sick.
    
    
        
     That's interesting, I don't get that option on Chrome on iPhone (Search Engine &gt; Recently visited), except for the officially supported five (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia).I'm wondering do you see that as an option visiting our site (we have an opensearch description for Andi also) or other search engines like You with one? Very curious.
    
    
    
        
      
 Thanks for having a look. The opensearch file is https://andisearch.com/andi.xml, and it's correctly referenced from the "&lt;link rel="search"..." opensearch tag. If you have a look in Firefox you'll see it prompts in the nav bar. So I don't think that would be the issue. Do you see anything for other engines like You with the opensearch head item?   
    
    
        
      
 Thanks heaps! Will post the outcome here just in case anyone else is trying to make opensearch work on Chrome on iOS once we figure it out!   
    
        
      
 I'm thinking maybe Chrome on iOS has its own flavor of implementation and possibly it needs the filename to be "opensearch.xml" rather than looking at the &lt;link&gt; tag. I'm renaming the file to see if that makes a difference. If you had an example of another site where it worked, that would be awesome. At least one more platform where OpenSearch works for setting the default site search would be nice.   
    
        
     You have a section in Andi Search which lets you try and set it as the default (in Firefox at least) but it doesn't work. Is that what you mean, or am I doing something wrong/weird?BTW I really like what you're doing, and I'll definitely like to set it as default in Firefox somehow if I could just to try it out. My first tests were surprisingly good, I didn't expect it to deliver results which are accurate and which appear to at least match DDG. Nice one. [slightly unusual page format on desktop though :)]
    
    
        
      
 Thanks! I don't want to distract from the main topic too much but would love to chat with you if you're open to it. There's a thread below with @neffity and I made some changes (trying to get Chrome on iOS to use OpenSearch) and broke that for a little. Update is just deploying now. I sincerely appreciate the feedback and you having a look too! :)   
    
        
      
 I tries you search engine with a few queries and I was pleasantly surprised! Keep up the good work!   
    
        
      
 I didn't want to take the discussion off topic but I appreciate that and thank you! Lots of work to do! Please reach out if you'd like to as well :)   
    
        
      
 Its been a while but when you visited a search engine website it then showed up as an option, not sure which OS / browser that was on though   
    
        
      
 Firefox supports an open search standard which is a big improvement, so that's probably where you saw this. It provides an easier experience from the nav bar to add a new search engine to the browser. In practice, while it's a huge improvement, I've found talking with users that it's mostly helpful if someone technical is talking them through the change.   
    
        
     Hello Jed, that sucks. I understand that custom search engine exclusion is a financial decision by companies that can get away with almost whatever they want to do.For iPhone, iPad, and macOS, you could use Swift and SwiftUI to write a single search app for your service. Flutter is pretty good also, then you could cover Windows and Linux also.
    
    
    
        
     That's simply not true. Even as a technical user who knows what you're doing, you get a hard-coded choice of exactly five - Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG or Ecosia. You can't add new ones at all. If you wanted to add a new search engine (like the one I'm working on, or any other), there is no way to do it.But let's try it. Go to Safari &gt; Preferences &gt; Search and choose the "Search engine" dropdown, and you'll see you have a dropdown with only five options. Google reportedly pays $15B per year for that top spot.
    
    
        
     A work around is to add a safari extension like "Keyword Search" and associate a key word to your search. Its nothing like setting a default search engine for a normal user, but atleast there is a way for the slightly more technical user.Though, I couldn't add a keyword to your site in firefox with its "Add a keyword" feature. Might be due to the javascript calling some url behind the screen.
    
    
        
     Go to search_engine.com in Safari. Share button. Add to Home Screen.This is not a bad solution; I appreciate your browser rage.
    
    
        
      
 Adding a shortcut to a website to the home screen is a nice convenience. Unfortunately, it doesn't add it as a search engine to your iPhone search, or to Safari. Even with a PWA (progressive web app), the App is just a wrapper on Safari. For a startup like us, it is probably the best option currently available, and we've tried to make it a good experience. But it does suffer the same drawbacks as a regular App as a browser replacement. If you swipe down from the home screen and type something into your iPhone's search bar, you're still using Google and Safari.   
    
        
     &gt; So here's a challenge, try adding a search engine not on that list.Well, you can. I just tried it and works. Granted, you need a third party app, but it's doable.
    
    
        
      
 I'd be interested in the steps you took. Third-party Apps on iOS can't change the Safari or system-wide options for search engines as far as I'm aware. Installing a third-party App just gives you a wrapper around Safari for browsing while you use that App only. If you swipe down on your home screen to use the system search, or open Safari itself, nothing has changed. I can ask you to install our App or another search provider's App, but it doesn't change your iPhone's search engine or add it to Safari.   
    
        
     Yes, I found it a few weeks ago. It changes how safari works and improves it quite a lot.I can block elements, and cookies in a site, define custom JavaScript or css, change the default search engine with one in a list o define a new one, and a whole lot of other things. All inside default safari. Its name is Hyperweb. You can get it here: https://apps.apple.com/app/hyperweb/id1581824571
    
    
        
      
 Kagi search has an extension. Maybe you could do something similar. It’s on the iOS store under kagi-search-for-safari.   
    
        
      
 That's interesting. I didn't think an extension could change the search engines available under Settings &gt; Safari &gt; Search Engine on iOS from the defaults (Google, Bing, Yahoo, DDG, Ecosia), or change the system-wide search used. Do you see different options now under Settings for search engines and did it change your system-wide search too (i.e. swipe down on home screen and then use the built-in Search)?   
    
        
      
 Swiping down doesn’t work, it’s in-browser only in the address bar. As for in safari, I don’t get options, but if the extension is enabled it redirects the search to Kagi.   
    
        
      
 Swiping down on my home screen gives search suggestions but no inline results. Clicking on those takes me to Kagi in safari.   
    
        
      
 No, it is a hack basically redirecting searches to a custom search engine. Good luck with Andisearch!   
    
        
     &gt; especially on an iPhone, you simply cannot change your search engine to a new search engine like us. It is impossible.See my post above about iCabMobile, where there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from. There are also other browsers than Safari and iCabMobile on iOS, many of which give alternatives to their search engine choices. Naturally if you think only users who choose the default browser are interesting as your market, I wonder if those users would take a chance on your alternative search engine?
    
    
        
      
 I replied to your duplicate post separately, but it is worth noting that even if you install an alternative browsing App and use it, the iOS system search (swipe down from the top to access the search bar) is still using Google and Safari. And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own options.   
    
        
     &gt; And even if you were to use another browser like iCabMobile, it also simply does not let you add in a new search engine not already in its own optionsI duplicated my post because you so pervasively in this thread duplicated your inaccuracies. You are wrong about this, iCabMobile allows the user to very easily add search engines: Settings &gt; Tools &gt; Search Engines &gt; Add Naturally I expect to be plentifully downvoted for this accurate information, just like pointing-out that iCabMobile has 25 search engines to was also extremely unpopular.
    
    
        
     I may not be following you, but are you saying that when you change search engine in your App, it also changes the default search for iOS and Safari system-wide?Or you are just talking about within your iCabMobile App itself, like anyone can do in their own app? As far as I know, all the alternative browser and search Apps (including ours for example) are wrappers on top of Safari on iOS. And they are unable to change the iPhone's system-wide search or browser. That's the search engine accessed, for example, when a user swipes down on their iPhone home screen, and enters a query into the "Search" field that appears. Normally, that's Google and Safari at the iOS system-wide level. Or are you saying that you are able to change these including adding alternative search engines under iOS Settings &gt; Safari &gt; Search Engine? I'm curious how you're doing this if so, and I'm sure lots of other people would be too. My understanding is that App Store Apps or Extensions can not normally change the iPhone search engines, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google does not allow you to set the New Tab to another search engineFirefox has removed the ability to set a default page for new tabs and requires users to install an extension to restore the functionality, which in fact provides degraded functionality. As originally implemented the new tab would load the new page instantly. With the extension, a new tab is created, focus is given to the URL bar and after a brief but noticeable pause, the chosen page loads.
    
    
        
     Google pays Apple for the privilege to be the first.Another way to think it is that Google pays Apple, so that they don't create their own search engine.
    
    
        
     Doesn’t apple already have a search engine? Where do the results for Siri suggestions come from? (I really don’t know)Just this morning I searched “air purifier” in safari and it suggested the wirecutter “best air purifiers” article
    
    
    
        
     I actually don't think Apple could build a good search engine. They believe in privacy, and will be compared to engines that track you everywhere.Or, it might be possible. But their constraints will make it far harder to build even a comparable search.
    
    
    
        
      
 Apple is operating a search engine right under our noses, hiding behind Siri. Applebot is regularly crawling the web. They’re probably much further along toward a privacy-focused search product than any of us would know.   
    
        
      
 I thought Siri's web results were returned from tour chosen search engine in settings. Does it use its own search?   
    
        
      
 "Web results" are. "Siri Suggested Websites" and "Siri Knowledge" are not — those are fed by Applebot. "Applebot is the web crawler for Apple. Products like Siri and Spotlight Suggestions use Applebot." — Apple's support document about Applebot.   
    
        
      
 I've wondered why no one has bought wolfram alpha and used it to power knowledge bases. Certainly it seems cheaper for Apple to have down that as a start point than to start from scratch. Maybe it's too technical for most users?   
    
        
      
 DDG is already a comparable privacy first search engine. Apple would just need to buy them in they cared, but instead they just promote them.   
    
    
    
        
     "Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore."This bluntness does not go far enough. People do not change defaults, no matter how "easy" it may be to do so. A default is a pre-made choice by someone other than the consumer. There is no set-up process where the consumer makes a choice. The choice has already been made. Consumers do not make this choice. Even if they could, in practice they don't. That fact may seem insignificant but it is worth billions of dollars. If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job. In probably the most important one, Google pays Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine. It was estimated at $10 billion in 2020 and $15 billion in 2021.[1] Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does it. $15 billion is too much to pay for something that may or may not change. It does not change. It is money in the bank. 1. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
    
    
        
     &gt; If I am not mistaken, the current CEO of Google spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job. I mean you could spend two seconds to search and realize you were in fact mistaken before bothering to write "If I am not mistaken..."
    
    
        
     Sundar Pichai was responsible for the Chrome browser and Android operating system. [1]While the comment might be a little oversimplified, I think it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit. And there's no question that Chrome and Android are the two central planks of Google's search distribution monopoly with consumers, along with the Apple deal. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sundar-pichai-rose-to-be...
    
    
        
     &gt; While the comment might be a little oversimplified let's see: &gt; spent most of his time working on "default search engine" (or "default web browser") deals before taking the CEO job  even if we take your convenient assumption as correct ("it's reasonable to say that those deals would have fallen under his ambit"), it's still wouldn't be a true statement. But feel free to point out which part is true if we relax any more assumptions.
    
    
        
     Based on the public record, I don't think the original commenter's statement was unreasonable or mistaken. And they have provided extensive additional documentation on a separate comment supporting the assertion.Based on Pichai being the senior executive at Google responsible for Chrome browser and search defaults, as a matter of public record he held corporate responsibility for getting google search as the default search engine on as many devices as possible. You stated that the original commenter was mistaken with no supporting evidence and a high level of acrimony in your phrasing. I'd be interested to see supporting evidence for why you think the commenter was mistaken, in the context of the other resources they provided.
    
    
        
      
 Sure, if you're comfortable with your job being described as spending most of your time working on affiliate link deals, we can agree that's a good description of someone working on the Google toolbar plugin and then Chrome OS, Android, etc.   
    
        
     If anyone else was curious, Sundar Pichai had not worked on Search prior to becoming CEO, it seems:&gt; Pichai joined Google in 2004,[8] where he led the product management and innovation efforts for a suite of Google's client software products, including Google Chrome and Chrome OS, as well as being largely responsible for Google Drive. In addition, he went on to oversee the development of other applications such as Gmail and Google Maps. In 2010, Pichai also announced the open-sourcing of the new video codec VP8 by Google and introduced the new video format, WebM. The Chromebook was released in 2012. In 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversaw.
    
    
        
      
 Consumers don’t want to see the results of their search or find the answer to their question. They want the assurance of being told the answer by an authority. Google has tried to become that authority. It’s true, just Google it.   
    
        
     &gt; Defaults are effectively permanent settings. It does not matter how easy it is to change a default setting if practically no one ever does itThinking about when Firefox defaulted to Yahoo. I wonder what switch rate was.
    
    
    
        
     More about Pichai's role in making Google the default search on more computers and directing search traffic to Google, by any means necessary."Pichai started at Google leading product management for the Google toolbar, a critically strategic product that enabled default search queries on different web browsers to go through Google and allow them to track browsing behavior to power the AdWords targeting engine. At the time, Internet Explorer was the "installed by default" incumbent for many users, while Firefox was the alternative browser of choice." "Pichai identified a weakness in Google's strategy, and Chrome began as a defensive play against the established browsers to protect and grow Google's search business (which still generates much of the company's revenue)."  https://www.productplan.com/learn/sundar-pichai-product-mana...  "Sundar Pichai is the one who introduced the toolbar, which led to an increase in user searches. It was later merged with Chrome, which became the most used web browser in the world."  https://startuptalky.com/sundar-pichai-story/  ""Most people here didn't want us to do a browser, so it was a little bit stealthy. Once we had it up and running, I remember showing it to Larry and Sergey - and even then there was a lot of scepticism." But Pichai got his way: Chrome was released in 2008 and now accounts for nearly 60% of the market, according to NetMarketShare, while Internet Explorer languishes on less than 16%."  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-bo...  "You know how Google's the default search engine for many Web browsers? That was Pichai's work."  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11...  "Pichai's portfolio includes Chrome, Android, search, ad technology, maps, social,commerce and infrastructure."  https://web.archive.org/web/20150226215637/http//www.forbes....  "Ten years ago, the Indian-born Pichai, 42, was a product manager at Google, and his domain consisted of the search bar in the upper right corner of Web browsers. He then persuaded his bosses to wade into the browser wars with Chrome, which in time became the most popular browser on the Internet and led to the Chrome operating system that runs on a line of cheap laptops called Chromebooks." "Android runs on 1.2 billion devices around the world. It drives users to the company's hugely profitable search engine and the ads on its maps service. Google search and maps are available on phones made by Apple and Microsoft, too, but Google pays those companies referral fees. The more people use Android, the more Google can keep that revenue to itself." "Google distributes the latest versions free under the agreement that device makers will highlight profitable Google services-especially search and maps-while their own brands and services take a back seat." "Pichai joined the small team working on Google's search toolbar. It gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the dominant browsers at the time, easy access to Google search. He proposed that Google build its own browser and won the support of the company's co-founders, though he faced an objection from then-CEO Eric Schmidt, who thought that joining the browser wars would be an expensive distraction." "Rubin had introduced it, but Pichai created an interdisciplinary team with the search group, which had voice search technology and algorithms that could discern what information might be most important to users. "Sundar helped me to formalize a relationship," says Johanna Wright, the product manager who runs Google Now. "Because search and Android sit in two different buildings, we ended up doing a people swap.""  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-s...
    
    
        
      
 Thank you for putting that together. I knew there was some resistance to doing a browser internally, but it was a brilliant insight that long term Google would need control of distribution for its search results as it became more and more a mass consumer service, especially after becoming ads-focused and moving toward more mainstream users, and with the world moving to mobile after the iPhone launched.   
    
        
      
 Just tried https://andisearch.com/ and I like it. Felt like a fresh look on results instead of the same old SEO ones. For example, searched for a few Java queries and found very informative website/results that weren't dominated by Bealdung. Searched for "soccer scores", "chelsea FC", "prince andrew", "WP export" and found things that would never have been on Google's first page, but were excellent returns. Nice work.   
    
        
      
 Thank you. While I don't want to distract from the topic here, I do really appreciate your feedback and you trying it out, and would love to talk more if you'd like to reach out! Speaking generally, the world needs more people working on search, and I think there is a lot of room for completely new approaches.   
    
        
      
 I'm pleasantly surprised by the high quality of your top results. That shows the search algorithms (whatever your choice was) are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted. As a fellow software engineer I'm curious about your stack and size of your operations. Are you blogging about this somewhere? You definitely should!   
    
        
     &gt; That shows the search algorithms ... are good enough and Google can be eventually disruptedI doubt this. I'm guessing that 90% of Google Search's development effort is concentrated on defeating SEO, and as soon as a new competitor succeeds well enough to attract SEO attention, their results will suddenly turn to custard. The competitor then has to combat the extremely sophisticated SEO practises developed against Google over the years. This is likely to be an even bigger barrier to disruption than building market share against Google.
    
    
        
     You're assuming here that Google's primary interest is consumers, but their paying customers are the advertisers. The reality is that the worse the organic results are, the more likely a user is to click on the ads instead, and that's how Google makes money.At the least that's a perverse incentive, and at worst it's a corrupting influence. Whether it is conscious or not, Google does better financially when there is more SEO spam in results. That's why the better Google does financially, the worse the search results are getting.
    
    
        
     I doubt this very much myself too! I little wishful thinking to be honest.However you're arguing as if new competitors had to monetize the same way Google does and that's not the only game available. Imagine a competitor that doesn't monetize clicks but works on donations (like wikipedia does). If results are higher quality than Google's the users will follow. Or maybe a search engine that promotes a particular product like a CRM tool for example. Disruption typically doesn't come in obvious ways or else someone else would have done it (including Google and its gazillion dollars).
    
    
        
      
 Thank you. I appreciate that very much. We plan to share on HN how we've built it and how it works, and get as much feedback as we can. That really needs its own thread, and I'm conscious of not getting off-topic or promotional here because this is such an interesting thread already, and it wasn't my intention to distract from that because this is one of the big problems in the world right now. Plus, to be honest, we have a few things that are broken and that we're working to fix! So to answer your question, yes! We hear the feedback asking us to share more, and we're going to get a new release up and share with HN soon. And sincerely, thanks for the encouragement to do that. We think it will be interesting to the community here.   
    
        
     I’m impressed! I did a search for ‘Oregon coast gardening’ and bunch of indie sites I’d not see before popped up. Some blogs too!!!!!! Old school.Why don’t you do a show hn so we can have a proper thread I’d love to learn more about the decision making of the AI.
    
    
        
     Hey thank you. Seriously I appreciate the feedback and encouragement to share Andi with HN. I know there have been a few comments and questions, even though I'm trying to not get off-topic because this is such an interesting thread. You're absolutely right that this needs it's own thread where we can answer questions properly.So we're definitely planning to share what we're building with the community here soon. Andi's very much an alpha and a few things are broken, but we're working on a new release that fixes them, and then we're going to share it and learn as much as we can from the feedback and wisdom here.
    
    
        
      
 "And I" or "Andy" in terms of pronunciation? I wanted to also mention how impressed I was with the results, well done!   
    
    
        
      
 I really like it too, will keep on testing.Small bug I found:   use the "go" command (e.g. go reddit)
 close the newly opened tab (e.g. reddit)
 click "Learn more about me"
 click the top left icon (Andi)
 =&gt; goes directly to reddit.com
 
EDIT: formatting   
    
        
     Thank you! And ugh! I thought we fixed that bug. On it :)One of the secrets with Google is search is that the top searches aren't searches at all. Number one search on google? "facebook" - it's people navigating. So the idea behind that is to let people navigate directly when they want to go somewhere specific, like "go youtube cute cats".
    
    
    
        
      
 Without wanting to go off topic here, may I ask what sort of error did you get? All looks fine from here, although it is an alpha. If you were happy to reach out I can try to help figure it out with you.   
    
        
     Secure Connection Failed: An error occurred during a connection to andisearch.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR. Also Firefox is flagging it as "Not Secure" in the address bar.Interestingly, once I turned off my VPN, it works again, Firefox doesn't display the message either. Note that other web pages work fine on the VPN. update: It work's with MozillaVPN, but not with my University's VPN. Perhaps UC Davis has flagged it from within their firewall.
    
    
        
      
 That's weird. The endpoints are on Amazon Cloudfront, so possibly uni VPN didn't like the CDN it is on.   
    
        
      
 Also, I set it as my default search engine for a trial since my first few searches went well. Is there a place to submit bug reports?   
    
        
      
 Oh awesome, thank you! Yes just say "/bug" any time and tick the little box to attach details (we don't see what searches are so that let's us know) or just hop on our Discord from Contact Us. We really appreciate you trying it out. It is an alpha and we have lots of work to do, especially performance. I've been trying not to go off topic from the conversation here but wanted to answer your direct question, but we can chat more directly.   
    
        
     I love the HN view option...mostly because I find that form so easy to scan.I've conducted a number of professional searches about neuroscience, obscure R packages, topics on D&amp;D and Pathfinder, and it has done exceptionally well. The one thing my obscure demographic would love is a replacement for Google Scholar, which I use all the time.
    
    
        
     I love the HN view too - it is compact, efficient and information dense. I think it works well for search results. And I love HN so it seemed like a neat homage :)Thank you for trying it out and the great feedback too. There hasn't been too much discussion here about Google Scholar, but better research and academic results is something I hear a lot of people talk about as a growing problem.
    
    
        
     Very cool effort but just the first thing I tried which is a mega common search for everyone. "Denver weather."Took a while to load, and only gave me short text of current conditions. When I did "denver weather forecast" it gave a bit more and showed results on the right from Wolfram and others but they don't tell me anything. Wolfram is current conditions and wind tomorrow. Next one just meta description for weather underground. It's going to snow tomorrow. That's what people are searching for. Google gets this stuff and makes that info super visually accessible. I really don't get the hate on their search quality. If it has gone down I haven't experienced this outside of mega spam things like recipes. But I still experience the black magic of typing in some vague thing you are trying to remember and somehow they know what it is.
    
    
        
     I've been trying not to be off-topic or self-promotional on this thread because it has so much other great discussion, and it needs a separate thread, but I wanted to answer your question quickly. Thanks sincerely for the feedback and for trying it out. We'd really love to chat more with you about this if you're open to it. The project is still an alpha and we have lots of work to do. We outline some of the good and bad things on our About page, including that it's weak at local searches (like weather or businesses or localizing to region) and there is too much spam in product reviews and ecommerce especially.My own feeling is that the spam and ad problem (and therefore actual result quality) on Google is at its worst for categories like finance, health and travel. Commercial promotion has really taken over there. For many people, ads are essentially spam when they take over the entire screen of results (try, say, "best home loans in the US"). There is huge variation though. Some searches are still pure. Thanks again and please feel welcome to reach out to chat more about this!
    
    
        
      There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers. I disagree. Two to three years ago I could get more what I wanted in a complex search once I tuned it properly. So Google had a twenty year run of good and useful searches. Google also worked to strong arm their monopoly, yes. But I claim they still served some quality after that. It's not that unusual for a monopoly built on quality to maintain their quality for a period of time after it achieves that monopoly status - institutional standards die but they can die over time.
    
    
        
     &gt; almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore...Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching GoogleI don't disagree with this as a fact, but I think there are a lot of things that work this way that aren't actually monopolies in the competition-preventing sense. If I wanted to launch a new breakfast cereal, getting my product into grocery stores would be one of the major challenges of starting that business. Competition for shelf space is a core concern of a lot of consumables. This definitely creates a lot of stickiness and barriers, and that comes with its share of downsides, but there are also good reasons that distribution systems work the way they do. Transaction costs are important.
    
    
        
     I don't think competition for shelf space is the right analogy here. Perhaps for Apps within the App Store you could argue that. But when there are only two mobile operating systems with meaningful market share, and when they make it impossible to change to a new search engine at all, and the results all come from only two sources (Google or Bing) that's a straight monopoly over distribution.It's a similar situation with the App Stores also. They are monopolies. We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.
    
    
        
     &gt; We've gone from a world of personal computing where software was a free market with open choices, to a closed and proprietary world where there is only one available source of software.That’s true but at the same time I think most people are pretty happy with it. HN readers aren’t typical in this regard. I’ve been writing software as my job since the mid-80’s and it’s only been in the past 4 or 5 years where I realized that I’m finally pretty happy with the tech I use day-to-day. If I had any complaint it would be that app stores have made software too inexpensive. When I look at something like Procreate which I think cost something like $10, I’m blown away. This can’t be sustainable.
    
    
        
     You have a point but shelf space is physically limited. Online real estate is not so limited. In my country there is reasonably healthy competition between supermarkets. Supermarkets do have self-branded products but they don't cross-sell competitors self-branded products.Here we have Apple with Google and Bing on their shelves. Microsoft have Bing and Google on their shelves. And Google have Goggle or Bing. Is that healthy or an oligopoly?
    
    
        
     &gt; Online real estate is not so limited.It's limited. It's limited by our attention spans. There's a reason web designers call specific pages "valuable real estate". For example Google's search page, the one with the input, is probably the most valuable web real estate in the world, closely followed by the first page of results once you've typed your query and hit Enter. I'm willing to bet $100 that the second page of results probably gets less than 1000th the hits the first one gets. Heck, make that 1 millionth of the hits the first results page gets.
    
    
        
     That's silly. Everything is limited by the scarcity of human attention spans, not just websites.Shelf space refers to the market with which someone competes, not whether people are thinking of a candy bar or finding a bathroom or a facebook post. Your argument commits survivor bias because it's ignoring the millions of other websites that exist and are being used. Being popular does not mean something is a monopoly, nor does it mean there's limited shelf space. Following your example, if Google spammed Pixel ads on it's home page, the page would become less popular. One of the reasons it became so popular was it's strict adherence to focusing on utility.
    
    
        
     If a webpage doesn't show up on Google, it might as well not exist for most practical purposes.Regardless of why exactly this is the case, it's not a healthy state of affairs.
    
    
        
      
 Even if true, what does that have to do with shelf space? Search results do not constitute the internet, and there are many more search engines than just Google.   
    
        
     And then there's the problem of the difference between your cereal and the big ones aren't going to be big because cereal is a finished art. The same with search. My outcomes using bing or google are almost the same. The reality is a lot of good conversation is locked within social media discussions and reddit is the only one that allows it all to be public by default, hence google + reddit. We're moving to walled gardens and most of them will simply keep google out. Google is probably as good as it can be, but it just doesn't have access to discussions in places like private facebook groups, discord, etc.Not to mention reddit is terrible outside of tech concerns. It leans conservative, young, male, and white. As a woman, contributing there is an invitation for harassment. Even when I don't contribute I do things like research cars to buy only to see forums dominated by "car guys" who mock safety standards, focus only on performance and the "get laid" aspect of cars, and are dismissive towards groups like "soccer moms." Well, I'm a soccer mom and felt wholly unwelcome in those communities and the advice there is actually terrible advice for parents wanting to buy cars. Then there's a whole religion on gaming be it consoles vs consoles or vs pcs, or publishers or franchises and just endless tribalism. Politics is an absolute nightmare as you can imagine. The savvy reader will say "well you have to know how to sort the comments a special way and never visit the sub you want but the 'true' version of the sub you want, etc" which is a million times more hostile to non-technical people than scrolling past some google ads and finding an article about what they want from a reputable newpaper or consumer reports. Reddit is just too wild west to be a google replacement. Worse, the good content is almost impossible to find. Google weighs popular discussions more than recent ones so it keeps giving me discussions from many years ago, even if I try to put the year in the search box. It has no idea how to crawl reddit and make it digestible for us and the reddit leadership want nothing to do with google it seems, for capitalistic reasons of keeping out a potential competitor and having their search be really good "any day now." Posting to reddit is its own kind of nightmare, full of rules per sub, each different and with an algo that will decide if your question gets any visibility, often only getting mean spirited comments in return, if not harassment. For as far as facebook has fallen, I can still visit my town or neighborhood group and ask people what cars they like and get something of a normal discussion. At reddit, I'll be asked for nudes or just mocked/gatekept. If anything if google is an old man at web 1.0 then reddit is an old man at web 2.0. I suspect google with outlast reddit as reddit looks primed to be overtaken, a bit like how myspace, slashdot and digg looked like unstoppable juggernauts during their time. Its "manboy" culture and its super hostile default subs and everyday misogyny, transphobia, and racism scare normal people away. Forums have always been the seedy underbelly of the internet but reddit is seemingly proud of being seedy, with spez coming out to say that he welcomes covid disinformation when reddit was recently called out about how its become the home of covid conspiracy theories. If reddit was publicly traded and you asked me between google and reddit, I'd say buy google 100%. I think we'll be reading a lot more "what happened to reddit" articles in the near future, not "what happened to google" articles. Reddit becomes more toxic over time and that's just advertiser poison. Remember, it happily was the home of "jailbait" subs showing sexualized photos of children and "creepshots" showing non-consensual photos of random women until CNN called them out. If there was no call out, then spez would happily be selling those subs as points of pride and growth. "Reddit is the new google" narratives are very echo-chambery, shortsighted, and highly questionable. I think it forever remains this cesspool that chases away advertisers while Google continues to adapt to a new online world and continues to be vastly profitable. Meanwhile, Reddit has yet to make a profit.
    
    
        
     Every time I hear this "Reddit is conservative-biased" I wonder if people are living in the same reality as I am. I just checked /r/all, the first political post is related to the Canadian trucker protest of which support is broadly split down the political divide. Top voted posts there slide as I expected, generally on the left-aligned component against the protests. The same, at least in my experience, applies to all political topics on reddit.Hell, Bernie, and then Biden were both top of reddit during the elections. In what way is that indicative of a "conservative leaning" on reddit. I'll give you young and male, but conservative? You've got to be pulling my leg here.
    
    
        
     /r/all is just a spam of new items, not a view of its culture.It was the largest Donald Trump fan site in the world (/r/thedonald before it was shut down for being so big its brigading tactics were damaging the site) and now /r/conservative takes that role. Before it was the biggest Ron Paul fan site. Its deeply pro-guns in nearly every comment section and any mention of Hillary or AOC is an invitation for angry comments and downvotes. Random subs are full of transphobic content and misogyny is near everywhere. /r/conspiracy is a right-wing paradise catering to right wing views. You cannot talk about money or finance without being yelled at about how bad fiat and the fed are, which are right-wing talking points. You can't have a covid discussion without an army of covid skeptics yelling at everyone. You can't discuss police brutality without dishonest "but both sides" types full of racist dog whistles. Its absolutely right leaning and token "liberal" positions like legal pot or better healthcare doesn't really change that. I know GOP voters with those positions but they always vote GOP for culture-war related reasons. Not to mention, being able to do drugs in your home is really neither liberal or conservative, its just in the USA only the liberal party is making any effort to make that happen. Covid skepticism, which spez defends, is extremely coded right-wing, so even leadership acknowledges who reddit users really are. The few liberal and feminist spaces that exist on reddit have draconian mod rules because of the constant brigading and some of them just give up and lock discussions because mods are exhausted and tired of fighting it. Just running a liberal or feminist or queer sub is a lot of work because reddit conservatives are constantly bridaging. This is not the sign of a liberal community. I mod a few subs and its just a nightmare out there. Just keeping conservatives from trolling and fighting with everyone is a big job. If you see "liberalism" its because the mods are keeping the everyday redditors away and trying to keep up the values and themes of that specific sub and its relatively tiny audience compared to the conservative majority. Cherry picking AI spammed Bernie posts doesn't change the culture in the comments or what visitors receive when they post. I'm in a lot of Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc spaces and I can guarantee you reddit is absolutely nothing like those spaces. Also you are taking my comment out of context, not only is reddit conservative, but as a hypothetic competitor to google its extremely conservative. I can google for things without being hit with Ron/Rand Paul narratives, Trump worship, pro-gun narratives, covid skepticism, transphobia, or racist dog whistles. So just the idea that Reddit is as welcoming as a Google search is very, very questionable. Google will transparently present you ads. Reddit will drown you in propaganda, culture war politics, and harassment. As the meme says, we are not the same.
    
    
        
     /r/all sorted by hot is items roughly sorted by popularity. Only if you sort by new, would it be a flood of contents by time.We can take a quick survey of /r/all sorted by "hot" as of this moment. The very first post I see with AoC is literally this: """AOC tells Joe Biden: Cancel more student loans to have "any chance" in 2022""" The top posts? All in support. Where is the dominant conservative force that warps conversation around it. HermanCainAward, literally a subreddit celebrating the deaths of the unvaccinated tops all regularly. How the hell is that "covid skeptic right dominant"? Is your idea of "reddit is conservative" that reddit hosts conservative communities at all? Even if they're smaller than the left-aligned communities there? EDIT: Some other quick statistics: Size of /r/conservative: 923k Size of /r/lgbt: 864k Size of /r/hermancainaward: 500k The "lol antivaxxers died" community is literally half the size of the largest conservative subreddit. The LGBT subreddit is the same size as OP's bugbear /r/conservative. The very much Dem supporting /r/politics is an order of magnitude larger than either of those, at 8 MILLION subscribers.
    
    
        
     Yeah, I was waiting for this comment. The OP you're responding to is way way WAY overexagerating the opinions of the body politic of reddit.Reddit is so large that having a potent conservative force is an inevitability - and much as we don't want to admit, for all the nastyness that goes on there, it's still a space that forces conservatives to be relatively speaking on "good behavior" (imagine if gab/voat/parler successfully displaced reddit), and more recently also forces their ideology to be heavily moderated (as in, to become more moderate), and watered down. Also LOL at criticism of the car community for being bad at recommending SUVs. Reddits car enthusiast community is made up of people whose favorite car by and large is the Miata. Is the Miata a good car for a soccer mom? No. Is the Miata the car of dudebro conservatives? Uh, HELL NO! I hate to say it, but sorry Karen, Reddit is for your son, not you.
    
    
        
     My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.Your loathing (for lack of a better term) of the discourse on Reddit has me wondering if the differences I perceive between our political and cultural tolerance stems from being on opposite sides of a few gnostic / agnostic boundaries, or if the difference between our demographic pigeon holes has spared me orders of magnitude of relative grief, allowing me the additional advantage of getting less overwhelmed by ambient asshattery. I will readily admit that the latter could easily lead to the former; I guess I wonder if the 2 —&gt; 1 causal order holds overwhelmingly in practice, and how to satisfactorily determine that in a way that manages to be honest, systematic, and compassionate.
    
    
        
     &gt;My suspicion is that any broadly successful community aggregator will have enough people holding belligerent, incompatible views, that one could never feel truly safe participating there.I'm of the opinion that this is fine. Rather, the better approach here might be instead gatekeeping and exclusivity. Now, before you tear my head off for that, let me elaborate a bit. Much of the issues of existing communities, seem to me to stem from an inability to deal with scale. A single heretic isn't a problem, but when the heretics outnumber the believers, they can then proceed to dominate the community. One potential solution I've wondered about is entry-restrictions and finer grained restrictions on permissions for a community. For instance, a community might be public view but member-only for posts/comments, with invite-only membership. Or perhaps memberships have to be approved by N randomly selected members. The catch of course, is that what I propose is also yet another contributor to the death of the open internet, much like discord is doing.
    
    
        
      
 Reddit is not a community; individual subreddits are. There are those that are Democratic, liberal, feminist, queer, socialist, etc.   
    
        
      
 Reddit as a whole is absolutely a community and the default subs and the comments in them reflect that. Its also one that brigades a lot into other subs, so there's a "real reddit" you see and its absolutely right-leaning.   
    
        
      
 I've changed my default search engine to Bing for a while. Before I did that, I did compare the results with Google search and found that the clickbait websites that keep pissing me off are shown only by Google search. Those content farm sites have been on Google search as the top results for years to the extent I think it literally cancels any advantage Google search provides.   
    
        
      
 “…almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore”? 6-8 quality leads in the last 14 days (ave. sale at $3,200) on less than $220 spent on ads begs to differ with you. We’ve only started advertising the last two weeks. We’ve had calls and form submissions _all_ from Google and we only launched our site roughly 45 days ago. I’m not a Google fanboy and I think Search does need an overhaul but people are mostly definitely using Google Search. Another client of mine gets 8-12 new customers per month all from Google searches and she doesn’t spend a dime on Google.   
    
        
      
 In many ways I think that supports my comment. People use Google search because it's the default and a monopoly, and it has a total monopoly on search ads as a result. But that is not a choice that consumers consciously make to go and use it. It's pre-installed as the only easily accessible default on their phones and computers, and no one ever thinks about what search engine they use or has chosen to use it. If you buy an Apple or Android phone, your search engine is Google, and you just assume it is the only search engine. It's great that it gets good results for your ad spend for you. That's why Google continues to set new records for revenue. Advertisers like you are their true customers. And the people searching are the product being sold.   
    
        
      
 They were not saying "nobody uses Google search" but rather that people were not consciously choosing to use it over other services, but using it because it is the default on virtually every device and browser, despite the fact that the majority of the results were ads. The fact that people are clicking on your ads doesn't exactly disprove that hypothesis.   
    
        
     Is there a reason why you've chosen the chat style interface vs the standard search box at the top and results at the bottom layout?This is not a comment on the search results itself - always appreciate the efforts to break out of the standard google results and surface other sources, but I found the interface confusing and the previews were also taking up a lot of space. A compact view would be better - or giving the option to turn the previews on / off.
    
    
        
     Thanks for trying it out. I don't want to take to discussion too off topic, but if I can try to answer in general terms, I think that it is not just that the search results on Google have been getting worse, the user experience has been too. There has been very little real innovation in how search works in the last 20 years, so it is good to try new approaches.With different views like compact vs visual, our feeling is that it's good to give people choices. If you get chance on desktop with Andi, try a search and then under Search Results, click "Change View", and try some of the other views. List view gives straight compact text results, and there is a Hacker view that presents results in the same information dense view as HN. That's my favorite. There is even a view Goggles that has a similar format to Google circa 2000 :) I'd love to chat more with you about this, and it is a great topic for when we share what we're building in its own thread here. Just based on feedback, we have two fairly passionate groups of early users on this topic - some love the conversational interface and others just want it to look like Google. So the approach we're taking is to give people choice.
    
    
        
     "almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore"May I ask how you arrived at this observation? This is the first time I am hearing this. I know of NO ONE who uses any other search engine. The term "Googled" is not yet a proxy for other search sites.
    
    
        
     People use Google because it's what comes installed on their phones and computers when they first turn them on, and they never actively choose it. So while everyone uses it, few consumers make an active choice to use it. From talking to users a lot, many just assume it's the only option - as you say, Google has become synonymous with search in the same way Xerox became a word for photocopying.Consumers use Google because it's the default and the only visible option when they turn their phones on. Unfortunately, that's what a monopoly on distribution looks like. People no longer make a choice and don't even realize they have one.
    
    
        
     I would think that there'd be an online opportunity for a search engine that only searches humanly curated sites. Those sites would be ones that have quality information rather than spam. Some obvious examples - wikipedia, reddit, hackernews, public domain books, etc.It's easy to game an algorithm, but hard to game a human - humans know garbage when they see it. As an aside, whenever I get a prescription, included with it is a dense two page sheet of detailed information about the drug. I see nothing like that online with a search. Why is this sort of thing not online?
    
    
        
      
 I would have gotten so excited about something like that 20 years ago, I would have yelled “Yahoo!” from the top of my lungs.   
    
        
     Maybe Yahoo's time has come again! Maybe Google's decline started when they no longer had competition from Yahoo?The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it. One way might be the users pay for it, either per-search or per-month. This way the incentives to provide good search results align with the interests of the people doing the searching, not the people being searched. The people who want to be searched would have an incentive to make a quality site that the search service would believe would please their customers. I can think of people willing to pay for quality searches - professionals looking for things they need, like programmers, lawyers, researchers, etc.
    
    
        
     &gt;The interesting thing would be coming up with a sustainable business model for it.Even though I loathe ads, I wouldn't mind one simple, clearly designated ad spawned from keywords in the search. No tracking and no cross site linking. No result promoting, etc... And yes, I believe that the current iteration of the web requires human moderation to be usefully searched.
    
    
    
        
     Honestly, if we're going to go old school, I vote Dogpile.Let's start pitting the searches against each other again.
    
    
        
      
 At least France and Belgium have public websites with the information sheets of all authorized drugs. I think at least the French one generally comes up in the first results on Google (when searching from a French connection).   
    
    
        
      
 pretty much what we're building at breezethat.com -- currently launching about one topic / week, and opening door soon so others can curate / moderate a topic   
    
        
      
 Humans can also game systems to promote their garbage if they care to. Spammers can hire a click farm to privilege garbage results. Spammers and scammers seem to see enough returns to invest in ways to game the internet’s openness. There would need to be some kind of trust system to make the curation trustworthy.   
    
    
        
      
 I’m not sure what you’re talking about wrt prescriptions. I just googled “diazepam” and got all the information on my pharmacy insert, and more. And often, more clearly presented.   
    
        
      
 Just tried andisearch and am extremely impressed. It has so far handled all queries I have thrown at it better than brave search and DDG. Will continue to experiment, best of luck and awesome work!   
    
        
      
 Thank you! I really do sincerely appreciate that. If you'd like to, please reach out to us there because we'd love to chat more. It wasn't my intention to take the discussion off-topic here because this thread is so incredibly interesting, but at the same time it's super encouraging to see the unprompted feedback and questions, and we'll share what we're doing properly on HN soon so we can address questions properly.   
    
        
     Firefox on Linux Mint was pointing at something else for a while (DDG I think? Bing? I don't recall).I gave up after a few weeks and had to switch it back to Google. Google's not perfect - it's never been perfect, it was just better than the alternatives - but it's still less bad than others.
    
    
        
     I might be wrong, but they also have a moat I'm the sheer amount of compute required to trawl through the internet?I mean maybe they was true and now they don't... But yeah good luck!
    
    
        
      
 Distribution will come if the product is better, but it is a hard problem. I try every new search engine I can and they are always worse/slower than google.   
    
        
      
 I have tried using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, but Firefox changed it back to Google with every update, so eventually I just gave up on that endeavor.   
    
        
      
 That's really strange, I've got it set as the default in Firefox on 3 different computers (2 mac 1 windows) and it's stayed the default over several updates. I think something might be wrong with your computer?   
    
        
     I guess.With the current Mozilla leadership it never even occurred to me that it could be a bug. I just assumed that it was something they do on purpose to get more money from Google.
    
    
        
      
 I'll echo that what you are experiencing isn't normal. I've had DDG as my default for a while and it's been preserved throughout updates.   
    
        
     &gt;Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymoreDo you have anything substantive to support this? I highly doubt it is true given the fact that the verb "to google" literally means "to search the internet".
    
    
        
      
 I think you missed the point here -- people synonymize googling with searching and therefore aren't choosing to google -- they're choosing to search but ending up using google despite having made no conscious effort to do so (it's just there).   
    
        
     Google is the default search on the vast majority of phones and desktop browsers by default.People don't change their search engine from something else to Google, because it is already the default search engine on the devices they buy and the web browsers they use. So people do not make a conscious choice to use Google. The vast majority make no choice at all. Google is synonymous with search because it is already the search engine on their phones and computers. They are simply never asked which search engine they want to use. Most consumers have no idea that you can even change your search engine. After talking with hundreds of users, they find it's either impossible to change (iPhone/MacOS) or too hard (Chrome). If you're Duck Duck Go or Bing, at least you're in a very limited dropdown list if someone does want to try something else. If you're a new search engine startup, you're not an option at all.
    
    
        
      
 Your argument supports the original poster. It is no longer a conscious choice, "Do I search for this via Google? Maybe I should use Bing? What about DuckDuckGo?", it is, "Oh, lemme Google that".   
    
        
     the other day, on HN i mentioned i was trying to find some relevant meme on DDG, and someone said "try googling 'foo bar baz'" and i thought it was funny.I don't use google search if i can avoid it. I'll try 3 others first, and generally just give up. Google doesn't deserve any money.
    
    
        
     &gt; It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.There are five (very simply accessible) different choices for Safari on iOS. But if you switch to iCabMobile on iOS there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.
    
    
        
     I think it's reasonable to point out that is not something most consumers are going to be able to do. The only meaningful search engine choice is that available within Safari. And you did install another App, they still aren't used from the system search on iOS, or from Safari itself.I think you might as well be asking regular consumers to root their device so they can use whatever Apps from outside the App Store, or whatever search engine they want. Also, even for a technical user, there is simply no way on an iPhone to change to a new search engine not already on a tiny list, and from talking with hundreds of consumers, I have not talked with a single non-technical person who could work out themselves how to change their Safari search engine to even one of the 5 limited choices, let alone a new option.
    
    
    
        
      
 Unfortunately, installing an App doesn't let you change the system-wide search on iOS (or Safari browser), so rooting the device would be the only real way. My intended point is that if you're a consumer trying to change your search engine to a new option on an iPhone, there is no way to do it.   
    
        
      
 Do you have a stake in this iCabMobile project? You were spamming its name 35 days ago and you're doing so again here.   
    
        
     &gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.Tons of people don't, though. They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water, even if they're tugging and trying to go in the completely wrong direction. Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people', and that means striving for fixing the complete word soup of search results people type in.
    
    
        
     A single mediocre experience optimized to work ‘most of the time’ for ‘most people’ is quite contrary to the narrative that has made Google such tremendous amounts of money (“let us surveil you so that you can have a more personalized experience”) though, isn’t it?Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for if their past behavior suggests that they mean what they type? Couldn’t the “search only for &lt;exact query&gt;“ option be a very good data point on making that determination automatically, or enabling a user setting for “give me exact results based on what I actually typed by default”? It seems possible to me that this behavior has more to do with the value of ads for “big” keywords than with (poorly) inferring user intent.
    
    
        
     I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great. Yeah, putting you into a male or female bucket, parent or child, homeowner or renter, that's worth a little bit. But, to find out your name and address and search history and how long your last bowel movement took, just to deliver an ad that's theoretically hyper-optimized to make you buy something... I just don't believe it.I don't believe that it's worth anything near what they are charging for it, except perhaps in the case of politics, which has always been an extremely efficient use of money. And even then, it's not worth a tiny fraction of the real cost it has to society.
    
    
        
     &gt; personalization just isn't that greatData analytics truly feels like a bubble. Netflix has achieved the dream of movie studios going back more than a century now. They have the talent, the money, and more than two decades of data. Netflix knows what you watch, when you stop watching, how often you watch, which movie covers work best. And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones. Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire. HBO and AMC are running laps around Netflix. Meanwhile, Netflix is making live action Cowboy Bebop and cancelling it before people even know it existed. I'm really curious what the data said about funding that particular project. On one hand, you have the cult following of the anime that will absolutely tear a live action version to shreds. On the other hand, you have to convince the uninitiated into viewing a remake of 23 year old anime. Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line. Oh, and, their top 10 feature is currently the biggest recommendation feature on their site. And it's not even personalized! If that's not a complete admission of defeat I don't know what is.
    
    
        
     Netflix has produced a lot of fairly solid content. Not at the level of the all-time great prestige TV shows like the ones you mentioned, but enough to keep a lot of subscribers happy for long periods of time at an accessible price. House of Cards (at least until the Kevin Spacey scandal blew up), Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, etc are a few that come to mind that I watched and enjoyed.I think Netflix has two big issues. The first is the way they drop seasons all at once prevents the natural cycle of pre-episode hype, post-episode interviews, speculation and leaks, fan anticipation, fan arguments (ship wars, etc), etc. Fan culture can't develop around this content as easily because there's never any breathing space for fans to collectively sit with the story so far. The shows that become a cultural force like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones need us to keep coming back to the conversation every week. They have us talking about what happened last week and will happen this week with our colleagues at work and around the dinner table. How can these Netflix IPs enter stable orbit in the cultural zeitgeist when they're once-a-year events? It devalues the work, positioning it more like a movie that you watch and then forget rather than a story you become invested in over a long period of time. Full season drops also allow people to binge a whole season of content for a single month's subscription and then immediately churn (ask me how I know). I assume they have some data-driven reasons for doing this, but it makes absolutely no sense to me. Besides that, I think they should put more wood behind fewer arrows. They've developed a reputation for aggressively cancelling smaller shows with passionate followings which makes a lot of people not even want to bother until something has become an established mainstream success. I think of them now as the Google of content-creation, putting out a lot of solid (but not amazing) products and then cancelling them once people start to grow attached.
    
    
        
      
 Wrote something similar before: 
"The writing has been on the wall for some time:
1. Grading system changed from 1-5 to 1-2 (thumbs up/down). They thought that the users where full of crap when rating. I do believe some bosses just looked "bad" when buying in the next Adam Sandler movie. This started a cozy culture where no one in Netflix was wrong. Recommendation engine becomes comically bad, even with the best and the brightest.
2. They started to buy everything under the sun. South park made an episode about it even. All the comedians got their own stand up specials. It was now way easier to get a top score (thumbs up). Bosses where happy.
3. As they no longer focuses on quality which they no longer can measure (measuring time watched and churn is not that useful!), they start to strive for quantity. Which is expensive, very expensive.
I guess that in the next decade Netflix will become the next Comcast and cost 35 USD per month, and it all started in an innocent change to the grading system."   
    
        
     &gt; Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits.That's not how the entertainment business works. If I had to guess, Netflix's data-driven approach to content production is like card-counting in blackjack. It only gives them a slight edge on the house. A net positive outcome over hundreds or thousands of hands but offering no guarantee over the outcome of any single hand. &gt; HBO and AMC are running laps around Netflix Netflix did win the most Emmys in 2021.[1] And they only started producing original content in 2013 or so. That's pretty good. 1. https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/netflix-emmys-the-crown-que...
    
    
        
     &gt; Then there is the personalization. The fact that there is a meme about spending more time browsing the Netflix catalog than watching content tells you everything you need to know about how little people trust Netflix recommendations. Their new "top 10" feature is just depressing most of the time. It looks like a list of ten random DVDs in the bargain bin near the Walmart checkout line.They may also be optimizing for revenues as opposed to recommendation quality (homegrown content being cheaper than licensed)
    
    
        
     Part of this might just be account switching issues though. If I’m watching for myself I can usually find what I want quickly. The problem comes when I’m trying to browse with my wife to find something we can both live with. At best it gives the my preferences and the Union of me + wife’s preferences (and vice versa on her account.) But what we’d really want is a separate recommendation feed that shows the intercept of me + wife’s preferences.But most people are lazy and won’t account switch for different contexts like that anyway, so there’s just no way they can keep the profile data as clean as it needs to be for a television.
    
    
        
     Netflix is not recommending what they think you'll like, they are recommending what they want you to watch. Once you're a subscriber, they want to keep you there as cheaply as possible.This is exactly what their data analytics has told them to do. Have a few popular, quality tv shows with star-studded casts as loss-leaders to bring in new viewers. Otherwise the model is to produce and recommend the shows that get them the most eyeballs per dollar; the bare-minimum to keep their subscribers there: - Stand up specials are dirt-cheap, quite popular, and provide never-ending variety. - Ditto with 'reality' shows, bake-offs, make-offs, expose documentaries, etc. - Old sitcoms and b-movies that have a proven re-watch-rate. Throw in a handful of first seasons to keep the FOMO up, and you've got a captive audience on the cheap. Maybe one or two will catch on and become the next loss-leaders. They may not have the quality shows that are 'running laps around' HBO and AMC, but by any of the metrics Netflix cares about they are simply running laps around HBO, AMC and everyone else.
    
    
        
     &gt;And yet, it's hard to look at Netflix as anything more than a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Netflix should be putting out nothing but hits. A dozen Breaking Bads or Game of Thrones.I don't follow this argument. Knowing what people like has very little to do with the quality of original creative content; surely you don't expect Goodreads to put out Shakespearean novels, or Spotify to be producing original hits on par with the Rolling Stones? Should ESPN have better pro sports scouting and coaching talent than the professional leagues? Knowing what people like, however, _does_ have to do quite a bit with selling those people a product - which Netflix just reported 15% YoY growth to $7.7B yearly revenue, they're clearly very successful to this end. I think you actually have it backwards - if anything, Netflix represents a total fulfillment of the promises of data analytics and personalization. Despite mediocre original content, this is a $200B company with 200M subscribers growing revenues by double digits two decades after IPO. If Netflix paid $450k+ salaries to screenwriters instead of engineers, you'd very likely get better movies on a worse streaming platform. And when Netflix has shelled out for Hollywood talent, like Mindhunter which has David Fincher and Charlize Theron, the results are quite good. Regardless, to take the fact that Netflix pays for premium engineering and analytics talent, but does not pay for premium filmmaking talent, and then spin that fact into Netflix being "a total failure of the promises of data analytics and personalization" is a questionable criticism.
    
    
        
      
 Strong comment. I agree completely with your negative assessment of the “value” of consumer habits to optimize Netflix recommendation. In my own case I feel trapped in a very shallow local minimum. Yes I watched a revenge flick or two but now I am type-cast for life.   
    
        
     Netflix really doesn't need to produce something like the wire or mad men or breaking bad. There's no reason to make a show that appeals strongly to 70% of the market when they could make 70 shows that 1% of the market is fanatical about. They don't have only one channel that competes for content and they don't seem budget limited.Ironically, it seems like AmazonPrime is far better at that. As for then top ten being bottom barrel stuff, I think you overestimate how popular mad men was vs. something like king of queens. I will say, Netflix seems to fail in many cases, and I don't understand how they think content discovery is supposed to work.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Yet they are not. In fact, they do not even have a single show that is to the level of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or The Wire.There may be others, but off the top of my head: Bojack Horseman.
    
    
    
        
     Right, people radically overestimate how much a profile is worth. Someone who owns a house in a rich area is somewhat easy to identify, and you target them... along with everyone else who is also trying to reach that rich slice, so you pay more.The very high quality pieces of information can be things like "wants to buy a life insurance policy this week" or "just had a baby" or "just bought a plane ticket to XYZ," or "is in the frequent flyer program and spends more than $20,000 per year on travel." However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless and not worth tracking for the most part. You reach those people through traditional mass marketing means.
    
    
        
     It's a great point you have made. I work technically as a data scientist, but my domain is scientific data. I have quite a few GitHub packages and get recruiter calls for data science jobs almost every week, with pretty generous salary offers.And from what it seems to me, there is a giant bubble. The vast majority of companies doing "data science" jobs are things that a smart undergrad can do with a month or two of training. And this is because I believe C-suites have completely gulped down the data is oil mantra. There are entirely charlatan companies with unicorn, even decacorn valuations now being built on this mantra - for example, CRED in India. Yet, as you said, and as I believe too, most of the data is worthless.
    
    
        
     Right, but unlike oil, most data is worthless most of the time.For example, I'm about to list my house on the market. The real estate agents who reached out to me last year and the year before that to try to induce me to sell the house had no chance of succeeding. Now is the time if they knew the secret that I'm about the list the house that they should all be competing for my business. The only relevant piece of information is that I'm about to sell the house. That is a valuable lead that many in my region would bid on. My background information is frankly not that relevant to the value of that lead, and isn't something that is readily surfaced by the kind of deep profiling that is supposed to be going on. It can be signaled by me signing up to some kind of list that sells my lead to a zillion people at once, but is never going to be surfaced accurately to the people who can earn the most profits from it by my Youtube habits or whatever. Zillow sells the logged in user data in the market I'm buying in to the real estate agents listing the houses, but that again is not something being modeled by some kind of big data operation, but is merely the same kind of "little data" provided on things like dating websites or LinkedIn when people browse your profile. There's no modeling going on there that requires sophistication.
    
    
        
     &gt; However the majority of information about people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no significant disposable income, is worthless...I've had a supposition for a while now that the targeted advertising industry should be closing the consumer cashflow loop by advertising effective self- and employment improvement, with the objective of increasing the disposable income people have so they can then make more brokering traditional sales
    
    
        
     &gt;I have a sense that this is the dirty little secret of the spyware advertising industry, personalization just isn't that great.Personalized adverts and recommendations can be incredibly, horrendously dumb. Here's what I see when I hit amazon's homepage at the moment :
A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago (no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.), USB cables I bought multiples of in the same time frame, a wireless charger (I already bought two before).
An entire line dedicated to showing me backpacks (I bought one less than a year ago)
An entire line dedicated to headphones (I recently bought wireless IEMs)
An entire line dedicated to watches (same) I don't get it. Supposedly the best and brightest work at firms like amazon and google to brainwash us to buy stuff, but classic, random, non-targeted advertisement is more likely to make me discover products I'd buy than targeted advertisement because the latter only shows me things after I don't need to buy them anymore! Here's what I would expect actually intelligent targeted advertising to do :
After buying a smartphone, recommend accessories (cases, screen protectors, USB-C dongles, chargers, whatever)
Here's what targeted advertisement actually does :
show me smartphones ads everywhere I go after I already selected and BOUGHT a smartphone. No, I don't need to buy another smartphone weeks after a recent replacement, amazon! The same sort of phenomenon can happen after google locks on searches I did to buy something. I can't wait to see the internet advertisement industry crash and burn, it's overvalued nonsense.
    
    
        
      A "buy once again" column that features blackout curtains I bought 3 months ago no, curtains don't need to be replaced every months, amazon.), Disagree there. About 75% of the things I buy on Amazon are repeating purchases that I nevertheless don't want to be automatically scheduled. It used to be a real pain in the neck to reorder something manually, so I'm glad they made that easier. But yes, in general, Amazon is full of low-hanging fruit that's been neglected on the tree for a decade or more. Buying clothes from Amazon still manages to be a worse experience than going to the mall, for instance, which is really saying something.
    
    
        
     I think the fact that most recommendation algorithms have seemingly converged on what seems like a really poor and naive implementation - fixation on very recent activity - shows that the sort of deep personalization touted is mostly BS.Both YouTube and Amazon heavily personalize by recommending primarily the 3-4 things that I've interacted with in the very recent past.
    
    
        
      
 This is not true. For example every time Summoning Salt uploads a video, which happens every few months, it will show up on my recommend feed because YouTube knows I'm willing to watch their ~1 hour documentaries even though I'm not subscribed to them.   
    
        
      
 Youtube seems to be a rare exception here in that people actually feel like its algorithm is useful. However, even then, their algorithm mostly seems to devolve to "what creators have you usually watched videos from" and (usually directly after you watch such a video) "what videos did other people who watched that video watch?" Basically the same principle as PageRank, just with a lot less spam to deal with.   
    
        
     This could (probably isn't) be a very quick implementation with a heuristic like 'if percentage of viewed videos from channel x (essentially per channel viewed) &gt; threshold ==&gt; show new video from channel x on homepage next time user appears.Make it fancy and use a multi armed bandit and call it machine learning/AI/data science.
    
    
        
     What it proves is that despite all that personalized data they have, it's the naive implementation that gets them the most clicks per dollar.So the question is this: if they're not (and never were) using that data for what they say they were, what are they doing with it?
    
    
        
      
 I believe YouTube recommendation is most well working one, so some people getting into echo chamber.   
    
        
     Just anecdote, but...The most common pattern I see relating to personalized advertising as someone being advertised to is that I will often see an ad for something I just bought (or some competitor to it) repeated relentlessly for a couple of days after buying it and this is after not seeing any related ads during the days prior where I was actually doing some research into the product space. Maybe I'm an outlier but they seem to miss the window of relevance on me often enough that I notice it as a commonly repeated pattern.
    
    
        
      
 I know it seems moronic, but I think it might actually make sense from the advertisers point of view. Some percentage of people who buy a thing are going to return it and buy something similar in the next week. That percentage is almost certainly large compared to the percentage of the overall population who's going to buy that thing in the next week, and it seems plausible to me it's even large compared to the number of people who have been browsing for the thing but haven't bought yet. (Think of it as the ratio of people just browsing vs ready to buy.)   
    
        
      
 Even so, wouldn't it be much smarter if they kept track of what the expected life expectancy of the thing you bought is, and then years later start feeding you ads for a replacement? Or is it too hard to track people over such a long period of time?   
    
        
      
 I don't think any advertisers would be able to offer "People who bought a washing machine 3 years ago" as a category that can be targeted without a riot   
    
        
      
 Same experience. What's even more mystifying is that often it is for items that no human would be likely to be buying many copies of in a short span of time (high ticket items, or items where you probably don't need more than one).   
    
        
      
 Just because I bought something doesn't mean I kept it. And those 0.1%, or whatever, returning items are very likely to buy another one of a different brand.   
    
    
        
      
 Exactly. If I just bought some power tool for a home improvement project, I am the least likely person in the country to want to buy that exact same power tool the next day.   
    
        
     Not if you hate it and want to return it. In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill? Because that subset of the population is probably more likely to be looking to buy one than any other.A return rate of say 1% may lead to more people looking to buy a drill who have just bought one in the last week than people looking to buy their first drill.
    
    
        
     &gt; In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill?If that's true, they left something out of their calculation: What percentage of people will install an adblocker as a result of feeling like they're being hounded for a few weeks? This scenario was mentioned specifically by Tim Cook when he introduced the Safari anti-tracking features.
    
    
        
     &gt;to find out your name and address and search historySo that you can continue to show me ads for a washing machine for months after I purchased a washing machine.
    
    
    
        
      
 I haven't consumed significant amounts of ads in a long time, only some logos in sports and the occasional visit to family or the rare times adblock fails (YouTube premium user too). So I can only imagine how hilarious that must be.   
    
        
      
 I think you're right. I'd like to see an analysis of the effectiveness of personalised advertising based on tracking versus ads based purely on local context. The latter being if you're on a web page about birds then you get ads for bird seed and bird houses. No tracking involved.   
    
        
      
 It's always fun watching an ad system try to figure out nonbinary people. Spotify ads can't decide whether I'm a successful businessman or Spanish-speaking housewife.   
    
        
     It's always fun checking Google's ad settings and seeing what they think I'm into.Apparently now I'm into baseball, flowers, boating, celebrities, country music, credit cards, geology, event ticket sales, fishing, and windows OS. Among a couple hundred other things. It even gets some rather basic facts (marital status, company size, education) wrong. I seriously wonder how they generate this profile?
    
    
    
        
      
 Well... It actually got some categories right, but I don't really feel that's very impressive considering that it put me in every category by the looks of it.   
    
        
      
 There's not a lot there for me. Just some generic whether I want to see alcohol and gambling ads on youtube.   
    
    
    
        
      
 It can have this problem even if you are not nonbinary. Buy a few toe rings and have it decide you're a woman...   
    
        
      
 It fascinates me to see how the ad algorithm responds to people who watch content in multiple languages. I study a lot of languages as a hobby, so I often watch YouTube videos that are in Mandarin, like news broadcasts and niche hobby channels. YouTube has now started showing me ads (in Mandarin) which seem to be targeted to Mandarin-speaking immigrant parents of young children who want a way to teach them Mandarin despite my, and my spouse’s, very busy careers. I find this amusing because I am a single, pasty white man in my 20s.   
    
        
     That’s just Spotify. Many years ago they had a little tool that actually reported what demographic slots it pegged you at based on your listening preferences. The top two hits for me were 1.) early 20s, college educated, White, woman 2.) 60+, blue collar, African American, maleAt the time I was a late 20s, college educated, South Asian male. I’m very cis and very straight. And yeah my musical tastes are pretty eclectic, but that was a weird profile to settle me on.
    
    
        
     Some people fit in convenient buckets, but lots of people don't, and assuming all people do, will make the ad system useless to a lot of people. Even if you're not non-binary at all, you could still be a successful businesswoman or a Spanish-speaking houseman (househusband? stay-at-home dad?).Better to just follow people's interests, instead of using their interests to incorrectly pigeonhole them and then drawing incorrect generalisations from that.
    
    
        
     Here's another less harmless aspect of that:Something about my actual interests and activity apparently makes youtube think I'm into Fox news and all the crazy shit found there. Now, who else has this same value judgement about me? This assessment that I neither declared for myself nor even ratified. It's annoying but ultimately harmless that youtube shows me conservative wackjob stuff. But is that same profile in someone else's database that marks me as someone to watch or something? Does it affect my insurance rates, my liklihood to get extra scrutiny when travelling, my ability to purchase or register a firearm, my access to jobs that might be extra sensitive or responsible, basically any of the things where someone either private or the state does any sort of background or credit check on you for any reason, and there are really many of those when you think a out it. I'm guessing, today, it's probably not really affecting my life in any real way, but, there is no way it makes any sense to say that will still be true tomorrow.
    
    
        
      
 There was that infamous case of a retailer figuring out someone was pregnant before they did based on what they were buying and mailing a customized flyer...to their dad's house. I don't remember the exact situation, but it probably wasn't the only incident.   
    
        
     That btw is an anecdote from the association mining community.I spent a lot of time learning about association rule mining in my AI courses, including the implementation details of competing ways to mine them. The technique seems extremely useful and fascinating (I jury rigged it for on the fly league of legends champ recommendations to maximize calculated win rate change given limited information), but I almost never see it used in the real world or even see it talked about anymore. What happened to association rule mining?
    
    
        
      
 I believe you're referring to a rumor (which may be true, I just mean it in the sense that it's out there and not something you or I have verified) about Target.   
    
        
      
 And the harm like what I'm saying was that her father was informed of her medical condition through that mechanism rather than from her.   
    
        
     My experience working in a similar domain (NLP summarization, which leverages methods like text rank which are identical to pagerank but for text summation) is similar.Personalized page rank is not significantly better at summarization in my experience, even "queryable" summarization, but that also could be a pure implementation problem or a problem of hyperparamater selection...
    
    
        
      
 Does it really work so well in politics? I've read in various places that a lot of political advertising in America functions basically as a means for channeling donors' money to a few K Street firms belonging to party insiders.   
    
    
        
      
 I agree with you. I highly doubt that our economy has enough (product, message) combinations to justify the need for personalization based on more than a dozen attributes.   
    
        
     I will buy X, if I need X. And once I buy X, it's done. For example, I wanted a cordless drill last week. Did the "site:reddit.com" thing (I actually have been doing that almost subconsciously now, as Google results are all trash), chose a drill, and ordered one off Amazon.Then, after that, what's the point in showing drill ads to me for two weeks?
    
    
        
     There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.Probably that's what they are going for if they're doing it on purpose.
    
    
        
     &gt; There's a well known effect in advertising that advertising a product to a person that has already bought that product generally increases their satisfaction with the product and the purchase, and may cause them to recommend the product to others.Do you have a link for further reading on that? That's fascinating if true.
    
    
        
      
 Could be - but at least for me it feels intrusive and irritating, not any positive feelings really   
    
        
      
 It's not supposed to feel good. If 9/10 people have a brief negative thought about the advertising experience and nothing else happens, but 1/10 people happen to have their friend on the phone at the time and makes a referral, then overall that is a win for the brand.   
    
        
      
 Have you considered consumer reports? I’m of the Reddit persuasion and find it’s a good resource. Bummer everything is polluted these days.   
    
        
     I don't think it's really a secret.It's pretty straightforward to understand that when the vast majority of your sites income is generated from ad revenue, that data is being used to optimize for generating ad clicks, etc., rather than actually giving users the best/most relevant/useful/desireable information for their purposes.
    
    
        
     From the behavior of ads (that I imagine are highly optimized), all that knowledge is useful for front-running an specific TV model all over your internet once you decide to buy a TV.It seems to be completely useless for anything else, and specifically harmful for product discovery, that is the one way ads add societal value.
    
    
    
        
      
 Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we found out that personalised advertising actually earned less than just auctioning off the obvious big keywords?   
    
        
      
 I worked for a healthcare recruitment company in a capital city with some large hospitals and a number of universities. I can't for the life of me understand why they chose to spend so much money on trying to track healthcare professionals online when they could just advertise it on-premise where they actually hang out.   
    
    
        
      Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for... You're missing what "personalization" has come to really mean. It means knowing enough about the user to give them an experience you can profit from and which they will accept. If there isn't something you can expect profit from, there's no reason to give them anything.
    
    
        
      
 This used to be solved by allowing queries like `Class Inheritance +ruby' to require results to include "ruby". They killed this for Google+ by changing it to quotes, so `Class Inheritance "ruby"' but now they interpret even those. When I use Google, which is less and less, I am not looking for a fight with a computer to express my intent, I'm looking for the answer to a question. That never seemed to be an issue until recently.   
    
        
      
 I work for Google Search. If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase. Nothing has changed in this. When it happens that people feel it fails, it's often that they don't realize we've matched that word or phrase appearing in ALT text or text that's appearing in a less visible part of the page -- or in a few cases, the page might have changed since we indexed it.   
    
        
     &gt; If you put a word or a phrase in quotes, we will only find things that have that exact word or phrase.I'm sorry to tell you, but this is flat wrong. I commented[1] about this a few months back with a random phrase as an example. I see it often in my day to day also. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094
    
    
        
     I searched for "eggzackly this" and all 10 results on the first page contain the phrase, although most have punctuation in the middle.Looking at all 22 results (without opening the "omitted results" section or image results), the phrase became harder to find off the first page, but I tended to find it in the source code, or the DOM, or the cached version of the page, or by disabling JS (sometimes requiring a combination of those techniques). I found it in 21 out of the 22. The one page I couldn't find it in (the dolls one) looks like a frequently updating page, and it was highlighted in the snippet, so it looks like it was there at the time of crawling but not now; the cache isn't there for that page. Full disclosure I work at Google, but not on Search.
    
    
        
     Punctuation matters. I explained this in another response, and I should have mentioned it as part of my response here. But to repeat, these are typical reasons why it might seem that quoted search isn't matching when it is:1) text appears in ALT text 
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available) In the [eggzackly this], you found matches of those words separated by punctuation -- which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched. I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages.
    
    
        
     The article has been updated with a response from Danny Sullivan, the person you're responding to, which is worth a read.I just tested "eggzackly this" and every result on the first page contains the string "eggzackly this", albeit usually with different punctuation ("Eggzackly. This [...]", "Eggzackly, this.", "Eggzackly! This [...]")
    
    
        
     I'm sorry but this has absolutely changed. I'm not sure why but quite often we are suggested results in queries that ignore quotes. The engine is even telling us that if omitted those terms.We don't have control over this and it's very frustrating.
    
    
        
     We haven't changed anything. Promise. Honest. Not at all. But we definitely want to look into any cases where people feel this isn't working, so actual examples (if people are comfortable sharing) will really help.What you're talking about is probably a case where there's a quoted word or phrase as well as other words that aren't quoted. In such a case, we're going to absolutely look for content that matches the quoted parts. That's a must. The other words, we'll look for them, but we'll also look for related words and sometimes, we might find content that doesn't match one of them. Because those other words aren't quoted, we'll tell you if we find a match that seems helpful but doesn't contain those non-quoted words. That's what the message is about. But it should never be telling you we omitted a quoted word or phrase because we won't -- with one exception. If there's literally nothing on the web we know of that matches a quoted word or phrase, then we're not going to show anything at all and say we couldn't match any documents.
    
    
        
     I tried to find a counterexample and I couldn't! I believe you that quotes really are working. What's confusing though is that a quoted word or phrase often doesn't show up in the Google results snippets. This is certainly the reason why people think quotes aren't being respected.Though, why does enabling "Verbatim" (in tools) on a search reduce the number of search results if all my terms are already quoted? Enabling Verbatim often does it make it feels like my queries are interpreted more literally, but if quotes are already being respected I don't understand how Verbatim would reduce the number of search results.
    
    
        
     I agree, it would be easier if it were in the snippet. That's something we're looking at. I believe it used to, but sometimes the quoted part might not have been the best overall snippet to use. But as said, we might revisit that.On the counts -- basically, it's all really rough estimates. We make a rough quick count, you go deeper into the page, we make a fresh estimate. It can change, and it doesn't always make sense and personally, I'd hope we just get rid of counts because of this, perhaps more confusing than helpful.
    
    
    
        
     Thanks Danny I'll try to whip up some examples.Interestingly I tried my pet peeve search, and it worked for the first time this year! It is for a specific recipe, and I search for 'ocau slow cooked balsamic beef'. I have had to manually find it in the archive of the overclockers.com.au forum for the past year, as Google seemingly forgot it existed no matter what search terms or operators I used. The main difference is I am using Firefox on Manjaro and not my historically typical environment for searching. Normally I would either be using Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iOS if I am in the kitchen. I will play around on some other devices and see what evidence I can find. P.s. I'm being referred in for a role at Google currently, is the Search team only in a specific area like Silicon Valley or is it a global team? Most of the jobs in Australia seem to be commercial facing, not product facing.
    
    
        
      
 Glad to hear that works! Search has teams around the world. I'd suggest if you see something relevant, apply even if it's in a particular location. Remote work has changed a lot things.   
    
        
      
 I hear that g search uses humans to quality check search results. How can I sign up to do this? From what I have read, it is invite only   
    
    
        
     Hey, thanks for much for this comment. I've personally experienced this and looked myself for an example when I first read your comment, but I couldn't find one.Today I stumbled upon one. Here's a broken example query: linux next hop "[::]" Here's the archive of the incorrect query result: https://archive.md/9WGe7  The first result (the man pages) does not contain [::] anywhere in the page text, the source, or the cached result. Could you take a look at this one?
    
    
        
     This is not the case in my experience. I type a query with some parts in quotes and often get lots of results that have in small letters at the bottom something along the lines of “does not include &lt;word in quotes&gt;”, with no in bold highlighted part showing the phrase in the page context. This was not the case in the past and google made sure the word I put in quotes is absolutely mentioned somewhereI’m guessing this happens when there are less results matching my phrase
    
    
        
     I would love if you or anyone who ever has this happen can share an example, if you're comfortable doing so. We'll debug. But if you quote something, we shouldn't show anything but that which matches the quoted material.Now, if you quote something and put in other non-quoted words, then we'll look for stuff that matches the quoted part and the other things are optional. So when you see that strikeout message, it means basically "We found this page that has the exact words you quoted, and it probably has one or more of the other words or related words you didn't quote, but heads-up, it doesn't have one of those non-quoted words at all." And we do this because sometimes there might be a useful page that doesn't contain all of your optional non-quoted words. Totally agree it would help if we did a better job bolding the sections of a page where the quoted terms apply. Often we do, but sometimes the snippeting won't include them if there's better text to describe the page overall. But we're looking at maybe improving here.
    
    
    
        
     Unless it's changed in the past 56 minutes, the SERP is pretty up-front that it can't find any pages with all three of those.It literally says `No results found for "kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly".` right at the top, and then shows you the (properly explained) results for the non-quoted version of the query.
    
    
        
      
 Mobile doesn't show that, at all. It also doesn't show that bit if you use the brand name "kitchenboss" instead of "kitchen boss", which I originally intended. My phone might have auto-corrected that without me noticing.Anyway, with the terms I posted earlier, on desktop it says:   Results for kitchen boss g320 disassembly (without quotes):
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search
 
Then it goes on to show me lots of unrelated results, instead of showing me the 'not many' great matches for my search. If my search doesn't turn up many good results (let alone great), that fine. Show me what you've got, let me decide how to broaden my search to get more. All of the unrelated results being shown are marketing spam sites. That's not helpful.   
    
        
     On mobile and desktop, I'm getting a message saying that when you search for ["kitchen boss" "g320" "disassembly"] that we have no results. And there's not much we can do if there are no pages we find that match all those words you required be present. There just aren't the pages.What we can do is try searching for all of the words, so perhaps you'll find something useful that way. But even we can tell when doing this that the results might not be what you want, which is why that automatic warning about maybe these aren't great matches. IE: we can't show you what we've got for a query where there are no exact matches. It's impossible. We can show you what we got if we don't require all the word be present. And we can tell you what we're doing. And you always have the choice to restart the query in another way if you don't like that. Now here's something else. You probably used the quotes because I'm guessing you figured it was better to tell us exactly what to do than trust us to look at all the words and analyze the context and so on and see if we could make matches generally. If you had done that, just searched for [kitchen boss g320 disassembly], then the first web page result is the instruction manual for your sous vide machine. It has cleaning steps, which I'm guessing also might be what you're after? (It looks like it's just take off the outer casing). Those results, doing it directly like that, are different than when we gave them to you after your quoted search failed. and that's probably because when you gave us quotes, and there were no matches, we might have tried some stricter matching to keep closer to the original requirements rather than use our general ranking. To wrap up: maybe don't try the quotes at first. It's totally fine to type in a long natural language query like [how do I take apart a kitchen boss g320] and if you do that, the instruction manual is right there.
    
    
        
      
 I added the quotes because I wasn't getting what I wanted without them. I don't need the user manual; I already have that and I'm not just trying to clean it. I wanted to find a guide to fully disassembling it, like the videos you find for phones when you want to replace a cracked screen yourself. Knowing that there are no matches at all is good information. (Disappointing, but good.) Trying to give me results for a different query, apparently assuming that I accidentally used the exact-match-only quotes, is not useful and kind of condescending. I think that's what leads people to think the quotes don't work the way they used to. Finally, the wording about not many good matches makes it sound like there are some good matches, but they've been mixed in with these other irrelevant matches. That's probably just a wording issue on the message, trying to soften the "We can't find anything" result.   
    
        
     Thanks for the additional information. It really helps understanding the situation.Showing results for non-quoted words isn't intended to be condescending nor an indication that we think someone made a mistake. Apologies that it comes across that way. We think we're clearly saying there are no matches with the "No results found" message. If we stopped there, the page would have nothing else. And I get that for you -- and perhaps others -- that might be preferable, a further reinforcement that there's nothing out there. For others, not so helpful. They potentially might give up with no real way of going forward, when just losing the quotes perhaps could get them useful information. And I get the trade-off concerns. I've seen many comments here that things done to support less "pro" users are annoying. And yet, we do need to find a way to support everyone. I think that's why we've probably gone with the message about no matches with and showing the quotes. Perhaps we should consider making that an option -- "Would you like to try this search again without quotes." As for the message about not good matches, we always try to show the best stuff we have first. That's the point of our ranking. The warning is meant to indicate that even though we'll list the best we have, for that query, none of it is particularly helpful -- not that here are a bunch of results, and there's some good matches mixed in with poor ones. Ranking that way would make no sense. But it might be also that we're so close to it -- that we always try to rank the most useful stuff first -- that we didn't consider the interpretation you had. So thank you again, it's really helpful to get that feedback. Sorry the information doesn't appear to be out there. I hope if you disassemble it on your own, you'll post the info out to the open web. I'm pretty sure you'd end up ranking well for that and helping others who might have a similar need.
    
    
        
      
 Weird. On a computer, `"kitchenboss" "g320" "disassembly"` returns exactly six results, all of which appear to include the quoted terms. Plus the "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" message at the top. Which sounds like exactly what you want. I wonder why it's different on mobile.   
    
        
     So, besides the possibility that you are flat out wrong (as another commentator claims you may be), let's assume that you're right.1. This is still horrific UX/UI 
2. The culture internally at Google seems to have a "we know better than the users" attitude in all things. 
3. Query rewriting is a horrific technique in general with almost zero value to life/society outside of fixing spelling errors. Whatever your A/B testing says about it's purported utility is polluted by Google's own dark patterns and political whims of the managers who run the internal search organizations. It helps to actually know better than your users if you want to take the attitude in number 2. I don't believe that you or Google knows better than it's users, for many reasons previously enumerated in this thread and others. One day Google search is going to be displaced and it's current utilization of query rewriting techniques will be one of the fundamental reasons for this. You should take the absolutely massive amount of recent criticism and the fact that users repeatedly claim it's happening in the face of your claim it's not seriously rather than literally blaming the users writ large for a problem that is fundementally with the behavior of Google search.
    
    
        
      
 I routinely see queries with quoted keywords where results don't have them highlighted in the snippets on the results page (but do have other, non-quoted keywords highlighted!).   
    
        
      
 That doesn't mean the quoted words weren't present in the content. It just means our system didn't think creating a snippet around those words was the most relevant snippet. Which I get, in some cases, actually would be better. It's something we're looking at.   
    
        
     Your system for snippet creation is so bad that according to you it's created a situation where many, many users believe that quotes don't work because of how bad it is.Please fix it, like now. Displace your teams current sprint priorities, or the anti-google search backlash will turn into a situation where in 2025 Google is on the defensive for search market share from a Phoenix rising yahoo or something like that. The fact that anyone at Google ever okayed this behavior at all in the first place is simply rage inducing and you should see that with the magnitude and persistence of the "actually it really doesn't work bro" kind of comments.
    
    
        
      
 If a snippet doesn't contain the words I searched for, I don't click it, because I assume Google has fucked up the search again and given me some irrelevant thing. If that is what has actually changed in the last few years making people think results are bad, the snippet algorithm, please revert that. I want to see the exact context that the words I typed appear in the page.   
    
        
      
 In some cases? I'm literally asking for a specific word to be included no matter what; how could it be irrelevant to the quote used to describe a page?   
    
        
      
 Snippets we show tend to focus on full-sentences or enough context to describe what a page is about or relevant to a search. If we have a match that's strongest simply because a quoted term appears in ALT text or some obscure menu item, that probably doesn't generate a compelling snippet in how we normally would measure things. But given that for someone doing that quoting, seeing the quoted area might be the most important thing. So the regularly snippet process isn't as helpful -- and it's something we'll look at.   
    
        
     I don't have any recent information on how google search works, but years ago it looked at the expertise level of the searcher. So newbies received newbie results, advanced searchers received advanced results (and more visibility into filtering functionality). Today... they're hiding the advanced features and also seem to be reducing personalization of results to save compute resources. It's horrible.You: Class Inheritance +ruby
Google: searching for "cash inheritance..."
    
    
        
      
 I work for Google Search -- we never operated like this. We don't know that someone is somehow a "newbie" vs and "advanced" searcher and change (nor did change) the results somehow.   
    
        
     I as a programmer can't imagine anyone building a search engine like this ?As far as my personal experience(n=1) with Google, I have also have never experience anything remotely like this.
    
    
        
      
 This is very helpful if I search for a name I didn't quite pick up or don't know how to spell, or if I only remember fragments of a quote or topic, then I just blurt out my stream of consciousness and Google will mostly point me in the right direction. That being said, I wish I could explicitly tell Google to treat my query more literally. Ideally you would be able specify the search query in some kind of grammar. They have these kinds of prompt mechanics for GPT3, so I doesn't seem too unrealistic, even if it's all ML nowadays.   
    
        
      
 I work for Google Search. We have several ways for you to do this. The easies is to put quotes around a word or a phrase that you absolutely, positively want to be present in content retrieved. And yes -- it still works. It really really does, but if you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know. We'll debug it. The reasons people sometimes think it's not working is because the text appears in ALT text, or it appears in text that's not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text), or there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat") or sometimes a page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available). You can also use verbatim mode from the toolbar so that we search for only the exact words you provide.   
    
        
      
 I don’t think op meant it literally, but the fact that the results are so keyword stuffed that despite “appearing” on the page they are actually irrelevant to the page and thus useless.   
    
    
    
        
     What?!Have you tried this? It immediately turns verbatim off. For everyone! It's been like this forever. Years and years. Gaslighting won't help here! In terms of quotes, again, this does NOT work like +, like verbatim. If it did, then that term would absolutely show up, just as it is, in search results. Yet, over the years I've seen: - aliasing happen from within quotes (EG, bob -&gt; robert) - quotes entirely ignored (eg, those terms NOT showing up) Yet searching with verbatim on, immediately causes those quoted words to appear! You are absolutely gaslighting people on this! Right now, in this thread. And if it isn't intentional, if you aren't gaslighting, then how can you not even notice that verbatim turns off, the second you select a date range? I want to say so much more here, but it's filled with such ... vitriol, that I think my terminal would melt.
    
    
        
     I'm not trying to gaslight anyone. And what would be the point? To say something works if it demonstrably doesn't work?Yes, I tried this for some of the presets before I replied. It worked. It still works. My sincere apologies for not specifically testing custom date range option as well. I should have; you are correct. That won't work. I'll pass it on to see if there's a way it can. My apologies again. If you need to do this another way, what I also said works. Do it in the search bar using the before/after command. Just quote all the words, and that's the same as verbatim.
    
    
        
     That is absolutely not the same as verbatim, and you need to do some empirical tests on your end, before you state things like this.Take a look here:  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29424094  It's like you're just spouting Google propaganda, without validating what you're saying. Just like with vertabim/date range, which has been a thing for close ot a decade, which Google has received endless reports about, this too does not do what you say. Your responses are akin to those canned responses one gets when you post a bad review. "So sorry, please contact us here at this email address.", which of course is all about impression, and results in nothing ever happening. This has been going on almost a decade, yet oh what, no, haha is your response.
    
    
        
     Verbatim mode means we search for exactly the terms you put into the box. Quoting terms means we search for exactly the quoted terms. That's what I meant by them being them same.So if you did this search in verbatim:
[search for this] It's the same as:
["search" "for" "this"] in terms of the instructions we're getting on what to retrieve -- look for content that has all of those words and only those words. No spell check. No synonyms. Just those words. The ranking of the results might differ, because we probably use slightly different ranking systems when using verbatim versus quoted words. But in either case, the retrieval requirement is the same. Results should have all the required words. I don't really see what the link above is saying to somehow refute all this. That link is about a quoted search for ["eggzackly this"] and nothing to do with verbatim mode. And it says that it found those two words in that order with punctuation... Which is what I explained elsewhere in this (now huge) thread. But to give it again: Typically the reasons people believe quotes are not working when they are is because: 1) text appears in ALT text 
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text) 
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat" 
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available) In the [eggzackly this] example, that's what was happening as the poster saw -- we found those words separated by punctuation, which we interpret as a space, so the phrase is matched. Personally, I wish we'd fix the situation with punctuation. I get that's confusing. But that's not a new change; quotes have operated that way for ages. Most important -- quotes SHOULD work as you and others are expecting. We WANT them to work that way. That's why we spend time looking at these reports saying they're not. I have spent lots of time doing just that. We find the matches. But if anyone believes they aren't working, and the reasons involved above aren't happening, let me know. We'll get on it. We want them to work as expected, and we want everyone to feel they're working that way.
    
    
        
     For additional clarity, quoting has always, always, always been different than +, and verbatim. When you(Google) removed +, so that 'google+ searches' could work without interference, quoting was already a thing, and people were just told by some airhead googler "Oh, but quoting is the same! Just use that!"It wasn't. It isn't. I never has been. Ever. Verbatim was introduced to replicate that lost + functionality, after massive outrage at the inability to find search results. The fact that you, and other Googlers still think "" is the same as verbatim/+, when it doesn't even show the same search results, is highly, highly questionable. To be beyond blunt, you're wrong. You are completely and totally wrong. +/verbatim and "" are not the same thing. Please go away, and learn how your own product works, before commenting on it, ok?
    
    
        
     I'm pretty familiar with how the + operator used to work and why Google dropped it, having written about it at the time it happened (spoiler, I wasn't happy it was dropped): https://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-... At the time, + was used to require that something be present. Quotes were used to require words appear in a particular order. You could do a search where you quoted a phrase, but that didn't necessarily require it to be present (as I recall). If you absolutely wanted the quoted phrase to be there, you had to quote and put a + in front of the quoted phrase. So yes, they were different things. When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase. With +, then with quotes and with verbatim, it's about what you retrieve. Verbatim says get these words or words and only those words. Quoting says get these words and only those words (and only those words in a particular order, if you indicate that). Just like + used to mean get these words and only these words. The ranking of results might vary when you quote versus verbatim, but what you're asking to be retrieved is the same to us.
    
    
        
      At the time, + was used to require that something be present  When + was eliminated, quotes took its place. Quoting a single word was the same as when you used to + a word -- find the exact word. Quoting a phrase still meant find the phrase, but that also meant it was required to find the phrase.  No, quoting did not take its place. At all. That's why verbatim was introduced, after outrage. Google claimed it did, but it still aliased. It still decided to provide results without quotes. Again, this is why verbatim was born. From that "Google no longer gives precise results, ever" angst.
    
    
        
      
 I can confirm what bbarnett says about date ranges and verbatim. Turning on a date range toggles verbatim off. Turning on verbatim toggles the date range off. It's impossible to enable them both.   
    
        
      
 As for the quoting, it should work. And if you have an example where it's not, please let me know. Quoting is designed to exact match. It shouldn't produce synonym matches, correct misspellings, find content that's not on the page as we saw it when indexed (I think I did say one confusing part is that if there's punctuation, that gets dropped when matching).   
    
        
     &gt; It immediately turns verbatim off. For everyone!I can confirm, one of the reasons I haven't used Google in several years.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 That's stopped working! Google is just ignoring them from time to time now. Did you even read the article?   
    
        
      
 I noticed that years ago, and it was one of my first frustrations with Google - the first inkling that the big G had jumped the shark.   
    
    
        
      
 I read the article, and the HN comment it links to, but didn't find an example in either, and it doesn't match my experience. Does someone have a concrete example when using quotes results in pages not containing the search terms?   
    
        
      
 It's definitely happened from time to time in my experience. If I had to guess, Google PMs really don't like blank search result pages.   
    
        
     I work for Google Search, and as I shared elsewhere, quoting still works. It really does. If you or anyone finds an example where you believe it doesn't, please let me know, and we'll debug. Typically the reasons people believe it is not working is because:1) text appears in ALT text
2) text is not readily visible on a page (maybe in a menu bar or small text)
3) there's punctuation ("dog cat" will match "dog, cat"
4) page has changed after we've indexed it (so view the cached copy, if available)
    
    
        
     I believe you! (see my other comment in response to the original one).But it seems people don't (my original comment is being heavily downvoted because of this). And although they can't submit even one example, the fact that they don't believe you is obviously a symptom of a bigger problem. For some reason, Google is losing the trust of power users.
    
    
        
     I just checked again. Here's what I get:- no results with or without quotes:   No results containing all your search terms were found.
 
- few results with quotes, not more without quotes:  Your search did not match any documents.
 It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search
 Tip: Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking
 for. For example, "cake recipes" instead of "how to make a cake."
 
- no results with quotes, but results without quotes: Google says that the search with quotes didn't find anything, and that they searched without quotes instead.I have yet to find any instance where Google corrects the inside of quotes without any warning.
    
    
        
      
 I've hit this many, many times, but I'm not sure I can easily reproduce it. Tends to happen when there are more search terms, in my experience.   
    
        
      
 Google still decides to interpret that however they like. Even the verbatim option in Search Tools doesn’t always help.   
    
        
      
 Google has been regularly ignoring quotes for at least 5 years, probably longer. That was one of the biggest factors for me dropping it as my main search engine.   
    
    
        
      
 That's like speaking to little children, that are learning to talk, reproducing their errors. Some adults believe that it's cute, but it's idiotic, confuses the babies and make their progress more difficult and slow.   
    
        
     I don’t think this means anything for the point you wanted to make about search results, but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk! It’s not a good analogy.Baby talk (or CDS, child-directed speech) helps engage their attention and provides valuable feedback. Kids who experience less CDS develop language more slowly. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_talk  (I heard about this research a number of years ago. Although I must admit, now I wonder if it’s affected by the science reproducibility crisis!)
    
    
        
     N = 3, we intentionally never baby talked to our kids, and spent a lot more time reading them novels and other things without pictures or simplified language than (I'd guess) most people do (we did also do plenty of picture books), and their language development was in all three cases way ahead of schedule.Could just be luck (well, genetics, probably) I guess. Maybe they'd have developed even faster if we'd used baby talk. One shitty thing about parenting is it's really hard to tell what helped, what hurt, and what didn't matter at all.
    
    
        
     &gt;...their language development was in all three cases way ahead of schedule.I would put a lot more of it to having (seemingly) engaged parents. Even a backwards strategy enacted by a loving parent who is consistently trying their best is likely to outperform the result that most can manage (owing to time/money/education/etc).
    
    
        
      
 That is my belief as well: being there, listening, interacting lovingly, paying attention is overwhelmingly more important than a particular technique.   
    
        
      
 I've never baby-talked to our son, but I do coach him to say things that are within (or almost) within his speaking capabilities. So for instance, this evening we were reading The Gruffalo, and he pointed to the fox and said, "Fox eat!" I said, "The fox wants to eat the mouse?" He said, "Yeah!" So I tried to coach him to say "Fox eat mouse". He got as far as "Fox eat there"; maybe he'll get to "Fox eat mouse" in a week or two.   
    
        
      
 I did this as well with the same results (but also have reason to believe genetics played a major part). But I'm not sure we're optimizing for the right thing. I'm far from convinced that accelerated language development is a good thing. I think development may suffer in other areas.   
    
        
     Why would you believe genetics plays a part? There is minimal evidence for that. You have actual evidence for things like your higher than average time engagement, nutritional indicators, as well as health and dental care. You probably live somewhere with decent air and water quality. Then of course the likely fact that parents have relatively prodigious vocabularies, fluency and articulation. This is why your kids are smart.Genetics are a marginal element approaching none.
    
    
    
        
      
 No doubt when we start looking at impairments and deficits that you can find plenty of situations where a high proportion of the phenotypic variance is heritable. But when you restrict the study to the top 60th to 95th percentile (which we are discussing here) I don't think you will find particularly strong relationships.   
    
        
     It's not genetics or a language strategy, just engagement.Compare a toddler living in a ghetto concrete jungle to one who takes daily strolls through Central Park or Suburbia. The enrichment of parents teaching about the trucks and the trees and the lady with a purple hat pays massive returns.
    
    
        
      
 Yeah, I'm not capable of baby talk. Too weird. I have always talked to my kids like they were adults. They seem fine.   
    
        
      
 I did goo goo gaa gaa for the first 6-8 months since you can tell there’s really nobody home up there yet and it’s cute and engaged my other kids to play with the youngest. But yes. Mine seem fine as well so I doubt CDS is going to make/break a human being.   
    
        
      ...but please note you’re exactly wrong about baby talk! But, but... I didn't say anything about baby talk!! The definition in that Wikipedia page is about something completely different: exaggerating intonation.
    
    
        
     I think this has proven to be false.Fathers descend to "baby talk" when the child is learning and slowly bring them up to par instead of trying to just force perfect talk from the start. They do this instinctively. There's some great comments on this from salman khan, I think. He recorded the first years of his kid's life at home and documented this phenomenon
    
    
    
        
     You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!" Babies must look at adults doing the googoo gaagaa, and think to themselves that these adults are absolute morons.The sites that Googs returns are basically the internet's version of googoo gaagaa. I look at the websites returned, and often think that the site's owners must be morons. Useless drivel clearly designed to game the Goog search results. I think think about how moronic it is that Googs allows this.
    
    
        
      You think the baby really wants to hear googoo gaagaa? Now, they are trying to say "I'm hungry. Feed me!" I suspect they know the sound they want to make but they don't know how to articulate it. They make an approximation and we can encourage them repeating the correct version, so they realize we understood what they're trying to do: "you're half way" but repeating their approximation is misleading.
    
    
        
     Most people don’t literally say “goo goo ga ga” to babies; what they actually do is echo babies’ nonsense sounds back at them.I subscribe to the theory that this helps babies understand what they sound like, and therefore helps them learn how to produce the sounds they want.
    
    
        
     "Googoo gaagaa" sounds like happy baby babble to me. Mine would more like "waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh" when they were hungry.Congratulations on recognizing the true morons.
    
    
        
      
 In my experience waaaaaaaAAAAaahhh meant wet diaper or something hurts. Leeeeeah, leeeaaaahhh was being hungry. Phonetically is similar to the beginning of a polish word mleko (milk)   
    
        
      
 I honestly find it pretty helpful. You can type "russian murder painting" into Google and it will come up with Ivan the Terrible and His Son. All that hinting may be annoying if you know exactly what you wanted, but I'm not a specialist in everything I ever search for.   
    
        
      
 Then again, both DuckDuckGo and Kagi also give that result for that search phrase. As well as being more generally useful for more specific searches as well.   
    
        
     What would be nice is if you could toggle this behaviour. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm looking for, sometimes I don't. Assuming I never do is at least as silly as assuming I always do. Just give me the option.I am frankly baffled that after all this focus on "personalised search", they still don't actually allow you to personalise your search like that.
    
    
        
      
 You can. Or at least you used to be able to, by putting your query in double quotes. Apparently it no longer works either.   
    
    
        
      
 Right. Feels like it's optimized for common voice queries, in sentence form. They've sacrificed technical/HN users to focus on this.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Fortunately, most of those web results give a pretty good rundown on the history of Linux. But yes, this is weird! I'll get it looked at.   
    
    
    
        
     Right, although piping junk into the search box and expecting it to bring back something useful is trained behavior.I've been using DuckDuckGo a lot more recently and the thing that surprises me isn't the kind and quality of the results, it's that I actually need to use my brain to search. It's not about whether this is a good or a bad thing—I kind of like the precision in a way, it's just jarring how different it is as an experience.
    
    
        
      Tons of people don't, though Do they? I see this stated all the time, with no references.  They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water  Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches. Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food. The same way some cities limit parking at big events so that people have to take mass transit. It's for their own good, but they have to be shown the way.  Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people  This may be Google's goal, but it hasn't happened yet. I don't have very many friends or acquaintances in the tech bubble, so I base my observations around real people in the real world. More and more they're giving up on Google entirely. Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest, Etsy, Amazon, and other non-Google sources. When I ask someone why they're searching Amazon reviews for tech support information, they tell me because it's not on the web. That's Google's failure.
    
    
        
     &gt; Perhaps if Google didn't try to fix things for people, they would be more thoughtful with their searches.As someone who's been a public librarian, I can tell you that is not how people work.
    
    
        
      
 You can only be thoughtful with your search if you know what you are searching for. But oftentimes i'm not really certain what i'm looking for, or i don't know the exact terminology that should be used, so i'll just enter some related terms, in the hope that google leads me in the right direction.   
    
        
     At the minimum.A truly thoughtful search requires an understanding of: - What you're searching for, which as you mention means terminology and knowing that information exists. (If you don't know that there's a country called Burkina Faso, it's never going to occur to you to search for its capital) - How each of your search tools works, its benefits and drawbacks. It's similar to selecting a programming language or framework: If I need to know a holiday date (e.g. I can never remember when the fuck President's Day is), I'll Google it because that's something even a normal person would notice if they screwed up. On the other hand, when I'm looking for current events information, I use a search tool that specializes in news searches for journalists and researchers because I don't want my search results biased by what Google thinks I want to see. - The domain in which you're searching, so you can evaluate what the search tools provide for you and use the tools iteratively. - Your own abilities and desires, which requires self-knowledge. A search is only a success if it produces something helpful to the searcher, and something they can't understand or won't use = not a successful search - What information is and is not available. It sounds like a silly thing, but this is how a lot of scams work: They're testing for people who lack a certain subset of common knowledge. For example, I've seen articles talking about local elections that imply nefarious intent behind some information not being provided online, and they're obviously written by people who don't commonly work with local election data. Because if they did, they'd know that when working with local election data, the default is 'idk we have it in a file cabinet or on a computer somewhere'. Search is HARD and Google has figured out one tiny, tiny part. It's just the part that was the easiest to build with what they had and that was easiest to monetize.
    
    
        
     &gt; Take away the junk food, and people will resort to real food.Many people already resort to real food, even with plenty of junk food around. “Problem” is unfortunately, that it comes at a price, that many are simply not ready or able to pay. Who should step in is a good question, and probably governments should make access to information a right and have high quality public service available (in this case a public web search engine). Public libraries used to fulfill this role for centuries.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Their primary search engines these days seem to be Instagram, Pinterest...Why would someone want to search Pinterest? Every time I've gotten a search result to Pinterest it's been some scraped image completely and frustratingly devoid of the context I was originally searching for. Pinterest is one of the worst offenders on the web.
    
    
    
        
      
 I see what you are saying but it seems to me that it used to do a much better job at that. These days I feel like I'm fighting the search engine constantly and it is certainly not magically finding what I want anymore. It feels like some crusty unmaintained tool that I have to know how to use.   
    
        
      
 It's funny to observe my stepson learning his way through Google. It's happening mostly through the assistants on TVs and locked cellphones. But he's learning to do exactly what you said: half-second thoughts and brute forcing many queries for the same subject. He's 7.   
    
        
      
 A less charitable interpretation --- and unfortunately one that could be true --- is that Google does not want you to think. It wants to keep you stupid because it's easier to deceive those who can't think and bend their thoughts in the direction that gives G more $$$. I'd say it's not merely optimising for the stupid; it's actively encouraging it. It wants to be your brain, control your thoughts and life.   
    
        
     Google has optimized to whatever sequence of behaviors achieves the most profit. The search results are not chosen for utility to the user but as nudges in a cycle of influence intended to drive you to attend to an ad, purchase something, or consume particular content.They should not be engaged in non-consensual manipulation of social or political behaviors, and the ethics of market manipulation at scale through advertisement are far from clear.
    
    
    
        
      
 I use market manipulation to mean just that, someone manipulating the market in whatever way. I'm not familiar with the legally-oriented meaning of this term.   
    
        
     Market cornering is classic market manipulation. Google uses every asset at their disposal to maintain their 98%+ death grip on the search markets. The list of competitors bought, stifled, legally crushed, or absorbed is probably endless. The search market is thoroughly cornered.I used the phrase intentionally and specifically. Advertising isn't always market manipulation, but it can be and is used to that purpose. Google uses advertisement and content "curation" to manipulate consumers. This results in product preference, purchasing behavior, and market conditions favorable to Google and/or unfavorable to Google's competition. This includes siloing consumers in political bubbles and manipulation of narratives through the deliberate selection, order, and pacing of content exposure based on the intent of Google's shotcallers. The reinforcement cycles inherent to their algorithms are used to manage the information made available to vast numbers of people, with highly detailed behavioral profiles used to achieve behavioral outcomes, whether it's buying something, voting, or preferences for or against particular policies or candidates.
    
    
        
     Yeah, the phrase they should have used is "influencing the market" rather than the technical economic term.Of course, influencer means something different now too.
    
    
        
      
 But isn't Google supposed to know everything about us by now? Surely they know who types correct search queries and who keeps making typos?   
    
        
     Yep. How many bug reports are useful vs how many are "the button didn't work"?Google is optimizing for that.
    
    
        
     Another factor that isn't being fully accounted for is a new SEO/marketing technique where many people are asking scripted questions publicly on sites like reddit and then stealthily providing answers that market a product or service. This leads to reddit results not being exactly authentic as well. Pretty much most online reviews cannot be trusted as we are begged to do positive reviews of companies (and when companies outright purchase positive reviews, which is also very rampant) also as a factor.Though Google is at fault for letting their service falter to the "payola" race, many other factors are in play all across the Internet since data quality has faltered almost totally. For major-cost and non-refundable purchases I need to trust, I go to brick and mortar stores and inspect what I am buying. I am thankful not everything has shifted to an online-only model. It's going to be a very bumpy ride on the Internet until Congress and consumer protection laws wake TF up and do their job.
    
    
        
      
 Is Google unique in that, though? Amazon reviews are worthless now because companies pay customers to leave positive reviews or pay review farms to leave positive reviews. Even if someone reports them to Amazon, though, the companies just close their accounts and open new ones with different names and sell the same product. It's so trivial for them to pivot when they get caught that I'm not sure there is a solution to this problem.   
    
        
     There is a perfectly good solution, and some people use it: don't buy from unknown vendors. If you buy a product from one of a few well-known companies in that space, they have a big investment in their brand, and are much less likely to engage in behaviors that might diminish the value of that brand.The price is that you pay more -- effectively, you are paying for that branding. I've had so many bad experiences on Amazon that I am increasingly doing just that. It doesn't apply to everything, but it is a useful strategy.
    
    
        
      
 So how does that apply to the conversation around Google, though? We can't only ingest information from a small group of sources. That's antithetical to the entire concept of the internet.   
    
        
     Isn't that effectively what limiting a google search to reddit does?Not that I'm convinced it will keep working, since reddit isn't really a vendor in the same sense, and doesn't have those incentives.
    
    
        
      
 Not really because the content is coming from a variety of users who are creating the content on the site. Reddit itself is not creating the content in the same way that sellers are trying to sell you their products and Google is trying to serve you their ads.   
    
        
      
 Yeah, I agree, but reddit also doesn't have the same skin in the game, hence the prior comment.   
    
    
        
      
 Reddit does have astroturfing, but a lot of communities are aggressive about identifying and banning shills, so it's not as widespread as in google search results.   
    
        
      
 A ton of reddit communities are run by shills themselves. That's why users outright get downvoted and banned when they even are posting potentially winning content. We cannot act like everything is totally normal these days on Reddit. They're hemorrhaging users fast.   
    
    
        
     Just look up posts about people getting banned from reddit on Twitter or on black hat forums. There are tons of people complaining about it.The thing about users getting entirely banned from a platform is that they aren't able to complain anywhere near to the forum about unfairness. It's all done in stealth. Platform algorithms now often do a lot to keep dissent about platforms themselves and partner companies out of sight. It's pretty crazy how companies that publicly advocate equality and fairness serve to undermine speech when it's about their business.
    
    
        
     There are such posts about each and every platform out there. In addition to not knowing what's the ban frequency, there's also no info in those complaints if they got banned for a good reason.Last winter people got fed up with antivax-dewormer-nomasker bullshit and a lot of subreddits just took the trash out, so those complaints you saw might just be be those dumbasses. I'm not saying there aren't annoying powertripping mods on Reddit, e.g. r/Linux, but there always tends to be an alternative subreddit one can use.
    
    
        
      
 There have been some great posts and comments today regarding online content manipulation and censorship   
    
        
     IMHO it's not so much of a problem with google search, but the internet as a whole.Most genuine discussions have moved from open, publicly accessible web to places inaccessible to search engines and general public. Smaller niche forums, blogs and personal websites with no financial incentive have died out. People have moved to Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack, Twitter and other places behind logins. Online newspapers and portals are increasingly using paywalls. Most of the genuine human interactions and quality content is not indexable anymore. Instead we have a million affiliate marketers fighting for the top positions in search results with every possible seo trick. Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.
    
    
        
      
 It's because private communities are the only ones free from mass abuse. Public forums moved to private discord groups with hard to find invite links / etc because public forums take an army of anti abuse workers to keep alive. While a discord group just needs a few people to kick the trouble makers and maybe revoke the invite link for a while.   
    
        
     If that's the entire problem, then why not make these forums read-only by default (while still keeping them publicly viewable) and hand out invite links as in Discord?Lobste.rs, for instance, has an interesting "invite tree" concept where your reputation is bound to people you've invited and who they've invited and so on.
    
    
        
     &gt; Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.There are still some pretty active enthusiast message boards, e.g., https://www.tacomaworld.com  But your overall point is valid, I think. My pointing to a single active forum doesn't change the fact that many of other enthusiast groups have moved to facebook groups and the like.
    
    
        
      
 Feature, not bug. If there's no public search, it can't be gamed for money. The problem TFA identifies is one of discerning that the person you're getting your info from is an actual person, who cares. The best way of doing that, until we find some way of creating institutional trust in these matters, is talking to the sort of person that spends all day in talking to a chat room about whatever it is you're asking about.   
    
        
     I too have found myself searching more in Reddit. Not to throw shade on Reddit, but even if I find exactly what I’m looking for in there, it’s depressing that it’s all bound up inside of another walled garden who will eventually have the same incentive as Google: squeeze every last advertising dollar out of the produc… I mean users. Like Google, it’s just a matter of time before they too lose their balance.A question worth posing to this community: how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers? Secondarily, how can said internet also be much more accessible to content authors so they won’t have to learn a css, html, and JS to publish some stuff? Finally, how can that content be discovered from within this network?
    
    
        
      
 I "search" reddit a lot, but all my searches are always through Google. Reddit search is notoriously bad, even after multiple attempts by them to fix it. Suffixing my Google searches with "reddit" though gives all the results I'm looking for.   
    
        
      
 Yeah. I’ve run into this too. A lot of websites have terrible internal search. Google crushes it, esp when you have a “site:reddit.com” to the query.   
    
        
     A factor in there has got to be 'who pays?' If it's hostile to advertisers, then there's got to be money to pay for the infrastructure from somewhere.Maybe a tax on ISPs? I think I'd happily pay $10 extra per month for access to an ad-free interrnet. Maybe $20. But how many of the people that are already happy with the ads and poor google results would do so? Would it be sustainable?
    
    
        
      
 I think you're grossly underestimating how much is needed to replace the ad revenue that feeds today's Internet. Remember, majority of people wouldn't pay for getting rid of ads, because they don't have the disposable income. So they're also not really worthwhile to advertisers. You have to divide the revenue by some small fraction of current users.   
    
        
     Yep. It's really weird if you think about it. The first time I saw a company being upfront about their ad revenue [1] I was surprised.&gt; The Premium fee is basically about $7 per year, which is less than what a free user generates in ad revenue. Thus leagues that pay for Premium and use an ad-blocker are generating less revenue than free users. They charge about $20 per user per year to remove ads. I pay for that, so I'm not sure what kind of ads they have, but I'd love to see what they're advertising and what the click through + conversion rates look like. What you said makes sense to me. I wonder if advertisers are paying a fortune to acquire users with a lot of disposable income. 1. https://www.fantrax.com/forums/general/messages/public/l72mh...
    
    
        
      
 Agreed, Facebook makes something like 8 dollars a user per year? That's just one of the mega services, imagine replacing that money for all of the players that power your internet.   
    
        
     It's very relevant to consider that the value of users is very unequal.IIRC for Facebook American users the average revenue was 50+ dollars per year. Furthermore, if you're the type of person for whom saving a few dollars doesn't matter, you're likely worth more than that average; and for FB to break even on your ads an appropriate price is likely to be closer to $100 per year.
    
    
        
     There must be a difference between paying for the infrastructure and paying for the content (including the code).It's easy to imagine a future where the infrastructure is something analogous to a public good, like clean water. The infrastructure is agnostic to the content. The content, on the other hand, is a product of a massive, churning, never-ending process of intellectual work. Ads, for the most part, provide the underlying economic incentive for that work. And the dirty little secret of all that ad-supported creative content? Its value is minimal. Truly minimal. Often low quality, incoherent. If it all went away tomorrow, I would hardly notice. That it is nevertheless so popular is something of a paradox. I know I sound ridiculous, but at the core, I'm beginning to believe that the fact that advertising is as powerful an economic force as it is, is a reflection of the fact that people's lives are more boring and devoid of meaning than we often admit.
    
    
        
      
 Ads will always exist because they work. Only way is to ban them explicitly but you can do that with AdBlock for example but you still get SEO spam, placed content, inauthentic "recommendations".   
    
        
     &gt; how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers?You have to reify "trust" into concrete, computer-representable data. Maybe borrow the "web of trust" concept from PGP, but do some sort of multiplicative thing where the amount you trust someone's recommendation online is the product of the trust relationships between you and the recommender. That's really the best you can do - even legislation against online advertising will be subverted by companies that go through layers of proxies to buy influence.
    
    
        
      
 One small thought — having the search engine be configurable, so that the user can specify which sources to give priority to (e.g., Reddit, NYT Wirecutter, Wikipedia, etc.), would be an incremental improvement.   
    
        
      
 I, too, search "&lt;search term&gt; + reddit" often for product reviews and such. Thing is, the results on that front have started to slide as the paid review side of the internet catches on. I'm finding that it's getting harder and harder to trust the reddit search results - lots of shill accounts and obvious junk. That's not a google problem, specifically, but it's another degradation of a workaround for declining search result quality :(   
    
        
      
 The only real advantage of reddit is that somebody will usually be insulting the ad account, so you can hopefully glean some truth from the insults.   
    
        
      
 Unless there's a critical mass of shills, and then anyone who speaks out against them will get banned and/or downvoted to oblivion..   
    
        
      
 Usually I trust Reddit threads where users give pros/cons of multiple competing products. Things like running shoes users have usually tried a lot out and liked them for different reasons. If those match with the one pair I've tried out it seems like a useful data point for decision making.   
    
        
      
 Yeah, a lot of subreddits are clogged with the same bad info that's gotten all over Google's front page. The stickied "list of recommendations" on an enthusiast sub is just the same as you'd get from clicking the top result of "Best X 2022" on Google, complete with affiliate links   
    
    
        
      
 That's not the point - the point is that paid shills are astroturfing reddit enthusiast subreddits, so that operator doesn't shield you at all. Once a hobbyist subreddit gets big enough, it attracts a lot of attention from shady types trying to capitalize on the captive audience. I've seen it happen numerous times (only when the offender is caught) in the /r/watches subreddit, the /r/overlanding subreddit, etc.   
    
        
     About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low.The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on the website into the articles. The result is trashy articles that could well have been written by a bot but aren't. This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work. It's people but they work like bots.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work.It may be becoming borderline. I expect that sentence/paragraph completion is already becoming useful to people who churn out quick content for a living. In any case, the important part isn't whether or not it's bots. The important part is whether or not it's authentic. The precise meaning of authenticity gets squishy, but it exists nonetheless. IMO the sentiments are correct, whatever the details. Part of why google sucks is that the internet is worse, for a bunch of the things we use google to search for. The internet becoming a larger, more profitable industry changed it. Instagramming for influencer perks, SEOing, or selling targeted ads like FB do... it does not lead to the same places that earlier iterations of the WWW produced. Times change.
    
    
        
      
 It's a pretty clear indication that the once stalwart effort, within Google, to produce a true search experience is effectively dead.   
    
    
        
      
 My friend briefly had a copywriting job writing weed strain descriptions for dispensaries. He was never provided the product he was describing, just told to make it up.   
    
        
     I have the very same feeling concerning electronics. Searching for a particular product does not even popping up 5-10 comparison articles but the content of all seems to be based on technical specifications of the manufacturer only, which I already have a hands on.Significantly more time required for consciously choosing a product to purchase (which in my case is critical because I am like Sheldon Cooper trying to choose between PS4 and XBOX One normally, to the horror of my wife, she wants a new TV and it is months long project based on accurate and quick data, and now this, with Google, which makes our family atmosphere even more tense : ) )
    
    
        
      
 In case you haven't encountered it yet: https://www.rtings.com is a good site for TV specs/reviews specifically. I know someone who works there and their methodology seems legit (I like it more than Wirecutter).   
    
    
        
     Most reviews are useless from the start because most reviewers are totally dependent on manufacturers or dealers providing samples (yet will generally claim to be "totally independent"). That's before you get to reviewers who can't or don't know how to test the product in question and so end up narrating the manufacturers specs to their faux testing.There are very few exceptions to this.
    
    
        
      
 Niche, probably outdated, but indicative: The only way to purchase a laser printer with high printing quality these days is to buy something expensive and hope for the best. Magazines used to do actual reviews of these things.   
    
        
     Brother MFC laser printers have delivered for me for over 15 years now. I have bought many for various small offices and my home and relatives’ homes, etc, and I have not heard any complaints.I especially like the scan function where brother web connect OCR’s the document and saves it as a pdf directly in your Box/Dropbox/OneDrive/GoogleDrive folder. Just wish it worked with iCloud Drive.
    
    
        
     Your comment is kind of like the "reviews". Yes, they work. I've got one of those.I'm interested in the printing quality though.
    
    
        
      
 Oops, my bad, I did not properly take into account high quality printing. It is definitely too cheap to be anything high quality, they just get the job done for everyday printing at a low price.   
    
    
        
      
 I look back at the newspaper stories I wrote a few decades back. I could get the score from the coach, find out hits from who and when, and after that 20 second interaction, I could write a news story in maybe three minutes, which told you everything you needed to know.   
    
    
        
      
 Somebody who worked at a winery once told me that the flavors they mention on the bottle are actually what the wine is missing, and they name them in the hope that the power of suggestion give you a more balanced impression.   
    
        
     It would be interesting to see some sort of study, to see the impact on wine labels on: normal people, vs wine "experts", vs sommeliers.I've seen a few of those wine documentaries about sommeliers, and they certainly made it seem like it was a legitimate ability to identify stuff. I'd be interested to see how close they are in a more neutral, measured environment.
    
    
    
        
     &gt;Tasters can't even tell reds from whites with a great deal of accuracy. [2]Actually, this one is bullshit. While it may be true that the average person without blind tasting experience cannot do this, anyone who has actually done blind tasting seriously should be pretty accurate at this. Purely structurally, red wines generally have much more tannin and more alcohol than whites. The famous study that led to this claim (which survives because people, especially the HN type, love feeling smug about expertise) doesn't really hold up. See eg http://sciencesnopes.blogspot.com/2013/05/about-that-wine-ex...
    
    
    
        
     Sommeliers are professionalized, with courses &amp; exams. But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers.Instead Sommelier exams are subjective - candidates are judged by another Sommelier on subjective criteria rather than objective measurement. In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? How does the candidate present themselves? Sommeliers dress in fine suits, but this should have no impact on actual wine tasting ability. Yet I am sure if I showed up in a draggy old t-shirt I would fail regardless. The whole industry seems allergic to objective scientific measurement. I am sure Sommelier's do have some ability to identify varieties, but are they actually tasting all those subtle hints they list off? I doubt it.
    
    
        
     What is this comment based on? To me it feels like this is what you imagine the exams are like. The MS exam (the highest and most famous one) has three parts: theory, service, and tasting. The service part is all about presentation, absolutely (that's the whole point). The tasting part is not. In particular...&gt;But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers. That is exactly how the tasting portion of the exam works. And &gt;In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? This isn't really how it works, especially the "high class" language comment. Actually there are a variety of different things that they are supposed to identify about the wine, known as "the grid" [1]. You can take a look at it yourself. They are essentially judged based on how well their grid matches up with the consensus grid from the master sommeliers. [1] https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/D...
    
    
    
        
      
 This is something I notice in advertising generally: whatever they most emphasize is least likely to be true about the product (e.g., the "great taste" of McDonald's).   
    
        
      
 I feel like this is how the lobbying and decision making about the legalization is going as well.   
    
        
      
 The other day I looked up the wordle answer (I know I know). The first result was a site where I had to scroll through about 19 paragraphs of SEO vomit to get to the answer. The page could literally have one word on it and serve it's purpose. If that isn't a sign that the the internet, or at least google search, is dead, I don't know what is.   
    
        
      
 There's a whole industry of sites like this for NYT crossword answers, to the point that it's often impossible to get any organic results at all for something that's been clued in the Times, which is frustrating because I don't just want the answer (there's a button in the app that does that already), I want to learn about the thing I’m unfamiliar with. Luckily, most topics that come up have some content on Wikipedia so I go there instead.   
    
        
      
 Ugh yes that’s super annoying! I don’t want the answer spoon-fed to me. The point of searching it is to actually learn a little something which will help me remember in the future   
    
        
      
 lol the same happens with WSJ. It’s very disappointing to try and do a bit of research on a clue and get the answer on a bot site linked to the puzzle you’re doing. Interesting how they do it though.   
    
        
     It’s like a DDoS attack on your mind (distributed because everyone is doing it). The attention span economy at its finest.Reminds me of those ways to catch spammers or bots by occupying some of their resources with meaningless tasks for as long as possible. Except it’s turned around. Sometimes I wonder if there’s even any real money in ads anymore or if it’s just a giant circle jerk that slowly destroys society…
    
    
        
     For future instances where you give up trying to figure out the wordle, I built a site to make that easier: www.wordlespoiler.comWord of warning: it has the answer to both today and tomorrows wordles.
    
    
        
     Speaking of bots, I'd be interested to know the percentage of articles on major traffic content sites are authored or co-authored by AI.My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a entropic gene pool in nature, but with information.
    
    
        
      
 Sports stories are frequently written by bots/AI/whatever you want to call them. Sports stats makes it relatively easy to create written text articles about games. When first rolled out, there were some obvious tells such as an excessive amount of "for the first time this season" or "set a record for the season" in articles about first games of the season. Unusual plays or quirky behavior by participants tend to be missed in these articles but otherwise they're serviceable though somewhat dry and bland.   
    
        
      
 Stock analysis articles are very commonly generated automatically from templates. The selected template is based on some real characteristics of a described company (whether the stock went up or down recently, what is the P/E etc.), but the content is generic and reused across all companies with similar characteristics.   
    
    
    
        
     Apparently, using a machine translation as a basis and working through correcting it to read or write foreign languages is a growing trend and that’s a form of computer assisted literacy if I were to guess.Bar that, it’s humans outrunning AI in the race to the bottom with a head start. Human people can be forced to be incredibly machine like.
    
    
    
        
     ~0% right now.I think the quality of searches like “best TV” will improve dramatically once language models are used to generate SEO spam. Anything would be an improvement over what today’s human spam bots produce.
    
    
        
      
 Lately, half the results I get are pages that I cant view without paying to some service or signing up for a free trial.. Google literally serves up results that are unreachable ..   
    
        
     Can we also talk about how Google allows top organic results to LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook which literally present you with a LOGIN page before you see anything related to your search?Absolute worst UX ever, yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.
    
    
        
     &gt; yet they allow it because it's their SV buddies.At one time, Google used to ban sites for "cloaking": offering one version of the page to the crawler, and another to the user. But over time they got into trouble from these sites, getting sued left and right. Being accused of putting up a wall, and abusing their monopoly. Eventually, these sites won out and Google dropped this requirement.
    
    
        
      
 Similar story with Image search. "Blah blah something something copyright something". And voila - now you can't get direct access to images on the search results page.   
    
    
        
     Ah so that's why Quora no longer shows you the first result before blurring the page most of the time.It's a shame. I've really enjoyed a lot of the well written responses there but I can't be bothered to create another account.
    
    
        
      
 At least Quora would show you a small something. Facebook and LinkedIn literally show no content except a login page.   
    
        
      
 This might be the case for news sites which show limited content until you sign into a paywall, but I don't recall the biggest offenders which show NO relevant content at all (LinkedIn and Facebook) saying anything.   
    
        
     Classic example of this kind of content... Try searching "How to use X to get stains out of Y".You will find a page for almost any X and Y combination. And they will all have wording like "Put some X on the stained Y... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!".
    
    
        
     "how to use jet fuel to get stains out of my yak"Nope, nothing relevant. Found a counterexample.
    
    
        
     This is how to use jet fuel to get stains out of a yak:Put some jet fuel on the stained yak... wait a bit... rub it in... and then put it through the washing machine. Hope it works!
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     That job is probably months away from being automated by GPT-3 and its ilk, supposing it hasn't yet been.Right now, I don't think you can tell it to use some specific terms in the text it generates, but it doesn't sound like a difficult extension.
    
    
        
     I mean then is DIT really a conspiracy theory? I know that people in HN have already started doing replies with AI in some threads. (only because they tell people). Wait a few more years and there will be no way to know if forums are just bots generating content.I guess HN would be a weird outlier, because there are no ads. Except maybe the bots would be useful after all when various "Show HN" or "Launch HN" and have the bots cheer those companies and get random publicity.
    
    
    
        
      
 That's how I know it's not gpt-3, gpt-3 would write better articles. At the very best it's poorly trained Markov chains.   
    
        
      
 The idea that a genuinely Dead Internet might be an improvement over the current internet experience is a fun one, and one I don't entirely disagree with.   
    
        
      
 Regardless of automation, there will always be jobs that are so "dumb" but still expensive to automate that people can do cheaper then machines.   
    
        
      
 Within the last 6 months I’m seeing a rise of very good NLP content farms that almost have what I’m looking for but not quite. I think what they do is start off a transformer based NLP with example queries that others have searched for and it generates a realistic looking answer that’s usually wrong. The scale and breadth of these could only be done by machines.   
    
    
    
    
        
     Eh, if that's the case, I'm cool to be one of the few remaining humans among billions of wonderful whoever-they-are.Beings so acceptive of others as to make me oblivious there's a difference? That's far more than humans ever accomplished.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I would expect an automaton to be able to spell; so perhaps the presence of spelling errors is a mark of an authentic page. Maybe one could force Goo to spit out authentic results by including a strategically-misspelled word in the search terms.   
    
        
     Totally agree on the reddit point, I've also noticed the same occurring to me. The girlfriend recently got Pokemon Arceus and sometimes asks me to Google something she wants to know.It's completely pointless, you just get a bunch of articles from news sites (??) that transcript the quest but not tell you anything more. I miss a nice community wiki like I'm used to from playing Dark Souls etc. I've just started appending site:reddit.com to everything, works a lot better.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Yeah, Fextralife saved my ass multiple times while working through the dark souls series. It's a shame that type of community resource isn't more popular.   
    
        
     Google could fix this by making the algorithm take into account searches that often end with "reddit", thus applying more weight to Reddit results to similar searches where the user didn't include Reddit in it. Clearly it's an indicator that those are the better results.Take StackOverflow for example. Almost any programmer will find a SO result as the top result and it's usually exactly what you're looking for. Since there's no money to be made by companies writing blog posts on debugging a compiler error, Google's algorithm works as intended. Question is: Why hasn't Google done anything about this? 
It's the organic results that are terrible, so they're not losing ad revenue by placing these garbage sites at the top. Perhaps its to intentionally make better websites pay for ads to get better placement? But those won't be the ones to ever pay to begin with...
    
    
        
      
 I think it would be foolish to assume google hasn't spent hundreds of hours in meetings talking about what they can do about everyone having to type reddit. Problem is they are facing an army of SEO experts who are one step ahead of google. As well as legal issues. Imagine if it was found google was artificially boosting reddit in an unfair way.   
    
        
      
 This is Google we're talking about. They could very easily conquer the SEO experts the same way they basically eliminated spam and most web browser exploits.   
    
        
      
 Working at a marketing agency, I can promise you the Dead Internet Theory really isn't even a conspiracy. It's depressing.   
    
        
      
 I did software dev at a marketing firm for about a year, and it was pretty soul sucking, so I know what you mean. I won't work at one again unless it's literally my only option.   
    
        
      
 I’ve been there too. The sad thing was that the people I worked with were genuinely great and smart people but you’re spot on about the actual state of the environment being a depressing and soul draining thing. I quit that job on moral grounds, I just couldn’t be a part of that any more.   
    
    
        
      
 I agree google is bad, but I think reddit is rapidly becoming equally as inauthentic. I'm sure every major player at this point understands the gains that can be had by astroturfing reddit. The real problem seems to be the internet is inherently untrustworthy and going back to finding people you trust in the real world is the only fix I can see.   
    
        
      
 We've also got to address the people and corporations that are gaming the system that google has created. Google is by no means off the hook, but Marketing practices have also taken a very bad turn to deception and in reinforcing a payola systems recently that we may never be able to recover from trust-wise.   
    
    
        
     &gt; - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust."Haha, the noobs. I use HN instead sunglasses cool face  A bit more seriously: I fully agree with this. And if HN doesn't have what I'm looking for then I use Reddit as well. But if HN has some info on the topic with a few highly upvoted threads, damn, it always impresses me.
    
    
        
      
 When I'm looking into some project or piece of software I'm unfamiliar with, I really do search for HN posts on it. Fastest way to cut through (enough) of the biased material and get something genuine. Even hyped stuff usually has enough contrarian posts to give you an idea of where to look for the skeletons.   
    
        
     HN has now been around a while, is really popular, and is starting to catch the attention of ad/marketing companies now, though - how do you know what here is genuine?Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash...
    
    
        
     And it's not just the spammers. Any topic that touches domestic or international politics in any way almost instantly brings out a lot of bad-faith actors, here or anywhere else on the internet.&gt; Even the heuristic of "only trust accounts older than n years" isn't perfect, as eventually a few people will undoubtedly sell their old accounts on a dark web market for a little extra cash... Yikes, I hadn't thought of that angle. That would explain some of the long-dormant accounts on Some Other Place that suddenly start spewing out-of-character garbage, assuming they weren't password-guessed, data-breached, or keylogged by some rando.
    
    
        
     Hmm, I think for now it's relatively easily distinguishable. I've noticed that HN'ers feel "like me". So I look for that specific signal. I look for signals that care about curiosity and an insane hunger for the truth. Also, it's tough to mimic "Oh yea, I was at Xerox Parc programming this language that was posted about, let me give some nuanced insights into what was stated in the article" (that quote was made up for the sake of example).The only marketeer that would be able to consistently fool me might be a marketeer that was a developer. But last time I applied for a junior marketeer position I was asked: given your resume, don't you want to be a developer instead? So devs seem to get pidgeonholed into always being devs.
    
    
        
     Me too I even have a bookmarklet in Firefox so that I can use a prefix (hn) and the search is rewritten as site:news.ycombinator.com, to make sure all results are limited to HN.I also have the same kind of bookmarklet for Reddit and Google Scholar.
    
    
        
      
 The reason that the quality on Reddit is higher is because there’s people moderating those quality subreddits. Without those moderators it would all turn to crap and be just as useless as Google.   
    
        
     Moderators that are often anonymous/unknown.(This isn't an argument against your point, just a bit of additional context that increasingly is odd to me as Reddit gains more and more social weight)
    
    
        
      
 Very true. Fortunately I don't think most moderators want to see their community destroyed. That's exactly what would happen if they started taking money. As a group, people will catch on fast and either force the moderator to step down or just leave for a new subreddit.   
    
        
     &gt; - "There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory..."
&gt; I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.I never believed in conspiracy theories, and after I read "Media Control" by Noam Chomsky I understood there is no need for conspiracy theories once you understand how individual incentives are aligned and how individuals always act to maximise profits. Someone on HN phrased this and I am not taking credit for it but it explains beautifully whats going on: "Google is not making money by showing you the best search result they can, they make money by keeping you searching."
    
    
        
     That does not make sense. If searches did not result in satisfactory results, then people would stop searching.Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit. This is a problem for google, maybe not right this minute as growth might offset dissuaded users, but nevertheless, it does not behoove them in the long run to provide garbage search results to people.
    
    
        
     &gt; Which they are, evidenced by restricting searches to HN or Reddit.You are right but overestimate the number of people doing these restrictive searches. They should be in the &lt;0.1% range. I personally switched (to duck and latly kagi.com) and know quite some people in tech that did so too, but the non tech-savy person (which are the majority of overall users) doesn't even know other search engines.
    
    
        
      
 Eventually, though, even non technical users will stop Google searching if it wastes their time. If they do not find what they want, then they can go back to asking people in person or instagram or whatever, but I would not expect people to keep aimlessly searching.   
    
        
     I view the Dead Internet Theory as Black Mirror style satire. All it would take is liberal application of GPT-3 style transformer AI to content generation and much of the Internet could be fake. You could have fake political trolls arguing with other fake political trolls from the other side, fake blogs, fake review sites, etc. and it would take me a while to notice. Most of the modern Internet is just that bad.Advertising always creates perverse incentives. It works in traditional media too. Look at what happened to things like Discovery and The Learning Channel when they became subject to advertising based pressure for ratings. They went from having actual educational content to being full of tabloid trash.
    
    
        
     The death of the authentic web really chimes with me. I have an almost physical reaction when I occasionally come across a page that isn’t trying to sell me something, that is a labour of love.A month or so ago, I was trying to help someone retrieve some very old Wordpress for Mac files. I found http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos and was so touched, I sent the author a few dollars for a coffee
    
    
        
     Google's problem is they've virtually nothing (given their resources) to "commoditizing their complement". https://www.gwern.net/Complement Google's compliment is web sites. What have they done to make a web site easier to make? They even killed their RSS feed. They have released a bit of web tech, but their offerings are generally a bit sad or only solve Google problems (e.g. Go). If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help. If you want to write a blog or make a simple web app, it's unlikely you're going to think "Google has some great stuff to help, and has awesome tools". Mozilla's web resources are better. Microsoft's web resources are better.
    
    
        
     &gt; If you want to distribute an .exe or .app, MS and Apple have released some pretty good tools to help.You mean having to pay them for the priviledge of not being flagged as "dangerous" by shitty machine learning algorithms?
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."&gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. Yeah I remember this being mentioned in a local presentation at university. As a great thing. Google doesn't search for what you write, but what you want. The problem is that very often Google don't know what I want. Before they introduced this, I was able to define my query so that I got exactly what I wanted.
    
    
    
        
      
 Dead Internet Theory is totally believable. I remember back in 2006-7 or so, being slightly curious about putting up a food review site because I was really angry at my local X food establishment. I found places were you could buy complete restaurant database ready to be scripted onto the web for maybe 90 a pop. The data was actually pretty good, but I was shocked by the huge community around flipping these dbs into internet spam. For the very high majority these were hungry business types who could barely open a code editor without asking for help. I only expect the problem has gotten exponentially worse since then now that ai generated content has improved in quality.   
    
        
     I think the OP is weak because it conflates ads and seo spam. Yes, Google went all in with ads, and yes, this hurt its credibility and the quality of its products.But there is no conceivable universe where seo spam isn't the arch enemy of Google. Google needs to fight spam to survive, it knows it and it does. But that's hard. So hard in fact, that nobody else has cracked the problem, and for all the anecdotal evidence of someone switching to Bing, Google's marketshare is still utterly dominant. The Dead Internet Theory may have some weight: Google hasn't dropped the ball, but it is slowly drowning into the sea of "content-free content". But if that's the case, so is everyone else.
    
    
        
     SEO is ads Google is failing to monetize.That said, the reason the Reddit trick works is that it uses information Google explicitly excludes when ranking content (engagement signals). Google has a bunch of “objective standards” that it uses to paternalistically shape what the web looks like. Many of these are divorced from what users actually want for pieces of content (https, AMP, a life story in front of recipes to demonstrate authorship, etc).
    
    
    
        
      
 I think our statements overlap. “Reddit moderators have better standards.” Is something I’d definitely agree with.   
    
        
     I think there’s actually two dimensions to this problem and the article and your comment only address one of them.The other dimension is that, in the past, if you searched for stuff your results were likely to be a blog or a forum thread. Today the bloggers have evolved into instagrammers, TikTokkers, YouTubers, or Podcasters. The Forums and community pages have moved to Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Discord, etc. So it’s not just that SEO and botspam has eaten the Google results page, it’s that this is all that’s left of the open internet that needed search to navigate. Much of it truly is a wasteland. Google owns part of the blame for crippling RSS and privileging recent pages and specific domains or AMP pages over evergreen, self-hosted content in search results. But also users have given up on the open internet in droves. Instead of starting a fansite they start fan subreddits or discords instead.
    
    
        
     That inauthenticity comment really hit home for me, too. I realize that I do not trust the internet at large, and haven't for a long time. That's been the real trigger for my retreat from mass social media into smaller, tigher online communities.Even HN is starting to feel like it wants to sell me something.
    
    
        
      
 The latter feeling may be because HN is run by a startup accelerator. They run literal native ads on the front page whenna startup they sponsor goes live.   
    
        
      
 I don't think that's where it comes from. It comes from the same places as Google, where people know the value of this community's attention. Posts at the top of HN are designed to get to the top of HN.   
    
        
     This fits well with my own worldview. I've been griping about Google results for years, and jumped for DuckDuckGo when it became usable. I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap and someone new will come along to replace it, just as Google replaced AltaVista.Even DDG knows that it can't handle everything, and so it has its bang shortcuts. I've used the !reddit one, and I'd use !w (Wikipedia) except I do those from the Firefox search bar. I've heard the "everything's a bot" theory before, but never saw a name put to it before. I'd have to guess that 99% of all SMTP traffic is spam at this point.
    
    
        
     &gt;I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crapIn terms of direct ads, perhaps. But for SEO spam, in many cases, DDG already seems to be there. For example, things as simple as "python datetime", "python json", or "python datetime.now", where it would seem obvious that the top result would be the documentation for the module/function, have spam sites above the actual Python documentation. Meanwhile, search for "matplotlib", and your screen will fill up with ads.
    
    
        
     &gt; This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.So are reddit-comments and entries. There it's even worse, because most people don't connect the content with manipulation. &gt; The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now. So, like reddit? I mean every platform has their hive mind, and reddit is even worse, because the hive mind can be manipulated with paid upvotes, not just reposting and comments. &gt; The same for trending programmer tools. Aren't most of them yet again commercial products from companies?
    
    
        
      
 As soon as Google removed Wikipedia as the first result of everything they started dying.   
    
        
     Except Wikipedia has a reliable place on the page, if a Wikipedia entry exists... they never _removed_ it, just _moved_ it.This is the least of the issues with Google.
    
    
        
     "It is obvious that serving ads creates misaligned incentives for search engines..."I don’t think this is the problem. The problem is the need for public companies to grow exponentially. If you take away the need to constantly grow exponentially, then ads on search can be both balanced well and make an insane amount of money.
    
    
        
      
 Based on some of the April Fools' Day experiments that Reddit has done in the past, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have the same hesitation and mistrust of Reddit posts and comments. So much of the content, even on Reddit, is made by bots or copied by bots from older, legitimate user-generated content.   
    
        
      
 There’s something sad and ironic about using Google to search Reddit. One, I mostly dislike using Reddit - I only want to see specific discussions very occasionally. Two, what is the state of the internet if I have to use the best search engine to find content on a website I mostly dislike? Haha.   
    
        
     Reddit's search engine is kind of crap (not terrible, but also not great). That's why I use Google for Reddit, to have a better Reddit search experience.I figured that's why it's so high, is Reddit's UX keeps slowly getting worse so the best way to find stuff on Reddit is by searching outside of it.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; This is it for me exactly.This is for me exactly too. Search "best XXX for YYY", and I get back two pages of dubious websites that smell like paid ads a mile away.
    
    
        
     Searching Reddit helps but the quality of comments has gotten lower since 2015 or so. It seems to coincide with the wave of subreddit bans and the nakedly politically-driven moderation on subreddits. And with the reflexive attitude—against anything countering the Reddit consensus—that developed during the Trump years. High quality posters seem to have withdrawn from the site (at least in how much they comment) and what's left is mostly ignorant teenagers and bitter millennials with shitty jobs. In turn, that crowd is much less likely to upvote high-quality thoughtful content, so the cycle continues. The decline in quality has trickled even into the less popular subs. Don't get me wrong, the site has always had problems, but the more recent decline in thoughtfulness is dramatic.The worst part is that despite Reddit getting so much worse, there is no other place that's grown to fill the void. This place is great, and I do search HN when it makes sense, but it's small and narrow in scope. Reddit basically crowds out any competing websites by sucking up all the low-level chatter required to sustain a community, but has also pushed away high-quality posters, who now have no place to go. Very tragic but maybe a good case study in shitty network effects.
    
    
        
      
 Quality on any non niche popular subreddits were already abysmal long before 2015. Reddit is useless for anything which is not highly specific but there are some diamonds in the rough: great subreddits exists about fashion, knives, gardening, coffee, shaving and plenty of other weird interests.   
    
        
      
 This is true but I find that about 2015 is the inflection point. Even posts about highly technical subjects are not as good if they’re from after that.   
    
    
    
        
     I dunno, looking at the growth curve in Paul Graham’s tweet I expect most of the drop in average comment quality can be attributed to the size of the user base. It’s hard to keep high-quality content the norm even in much smaller communities./r/nfl had a reputation for high-quality content and wasn’t a particular battleground in the Trump Wars. It’s still a good breaking news feed, and the live game threads are fun, but every post is dominated by joke comments and memes.
    
    
        
     I find the idea that banning Trump supporters killed reddit to be pretty far-fetched.To the extent there is a change in quality, it probably comes from other factors, including having a bigger, broader, and different user base now than in the past (and only a small portion of that change likely came from Trump-related bans).
    
    
        
      
 Parent didn't say Trump supporters. And I completely agree with their observation. Quality went completely off a cliff around that time. I think it just officially entrenched the Reddit orthodoxy and that there is a "right way" to think, and that infected even non-political subreddits. Not all though, I know some subs are much better and open to discussion than in the past.   
    
    
    
        
     &gt;most of the web has become too inauthentic to trusti think that specialised search engines are gaining ground. For example, I am using github search for searching code samples, that works better than google. You might want to check my side project that tries to explore the subject. I have a search tool / catalog of duckduckgo !bang operators, i am hoping that it allows for better discoverability of specialized search engines.  https://mosermichael.github.io/duckduckbang/html/main.html - (best viewed on a PC). The latest addition is a description for each search engine, just hover over the name, and you get a description derived from the sites meta and title tags. I think that specialised search engines are gaining ground, it has become easier to set one up, thanks to elasticsearch/lucene. They can be quite good, for a limited domain, and they don't have to invade your privacy in order to find out what you are looking for. I think that what is missing are tools like this, that would aid the discovery and use of these search engines. I hope that this will allow them to eat into the market from the 'low end'. The projects source is here: https://github.com/mosermichael/duckduckbang  Unfortunately they don't invest too much into !bang operators at duckduckgo, however that's my input data...
    
    
        
     But I still prefer to use Google to search Reddit or Stack overflow.Reddit especially has horrible search.
    
    
        
      
 Google doesn't care about indexing the internet, that's easy. Every other product they have built since search has been about indexing you.   
    
        
     &gt; The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the webThis point especially rings true for me, but it also concerns me a bit. Reddit has killed a lot of other forums over the years. If something happens to Reddit, we run the risk of losing a large corpus of information.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."&gt; This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. I hate this too. I do get typos corrected by Google. But I don't need that - if I put a typo in my query and get bad results, I can correct the typo myself. But if Google decides I must not have meant what I actually said, there's no way for me to correct that. It's a ridiculously bad tradeoff - we eliminate errors that are trivially fixed by introducing errors that can't be fixed at all. I have similar feelings about phone input autocorrect, which automatically converts typos that are very easy to read into (mostly) correctly spelled words, plus (sometimes) completely unintelligible nonsense.
    
    
        
     Makes sense why they would fuzzy search. Not all users can be expected to know Google fu.So let mainstream use fuzzy and keep power user features. The big issue is power user support is gone for people with Google fu. Ads or no ads isn’t really an issue for this because it’s such a small percentage of users that know Google fu.
    
    
        
      
 I agree. Often, what I am after online is to see what other real people are saying about something. typing 'reddit' into google is basically a proxy for "please google for the love of good, can you start indexing actual human discussions again?".   
    
        
     &gt;&gt;- "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."&gt;This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. It should do both. And it used to do both.
    
    
        
      
 I have a similar habit, I often search "[topic] forum" - I'm not fond of Reddit specifically due to accessibility issues although in some cases I still go there because it's the only good source.   
    
        
     &gt;because results on other sites aren't trustworthyReddit is gamed way more than google. Paid posters, moderation of anything against a narrative. Google search may be dying, but reddit ain't doing much better.
    
    
        
     &gt; The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust.It's only a matter of time before reddit too becomes too inauthentic to trust. Not only is it directly funded by advertising, its audience is mainstream enough for advertisers to invest time and money posting fake opinions in order to make it look like it's coming from real people. I seriously hope I never see comments or news about people appending hacker news to searches. I don't want advertisers to kill this site when they catch wind of it.
    
    
        
     Google was boiling the frog really really slow.You can still can get exact searches by google dorks but "normal" people might find "google trying to be smart" actually useful.
    
    
        
     &gt; I hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.Nice try. That's totally what a bot would say.
    
    
        
     Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like?I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past
    
    
        
     They have filed for an IPO last month with the SEC so they should go public very soon.Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website. It happened before and the admins yielded to them so I don't see why it wouldn't happen again, especially since it's not like they can run the website without that weird cabal of (mostly delusional/psychotic) power mods doing their work for free.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt;is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website I have a story about this - and its worse than just mods -- Admins intervene and set narrative on for whom is allowed to mod and make mod decisions... I wont reveal the details - but I have seen Admins literally come in and fuck up Mod orders because (my suspicion) is that the Admins have MANY accounts that /appear/ as mods - but are actually Admin shill accounts... I had this happen to me first hand and I was appalled. Reddit's ethics are absolute garbage in this regard.
    
    
        
      
 I've also thought that. The reddit shutdown made the frontpage of (reputable) news sources, I can't imagine that investors aren't going to be asking the admins how much control they really have over the user experience on any given day.   
    
    
        
     Oh, forgot about that... ThanksAre they still under them? regardless, what is reddit's current value? (I've been on reddit for 15 years - but I have recently deleted my accounts due to censorship and ban-hammering for the most ridiculous reasons.)
    
    
    
        
      
 It's perhaps a little bit early in its creation to be sharing this but I am working on a new search that should help to fix the problems mentioned in the article, https://namusearch.com/. It allows you to build (and share with others) a curated list of websites that you want to use for searches   
    
    
        
      
 Yup, when I want to search anything I use a combination of reddit, HN, and Discord. My main use of Google these days is to find a website I forget the name of but roughly know what it's called. In the olden days, I used bookmark aggregation sites like del.icio.us to search for relevant content, which was generally more fruitful than a Google search.   
    
        
      
 Maybe a different kind of terror than Dead Internet Theory: the Internet is "alive", but it acts as if it was dead.   
    
        
     &gt;Dead Internet TheoryReminds me of the "birds aren't real" theory. Its almost more social commentary than a serious theory
    
    
        
      
 I didn’t really even think about this properly until just now.. these days I am looking at Reddit, Facebook groups and if needs be, YouTube (videos not by ‘creators’ as far as possible) to find information I used to google. Ads and referral links have totally ruined the usefulness of so much information.   
    
        
      
 I agree that Reddit remains a good source for info, but I’ve found that Google usually does a good job surfacing Reddit results — usually in the top half. Though this is most notable when I’m googling for esoteric info about TV shows and video games (e.g. “best build mass effect 3”)   
    
    
        
     &gt; The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like RedditAre you a fan of r/mtb or r/mountainbiking?
    
    
    
        
      
 The first review site I go to, to find if the product should be trusted or not is reddit only in the hope that not every comment is a paid ad.   
    
        
      
 Great take on the topic. I completely agree, love the small communities that form in Reddit and there I can find the experts to ask.   
    
        
      
 StackExchange is better for an informed discussion. Reddit has become too much like Yahoo! Answers.   
    
        
      
 That's so funny, because I use Google to search reddit, because Google's search of reddit is better than Reddit's.   
    
        
      "The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web." I just wanted to mention that a friend of mine made an app for user-reported trail conditions that might be worth taking a look at:
https://trekko.app/
    
    
        
      
 I wish Google would offer two different search products, one assuming Google-fu, and one not.   
    
    
        
     &gt; I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.Oh my sweet summer child. Reddit is absolutely infested with paid shills.
    
    
        
     &gt; I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.There is so much shilling on Reddit if you knew it would blow your mind. I wish more people realized this. Reddit is the best place to shill because not only is it ridiculously simple, people also automatically assume you’re not shilling, and then once you seed the idea, everyone else will do the shilling for you indirectly. The healthiest way to use Reddit is like Wikipedia: assume the information you’re reading is highly compromised and biased in one way or another, but use it as a starting point in your further research and it’s a great tool. Reddit posts are not your friends. Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling. Reddit is the best place to shill and the sooner the non-shillers figure that out, the better off the entire internet will be.
    
    
        
     &gt;Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.I increasingly think that upvote/downvote culture is the worst thing to happen to the internet and the world at large. The problem is I don't have an alternative solution to propose. Your comment is spot-on in my opinion though - I usually start with Reddit results, but try to check against other sources before relying on it.
    
    
        
     Reddit also - in my opinon - actively enables shilling and botposting. Why do they have an API?A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one? Also the model of user-created and user-moderated subreddits actively enables the creation of shill accounts. It's trivial to create a subreddit and use it to farm karma with a ton of bots. If you can keep real users from ever entering your walled garden of a subreddit (of which there are many) your bots will never be detected until you wipe their comment history and set them loose on the rest of the site.
    
    
    
        
     &gt;A forum that's meant to be 100% about humans talking to humans doesn't need an API, so why does it expose one?Third-party clients?
    
    
        
      
 reddit's search isn't that helpful though. I often get to reddit from Google, sometimes I even do site:reddit.com, but still using Google's search.   
    
        
      
 Its not about reddit as a search, it's about using reddit to validate your search because the alternative would likely yield poor results. You could trust the 10 listacles that came up as the first results that all look oddly similar, or you can try and filter through reddit by including it in your search terms
Google Search Is Dying
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30725933
If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
2022-03-18
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 <a href="vote?id=30728250&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results.<p>Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).</p><p>I feel there is a lot of untapped potential that gets missed by just trying to be a Google search clone.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728424&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no complex filtering to do things like removing search results that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to specifically refine your search. Google still has the most useful search, but they've taken away methods to get better results. I remember I was pretty upset when i couldn't search for images by exact dimensions anymore. Bing allows this.<p>Google's product direction has been inching backwards for a decade.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732916&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;It treats its power users like kids<p>It's worse than that: Google's power user features used to work reliably and repeatably. Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it.</p><p>I've recently noticed that Youtube has a similar feature. If you search for a video, you'll only get a small number of results before Youtube will start showing you "recommendations" which are only somewhat related to your original search. Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results.</p><p>It just seems that raw search is disappearing, and "recommendation engines" are appearing everywhere.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733340&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results.<p>Even more ironically and many here would have experienced this themselves: the best way to find something on YouTube is to use Bing
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 <a href="vote?id=30734822&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; the best way to find something on YouTube is to use Bing<p>Weirdly the same is the case for reddit.</p><p>What I really want I guess is, a search engine, where i can provide you sites to index, and when I am searching, I only search through those sites. That's it.
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 <p>What about discovery of sites you don’t know about. The whole purpose of he internet is that we’re all connected, but you seem to want only an extended private network.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30777944&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>A surprsingly large amounts of time I use Google, is to mainly to search on either reddit, stackoverflow, hackernews etc. Even searching for other sites is helpful using those sites i.e. searching for developer blogs gets far better results if I add reddit to it.<p>I think Google has it's place. However, I also think that an additional search engine like the one I described would be a very nice and useful tool. At least for me.
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 <a href="vote?id=30734726&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you.<p>Google trying to interpret what you want is, in my opinion, the largest reason that the search has become so bad. It guesses very poorly, and I end up having to try to guess what the magic incantation is to get it to give the what I'm searching for.
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 <a href="vote?id=30755929&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>"Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it."<p>This. So much this.</p><p>And it is so...bloody...annoying.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729738&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that.<p>Google has removed features that it had 10 years ago.
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 <a href="vote?id=30730401&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I still don’t get why. It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it? What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?<p>I do suspect the main thing people complain about currently with Google is the abundance of ads and the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long.
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 <a href="vote?id=30731533&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it?<p>Greater scale = greater cost of keeping data hot in their search data-warehouses (esp. in light of contention over memory/caches.) Keeping around both a source-text string <i>and</i> its tsvector representation (or whatever Google's version of that is) is a "thing that doesn't scale" that they could provide at 1B queries/day, but probably not at 10B queries/day.</p><p>&gt; the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long.</p><p>That's not the algorithm's fault <i>per se</i>; that's instead the fact that recipes can't be copyrighted, and so these sites can freely steal + repost one-another's recipes, and so you'll find the same recipe word-for-word on many sites, thus making an exact match in the recipe part not contribute highly to ranking any particular site. The 2000-word blog post, on the other hand, is actual Intellectual Property unique to the site posting it. So it only appears in the one place; and so when your query matches it, it ranks quite highly indeed.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732370&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; That's not the algorithm's fault per se;<p>Yes, it is. There are good recipe sites out there with authoritative, reliable content and fast loading times. Google says it prioritizes those things, I can identify sites that have them, and yet the algorithm doesn't favour them. That's the algorithm's fault no matter what memes about copyright law cause a proliferation of shitty websites.
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 <a href="vote?id=30738980&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>What I'm saying is that the "recipe" part of a recipe website is a <i>commodity</i> – there <i>is</i> no "authoritative" source for a given recipe, unless that recipe is too niche in appeal to end up widely disseminated. This video (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNLzyqqINw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNLzyqqINw</a>) has a pretty good coverage of the topic.<p>Compare and contrast: phone-number directory listings. Who should Google cite as the authoritative source for lists of name-to-phone number associations? Nobody. All the lists are copying from each-other, curating and correcting the data taken from one-another, gathering their own original data for additions, and everything in between. Every portal overlaps every other portal, but mostly has the same stuff.</p><p>Compare and contrast, in the physical world: printings of public-domain literature. If Google indexed bookstores, which printing by which publisher would you want them to rank first on a search for e.g. <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>?
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 <a href="vote?id=30733400&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>What I really want is biased search results of my choosing.<p>$10 a month for a personal search is a bit much. $10 a month for work related search is cheap. Give me results specific to my industry without having a super long query.
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 <p>The last time this came up, Google demonstrated that it still worked. Most of the examples of it not working people tried to provide are actually just unexpected exact matches in the HTML that the standard user doesnt see, so they seem like false positives or "surprisingly good" results not based on the page content.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Exactly. Even within the ad platform they keep pushing advertisers to target ‘broad’ keywords instead of ‘exact match’ ones.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Brilliant observation, never thought of it. Now the quality degradation kinda starts to make sense.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732768&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?<p>Control. They've moved from helping you find what you asked for, to trying to influence you to changingnwhat you ask for to the thing that paid them the most.</p><p>Similarly they're they're forcing creators to alter content to match their metrics or fall into obscurity.
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 <p>Because somebody could have crafted a superior search using their refined search as an API, destroying the Add Revenue</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733491&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Eh, it's not so much that it stopped working as it is that it never worked the way you thought it did.<p>Quotes have ~always been an exact match on the <i>tokenized</i> query text, not a substring match on the corpus text. No synonyms, reordering, gaps, etc, but the matches -- and failures -- are sometimes not obvious at first blush.</p><p>If you search for "don't stop me now", for instance, that "don't" tokenizes to "don t", so it will match the tokenized strings "don't", "don t", "don-t", "don, t", etc ... but not "dont", because that's outside tokenization.</p><p>On the other hand, snippets mostly <i>are</i> substring matches of the query text, so if you see a result to a literal query that doesn't have a snippet, you know it's probably one of the weird matches.
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 <a href="vote?id=30775441&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>This is just patently false in addition to being condescending.<p>If you use quotes around a phrase, it will reorder terms and make substitutions with synonyms in addition to straight up ignoring the quoted phrase no katter how many times you add +. If you then fiddle with settings (randomly not available depending on star alignment and device) to change it to 'verbatim' it will still reorder and split up tokens in the phrase.
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 <p>Why is it that exact searches used to actually work reliably, then? What's changed?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This has changed:<pre><code> term -term
</code></pre>
In the past that Google search returned no results for any search. Today the set of results are altered before they are presented to the user. Sometimes the set of reslts is empty and at other times it contains results.<p>For example:</p><pre><code> steve -steve returns 0 results
 test -test returns 4,780,000,000 in my search
 starting with google/youtube videos</code></pre></p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30735885&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>That's easy; there are synonyms added for test but not for steve.<p>If you search for ["test" -test] you'll get no results; quoting "test" removes the synonyms.</p><p>It's probably not new behavior per se, but synonyms have gotten a lot broader over the years, so it was a lot easier to punch [term -term] ten years ago and hit a term which had no synonyms.
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 <a href="vote?id=30738565&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Correct, though it is new in the sense of this conversation, which compares to how a search used to be.<p>The point wasn't as to what the synonyms were for a specific search term but that they have been added as implicit terms, which makes google search no longer exact.
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 <p>[test -test -tests -tested -testing] returns no results for me - teased out the synonyms!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30739176&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I mean, I'm confident that the <i>core</i> of how it works -- "an exact match between the tokenized document and the tokenized query" -- hasn't changed in a very long time, but I can't really promise there wasn't another aspect I'm ignorant of that is responsible for the behavior you remember that changed somehow.<p>"Exact tokenized matching" can look like "exact string matching" a lot of the time. Until you hit some of the edge cases it's like kerning: <a href="https://xkcd.com/1015/">https://xkcd.com/1015/</a>
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 <p>Honestly, Yandex has really good image search. I now do all three (Google, Bing, and Yandex) when I'm researching for a design.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729472&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Going backwards and standing still often look the same. I think its both in this case to varying degrees. Google is competing against itself, obvious competitors but also obvious refinements that appear so regardless of actually being implemented. The no-login filter is a refinement that would be useful to many.<p>There are so many obvious improvements that could be made to gmail but there's no real way to do them as a consumer.
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 <a href="vote?id=30730130&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Googles priorities have been long shifted from products to money. They are now deliberately doing evil things for more money.<p>It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation. Google has been came such a monster, even we know it's dying, but its momentum will keep it going for a very long time. And if it can correct its trajectory just a little bit, the collapsing process will be even longer.
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 <a href="vote?id=30731268&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation.<p>Very debatable.
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 <p>No fun allowed. Or the implication is taking drugs for anything but recreation won't kill you. I need more guidance!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Hmmm, only if you know when to stop and can actually stop, sure, no it won't kill you.
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 <a href="vote?id=30740385&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I did not even mention which drug<p>Exactly. Heroin is pretty addictive, pretty fast.</p><p>Otoh, there is no lethal dose that we know of for magic mushrooms (psylocibin). You can take a lot and have a hell of a trip but no one ever died from a psylocibin overdose. And it’s not addictive in the sense that you’ll get physical effects of you stop taking it. It builds a tolerance that will make it have much less effect if you take too much too often so it kinda takes care of the problem this way.</p><p>Alcohol which is freely available to any adult can make you addicted and will Jill you if you take too much of it.</p><p>What about sugar? We’re pretty much all addicted to it, and it can kill in the long term (obesity, diabetes…)</p><p>I’m not a drug expert but I think it’s very detrimental to say that all drugs are bad, they’ll make you an addict and kill you, and they’ll liquefy your brain. This is FUD and it results in shaming. It also creates abysmally poor public policy like the “war on drugs” which has been nothing but a colossal failure and a misery generating system.
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 <p>I agree with you but I think the problem is that majority of internet users are casual users who don't care about complex queries. Maybe good business idea would be to make internet search engine which enables complex queries like the one you described. Google was made for masses not for power users.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30728314&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google <i>had</i> a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away.<p>You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about.</p><p>Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729043&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.<p>It is now evident Google is not in the business of making its search any better.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729544&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Which is why we need more competitors in this space.<p>When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the only intrinsic business force is direct monetisation paths... completely different incentives.
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 <p>Because indexing the web and organizing all that information is expensive. It’s also a lot of power so we can’t exactly trust that job to a single government or even a group of allied governments. Universities could potentially handle it by pooling a lot of resources, but I can’t really think of who else I would trust to be The Search Engine. Google isn’t ideal but at least it’s priorities are mostly aligned with the average user’s.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730743&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Users?<p>Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still <i>billions</i> worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.
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 <p>Sadly, that's not realistic. You can get a subset of users to pay, but it's vanishingly small compared to everyone who thinks they are perfectly happy with the "free" status quo. Even a dollar a month, it is infinitely more than zero. I just had this conversation with members of my extended family and almost all of them were of the "I don't care if I'm tracked, I've got nothing interesting to hide" mindset, along with "not a chance in hell I'm going to pay for this, or email, when I get them from Google for free."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>How about a company that provides a search engine, but as a part of a greater subscription service whose selling point isn't search? Imagine, for example, that paying for Apple One got you access to an Apple-operated search engine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There isn't a single scenario for any product or service anywhere that will get every Internet user to pay a monthly fee - not even for 1¢ a month.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732700&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct payment. Companies can white-label the service or include it as a value-add as part of their offering; for example an ISP or mobile carrier offering this to their customers.<p>At the moment I'm not aware of any company whose primary service is <i>search</i>. I believe the demand would be there - OS manufacturers currently have to either put up with Google (even if their goals diverge - for example it doesn't work well with Apple's privacy-focused marketing) or Bing.</p><p>A third player whose <i>primary</i> business is search (as opposed to using it as a loss-leader to lure people into their ecosystems, like Google and Bing are) could get some use, not to mention that <i>programmatic</i> access to large web index would no doubt be a service many companies would pay for. Think Algolia or hosted ElasticSearch but pre-seeded with a broad index of the web.
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 <p>It doesn't have to appeal to every internet user. Not even most internet users. It just has to appeal to enough to make money, which is a substantially smaller number than the total number of internet users.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter (among other filters)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>it requires a google account. I like teddit.net's approach of allowing the user to set up preferences and import them as a json.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729726&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Shouldn't there be a way to only search multiple forums through some userscript? Only found out about userscript after messing around with an iOS app called HyperWeb.<p>At least in my limited understanding of userscript's capabilities, you'd still need to explicitly specify the forums you want to search, but I imagine that would solve lots of use cases for search filters.
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 <a href="vote?id=30730549&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google has a limit to how long searches can be. So if it’s a complex one, it can’t be too long.<p>I think you can only specify searching one site at a time. With site: search filter.</p><p>—</p><p>Google’s custom search engine’s where you can give a whitelisted amount of sites isn’t very good. At least not any more. It didn’t include lots of pages it’s main index does. Or the rankings were all out of sorts rendering not useful.
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 <p>Forums were somewhat decentralized. Without attributing motive, platforms are interested in moving in the opposite direction.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Are there any wrappers for Google search that try to implement a bag of these sorts of workarounds this with a nice UI?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This could be solved with selectable ranking strategies. Of course Google isn't going to offer that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733236&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.<p>Sure, in the sense that someone who had their legs broken sucks at running. Compared to yesterdays, Google today has to deal with a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search. It's easy to fetch good water when the well is clean and no one is trying to actively poison it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733637&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I partially agree with your comment, but it feels like in some/many cases the Google algorithm has large flaws that were not previously there and that (superficially) seem solvable. For example:<p>* If I search for recipes, the Google algorithm seems to <i>heavily</i> favour recipes with a short novel prepended to them. The “novel” does not have to be particularly relevant to the content - I’ve seen recipes with “novels” that I’m not convinced wasn’t partially algorithmically generated. Every human being I’ve ever spoken to hates this.</p><p>* Google will search for what it believes to be alternatives to terms, even when those terms are placed into quotes (which used to prevent this behaviour). This can be very irritating when Google’s alternative terms are incorrect.</p><p>Both of these are regressions over earlier behaviour, and don’t seem to have any obvious benefit to them.
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 <p>Don't know about regressions. Did it maybe just take people some time to figure out that Google Bot is really, <i>really</i> captivated by a riveting story to accompany that pancake recipe?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733331&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search<p>I think their #1 problem is their product managers trying to do "something" to add said something to their resume and making the product horrible to use in the process</p><p>Examples include:
- Grid view tab switcher in Chrome Android
- Removing dislike count on YouTube
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 <p>As a xoogler, it was clear when the original search quality folks left and were replaced with people whose goal was to grow the product (and the company) without much care for quality.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733774&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Different types of these strategies have been around since before google existed. Hell, even web directories (like early yahoo!) had to deal with spam, early google had to deal with keyword spam. Paid backlinks, spammed comment sections with backlinks, copied content sites as backlink farms, all of this existed at least as early as 2005-ish. For some sites (some of them with legitimate info) the meta keywords tag (even though google stopped using it very early) was the bulk of their size for just this reason.<p>What has so radically changed the last couple of years to make spam take top spots on the SERP?
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 <p>This is not 2005 spam. This is just how people are expected to write now. More people think it's normal. By spam being more content-like, and, in response, content getting inspired by spam and getting more spam-like, spam is getting increasingly indistinguishable from content.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733614&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Exactly. Google sucks because the internet that we remembered died long ago, hoovered up into social media.<p>The person passionate about beetles who would have a great website in 2002 now posts 38 post Twitter threads (at best) or Instagram/Facebook posts that are lost forever.</p><p>It’s sad as we had this amazing “long tail” effect where a company like Google <i>could</i> set out to organize the worlds information.</p><p>Unfortunately the economics drive new behavior, and the next cohort of big web companies sought to monopolize human attention. The more profitable ones like Facebook are masters of psychological manipulation, and the second string cohorts like Reddit who aren’t very smart/manipulative adopt a more hands off approach where undesirable content like porn juices engagement.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729741&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines.<p>People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't in 2008. Which is obvious because in 2008 there was only reddit and like 3 other sites, now there's dozens of relevant ones.
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 <p>Yes. There is massively more spam, and they’ve made it do a lot less direct search matching (many results don’t include the actual word that matters for instance)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30731140&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>You don’t give Google enough credit: They totally can add a “report spam site” action in the search results, but they don’t, because they don’t care. It would help immensely to have websites disappear from search after 100 trusted Google users complain about them (after manual review). This stuff already exists and works on Google Maps.<p>Even the data collected from a personal blocklist would be useful for them, without explicitly reporting sites, but again they just don’t care.</p><p>They’ve been in the business of parsing websites for 25 years, surely they can tell ad-infested spam websites apart from good ones.
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 <p>I think this is also because of potential abuse: there's nothing to prevent malicious SEO gamers from reporting legitimate sites as 'spam' to remove competition, as a means of extortion, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30739655&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Yes but I mentioned how to limit that:<p>&gt; trusted Google users</p><p>&gt; (after manual review)</p><p>&gt; already exists and works on Google Maps
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 <a href="vote?id=30732783&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It is their fault when they've actively pressured real content into being indistinguishable from spam sites.<p>If you don't write like a drunk two year old and fill everything with key phrases now you simply don't appear in results, so any site that can become known has to be rewritten by gpt into barely intelligible garbage that dances around the point for four paragraphs when it could be communicated in four words..
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 <a href="vote?id=30732596&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I've also not noticed. But this is the most common topic on HN so I probably had/have different search habits to have missed the wonderful experience of Google 10 years ago.<p>Google meets my expectations for a search engine but maybe I'm not expecting enough from search?
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 <p>Honestly I use startpage and I'm blocking ads so aggressively I barely know what Google search is supposed to look like.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732694&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).<p>These are all truly excellent and refreshingly imaginative ideas, in a conversation too often starved of critical thinking (elsewhere in this thread commenters, unable to imagine any alternative at all, are incredulously asking "what would you even replace it with?").</p><p>I would just say that search in it's traditional form is valuable too, and highly efficient. Or at least it can be when done well. I think millionshort search results are a good example of what traditional search can be.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732107&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah well, that's what you want, and probably a decent couple of power users. And I totally agree.<p>But here is the thing:</p><p>My mom, dad and even my brother, they don't need that. They need the limitations aka borders, the "simplicity", the synchronisation and the search results. They still stick with Facebook, Google and Amazon because it's easy to use and their gate to the Internet, where all the smart people are living and the "future is real". They do not understand the drawbacks or they just don't care.</p><p>And I dare to assume that this pictures the vast majority of Internet users.
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 <p>Good thing there's more of a market than your mom, dad, and even your brother, or alternative search competitors like duckduckgo and others would be completely screwed.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732328&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Maybe the market of people that are significantly different from his/her mom is just too small to justify the significant investments needed to build a search engine.<p>Or said another way: If 99% are happy with Google, can the remaining 1% pay enough to finance "Google pro" ?
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 <p>Is there an alternative search engine right now that is both good and not based heavily on an incumbent by a large tech company (ie: bing)? If not then the argument isn't disproved.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732529&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>This is actually what I worry about more.<p>I'm browsing with Firefox on Mac with adblockers, and have some knowledge of what the potential scams are.</p><p>Is Google actually helping the average user more than a hypothetical alternative?</p><p>Don't know, tricky question to answer, but whatever the answer is it's likely a society wide change, involving regulation and new business models and ethical consumer choices, not just a new search engine.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728445&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.<p>Came here to write exactly that</p><p>Why are we still using it?</p><p>There's nothing better out there.
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 <p>I've been starting to use kagi for search. I'm still using google by default, but when I get a screen full of ads and clickbait articles I turn to kagi and it's almost always better.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Maybe you should try an opposite approach. When kagi gives you useless results switch to Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30743873&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>This is what I do. Kagi gets there 95% of the time. Plus I get to down/up rank results. Plus no ads. Plus I feel confident I’m getting the best result for me and not for advertisers. Truth be told I’ve been using “site:reddit.com” for years now already.<p>Google still has the lead with the answer box and older results. They’ve been collecting data for longer and I suspect their indexing heuristics are incredible.
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 <p>I wanted to love kagi, but they still have the same fuzzy search that makes it about impossible to find something odd that shares keywords with commonplace things.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google is still my default as 9 out of 10 I get the answer I need quickly. Bing does my other 10% where Google provides junk or stale results.... Google Search really is declining. I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment. On the Maps front, I'm really enjoying Apple Maps as it has less junk - I just want a map!!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733174&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment.<p>I switched my default over to Bing about two months ago and it is surprisingly good. Subjectively I would say it is better more often than it is worse.
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 <a href="vote?id=30734534&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Untapped potential. exactly. To me the biggest problem isn't the results (even the ads) it's the lack of innovation. The lack of making search an experience and something that generates a value I can store and share.<p>I've been looking at several of the options talked about here. My favorite so far is Neeva (<a href="https://neeva.com/">https://neeva.com</a>) due to their "spaces" concept and how it provides a simple building block I can explore to address many of the use cases I have for search.</p><p>Search needs innovation and people trying new things.
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 <a href="vote?id=30731066&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).<p>Yes, I would love this. I was recently looking for reviews of a certain woodworking tool. The vast majority of websites googled returned were clearly bot created sites. I came away thinking I wanted a curated list of a few sites actually created by humans.
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 <p>I really missed those days that I could write URLs I visited frequently on notebook. Unfortunately, we might never be no way back to the good old days. There is literally way too much info on the internet, and thus impossible to index contents manually.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I dont think it is as hopeless as you think. There are only so many websites people actually use for human-created content. Those should be prioritized. There is still the issue of differentiating between bot blogs and human blogs but I'm sure I could figure something out at a 200k salary, and google has plenty of people like that</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730917&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I think there's also some inertia. I know how to tweak google.<p>I have also used some competitors. They are fine for most things (finding the hours of a local store, a restaurant's menu).</p><p>However, when the going gets tough (troubleshooting a technical issue, looking for a recommendation) I fall back to google.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732889&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google works great for most daily tasks software questions, looking for a service/company etc<p>But when I want to do serious research on things like eczema, diet, backpain, exercise. Google absolutely fails (also Google scholar) I have to buy books, go through Reddit,listen to YouTube lectures etc that point to the correct literature and then you get to know the experts, different opinions etc.</p><p>All you find is these generic sites with basic advice which is common knowledge lik WebMD. Not bad, but they dominate the entire search.</p><p>I would think a heavy version of Google focused on in depth/experts would be great.
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 <p>It generally even fails when you are looking for a product. If you don't know certain brand. I have been hunting reasonably priced stainless steel meat grinder(the grinding parts, not the body), but with google due to all SEO spam it feels like impossible task...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30766752&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, please bring web directories back!<p>Today we have more possibilities to manage that than in the early days. Many things can be automatically generated/crawled/MLed or crowdsourced. Browser extensions can help to categorize almost all important websites.</p><p>Data sources like Reddit, Stack Overflow or Wikipedia already have many websites categorized. We just need to combine the data.</p><p>I did a few experiments myself trying to drive hierarchies from tag data. It works surprisingly well. There is even some academic work in this direction.
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 <p>Honestly at this point I don't think bing sucks vs google. Bing has less random junk in SERPS for a lot of searches, and seems less gamed by SEO companies, but it isn't really better enough to make a point of switching my chrome url bar over and breaking my habit of just going to google. If things keep going like they have been I wouldn't be surprised if I switch in the near future though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wonder what do you mean by "vastly superior". For search i use Kagi, for a browser i use Firefox. For mail you can use Protonmail or i guess there are other alternatives also. Only thing i miss is Gmail message threading. Other than that nothing else. So i think people are only used to Google, that's all. I don't think it's vastly superior in any area anymore</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Plus I strongly suspect Google search no longer gives the most accurate answer, but the one most profitable for Google ads.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It would be funny if some site with youtube-style recommendations got popular because that's basically what I believe google is using under the hood already and it would be so easy for them to pivot to that style and then take over all the momentum the recommendation-style site got.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Why would an average user use such service? I was thinking about creating such "internet recommendation engine" so to speak but as my hypothetical project was progressing I realized that it started looking more and more like internet search engine as and when I started adding more advanced features. But looking from costs point of view it is cheaper to create internet recommendation engine than internet search engine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I see the problem with Google search of today vs Google search of 10 years ago being that the first page of search has already become a "Youtube-style recommendations for websites". It's more like a curated list of "approved content" now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think companies have tried, but it simply hasn't worked. Yahoo tried to do a lot of this, and simply failed. Arguably they could have done it better, but I don't think many will have a better shot than them for a while more to come.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730392&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I'm going to second that. Since switching off Google a couple years ago I have had fewer and fewer "failed" searches which required me to go back to Google to try the search.<p>The more people who use Brave Search (they own their own index), the better it will become. And right now I'd say it's orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others.
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 <a href="vote?id=30730882&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Haven't tried Brave, but I'd say DDG results are much better than Google Search.<p>I think it's down to personal preference or something.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733038&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Right now, DDG gives me the best search results of anything that I've tried. I know people who don't get the same quality results from it as I do, though.<p>I'm 100% convinced that the difference comes down to how searches are formulated. At least, the people who I know that experience poor quality searches seem to enter their queries as natural-language questions rather than search terms.
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 <p>In my experience Brave is better than DDG for tech topics. But DDG so far is noticeably better for non-english content and image search, so I still use it as a fallback.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732607&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others<p>used brave as my daily search engine for a couple of months and I must say this was not the case for me. Results for global EN topics were indeed better than ddg/bing in some cases (nowhere near an order of magnitude better, though), but results for any non-EN or local queries (think searching for major websites running for 15 yrs) were extremely poor in most cases.
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 <p>Well that's a good point. I only speak English so I speak for my language. On the point of Brave vs DDG I think my main point is that Brave has its own index and DDG is based on ... Bing? ... I'm not sure. At any rate I don't think there's a comparison there.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I made an earnest effort to switch to Brave, but I'm back with Google for almost all searches because 1100ms+ result page loads are simply unworkable here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732394&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I'm sticking it out, but I find that I have to fall back to Google on 1 out of 10 searches. Mostly technical ones.<p>But what really annoys me (and maybe I'm doing something wrong) is that one page of (slow) results is not enough. I understand that Google's 1,000,000+ results is also not necessary. But I often need more than 20. Come to think of it, I rarely need pages 2 and beyond when using Google. So maybe that's saying something about the quality of the Brave results? They're just not as good.
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 <p>Reddit is heavily biased towards new content and you have to know what subreddits to look for to find the interesting stuff. The nice thing with Youtube recommendations (after recent updates) is that it pulls out a lot of older content and it also has a pretty good understanding of contexts and topics, even pretty niche stuff. Plain Google search really has no way of exploring the web in the same way you can just do with Youtube recommendations. Also helps that Youtube is extremely low on spam, you get ads and product placement, but not the bot generated filler that is cluttering up Google search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30728821&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years ago<p>How much of that is based on general incompetence, SEO gaming, growing complexity of searches or manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")? Or something else.
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 <p>I guess another major barrier for higher quality search is the deep web (discord, fb, private forums, etc.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732219&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")?<p>This makes it basically unusable for anything that isn't a technical question, for which it is still reasonably good if you restrict to sites where it will likely get a reasonable answer.</p><p>If special interest groups aligned with google have a position on what you're searching though, it will simply be spammed outright and any evidence to the contrary either concealed or "fact checks" which consist of minor modifications on the core underlying fact in question spiked with something that is obviously false so that the fact check can say "false" whilst actually the underlying fact in question is not at all false. <i>Even when</i> those special interest groups are right, google is still useless because it will give you such a slanted view of the territory you will be utterly clueless as to what other sides of the debate even exist as anything more than silly strawmen. Most questions in this class people would be better served by just petitioning Blackrock and similar directly and asking them what they should think.</p><p>For commercial stuff it's almost as bad, I find myself having to figure out the underlying financial realities of the industry that produces x, then getting a summary of the market space by volume and associated data, then speculating on stuff that might exist within that market space that might be nice in light of whatever flaws afflict the market space in question, and maybe if I get lucky I'll find something through the reams and reams of valueless SEO optimised pop-up spewing complete and utter bullshit desperately attempting to capitalise on my assumed stupidity with their cookie cutter a-b tested "sales pitches". Most of the time I end up just going to alibaba or similar, finding vendors shipping actual large units with decent reviews, and then working backwards from there to what I'm looking for.</p><p>Watching google fall from something amazing to probably-worse-than-microsoft-all-things-considered tier was quite the eye opener.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729252&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Search, "what hotel to stay in san francisco soma". You'll see that every single result above the fold is an Ad.<p>In fact it doesn't even give me a single useful piece of information. #1 result is a link to expedia. #2 is to hotels.com, #3 to the trip advisor. Scroll down Google Hotels widget. Then on the 3rd browser viewpoint page I get actual query results.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729565&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>The result I got was a list, with maps and prices with an option to refine stay dates.<p>Not sure how that could be improved to be honest.</p><p>Next entry was a non-ad from Tripadvisor.
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 <p>When weird search results get posted on HN, they're sometimes fixed within minutes. I wouldn't doubt that the search term was "fixed" by someone reading HN.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's less about paid placement taking priority (as in intentionally degrading results) but more that there's no incentive to spend money improving organic search results where at best it'll do nothing and at worst <i>decrease</i> the profitability of paid results (people are less likely to click on them if the organic results are good), not to mention that crap organic results <i>also</i> benefit Google as these websites often have Google Ads or Analytics.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The author missed the most important reason that Google search results often suck: tens of thousands of people are working very hard to make it suck. They call themselves "SEO specialists", and their job is to get their shitty site to the top of the rankings. It's an ongoing battle. Sure, Google wants to make money, but to do that they need to protect their search moneymaker and keep it dominant, so their incentive is to make the users happy. They aren't sucking on purpose.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30731686&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.<p>Right now SEO it's an arms race between google and every SEO agencies, with a keyword being attached to some company that may have 0 relevance to the user.</p><p>Doesn't help, that depending on the query, the first results are ads only superficially related. You can search for the name of a popular brand of a car/hotel/insurance, and the first results are the competitors. If you don't want to be below the fold, you need to pay, even if your website it's exactly what the user it's looking for.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732263&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.<p>It was never the case. As soon as google started to be popular, people were hired to manipulate its search results. "Natural" SEO was never a thing. You always had to use shady tactics in order to get a good ranking because everybody was doing the same.
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 <p>Even before Google, people would stuff the bottom of their page with black on black keyword stuffing to game Altavista</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This exactly. Google was an almost overnight success because in the beginning it gave much more useful results than Altavista and others even when they had indexed a small fraction of what Altavista had.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30732969&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>The internet grew up. I want to hate Google as much as the next guy but it is not their fault that money has corrupted it.<p>In that sense Google's monopoly is actually preferable for marketeers. It would be a lot harder to manipulate search engine results if the public was split among 20 of them.
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 <p>That would not help. Those kind of effects are inherent in the system. As long as Visitsv lead to any kind of revenue, no matter if by Ad Impressions or Affiliate Programms or whatever, there exists a motivation and people will try to drag visitors to their sites. You will have to remove eCommerce from the Internet to fix that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Search isn’t Google’s moneymaker, advertising is. And those shitty SEO’d sites are choc-a-bloc with advertising. Google has little incentive to downrank them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730901&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google can trivially reduce the amount of spam by using the amount of ads, analytics, affiliate links, etc as a negative ranking signal.<p>Instead of targeting SEO per-se (as it's difficult to determine a <i>good</i> website with SEO vs a spam website with SEO), target how they're making money.</p><p>They're not doing so exactly because they have no incentive.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733014&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>What incentives do they have to promote affiliate links to Amazon ?<p>It's a bit more complicated than that. Even useful sites in commercially related niches use affiliate links as a source of revenue.
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 <p>I’m not saying they <i>promote</i> them explicitly. I’m arguing that they should <i>downrank</i> them because it’s a likely indicator of spam - there’s a lot of spam websites out there which are just bullshit listicles or fake review websites whose primary objective is to get you to buy through their affiliated link. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s software out there that can churn out and update these websites automatically. Google has no incentive to downrank these though because those spam websites also often contain Google analytics or ads.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Search is their main gateway to the advertising dollars. "Google it" is synonymous with any search regardless of the engine being used.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They serve more ads if they steer you towards the low value SEO website filled with Adsense.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729902&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google has incentives to degrade the quality of search results for the benefit of its profitability, up to the extent that is able to without turning away too many users.<p>I think it's more like that rather than an either/or.
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 <p>They have competition: if we get to the point where Bing/DuckDuckGo results are clearly better, people will start moving, and that will hurt their revenue badly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730572&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Yes and those results don’t have to be just better. They have to be clearly better as you stated. The likliehood of that happening any time soon is close to zero.<p>I personally use Bing for 95% of my searches and have done so since it launched. Or re-launched.
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 <p>I switched precisely because I found that the DuckDuckGo results were indeed better. This was a third attempt though - the first two times it wasn't quite good enough. It improved, and Google got worse.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This makes no sense. Google makes more money when users click on some crappy landing page filled with display ads?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730661&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>The web has - as it inevitably would - adapted to being searched by Google.<p>This makes it much harder to be a good search engine.</p><p>I have no idea how to quantify how <i>much</i> the decline is because of that.
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 <a href="vote?id=30743960&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>While true, this isn’t actually a complicated issue to solve: humans and a heavy hand. Get humans to review everything on page one of every search. Get caught massaging your site? Permanent ban.<p>Google refuses to hire humans to do stuff like this. Their service is terrible. Maps requires free labour of millions of users to get information updated.
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 <a href="vote?id=30726578&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search.<p>These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that democracy has failed so lets replace it, replace with what? Its the best we can get given the alternatives, and its flaws will always be exploited.
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 <a href="vote?id=30726757&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries.<p>It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)
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 <p>Came here to mention kagi.
Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool.
Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Wow, they have that? That’s what I always wanted from Google and they never delivered. Im sure they had reasons. I really don’t think they want to empower their users, they are even hostile to search users and content creators, amp comes to mind and am glad it dissapeared already. Meanwhile I’be been using duckduck but i’ll give kagi a go.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30728554&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>What happens when you ask it how many Ukrainian generals have died? Does it insist on giving you pages and pages about Russian generals, like Google?<p>I was looking for this and it really annoys me how it thinks it knows what I want.
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 <p>No, Kagi (unlike Google and DDG) will just stop providing results, it won't make up others with very tenuous links to your search terms like the others do.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Just tried that. I did have to put "ukrainian generals" into quotes (which makes sense, that's how it's supposed to work) but then it just showed me 5 results total, all of which contained exactly that phrase.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Kagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>And as of now, they are listening to users very attentively. Just a few hours ago I suggested they clarify the defualt "Programming" filter since it only searches q&amp;a sites (i.e Stack Overflow) and they have already changed the name to "Programming Help" to make it more clear.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729500&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Is there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit.<p>I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729658&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>According to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts as an additional search, so you could go through your quota pretty fast.<p>Apparently all of this is to offset the costs from paying Google and Bing to run searches for them (the site basically takes results from Google and Bing and then combines them together with their own special sauce) but with a pricing model like this it seems like Kagi will remain a niche tool solely used by the wealthy.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732692&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Hm, 30 USD/month for good search is not that much - and certainly not "wealthy" territory. Remember that many people pay subscription services they use a lot less (18 USD for Netflix, anyone?).<p>The main paradigm shift necessary will be to pay at all for something that was "free" and is provided "free" to this day - even if the quality is worse.
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 <p>Monthly subscription and quotas? While I respect and understand the goal I can’t help but feel like we are paywalling what the web has been for the longest time and should be “out of the box”.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30731141&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Hostile is such a drastic word to apply to a service that is dedicated to making search better by actually listening to the desires of their users.<p>They need to support their efforts somehow. Instead of showing ads or selling your data, they are going to charge a fee to use it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733907&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Google uses ads to pay for the service, which is available without logging in. Those ad systems can track you. On the other hand, a paid service (even if it is currently in "free" mode) will likely get rid of ads, but requires some authentication to know you are you.<p>I'm logged into Google all the time. I do this to get sharing working across Chrome. Others doe the same with Firefox. Some don't, because privacy.</p><p>I hear you think logins are 1000x more hostile than paying with your eyeballs. How would you suggest resolving this clearly conflicted view with logging in vs. how the revenue is made on a given site?
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 <a href="vote?id=30734907&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It used to be that if you used a paid service, then that service wouldn't throw you to the wolves of internet marketing/tracking companies. That alone made logins 1000 times less hostile.<p>But that is changing. Internet marketing companies are now teaming up with websites so the websites to their dirty work for them and you end up getting tracked anyway -- but with much higher certainty as to who you are. That means that now, yes, logins are more hostile.</p><p>The web continues to get smaller and smaller.
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 <p>And they also intend to charge $10 per month (and that's just for 20 searches per day, which is a WTF low number). There's no way I'm paying that kind of money.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>+1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding searches…</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>But why would a search engine require an account to use in the first place? Or maybe I took it wrong?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730415&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Kagi is probably a lot more usable, right now. Nobody’s trying to game it.<p>As long as it remains niche, it might actually stay that way indefinitely. I’m just worried about Google taking inspiration from them. I bet whatever “tricks” they use now would get a lot less effective if they did.
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 <a href="vote?id=30732143&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>What’s the story behind Kagi - are they somehow related to Google?<p>To my knowledge besides the old experiments with client side search, Google has never allowed (even paid) api access to their search. I thought they did not do this, because it would have allowed somebody to jump start a search engine that might eventually become a competitor.</p><p>Kagi seems to be open about their Google relationship, so I assume they have agreement in place.</p><p>This even feels like some experiment from Google to create a premium, paid, search product (like what they did with YouTube).
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 <p>At least Startpage has been serving Google results (via paid API access) for years. There is nothing new about Kagi paying for access to it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729546&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It's substantially better than Google for what I do with it (mostly work-related queries). A few reasons why:<p>* It blocks all the GitHub and Stack Overflow copycat sites out of the box.</p><p>* I can add additional sites to the block list with two clicks.</p><p>* It up-ranks (semi-)official documentation like the Python docs or MDN over blog spam sites.</p><p>* I can manually up-rank sites (and even pin them to the top of the results) if I'd like to see them more often.</p><p>Kagi is awesome because where Google thinks it can guess what you want, Kagi gives you an easy way to <i>tell</i> it what you want.
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 <p>I already have an extension that's allow me to block, or highlights results on Google or Bing</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Kagi's better than Google for me. Proof is that initially I only had it set up as default search on one device but I've progressively switched them all over out of annoyance with crap google results. I haven't yet had to go to google once to finish a search I started on Kagi.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is probably true for me, if we also say that 50% of the queries are orders of magnitude higher quality on Kagi.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I use Google without AdBlock on my phone daily and it's not quite that different.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I use Google without AdBlock whenever I am in a private browser in addition to going without adblock on both my phone and tablet. I agree, it isn't that much different. At least with search, that is.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Do I have to wait for their invitation to join the beta list before I can try Kagi? The comments here are promising and I tried to take a look for myself but apparently only beta users are allowed in at the moment.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You have to ask for it by submitting a form in their webpage and they send you an invitation to your mail</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think that with current technology, beating google at the scale they run at is impossible. I think with advances it NLP, its possible. But right now, its pie in the sky.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Even my grandparents figured out how to scroll by the ads at the top of Google search. Actively hostile is a bit much.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30728298&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>The progression that people almost always forget:<p>1) New system comes out that indexes/controls/regulates a naively created dataset</p><p>2) Data consumers adopt that system and experience benefits</p><p>3) Data suppliers learn rules of system and take advantage of it to improve the positioning of their data, thus breaking the intent of a system built on the assumption of naive creation</p><p>4) Users complain about the broken system</p><p>5) New entrants realize that the original system actually solved the core problem really well, and there are no easy ways to solve the 'gaming the system' problem</p><p>6) Flawed system remains the best available option indefinitely</p><p>It's like entropy, there's just no fighting it.</p><p>EDIT: And to extend this beyond Google - do you see a lot of long text blocks in 7 second tik tok videos? That's because the creator found a way to game the algorithm.
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 <a href="vote?id=30751089&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Email spam? I'd say that's basically solved.<p>For bot detection, when was the golden age? I'd say that, rather than follow the above description, it started as non-existent and there was basically a smooth descent downward to where we are now.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728902&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Well let's make this real.<p>Sites with people hired to optimize the robots.txt file are ranked higher than those without. If we ban all websites that hire people to optimize their robots.txt, then a lot of the web isn't indexed and the search results suffer.</p><p>Or if we ban every creator on tik tok who posts a lot of text in a short video, then a lot of creators are going to be de-platformed and moved elsewhere.</p><p>The point of what I wrote is that 'humans are really god at following rules, so much so that they often are able to manipulate rules to their advantage, without breaking said rules.</p><p>That's why this is such a hard problem to counter.
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 <p>You're ignoring the only insightful part of the article: if a search engine succeeds at all, it cannot ban anyone, because some antitrust bureaucrat somewhere will cluck about it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730923&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>If this were true, wouldn't Google display all million pages that are vaguely relevant to my query on the first screen?<p>Their only job is to stack order the internet. Down ranking a site to the 1,000,000th result is the same as banning them. They necessarily do this all the time (like for every search with more than 10 potential hits).
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 <a href="vote?id=30729037&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Define the border between SEO and abuse.<p>Perhaps there is no border to be defined since nearly all SEO is abuse?!</p><p>The only acceptable SEO should be "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".
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 <a href="vote?id=30729449&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Let's say someone writes a blog article. They publish it on Wordpress with a bunch of unoptimised defaults. Some time after, someone comes along and says "Hey, the search engine will rank your post more highly if you include the name of the post in the URL instead of just having it be blog.example.com/posts?id=1234", so they change the URL. Is that SEO? Should that result in the site being de-listed/banned? It doesn't meet your definition of "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".<p>And where is the line between "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer" and SEO? If I realise that (to take an example from something found on Google) I could take the sentence "Identify the best customers and convert more" and rewrite it as "Marketing automation helps you identify the best customers and convert more", is that SEO because I'm intentionally adding a keyword, or is that making the content more relevant to the user by being more explicit in what I'm saying?
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 <p>I'm sure there are better examples, but this specific one actually does make the experience better for the reader. People often return to good blog posts and it's a lot easier to remember a title than a numerical id. If you can remember the title and know the url of the blog and it has a simple naming convention, you can bypass the search engine entirely and just go straight there. Sports sites are really good about this. &lt;URL&gt;/&lt;LEAGUE&gt;/stats always gets you the stats. &lt;URL&gt;/&lt;LEAGUE&gt;/standings gets you the standings. If you're curious how a team is doing or who currently leads in scoring or whatever, you know where to go without needing assistance from search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30729719&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>To my moral standard, all of this is manipulative if the <i>intention</i> is to manipulate the Google ranking instead of seeing an improved Google ranking as a <i>result</i> of delivering better service to the visitor.<p>This does of course not imply that these things can be proven, which implies that no action can be taken. Not everything that is immoral is punishable.
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 <a href="vote?id=30730755&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I believe blocking an honest discussion is never going to do more good than harm. The original post doesn't even suggest that we should overthrow our Google overlord to replace it with whatever we find interesting. It's just pointing various limitations and issues that Google users are facing right now. And apparently from the replies here, there are even more aspects that people are have troubles with.<p>It's true building a good search engine is an gigantic undertaking but if Google (or someone else entirely) is aware of the current issues, they may have ideas to tackle those problems and then we can all share a better internet.</p><p>Same for the argument with democracy and any other similar arguments, pointing out problems within our current institutions doesn't remotely mean that we want to abolish everything and start from scratch.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728175&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Nobody is coming along with a better search engine<p><a href="https://neeva.com/">https://neeva.com/</a> better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail.</p><p>Edit:</p><p>Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728193&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>"See results for
'&lt;my search term&gt;'
Create your free Neeva account."<p>"To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features, create your free account.
Already a Neeva member? Sign in"</p><p>Yeah, no.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729925&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I get that.<p>But essentially we all have de facto accounts on Google anyway.</p><p>They track and monitor usage and then map you to a user account when you finally login somewhere.</p><p>I'm totally fine with that being upfront and made clear from the get go!
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 <p>Ah, Neeva is eventually going to be a paid product, that's why it's that way. That said, their membership is pretty cheap for what you get.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't mind giving my email or making an account after I have any inkling that the product might be worth deleting a few spam emails. Neeva was giving me a modal popup in my first minute; that's <i>never</i> going to get my email.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30736373&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>(Founder of Neeva here) Appreciate the input and hear your frustration. This is a carryover from changes we made to introduce the free tier earlier in the quarter. We are making imminent improvements on modal frequency and getting them out of your way. Stay posted.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30738854&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Yo! Neeva is a dope product, imo, but could I offer some suggestions on how I use Neeva?<p>1. I have more than one GitHub account (one is for work, one is for personal stuff). I would like to somehow keep them separate, but at least being able to add multiple GitHub accounts for indexing would be cool.</p><p>2. Could Neeva offer something for segmenting the parts of my online presence? For instance, there's personal me and then there's work me. I'd like to turn a different profile on when I'm doing different things.</p><p>3. I don't know if it's possible to partner with ProtonMail, but I'd love to index that and my Proton Calendar as well.</p><p>Also didn't know the free tier is permanent, but I think that's probably a good move. Thanks for what you do!
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 <a href="vote?id=30742588&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Hi! Thanks for your notes here. I'll take these suggestions back to our team. re: 2. Being able to connect two accounts is interesting -- right now I solve this by having two Neeva accounts, one associated with my work email and one with my personal email.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30728879&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Neeva has a free tier (with only access to the search engine, so people can still test the search aspect), but when you pay for it now you ALSO get LastPass premium and Bitdefender VPN Premium as well, along with all their integrations into your system.<p>If you trust these people are doing what they say, it's a pretty good deal for securing your internet spaces and trying to get away from google, imo.
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 <p>I experimented with neeva, because I'd really like an alternative to Google, even a paid one. However, I found its results pretty disappointing. At least for my work, I had to go back to Google, because I don't want to waste time "on the clock."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30726699&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Not sure if you read the post. They don't advocate for replacing Google. They want to add onto Google and other search engines.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30731429&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Not everyone lives in the US and/or an English-speaking country.<p>I can't find shit with DDG and the experience is like using Google from 20 years ago when it didn't have any of its bells and whistles.
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 <a href="vote?id=30734263&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It’s actually because I’m not in an english speaking country that Google is failing me and screwing my searches for anything than can be somewhat pushed to local results…<p>I’m glad it works for you, it just reminds me how different are everyone’s expectations of good search results.
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 <a href="vote?id=30737739&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Same here. Traveling and when I search for postgres I don't want to find the local student project as the top result</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30731635&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Some side by side comparisons just now:<p>"pizza near me" - Google suggested a well rated place within 5 miles. DuckDuckGo suggested a pizza place 91 miles away??</p><p>"busted kids lip" - Google says gauze and a cold pack. DuckDuckGo says salt water??</p><p>"best monitor for mac" - Google says Dell Ultrasharp with 4.5 stars and 738 ratings on amazon. DuckDuckGo says BenQ 4 stars with 174 ratings on amazon?</p><p>how is this better?
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 <a href="vote?id=30726786&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine.<p>No, they are underestimating the difficulty of <i>funding</i> a good search engine.</p><p>I liked the runnaroo search very much as did several of my friends. The guy who ran it couldn't fund it. He shut it down.</p><p>Altavista (Yeah, that far back) had a nice feature where it would draw a cluster graph of your search results. So, if you searched for "python", it would show your results but would also draw a little graph and you could see that "Hey, there are two clusters here--programming and reptiles." You could then click on the "programming" node and the "reptiles" cluster would go away. It allowed you to drill through irrelevant stuff <i>really</i> quickly.</p><p>Note how that feature doesn't exist today--in spite of orders of magnitude more programmers being thrown at search, graph algorithms, and nifty Javascript web UIs. I wonder why ...</p><p>(/sarcasm in case you missed it. I don't wonder why. Such a feature would let you drill through irrelevant Ad and SEO garbage too quickly and would impact Google's revenue.)
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 <a href="vote?id=30729796&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>building Breeze, which does pretty much that minus the cool UI angle, and yeah, only way for it to work at scale is premium like neeva, kagi, etc.<p>we started out with topics and then moved to web, and are now folding topics into the web search experience, it's really hard stuff to get right</p><p>our first main filter was blogs, which is getting renamed to posts for a mix of reasons, adding forums shortly, along with other more specific topics</p><p>re: <a href="https://breezethat.com/">https://breezethat.com/</a> -- &amp; better on laptop / desktop atm, premium version will be ad-free
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 <a href="vote?id=30727783&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I'd say you're half right. Things are harder now and the success of Google has contributed to this.<p>However, I think Google has severely degenerated from just two years ago, when most of the problems were fully in effect.</p><p>Google is a bit of a product of the situation of scams being the easiest way anyone makes online.
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 <a href="vote?id=30733360&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then<p>Has anyone considered the possibility that all this Machine learning and AI models is what made Google and YouTube searches worse?
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 <a href="vote?id=30734975&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I strongly suspect that's a very large part of what is making everything worse. Or, at least, there does seem to be a correlation in time between the implementation of ML and the degradation of the quality of results.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30736779&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I wouldn't call it so much the implementation of ML but rather from when they decided they were an AI/ML company.<p>The Amazon recommendations engine, the poster child of ML in 2014 isn't any good at recommending products that I actually want to buy either.
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 <p>People said this about pre-Google search engines. Someone will figure out the next PageRank and give us another 10-20 years of useful search.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30730625&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>There were many multiples less people online. The internet economy was almost nothing back then.<p>There’s no comparing how things were in the 90s and early 00s to now.</p><p>Every social media company before Facebook faltered or began losing a good chunk of their user base fairly quickly. Until that stopped happening with Facebook and IG for over a decade now.</p><p>Reddit’s position has also been here for a decade now.
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 <a href="vote?id=30728212&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think these posts should be blocked, because they create discussion, which creates interest, which incentivizes for problem solving.<p>Humans are incredibly good at solving engineering problems they can see from a mile away, although it takes time to solve.
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 <a href="vote?id=30727381&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p><pre><code> Honestly I think people are completely underestimating 
 the difficulty of a good search engine
</code></pre>
I suspect that is not difficult so much as expensive.<p>Boutique search engines pop up all the time here on HN, but they can't compete fairly against Google, without the resources to crawl a billion webpages day after day.
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 <a href="vote?id=30729131&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Source? But it's definitely possible nowadays when RAM is cheap and modern Google makes the Internet feel incredibly smaller than it was 20 years ago.<p>At the time you would get tons of results from a myriad of small blogs, forums, niche websites. Nowadays it's Pinterest, blogspam and more SEO optimised algorithmic crap. If you're lucky you get a forum result that might actually be relevant.</p><p>Given the joke that if you can't Google it it doesn't exist, it follows that the Internet has considerably shrunk in the past two decades.
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 <p>It looks like I was mistaken. They don't keep all of the documents in RAM, but I'm pretty sure they keep the search index (100 petabytes) in RAM. I'm struggling to find a source but I remember hearing it in a talk given by a Googler on YouTube. I also read somewhere that moving their whole index to RAM is how they brought their response times down from a couple of seconds to a couple hundred milliseconds.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Democracy would be best replaced with cashless society. Society based on everyone value of doing what they love doing most (aka hobbyist), and virtually everything else replaced by robots and technology we already have. This is what's coming eventually, but its not something that can be installed on the top of your "operating system"; you will have to format the whole hard-drive (civil war)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30726759&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I suppose in the absence of cash we would just force some people to do the necessary tasks that aren't anyone's favourite hobbies?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=30733974&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Well, ideally people could choose to do whatever they liked to provide for society. Everyone would have a role to play. So those that like to farm (raised on a farm, to be proud of their work) would farm, those that want to commit their life to science could attempt to advance their field. Someone might find an invigorating pride in making sure wastewater treatment is running well, but they don't know how to get into the field and are stuck working a job they don't like for money, currently. Artists could create culture. As long as you are doing something to provide for society, society will provide for you.<p>There will be people that do not have favorite hobbies. There will be people with no ambition who benefit from being told what they can or should do to contribute. Those people, in order to have their needs met could choose to take on a Necessary Task, even if it isn't their favorite thing. Maybe they learn to love it and excel at it.</p><p>Don't want to do anything to contribute to society despite being physically and mentally able? No needs met. Meet them yourself, you magnificent lone wolf. Want your needs met but don't want to do Necessary Task that you hate? Find a purpose and pursue it.
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 <a href="vote?id=30737481&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>I don't know how to break it to you, but the system you're looking for that does all the things you're saying is capitalism.<p>Have the talent and desire to be a heart surgeon? Go for it, and you'll be rewarded. Want to make life sized statues of the Beatles out of used printer cartridges? Eh, fine but maybe also get a day job.
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 <a href="vote?id=30737794&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>Ah yea. Let me just pay to put myself through med school independently while I struggle to pay for food and housing.<p>Sorry but Capitalism is a broken system that is not meeting mine or million's of others needs, much less enabling us to pursue what we're actually passionate about. I at least know that I am passionate about building and supporting technology but I still struggle to pursue it professionally because I had the poor luck to be born without the resources to get a piece of paper that says I know how.
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 <a href="vote?id=30765666&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D30725933"></a> </td><td><p>It's sort of weird how badly people have become unable to understand what the word capitalism actually means, these days<p>It seems like everyone just thinks it's how you describe the contemporary world</p><p>No, what they're describing isn't capitalism. Not even close
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 </tbody></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login            
              

  If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it? ( abhinavsharma.com )           
 285 points by abhinavsharma 10 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 457 comments            
              
              
              
 kauguste281 10 months ago | next [–]             
              
 Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results.         
              
 Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).       
              
 I feel there is a lot of untapped potential that gets missed by just trying to be a Google search clone.            
              
              
 thrwawy283 10 months ago | parent | next [–]             
              
 You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no complex filtering to do things like removing search results that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to specifically refine your search. Google still has the most useful search, but they've taken away methods to get better results. I remember I was pretty upset when i couldn't search for images by exact dimensions anymore. Bing allows this.     
              
 Google's product direction has been inching backwards for a decade.            
              
              
 everdrive 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 >It treats its power users like kids             
              
 It's worse than that: Google's power user features used to work reliably and repeatably. Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it.         
              
 I've recently noticed that Youtube has a similar feature. If you search for a video, you'll only get a small number of results before Youtube will start showing you "recommendations" which are only somewhat related to your original search. Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results.       
              
 It just seems that raw search is disappearing, and "recommendation engines" are appearing everywhere.            
              
              
 mohanmcgeek 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results.           
              
 Even more ironically and many here would have experienced this themselves: the best way to find something on YouTube is to use Bing           
              
              
 erklik 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > the best way to find something on YouTube is to use Bing             
              
 Weirdly the same is the case for reddit.             
              
 What I really want I guess is, a search engine, where i can provide you sites to index, and when I am searching, I only search through those sites. That's it.           
              
              
 etherealG 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What about discovery of sites you don’t know about. The whole purpose of he internet is that we’re all connected, but you seem to want only an extended private network.           
              
              
 erklik 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 A surprsingly large amounts of time I use Google, is to mainly to search on either reddit, stackoverflow, hackernews etc. Even searching for other sites is helpful using those sites i.e. searching for developer blogs gets far better results if I add reddit to it.         
              
 I think Google has it's place. However, I also think that an additional search engine like the one I described would be a very nice and useful tool. At least for me.           
              
              
 mohanmcgeek 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google fails miserably over there too.             
              
 First page is full of results from a handful of sites.             
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you.            
              
 Google trying to interpret what you want is, in my opinion, the largest reason that the search has become so bad. It guesses very poorly, and I end up having to try to guess what the magic incantation is to get it to give the what I'm searching for.          
              
              
 zeruch 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 "Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it."           
              
 This. So much this.             
              
 And it is so...bloody...annoying.             
              
              
 pessimizer 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that.            
              
 Google has removed features that it had 10 years ago.             
              
              
 IgorPartola 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I still don’t get why. It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it? What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?          
              
 I do suspect the main thing people complain about currently with Google is the abundance of ads and the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long.          
              
              
 derefr 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it?            
              
 Greater scale = greater cost of keeping data hot in their search data-warehouses (esp. in light of contention over memory/caches.) Keeping around both a source-text string and its tsvector representation (or whatever Google's version of that is) is a "thing that doesn't scale" that they could provide at 1B queries/day, but probably not at 10B queries/day.        
              
 > the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long.           
              
 That's not the algorithm's fault per se; that's instead the fact that recipes can't be copyrighted, and so these sites can freely steal + repost one-another's recipes, and so you'll find the same recipe word-for-word on many sites, thus making an exact match in the recipe part not contribute highly to ranking any particular site. The 2000-word blog post, on the other hand, is actual Intellectual Property unique to the site posting it. So it only appears in the one place; and so when your query matches it, it ranks quite highly indeed.     
              
              
 dmurray 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > That's not the algorithm's fault per se;             
              
 Yes, it is. There are good recipe sites out there with authoritative, reliable content and fast loading times. Google says it prioritizes those things, I can identify sites that have them, and yet the algorithm doesn't favour them. That's the algorithm's fault no matter what memes about copyright law cause a proliferation of shitty websites.        
              
              
 derefr 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What I'm saying is that the "recipe" part of a recipe website is a commodity – there is no "authoritative" source for a given recipe, unless that recipe is too niche in appeal to end up widely disseminated. This video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNLzyqqINw ) has a pretty good coverage of the topic.         
              
 Compare and contrast: phone-number directory listings. Who should Google cite as the authoritative source for lists of name-to-phone number associations? Nobody. All the lists are copying from each-other, curating and correcting the data taken from one-another, gathering their own original data for additions, and everything in between. Every portal overlaps every other portal, but mostly has the same stuff.       
              
 Compare and contrast, in the physical world: printings of public-domain literature. If Google indexed bookstores, which printing by which publisher would you want them to rank first on a search for e.g. Pride and Prejudice?          
              
              
 scim-knox-twox 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Try Kagi.com, you can rank domains however you want             
              
              
 loonster 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What I really want is biased search results of my choosing.             
              
 $10 a month for a personal search is a bit much. $10 a month for work related search is cheap. Give me results specific to my industry without having a super long query.           
              
              
 scim-knox-twox 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's what Kagi lenses are for. Just try...             
              
              
 martha_neeva 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 (Neeva team member here) re: recipes. You might like the Neeva recipe search experience. You can see an entire recipe and reviews (without the ads or intro text) without navigating away from the search results page. Quick example here: https://neeva.com/search?q=baked+potato&src=nvobar         
              
              
 ZeroGravitas 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The last time this came up, Google demonstrated that it still worked. Most of the examples of it not working people tried to provide are actually just unexpected exact matches in the HTML that the standard user doesnt see, so they seem like false positives or "surprisingly good" results not based on the page content.        
              
              
 rvnx 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Approximate match allows you to sell approximate/related-match ads            
              
              
 35mm 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Exactly. Even within the ad platform they keep pushing advertisers to target ‘broad’ keywords instead of ‘exact match’ ones.            
              
              
 richardfey 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Brilliant observation, never thought of it. Now the quality degradation kinda starts to make sense.            
              
              
 Schroedingersat 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 > What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?            
              
 Control. They've moved from helping you find what you asked for, to trying to influence you to changingnwhat you ask for to the thing that paid them the most.           
              
 Similarly they're they're forcing creators to alter content to match their metrics or fall into obscurity.            
              
              
 thisNeeds2BeSad 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Because somebody could have crafted a superior search using their refined search as an API, destroying the Add Revenue            
              
              
 vbezhenar 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They didn’t remove literal search. Put your literal in quotes.            
              
              
 Schroedingersat 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This stopped working reliably some time before last year.             
              
              
 saalweachter 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Eh, it's not so much that it stopped working as it is that it never worked the way you thought it did.            
              
 Quotes have ~always been an exact match on the tokenized query text, not a substring match on the corpus text. No synonyms, reordering, gaps, etc, but the matches -- and failures -- are sometimes not obvious at first blush.          
              
 If you search for "don't stop me now", for instance, that "don't" tokenizes to "don t", so it will match the tokenized strings "don't", "don t", "don-t", "don, t", etc ... but not "dont", because that's outside tokenization.          
              
 On the other hand, snippets mostly are substring matches of the query text, so if you see a result to a literal query that doesn't have a snippet, you know it's probably one of the weird matches.          
              
              
 Schroedingersat 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is just patently false in addition to being condescending.            
              
 If you use quotes around a phrase, it will reorder terms and make substitutions with synonyms in addition to straight up ignoring the quoted phrase no katter how many times you add +. If you then fiddle with settings (randomly not available depending on star alignment and device) to change it to 'verbatim' it will still reorder and split up tokens in the phrase.        
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Why is it that exact searches used to actually work reliably, then? What's changed?            
              
              
 IncRnd 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This has changed:             
              
 term -term             
              
 In the past that Google search returned no results for any search. Today the set of results are altered before they are presented to the user. Sometimes the set of reslts is empty and at other times it contains results.          
              
 For example:             
              
 steve -steve returns 0 results             
 test -test returns 4,780,000,000 in my search             
 starting with google/youtube videos             
              
              
 saalweachter 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's easy; there are synonyms added for test but not for steve.            
              
 If you search for ["test" -test] you'll get no results; quoting "test" removes the synonyms.            
              
 It's probably not new behavior per se, but synonyms have gotten a lot broader over the years, so it was a lot easier to punch [term -term] ten years ago and hit a term which had no synonyms.          
              
              
 IncRnd 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Correct, though it is new in the sense of this conversation, which compares to how a search used to be.            
              
 The point wasn't as to what the synonyms were for a specific search term but that they have been added as implicit terms, which makes google search no longer exact.           
              
              
 fargle 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 [test -test -tests -tested -testing] returns no results for me - teased out the synonyms!            
              
              
 saalweachter 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I mean, I'm confident that the core of how it works -- "an exact match between the tokenized document and the tokenized query" -- hasn't changed in a very long time, but I can't really promise there wasn't another aspect I'm ignorant of that is responsible for the behavior you remember that changed somehow.         
              
 "Exact tokenized matching" can look like "exact string matching" a lot of the time. Until you hit some of the edge cases it's like kerning: https://xkcd.com/1015/           
              
              
 Geonode 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Honestly, Yandex has really good image search. I now do all three (Google, Bing, and Yandex) when I'm researching for a design.           
              
              
 dlsa 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Going backwards and standing still often look the same. I think its both in this case to varying degrees. Google is competing against itself, obvious competitors but also obvious refinements that appear so regardless of actually being implemented. The no-login filter is a refinement that would be useful to many.         
              
 There are so many obvious improvements that could be made to gmail but there's no real way to do them as a consumer.            
              
              
 mrjin 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Googles priorities have been long shifted from products to money. They are now deliberately doing evil things for more money.            
              
 It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation. Google has been came such a monster, even we know it's dying, but its momentum will keep it going for a very long time. And if it can correct its trajectory just a little bit, the collapsing process will be even longer.        
              
              
 ornornor 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation.           
              
 Very debatable.             
              
              
 beebeepka 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 No fun allowed. Or the implication is taking drugs for anything but recreation won't kill you. I need more guidance!            
              
              
 ornornor 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Taking drugs for fun won’t necessarily make you an addict or kill you.            
              
              
 mrjin 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Hmmm, only if you know when to stop and can actually stop, sure, no it won't kill you. But what if you cannot stop? Most importantly, I did not even mention which drug as those was never the point.          
              
              
 ornornor 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > I did not even mention which drug             
              
 Exactly. Heroin is pretty addictive, pretty fast.             
              
 Otoh, there is no lethal dose that we know of for magic mushrooms (psylocibin). You can take a lot and have a hell of a trip but no one ever died from a psylocibin overdose. And it’s not addictive in the sense that you’ll get physical effects of you stop taking it. It builds a tolerance that will make it have much less effect if you take too much too often so it kinda takes care of the problem this way.       
              
 Alcohol which is freely available to any adult can make you addicted and will Jill you if you take too much of it.            
              
 What about sugar? We’re pretty much all addicted to it, and it can kill in the long term (obesity, diabetes…)            
              
 I’m not a drug expert but I think it’s very detrimental to say that all drugs are bad, they’ll make you an addict and kill you, and they’ll liquefy your brain. This is FUD and it results in shaming. It also creates abysmally poor public policy like the “war on drugs” which has been nothing but a colossal failure and a misery generating system.        
              
              
 mrkramer 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I agree with you but I think the problem is that majority of internet users are casual users who don't care about complex queries. Maybe good business idea would be to make internet search engine which enables complex queries like the one you described. Google was made for masses not for power users.         
              
              
 LeoPanthera 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google had a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away.            
              
 You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about.           
              
 Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.            
              
              
 sph 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.            
              
 It is now evident Google is not in the business of making its search any better.            
              
              
 tomxor 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Which is why we need more competitors in this space.             
              
 When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the only intrinsic business force is direct monetisation paths... completely different incentives.      
              
              
 passerby1 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Where should the profit come from for a search-oriented product/business?            
              
              
 IgorPartola 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Because indexing the web and organizing all that information is expensive. It’s also a lot of power so we can’t exactly trust that job to a single government or even a group of allied governments. Universities could potentially handle it by pooling a lot of resources, but I can’t really think of who else I would trust to be The Search Engine. Google isn’t ideal but at least it’s priorities are mostly aligned with the average user’s.       
              
              
 Nextgrid 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Users?             
              
 Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still billions worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.          
              
              
 rootusrootus 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Sadly, that's not realistic. You can get a subset of users to pay, but it's vanishingly small compared to everyone who thinks they are perfectly happy with the "free" status quo. Even a dollar a month, it is infinitely more than zero. I just had this conversation with members of my extended family and almost all of them were of the "I don't care if I'm tracked, I've got nothing interesting to hide" mindset, along with "not a chance in hell I'm going to pay for this, or email, when I get them from Google for free."     
              
              
 derefr 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 How about a company that provides a search engine, but as a part of a greater subscription service whose selling point isn't search? Imagine, for example, that paying for Apple One got you access to an Apple-operated search engine.          
              
              
 popcube 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 how about just sell your customers to Google? Apple had do this on Safari            
              
              
 IncRnd 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 There isn't a single scenario for any product or service anywhere that will get every Internet user to pay a monthly fee - not even for 1¢ a month.           
              
              
 Nextgrid 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct payment. Companies can white-label the service or include it as a value-add as part of their offering; for example an ISP or mobile carrier offering this to their customers.          
              
 At the moment I'm not aware of any company whose primary service is search. I believe the demand would be there - OS manufacturers currently have to either put up with Google (even if their goals diverge - for example it doesn't work well with Apple's privacy-focused marketing) or Bing.         
              
 A third player whose primary business is search (as opposed to using it as a loss-leader to lure people into their ecosystems, like Google and Bing are) could get some use, not to mention that programmatic access to large web index would no doubt be a service many companies would pay for. Think Algolia or hosted ElasticSearch but pre-seeded with a broad index of the web.        
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It doesn't have to appeal to every internet user. Not even most internet users. It just has to appeal to enough to make money, which is a substantially smaller number than the total number of internet users.          
              
              
 garbagetime 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Governments             
              
              
 mescaline 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 From a business model that doesn't make money off ads.             
              
              
 vopi 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter (among other filters)            
              
              
 visarga 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 You can make custom search engines by selecting an explicit list of sites on top of Google here            
              
 https://cse.google.com/all             
              
              
 dantyti 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 it requires a google account. I like teddit.net's approach of allowing the user to set up preferences and import them as a json.           
              
              
 pinky1417 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Shouldn't there be a way to only search multiple forums through some userscript? Only found out about userscript after messing around with an iOS app called HyperWeb.           
              
 At least in my limited understanding of userscript's capabilities, you'd still need to explicitly specify the forums you want to search, but I imagine that would solve lots of use cases for search filters.          
              
              
 skinnymuch 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Google has a limit to how long searches can be. So if it’s a complex one, it can’t be too long.            
              
 I think you can only specify searching one site at a time. With site: search filter.            
              
 —             
              
 Google’s custom search engine’s where you can give a whitelisted amount of sites isn’t very good. At least not any more. It didn’t include lots of pages it’s main index does. Or the rankings were all out of sorts rendering not useful.          
              
              
 aww_dang 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Forums were somewhat decentralized. Without attributing motive, platforms are interested in moving in the opposite direction.            
              
              
 jessriedel 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Are there any wrappers for Google search that try to implement a bag of these sorts of workarounds this with a nice UI?            
              
              
 srcreigh 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 But do those forums run Google ads?             
              
              
 aww_dang 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes             
              
              
 Melatonic 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I feel this same way about a lot of aspects of Google search.             
              
              
 wolpoli 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This could be solved with selectable ranking strategies. Of course Google isn't going to offer that.            
              
              
 jstummbillig 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.             
              
 Sure, in the sense that someone who had their legs broken sucks at running. Compared to yesterdays, Google today has to deal with a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search. It's easy to fetch good water when the well is clean and no one is trying to actively poison it.         
              
              
 542458 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I partially agree with your comment, but it feels like in some/many cases the Google algorithm has large flaws that were not previously there and that (superficially) seem solvable. For example:          
              
 * If I search for recipes, the Google algorithm seems to heavily favour recipes with a short novel prepended to them. The “novel” does not have to be particularly relevant to the content - I’ve seen recipes with “novels” that I’m not convinced wasn’t partially algorithmically generated. Every human being I’ve ever spoken to hates this.        
              
 * Google will search for what it believes to be alternatives to terms, even when those terms are placed into quotes (which used to prevent this behaviour). This can be very irritating when Google’s alternative terms are incorrect.          
              
 Both of these are regressions over earlier behaviour, and don’t seem to have any obvious benefit to them.            
              
              
 jstummbillig 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Don't know about regressions. Did it maybe just take people some time to figure out that Google Bot is really, really captivated by a riveting story to accompany that pancake recipe?           
              
              
 mohanmcgeek 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search            
              
 I think their #1 problem is their product managers trying to do "something" to add said something to their resume and making the product horrible to use in the process           
              
 Examples include: - Grid view tab switcher in Chrome Android - Removing dislike count on YouTube            
              
              
 dekhn 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 As a xoogler, it was clear when the original search quality folks left and were replaced with people whose goal was to grow the product (and the company) without much care for quality.           
              
              
 SahAssar 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Different types of these strategies have been around since before google existed. Hell, even web directories (like early yahoo!) had to deal with spam, early google had to deal with keyword spam. Paid backlinks, spammed comment sections with backlinks, copied content sites as backlink farms, all of this existed at least as early as 2005-ish. For some sites (some of them with legitimate info) the meta keywords tag (even though google stopped using it very early) was the bulk of their size for just this reason.     
              
 What has so radically changed the last couple of years to make spam take top spots on the SERP?            
              
              
 jstummbillig 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is not 2005 spam. This is just how people are expected to write now. More people think it's normal. By spam being more content-like, and, in response, content getting inspired by spam and getting more spam-like, spam is getting increasingly indistinguishable from content.         
              
              
 Spooky23 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Exactly. Google sucks because the internet that we remembered died long ago, hoovered up into social media.            
              
 The person passionate about beetles who would have a great website in 2002 now posts 38 post Twitter threads (at best) or Instagram/Facebook posts that are lost forever.           
              
 It’s sad as we had this amazing “long tail” effect where a company like Google could set out to organize the worlds information.           
              
 Unfortunately the economics drive new behavior, and the next cohort of big web companies sought to monopolize human attention. The more profitable ones like Facebook are masters of psychological manipulation, and the second string cohorts like Reddit who aren’t very smart/manipulative adopt a more hands off approach where undesirable content like porn juices engagement.        
              
              
 zapdrive 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Reddit isn't manipulative? Have you been there recently?             
              
              
 Spooky23 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They are manipulative, but not effective.             
              
              
 Barrin92 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines.        
              
 People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't in 2008. Which is obvious because in 2008 there was only reddit and like 3 other sites, now there's dozens of relevant ones.          
              
              
 lazide 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes. There is massively more spam, and they’ve made it do a lot less direct search matching (many results don’t include the actual word that matters for instance)           
              
              
 google234123 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.           
              
              
 mushyhammer 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You don’t give Google enough credit: They totally can add a “report spam site” action in the search results, but they don’t, because they don’t care. It would help immensely to have websites disappear from search after 100 trusted Google users complain about them (after manual review). This stuff already exists and works on Google Maps.        
              
 Even the data collected from a personal blocklist would be useful for them, without explicitly reporting sites, but again they just don’t care.           
              
 They’ve been in the business of parsing websites for 25 years, surely they can tell ad-infested spam websites apart from good ones.           
              
              
 knighthack 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think this is also because of potential abuse: there's nothing to prevent malicious SEO gamers from reporting legitimate sites as 'spam' to remove competition, as a means of extortion, etc.          
              
              
 mushyhammer 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes but I mentioned how to limit that:             
              
 > trusted Google users             
              
 > (after manual review)             
              
 > already exists and works on Google Maps             
              
              
 firecall 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is super useful: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter            
              
 Removes sites that copy SO answers etc...             
              
              
 Schroedingersat 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 It is their fault when they've actively pressured real content into being indistinguishable from spam sites.            
              
 If you don't write like a drunk two year old and fill everything with key phrases now you simply don't appear in results, so any site that can become known has to be rewritten by gpt into barely intelligible garbage that dances around the point for four paragraphs when it could be communicated in four words..         
              
              
 sidibe 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I've also not noticed. But this is the most common topic on HN so I probably had/have different search habits to have missed the wonderful experience of Google 10 years ago.           
              
 Google meets my expectations for a search engine but maybe I'm not expecting enough from search?            
              
              
 AniseAbyss 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Honestly I use startpage and I'm blocking ads so aggressively I barely know what Google search is supposed to look like.            
              
              
 glenstein 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).          
              
 These are all truly excellent and refreshingly imaginative ideas, in a conversation too often starved of critical thinking (elsewhere in this thread commenters, unable to imagine any alternative at all, are incredulously asking "what would you even replace it with?").         
              
 I would just say that search in it's traditional form is valuable too, and highly efficient. Or at least it can be when done well. I think millionshort search results are a good example of what traditional search can be.          
              
              
 y42 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yeah well, that's what you want, and probably a decent couple of power users. And I totally agree.            
              
 But here is the thing:             
              
 My mom, dad and even my brother, they don't need that. They need the limitations aka borders, the "simplicity", the synchronisation and the search results. They still stick with Facebook, Google and Amazon because it's easy to use and their gate to the Internet, where all the smart people are living and the "future is real". They do not understand the drawbacks or they just don't care.       
              
 And I dare to assume that this pictures the vast majority of Internet users.            
              
              
 jackblemming 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Good thing there's more of a market than your mom, dad, and even your brother, or alternative search competitors like duckduckgo and others would be completely screwed.           
              
              
 fxtentacle 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Maybe the market of people that are significantly different from his/her mom is just too small to justify the significant investments needed to build a search engine.           
              
 Or said another way: If 99% are happy with Google, can the remaining 1% pay enough to finance "Google pro" ?            
              
              
 marcinzm 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is there an alternative search engine right now that is both good and not based heavily on an incumbent by a large tech company (ie: bing)? If not then the argument isn't disproved.           
              
              
 ZeroGravitas 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is actually what I worry about more.             
              
 I'm browsing with Firefox on Mac with adblockers, and have some knowledge of what the potential scams are.            
              
 Is Google actually helping the average user more than a hypothetical alternative?            
              
 Don't know, tricky question to answer, but whatever the answer is it's likely a society wide change, involving regulation and new business models and ethical consumer choices, not just a new search engine.          
              
              
 thereare5lights 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.             
              
 Came here to write exactly that             
              
 Why are we still using it?             
              
 There's nothing better out there.             
              
              
 elevaet 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I've been starting to use kagi for search. I'm still using google by default, but when I get a screen full of ads and clickbait articles I turn to kagi and it's almost always better.           
              
              
 gillytech 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Maybe you should try an opposite approach. When kagi gives you useless results switch to Google.            
              
              
 Gareth321 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is what I do. Kagi gets there 95% of the time. Plus I get to down/up rank results. Plus no ads. Plus I feel confident I’m getting the best result for me and not for advertisers. Truth be told I’ve been using “site:reddit.com” for years now already.          
              
 Google still has the lead with the answer box and older results. They’ve been collecting data for longer and I suspect their indexing heuristics are incredible.           
              
              
 kuhewa 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wanted to love kagi, but they still have the same fuzzy search that makes it about impossible to find something odd that shares keywords with commonplace things.           
              
              
 CraigRood 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google is still my default as 9 out of 10 I get the answer I need quickly. Bing does my other 10% where Google provides junk or stale results.... Google Search really is declining. I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment. On the Maps front, I'm really enjoying Apple Maps as it has less junk - I just want a map!!        
              
              
 matheweis 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment.            
              
 I switched my default over to Bing about two months ago and it is surprisingly good. Subjectively I would say it is better more often than it is worse.           
              
              
 wyclif 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 You should try Brave search.             
              
              
 fils 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Untapped potential. exactly. To me the biggest problem isn't the results (even the ads) it's the lack of innovation. The lack of making search an experience and something that generates a value I can store and share.          
              
 I've been looking at several of the options talked about here. My favorite so far is Neeva (https://neeva.com) due to their "spaces" concept and how it provides a simple building block I can explore to address many of the use cases I have for search.          
              
 Search needs innovation and people trying new things.             
              
              
 irrational 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).        
              
 Yes, I would love this. I was recently looking for reviews of a certain woodworking tool. The vast majority of websites googled returned were clearly bot created sites. I came away thinking I wanted a curated list of a few sites actually created by humans.         
              
              
 mrjin 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I really missed those days that I could write URLs I visited frequently on notebook. Unfortunately, we might never be no way back to the good old days. There is literally way too much info on the internet, and thus impossible to index contents manually.          
              
              
 cupofpython 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I dont think it is as hopeless as you think. There are only so many websites people actually use for human-created content. Those should be prioritized. There is still the issue of differentiating between bot blogs and human blogs but I'm sure I could figure something out at a 200k salary, and google has plenty of people like that        
              
              
 andi999 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 So you want the search engine to perform a turing test? Nice.             
              
              
 mooreds 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think there's also some inertia. I know how to tweak google.            
              
 I have also used some competitors. They are fine for most things (finding the hours of a local store, a restaurant's menu).            
              
 However, when the going gets tough (troubleshooting a technical issue, looking for a recommendation) I fall back to google.            
              
              
 toshk 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google works great for most daily tasks software questions, looking for a service/company etc            
              
 But when I want to do serious research on things like eczema, diet, backpain, exercise. Google absolutely fails (also Google scholar) I have to buy books, go through Reddit,listen to YouTube lectures etc that point to the correct literature and then you get to know the experts, different opinions etc.         
              
 All you find is these generic sites with basic advice which is common knowledge lik WebMD. Not bad, but they dominate the entire search.           
              
 I would think a heavy version of Google focused on in depth/experts would be great.            
              
              
 Ekaros 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It generally even fails when you are looking for a product. If you don't know certain brand. I have been hunting reasonably priced stainless steel meat grinder(the grinding parts, not the body), but with google due to all SEO spam it feels like impossible task...         
              
              
 manx 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yes, please bring web directories back!             
              
 Today we have more possibilities to manage that than in the early days. Many things can be automatically generated/crawled/MLed or crowdsourced. Browser extensions can help to categorize almost all important websites.          
              
 Data sources like Reddit, Stack Overflow or Wikipedia already have many websites categorized. We just need to combine the data.           
              
 I did a few experiments myself trying to drive hierarchies from tag data. It works surprisingly well. There is even some academic work in this direction.           
              
              
 CuriouslyC 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Honestly at this point I don't think bing sucks vs google. Bing has less random junk in SERPS for a lot of searches, and seems less gamed by SEO companies, but it isn't really better enough to make a point of switching my chrome url bar over and breaking my habit of just going to google. If things keep going like they have been I wouldn't be surprised if I switch in the near future though.       
              
              
 masa331 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wonder what do you mean by "vastly superior". For search i use Kagi, for a browser i use Firefox. For mail you can use Protonmail or i guess there are other alternatives also. Only thing i miss is Gmail message threading. Other than that nothing else. So i think people are only used to Google, that's all. I don't think it's vastly superior in any area anymore        
              
              
 peter303 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Plus I strongly suspect Google search no longer gives the most accurate answer, but the one most profitable for Google ads.            
              
              
 hwers 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It would be funny if some site with youtube-style recommendations got popular because that's basically what I believe google is using under the hood already and it would be so easy for them to pivot to that style and then take over all the momentum the recommendation-style site got.         
              
              
 mrkramer 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Why would an average user use such service? I was thinking about creating such "internet recommendation engine" so to speak but as my hypothetical project was progressing I realized that it started looking more and more like internet search engine as and when I started adding more advanced features. But looking from costs point of view it is cheaper to create internet recommendation engine than internet search engine.       
              
              
 buywarbonds 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I see the problem with Google search of today vs Google search of 10 years ago being that the first page of search has already become a "Youtube-style recommendations for websites". It's more like a curated list of "approved content" now.          
              
              
 madrox 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think companies have tried, but it simply hasn't worked. Yahoo tried to do a lot of this, and simply failed. Arguably they could have done it better, but I don't think many will have a better shot than them for a while more to come.          
              
              
 lmg643 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Brave search is fantastic, haven't noticed a difference since moving            
              
              
 gillytech 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm going to second that. Since switching off Google a couple years ago I have had fewer and fewer "failed" searches which required me to go back to Google to try the search.           
              
 The more people who use Brave Search (they own their own index), the better it will become. And right now I'd say it's orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others.           
              
              
 hedora 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Haven't tried Brave, but I'd say DDG results are much better than Google Search.            
              
 I think it's down to personal preference or something.             
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Right now, DDG gives me the best search results of anything that I've tried. I know people who don't get the same quality results from it as I do, though.           
              
 I'm 100% convinced that the difference comes down to how searches are formulated. At least, the people who I know that experience poor quality searches seem to enter their queries as natural-language questions rather than search terms.          
              
              
 5560675260 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 In my experience Brave is better than DDG for tech topics. But DDG so far is noticeably better for non-english content and image search, so I still use it as a fallback.           
              
              
 dantyti 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others             
              
 used brave as my daily search engine for a couple of months and I must say this was not the case for me. Results for global EN topics were indeed better than ddg/bing in some cases (nowhere near an order of magnitude better, though), but results for any non-EN or local queries (think searching for major websites running for 15 yrs) were extremely poor in most cases.        
              
              
 gillytech 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Well that's a good point. I only speak English so I speak for my language. On the point of Brave vs DDG I think my main point is that Brave has its own index and DDG is based on ... Bing? ... I'm not sure. At any rate I don't think there's a comparison there.         
              
              
 dmw_ng 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I made an earnest effort to switch to Brave, but I'm back with Google for almost all searches because 1100ms+ result page loads are simply unworkable here.           
              
              
 jspash 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm sticking it out, but I find that I have to fall back to Google on 1 out of 10 searches. Mostly technical ones.            
              
 But what really annoys me (and maybe I'm doing something wrong) is that one page of (slow) results is not enough. I understand that Google's 1,000,000+ results is also not necessary. But I often need more than 20. Come to think of it, I rarely need pages 2 and beyond when using Google. So maybe that's saying something about the quality of the Brave results? They're just not as good.       
              
              
 cloutchaser 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Youtube-style recommendations for websites             
              
 Reddit?             
              
              
 kauguste281 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Reddit is heavily biased towards new content and you have to know what subreddits to look for to find the interesting stuff. The nice thing with Youtube recommendations (after recent updates) is that it pulls out a lot of older content and it also has a pretty good understanding of contexts and topics, even pretty niche stuff. Plain Google search really has no way of exploring the web in the same way you can just do with Youtube recommendations. Also helps that Youtube is extremely low on spam, you get ads and product placement, but not the bot generated filler that is cluttering up Google search.    
              
              
 BeFlatXIII 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Only so long as old Reddit remains intact.             
              
              
 bko 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Google sucks compared to Google from years ago             
              
 How much of that is based on general incompetence, SEO gaming, growing complexity of searches or manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")? Or something else.           
              
              
 dantyti 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I guess another major barrier for higher quality search is the deep web (discord, fb, private forums, etc.)            
              
              
 etherael 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")?             
              
 This makes it basically unusable for anything that isn't a technical question, for which it is still reasonably good if you restrict to sites where it will likely get a reasonable answer.           
              
 If special interest groups aligned with google have a position on what you're searching though, it will simply be spammed outright and any evidence to the contrary either concealed or "fact checks" which consist of minor modifications on the core underlying fact in question spiked with something that is obviously false so that the fact check can say "false" whilst actually the underlying fact in question is not at all false. Even when those special interest groups are right, google is still useless because it will give you such a slanted view of the territory you will be utterly clueless as to what other sides of the debate even exist as anything more than silly strawmen. Most questions in this class people would be better served by just petitioning Blackrock and similar directly and asking them what they should think.
              
 For commercial stuff it's almost as bad, I find myself having to figure out the underlying financial realities of the industry that produces x, then getting a summary of the market space by volume and associated data, then speculating on stuff that might exist within that market space that might be nice in light of whatever flaws afflict the market space in question, and maybe if I get lucky I'll find something through the reams and reams of valueless SEO optimised pop-up spewing complete and utter bullshit desperately attempting to capitalise on my assumed stupidity with their cookie cutter a-b tested "sales pitches". Most of the time I end up just going to alibaba or similar, finding vendors shipping actual large units with decent reviews, and then working backwards from there to what I'm looking for. 
              
 Watching google fall from something amazing to probably-worse-than-microsoft-all-things-considered tier was quite the eye opener.           
              
              
 supernovae 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 none.. it’s all because of paid placement taking priority             
              
              
 bushbaba 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Search, "what hotel to stay in san francisco soma". You'll see that every single result above the fold is an Ad.            
              
 In fact it doesn't even give me a single useful piece of information. #1 result is a link to expedia. #2 is to hotels.com, #3 to the trip advisor. Scroll down Google Hotels widget. Then on the 3rd browser viewpoint page I get actual query results.          
              
              
 emmelaich 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The result I got was a list, with maps and prices with an option to refine stay dates.            
              
 Not sure how that could be improved to be honest.             
              
 Next entry was a non-ad from Tripadvisor.             
              
              
 bushbaba 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Here's my results: https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b            
              
              
 emmelaich 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yeah the second looks like what I got. (BwZX9FQ)             
              
              
 heavyset_go 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 When weird search results get posted on HN, they're sometimes fixed within minutes. I wouldn't doubt that the search term was "fixed" by someone reading HN.           
              
              
 asiachick 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I got a list of hotels. not sure how it could be more useful             
              
 https://ibb.co/JxfY6BX             
              
              
 bushbaba 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Here's my results: https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b            
              
              
 unlikelymordant 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 You are using an adblocker though             
              
              
 Nextgrid 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's less about paid placement taking priority (as in intentionally degrading results) but more that there's no incentive to spend money improving organic search results where at best it'll do nothing and at worst decrease the profitability of paid results (people are less likely to click on them if the organic results are good), not to mention that crap organic results also benefit Google as these websites often have Google Ads or Analytics.      
              
              
 not2b 10 months ago | prev | next [–]             
              
 The author missed the most important reason that Google search results often suck: tens of thousands of people are working very hard to make it suck. They call themselves "SEO specialists", and their job is to get their shitty site to the top of the rankings. It's an ongoing battle. Sure, Google wants to make money, but to do that they need to protect their search moneymaker and keep it dominant, so their incentive is to make the users happy. They aren't sucking on purpose.      
              
              
 javchz 10 months ago | parent | next [–]             
              
 I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.           
              
 Right now SEO it's an arms race between google and every SEO agencies, with a keyword being attached to some company that may have 0 relevance to the user.           
              
 Doesn't help, that depending on the query, the first results are ads only superficially related. You can search for the name of a popular brand of a car/hotel/insurance, and the first results are the competitors. If you don't want to be below the fold, you need to pay, even if your website it's exactly what the user it's looking for.        
              
              
 throw_m239339 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.           
              
 It was never the case. As soon as google started to be popular, people were hired to manipulate its search results. "Natural" SEO was never a thing. You always had to use shady tactics in order to get a good ranking because everybody was doing the same.          
              
              
 kalleboo 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Even before Google, people would stuff the bottom of their page with black on black keyword stuffing to game Altavista            
              
              
 oriolid 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This exactly. Google was an almost overnight success because in the beginning it gave much more useful results than Altavista and others even when they had indexed a small fraction of what Altavista had.          
              
              
 MomoXenosaga 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The internet grew up. I want to hate Google as much as the next guy but it is not their fault that money has corrupted it.            
              
 In that sense Google's monopoly is actually preferable for marketeers. It would be a lot harder to manipulate search engine results if the public was split among 20 of them.           
              
              
 y42 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That would not help. Those kind of effects are inherent in the system. As long as Visitsv lead to any kind of revenue, no matter if by Ad Impressions or Affiliate Programms or whatever, there exists a motivation and people will try to drag visitors to their sites. You will have to remove eCommerce from the Internet to fix that.        
              
              
 moistly 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Search isn’t Google’s moneymaker, advertising is. And those shitty SEO’d sites are choc-a-bloc with advertising. Google has little incentive to downrank them.           
              
              
 Nextgrid 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Google can trivially reduce the amount of spam by using the amount of ads, analytics, affiliate links, etc as a negative ranking signal.           
              
 Instead of targeting SEO per-se (as it's difficult to determine a good website with SEO vs a spam website with SEO), target how they're making money.           
              
 They're not doing so exactly because they have no incentive.             
              
              
 petra 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What incentives do they have to promote affiliate links to Amazon ?            
              
 It's a bit more complicated than that. Even useful sites in commercially related niches use affiliate links as a source of revenue.           
              
              
 Nextgrid 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I’m not saying they promote them explicitly. I’m arguing that they should downrank them because it’s a likely indicator of spam - there’s a lot of spam websites out there which are just bullshit listicles or fake review websites whose primary objective is to get you to buy through their affiliated link. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s software out there that can churn out and update these websites automatically. Google has no incentive to downrank these though because those spam websites also often contain Google analytics or ads.     
              
              
 Program_Install 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Search is their main gateway to the advertising dollars. "Google it" is synonymous with any search regardless of the engine being used.           
              
              
 makeitdouble 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Wouldn’t in-app advertisement be at least on par, probably higher in usage ?            
              
              
 moistly 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They serve ads regardless how you get to the site you’re viewing.            
              
              
 ornornor 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They serve more ads if they steer you towards the low value SEO website filled with Adsense.            
              
              
 moistly 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That is precisely my original point.             
              
              
 asiachick 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google loses if people stop using it. Google has every incentive to downrank them.            
              
              
 glenstein 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Google has incentives to degrade the quality of search results for the benefit of its profitability, up to the extent that is able to without turning away too many users.           
              
 I think it's more like that rather than an either/or.             
              
              
 not2b 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They have competition: if we get to the point where Bing/DuckDuckGo results are clearly better, people will start moving, and that will hurt their revenue badly.           
              
              
 skinnymuch 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes and those results don’t have to be just better. They have to be clearly better as you stated. The likliehood of that happening any time soon is close to zero.           
              
 I personally use Bing for 95% of my searches and have done so since it launched. Or re-launched.            
              
              
 bencollier49 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I switched precisely because I found that the DuckDuckGo results were indeed better. This was a third attempt though - the first two times it wasn't quite good enough. It improved, and Google got worse.          
              
              
 temp20160423 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This makes no sense. Google makes more money when users click on some crappy landing page filled with display ads?            
              
              
 BurningFrog 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The web has - as it inevitably would - adapted to being searched by Google.            
              
 This makes it much harder to be a good search engine.             
              
 I have no idea how to quantify how much the decline is because of that.            
              
              
 Gareth321 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 While true, this isn’t actually a complicated issue to solve: humans and a heavy hand. Get humans to review everything on page one of every search. Get caught massaging your site? Permanent ban.          
              
 Google refuses to hire humans to do stuff like this. Their service is terrible. Maps requires free labour of millions of users to get information updated.           
              
              
 elliekelly 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The author included with this “blog post” about their browser extension.            
              
              
 fdgsdfogijq 10 months ago | prev | next [–]             
              
 Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search.        
              
 These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that democracy has failed so lets replace it, replace with what? Its the best we can get given the alternatives, and its flaws will always be exploited.          
              
              
 zargon 10 months ago | parent | next [–]             
              
 No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries.          
              
 It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)          
              
              
 black_puppydog 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Came here to mention kagi. Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool. Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.         
              
              
 tartoran 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Wow, they have that? That’s what I always wanted from Google and they never delivered. Im sure they had reasons. I really don’t think they want to empower their users, they are even hostile to search users and content creators, amp comes to mind and am glad it dissapeared already. Meanwhile I’be been using duckduck but i’ll give kagi a go.        
              
              
 notreallyserio 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Worse, Google used to allow you to block sites but removed the feature a long while back: https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/03/google-discontinue... .           
              
              
 lordnacho 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 What happens when you ask it how many Ukrainian generals have died? Does it insist on giving you pages and pages about Russian generals, like Google?           
              
 I was looking for this and it really annoys me how it thinks it knows what I want.            
              
              
 berkut 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 No, Kagi (unlike Google and DDG) will just stop providing results, it won't make up others with very tenuous links to your search terms like the others do.           
              
              
 black_puppydog 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Just tried that. I did have to put "ukrainian generals" into quotes (which makes sense, that's how it's supposed to work) but then it just showed me 5 results total, all of which contained exactly that phrase.          
              
              
 Physkal 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 How are the porn results?             
              
              
 sltkr 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Kagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.           
              
              
 omnicognate 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.        
              
              
 jasinjames 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 And as of now, they are listening to users very attentively. Just a few hours ago I suggested they clarify the defualt "Programming" filter since it only searches q&a sites (i.e Stack Overflow) and they have already changed the name to "Programming Help" to make it more clear.         
              
              
 Melatonic 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically          
              
              
 lolinder 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Is there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit.           
              
 I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.            
              
              
 ndiddy 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 According to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts as an additional search, so you could go through your quota pretty fast.      
              
 Apparently all of this is to offset the costs from paying Google and Bing to run searches for them (the site basically takes results from Google and Bing and then combines them together with their own special sauce) but with a pricing model like this it seems like Kagi will remain a niche tool solely used by the wealthy.        
              
              
 DocTomoe 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Hm, 30 USD/month for good search is not that much - and certainly not "wealthy" territory. Remember that many people pay subscription services they use a lot less (18 USD for Netflix, anyone?).          
              
 The main paradigm shift necessary will be to pay at all for something that was "free" and is provided "free" to this day - even if the quality is worse.           
              
              
 freeflight 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Monthly subscription and quotas? While I respect and understand the goal I can’t help but feel like we are paywalling what the web has been for the longest time and should be “out of the box”.          
              
              
 dinkleberg 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Hostile is such a drastic word to apply to a service that is dedicated to making search better by actually listening to the desires of their users.           
              
 They need to support their efforts somehow. Instead of showing ads or selling your data, they are going to charge a fee to use it.           
              
              
 mescaline 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Google uses ads to pay for the service, which is available without logging in. Those ad systems can track you. On the other hand, a paid service (even if it is currently in "free" mode) will likely get rid of ads, but requires some authentication to know you are you.         
              
 I'm logged into Google all the time. I do this to get sharing working across Chrome. Others doe the same with Firefox. Some don't, because privacy.           
              
 I hear you think logins are 1000x more hostile than paying with your eyeballs. How would you suggest resolving this clearly conflicted view with logging in vs. how the revenue is made on a given site?          
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It used to be that if you used a paid service, then that service wouldn't throw you to the wolves of internet marketing/tracking companies. That alone made logins 1000 times less hostile.           
              
 But that is changing. Internet marketing companies are now teaming up with websites so the websites to their dirty work for them and you end up getting tracked anyway -- but with much higher certainty as to who you are. That means that now, yes, logins are more hostile.         
              
 The web continues to get smaller and smaller.             
              
              
 LordAtlas 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 And they also intend to charge $10 per month (and that's just for 20 searches per day, which is a WTF low number). There's no way I'm paying that kind of money.           
              
              
 buildbot 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 +1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding searches…           
              
              
 mrjin 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 But why would a search engine require an account to use in the first place? Or maybe I took it wrong?            
              
              
 notriddle 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Kagi is probably a lot more usable, right now. Nobody’s trying to game it.            
              
 As long as it remains niche, it might actually stay that way indefinitely. I’m just worried about Google taking inspiration from them. I bet whatever “tricks” they use now would get a lot less effective if they did.          
              
              
 jpalomaki 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 What’s the story behind Kagi - are they somehow related to Google?            
              
 To my knowledge besides the old experiments with client side search, Google has never allowed (even paid) api access to their search. I thought they did not do this, because it would have allowed somebody to jump start a search engine that might eventually become a competitor.         
              
 Kagi seems to be open about their Google relationship, so I assume they have agreement in place.            
              
 This even feels like some experiment from Google to create a premium, paid, search product (like what they did with YouTube).            
              
              
 jsnell 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 At least Startpage has been serving Google results (via paid API access) for years. There is nothing new about Kagi paying for access to it.           
              
              
 Kuinox 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.           
              
              
 lolinder 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It's substantially better than Google for what I do with it (mostly work-related queries). A few reasons why:            
              
 * It blocks all the GitHub and Stack Overflow copycat sites out of the box.            
              
 * I can add additional sites to the block list with two clicks.            
              
 * It up-ranks (semi-)official documentation like the Python docs or MDN over blog spam sites.            
              
 * I can manually up-rank sites (and even pin them to the top of the results) if I'd like to see them more often.            
              
 Kagi is awesome because where Google thinks it can guess what you want, Kagi gives you an easy way to tell it what you want.            
              
              
 Kuinox 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I already have an extension that's allow me to block, or highlights results on Google or Bing            
              
              
 omnicognate 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Kagi's better than Google for me. Proof is that initially I only had it set up as default search on one device but I've progressively switched them all over out of annoyance with crap google results. I haven't yet had to go to google once to finish a search I started on Kagi.         
              
              
 zargon 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is probably true for me, if we also say that 50% of the queries are orders of magnitude higher quality on Kagi.            
              
              
 Tenoke 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I use Google without AdBlock on my phone daily and it's not quite that different.            
              
              
 Broken_Hippo 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I use Google without AdBlock whenever I am in a private browser in addition to going without adblock on both my phone and tablet. I agree, it isn't that much different. At least with search, that is.          
              
              
 huynhhacnguyen 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Do I have to wait for their invitation to join the beta list before I can try Kagi? The comments here are promising and I tried to take a look for myself but apparently only beta users are allowed in at the moment.          
              
              
 79a6ed87 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You have to ask for it by submitting a form in their webpage and they send you an invitation to your mail            
              
              
 fdgsdfogijq 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think that with current technology, beating google at the scale they run at is impossible. I think with advances it NLP, its possible. But right now, its pie in the sky.           
              
              
 ApolloFortyNine 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Even my grandparents figured out how to scroll by the ads at the top of Google search. Actively hostile is a bit much.            
              
              
 tonyedgecombe 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I don't think my parents would be able to distinguish between the ads and natural listings.            
              
              
 RC_ITR 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The progression that people almost always forget:             
              
 1) New system comes out that indexes/controls/regulates a naively created dataset            
              
 2) Data consumers adopt that system and experience benefits             
              
 3) Data suppliers learn rules of system and take advantage of it to improve the positioning of their data, thus breaking the intent of a system built on the assumption of naive creation           
              
 4) Users complain about the broken system             
              
 5) New entrants realize that the original system actually solved the core problem really well, and there are no easy ways to solve the 'gaming the system' problem           
              
 6) Flawed system remains the best available option indefinitely            
              
 It's like entropy, there's just no fighting it.             
              
 EDIT: And to extend this beyond Google - do you see a lot of long text blocks in 7 second tik tok videos? That's because the creator found a way to game the algorithm.           
              
              
 jessriedel 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Honest question: what else besides web search has followed this progression?            
              
              
 makeitdouble 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Spam and bot detection could be close to that model ?             
              
              
 jessriedel 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Email spam? I'd say that's basically solved.             
              
 For bot detection, when was the golden age? I'd say that, rather than follow the above description, it started as non-existent and there was basically a smooth descent downward to where we are now.          
              
              
 pixl97 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 3) ban abusive data providers?             
              
              
 RC_ITR 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Well let's make this real.             
              
 Sites with people hired to optimize the robots.txt file are ranked higher than those without. If we ban all websites that hire people to optimize their robots.txt, then a lot of the web isn't indexed and the search results suffer.          
              
 Or if we ban every creator on tik tok who posts a lot of text in a short video, then a lot of creators are going to be de-platformed and moved elsewhere.           
              
 The point of what I wrote is that 'humans are really god at following rules, so much so that they often are able to manipulate rules to their advantage, without breaking said rules.           
              
 That's why this is such a hard problem to counter.             
              
              
 jeffbee 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 You're ignoring the only insightful part of the article: if a search engine succeeds at all, it cannot ban anyone, because some antitrust bureaucrat somewhere will cluck about it.           
              
              
 hedora 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 If this were true, wouldn't Google display all million pages that are vaguely relevant to my query on the first screen?            
              
 Their only job is to stack order the internet. Down ranking a site to the 1,000,000th result is the same as banning them. They necessarily do this all the time (like for every search with more than 10 potential hits).          
              
              
 elevaet 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 How would that even work? Define the border between SEO and abuse.            
              
              
 q-big 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Define the border between SEO and abuse.             
              
 Perhaps there is no border to be defined since nearly all SEO is abuse?!            
              
 The only acceptable SEO should be "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".            
              
              
 ipsi 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Let's say someone writes a blog article. They publish it on Wordpress with a bunch of unoptimised defaults. Some time after, someone comes along and says "Hey, the search engine will rank your post more highly if you include the name of the post in the URL instead of just having it be blog.example.com/posts?id=1234", so they change the URL. Is that SEO? Should that result in the site being de-listed/banned? It doesn't meet your definition of "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".     
              
 And where is the line between "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer" and SEO? If I realise that (to take an example from something found on Google) I could take the sentence "Identify the best customers and convert more" and rewrite it as "Marketing automation helps you identify the best customers and convert more", is that SEO because I'm intentionally adding a keyword, or is that making the content more relevant to the user by being more explicit in what I'm saying?      
              
              
 nonameiguess 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm sure there are better examples, but this specific one actually does make the experience better for the reader. People often return to good blog posts and it's a lot easier to remember a title than a numerical id. If you can remember the title and know the url of the blog and it has a simple naming convention, you can bypass the search engine entirely and just go straight there. Sports sites are really good about this. <URL>/<LEAGUE>/stats always gets you the stats. <URL>/<LEAGUE>/standings gets you the standings. If you're curious how a team is doing or who currently leads in scoring or whatever, you know where to go without needing assistance from search.   
              
              
 q-big 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 To my moral standard, all of this is manipulative if the intention is to manipulate the Google ranking instead of seeing an improved Google ranking as a result of delivering better service to the visitor.          
              
 This does of course not imply that these things can be proven, which implies that no action can be taken. Not everything that is immoral is punishable.           
              
              
 huynhhacnguyen 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I believe blocking an honest discussion is never going to do more good than harm. The original post doesn't even suggest that we should overthrow our Google overlord to replace it with whatever we find interesting. It's just pointing various limitations and issues that Google users are facing right now. And apparently from the replies here, there are even more aspects that people are have troubles with.       
              
 It's true building a good search engine is an gigantic undertaking but if Google (or someone else entirely) is aware of the current issues, they may have ideas to tackle those problems and then we can all share a better internet.          
              
 Same for the argument with democracy and any other similar arguments, pointing out problems within our current institutions doesn't remotely mean that we want to abolish everything and start from scratch.          
              
              
 kodah 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Nobody is coming along with a better search engine             
              
 https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail.           
              
 Edit:             
              
 Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.            
              
              
 sokoloff 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 "See results for '<my search term>' Create your free Neeva account."            
              
 "To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features, create your free account. Already a Neeva member? Sign in"            
              
 Yeah, no.             
              
              
 firecall 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I get that.             
              
 But essentially we all have de facto accounts on Google anyway.            
              
 They track and monitor usage and then map you to a user account when you finally login somewhere.            
              
 I'm totally fine with that being upfront and made clear from the get go!            
              
              
 kodah 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Ah, Neeva is eventually going to be a paid product, that's why it's that way. That said, their membership is pretty cheap for what you get.           
              
              
 sokoloff 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I don't mind giving my email or making an account after I have any inkling that the product might be worth deleting a few spam emails. Neeva was giving me a modal popup in my first minute; that's never going to get my email.          
              
              
 vivekraghunatha 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 (Founder of Neeva here) Appreciate the input and hear your frustration. This is a carryover from changes we made to introduce the free tier earlier in the quarter. We are making imminent improvements on modal frequency and getting them out of your way. Stay posted.         
              
              
 kodah 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yo! Neeva is a dope product, imo, but could I offer some suggestions on how I use Neeva?            
              
 1. I have more than one GitHub account (one is for work, one is for personal stuff). I would like to somehow keep them separate, but at least being able to add multiple GitHub accounts for indexing would be cool.          
              
 2. Could Neeva offer something for segmenting the parts of my online presence? For instance, there's personal me and then there's work me. I'd like to turn a different profile on when I'm doing different things.          
              
 3. I don't know if it's possible to partner with ProtonMail, but I'd love to index that and my Proton Calendar as well.            
              
 Also didn't know the free tier is permanent, but I think that's probably a good move. Thanks for what you do!            
              
              
 martha_neeva 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Hi! Thanks for your notes here. I'll take these suggestions back to our team. re: 2. Being able to connect two accounts is interesting -- right now I solve this by having two Neeva accounts, one associated with my work email and one with my personal email.         
              
              
 kaan0200 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Neeva has a free tier (with only access to the search engine, so people can still test the search aspect), but when you pay for it now you ALSO get LastPass premium and Bitdefender VPN Premium as well, along with all their integrations into your system.          
              
 If you trust these people are doing what they say, it's a pretty good deal for securing your internet spaces and trying to get away from google, imo.           
              
              
 AlexCoventry 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I experimented with neeva, because I'd really like an alternative to Google, even a paid one. However, I found its results pretty disappointing. At least for my work, I had to go back to Google, because I don't want to waste time "on the clock."          
              
              
 quantified 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 DuckDuckGo has been good enough for my day-to-day use. I’ll use Google for a few things.            
              
              
 taysix 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Not sure if you read the post. They don't advocate for replacing Google. They want to add onto Google and other search engines.           
              
              
 space_rock 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Sorry but duckduckgo or probably any other search is better than Google at this moment            
              
              
 temp 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not everyone lives in the US and/or an English-speaking country.            
              
 I can't find shit with DDG and the experience is like using Google from 20 years ago when it didn't have any of its bells and whistles.           
              
              
 makeitdouble 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It’s actually because I’m not in an english speaking country that Google is failing me and screwing my searches for anything than can be somewhat pushed to local results…           
              
 I’m glad it works for you, it just reminds me how different are everyone’s expectations of good search results.            
              
              
 space_rock 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Same here. Traveling and when I search for postgres I don't want to find the local student project as the top result            
              
              
 bricemo 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Some side by side comparisons just now:             
              
 "pizza near me" - Google suggested a well rated place within 5 miles. DuckDuckGo suggested a pizza place 91 miles away??            
              
 "busted kids lip" - Google says gauze and a cold pack. DuckDuckGo says salt water??            
              
 "best monitor for mac" - Google says Dell Ultrasharp with 4.5 stars and 738 ratings on amazon. DuckDuckGo says BenQ 4 stars with 174 ratings on amazon?           
              
 how is this better?             
              
              
 bsder 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine.            
              
 No, they are underestimating the difficulty of funding a good search engine.            
              
 I liked the runnaroo search very much as did several of my friends. The guy who ran it couldn't fund it. He shut it down.            
              
 Altavista (Yeah, that far back) had a nice feature where it would draw a cluster graph of your search results. So, if you searched for "python", it would show your results but would also draw a little graph and you could see that "Hey, there are two clusters here--programming and reptiles." You could then click on the "programming" node and the "reptiles" cluster would go away. It allowed you to drill through irrelevant stuff really quickly.       
              
 Note how that feature doesn't exist today--in spite of orders of magnitude more programmers being thrown at search, graph algorithms, and nifty Javascript web UIs. I wonder why ...           
              
 (/sarcasm in case you missed it. I don't wonder why. Such a feature would let you drill through irrelevant Ad and SEO garbage too quickly and would impact Google's revenue.)           
              
              
 aghilmort 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 building Breeze, which does pretty much that minus the cool UI angle, and yeah, only way for it to work at scale is premium like neeva, kagi, etc.           
              
 we started out with topics and then moved to web, and are now folding topics into the web search experience, it's really hard stuff to get right           
              
 our first main filter was blogs, which is getting renamed to posts for a mix of reasons, adding forums shortly, along with other more specific topics           
              
 re: https://breezethat.com/ -- & better on laptop / desktop atm, premium version will be ad-free            
              
              
 joe_the_user 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I'd say you're half right. Things are harder now and the success of Google has contributed to this.            
              
 However, I think Google has severely degenerated from just two years ago, when most of the problems were fully in effect.            
              
 Google is a bit of a product of the situation of scams being the easiest way anyone makes online.            
              
              
 mohanmcgeek 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then            
              
 Has anyone considered the possibility that all this Machine learning and AI models is what made Google and YouTube searches worse?           
              
              
 JohnFen 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I strongly suspect that's a very large part of what is making everything worse. Or, at least, there does seem to be a correlation in time between the implementation of ML and the degradation of the quality of results.          
              
              
 mohanmcgeek 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I wouldn't call it so much the implementation of ML but rather from when they decided they were an AI/ML company.            
              
 The Amazon recommendations engine, the poster child of ML in 2014 isn't any good at recommending products that I actually want to buy either.           
              
              
 Kye 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 People said this about pre-Google search engines. Someone will figure out the next PageRank and give us another 10-20 years of useful search.           
              
              
 skinnymuch 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 There were many multiples less people online. The internet economy was almost nothing back then.            
              
 There’s no comparing how things were in the 90s and early 00s to now.            
              
 Every social media company before Facebook faltered or began losing a good chunk of their user base fairly quickly. Until that stopped happening with Facebook and IG for over a decade now.           
              
 Reddit’s position has also been here for a decade now.             
              
              
 DantesKite 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I don't think these posts should be blocked, because they create discussion, which creates interest, which incentivizes for problem solving.           
              
 Humans are incredibly good at solving engineering problems they can see from a mile away, although it takes time to solve.            
              
              
 Gtex555 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Could you please go into more detail , I agree with you btw.             
              
              
 thomassmith65 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
              
 Honestly I think people are completely underestimating             
 the difficulty of a good search engine             
              
 I suspect that is not difficult so much as expensive.             
              
 Boutique search engines pop up all the time here on HN, but they can't compete fairly against Google, without the resources to crawl a billion webpages day after day.           
              
              
 charcircuit 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Google also keeps a copy of the "entire" web in RAM to search it faster.            
              
              
 sph 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Source? But it's definitely possible nowadays when RAM is cheap and modern Google makes the Internet feel incredibly smaller than it was 20 years ago.           
              
 At the time you would get tons of results from a myriad of small blogs, forums, niche websites. Nowadays it's Pinterest, blogspam and more SEO optimised algorithmic crap. If you're lucky you get a forum result that might actually be relevant.          
              
 Given the joke that if you can't Google it it doesn't exist, it follows that the Internet has considerably shrunk in the past two decades.           
              
              
 cromwellian 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Here, let Jeff Dean explain how it works (and why this is a complex problem that a lot of the naive 'build a better search engine than Google' miss)           
              
 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fc32/72302461b74217662085a8...            
              
 The original article's description of how Google search signals work doesn't even scratch the surface of all the signals it's using.           
              
              
 charcircuit 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 A link to the talk for those curious             
              
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQuSuyUVkoE             
              
              
 charcircuit 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It looks like I was mistaken. They don't keep all of the documents in RAM, but I'm pretty sure they keep the search index (100 petabytes) in RAM. I'm struggling to find a source but I remember hearing it in a talk given by a Googler on YouTube. I also read somewhere that moving their whole index to RAM is how they brought their response times down from a couple of seconds to a couple hundred milliseconds.       
              
              
 joering2 10 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Democracy would be best replaced with cashless society. Society based on everyone value of doing what they love doing most (aka hobbyist), and virtually everything else replaced by robots and technology we already have. This is what's coming eventually, but its not something that can be installed on the top of your "operating system"; you will have to format the whole hard-drive (civil war)       
              
              
 FastMonkey 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I suppose in the absence of cash we would just force some people to do the necessary tasks that aren't anyone's favourite hobbies?           
              
              
 xerox13ster 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Well, ideally people could choose to do whatever they liked to provide for society. Everyone would have a role to play. So those that like to farm (raised on a farm, to be proud of their work) would farm, those that want to commit their life to science could attempt to advance their field. Someone might find an invigorating pride in making sure wastewater treatment is running well, but they don't know how to get into the field and are stuck working a job they don't like for money, currently. Artists could create culture. As long as you are doing something to provide for society, society will provide for you.    
              
 There will be people that do not have favorite hobbies. There will be people with no ambition who benefit from being told what they can or should do to contribute. Those people, in order to have their needs met could choose to take on a Necessary Task, even if it isn't their favorite thing. Maybe they learn to love it and excel at it.        
              
 Don't want to do anything to contribute to society despite being physically and mentally able? No needs met. Meet them yourself, you magnificent lone wolf. Want your needs met but don't want to do Necessary Task that you hate? Find a purpose and pursue it.         
              
              
 joering2 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Couldn't have written it better myself. Thank YOU!             
              
              
 FastMonkey 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I don't know how to break it to you, but the system you're looking for that does all the things you're saying is capitalism.            
              
 Have the talent and desire to be a heart surgeon? Go for it, and you'll be rewarded. Want to make life sized statues of the Beatles out of used printer cartridges? Eh, fine but maybe also get a day job.          
              
              
 xerox13ster 10 months ago | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Ah yea. Let me just pay to put myself through med school independently while I struggle to pay for food and housing.            
              
 Sorry but Capitalism is a broken system that is not meeting mine or million's of others needs, much less enabling us to pursue what we're actually passionate about. I at least know that I am passionate about building and supporting technology but I still struggle to pursue it professionally because I had the poor luck to be born without the resources to get a piece of paper that says I know how.       
              
              
 JohnHaugeland 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's sort of weird how badly people have become unable to understand what the word capitalism actually means, these days            
              
 It seems like everyone just thinks it's how you describe the contemporary world            
              
 No, what they're describing isn't capitalism. Not even close             
              
              
 xboxnolifes 10 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I don't understand how any of that has anything to do with democracy.            
              
              
              
 195 more comments...             
              
              
              
              
              
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Search:             

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results.Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever). I feel there is a lot of untapped potential that gets missed by just trying to be a Google search clone.
    
    
        
     You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no complex filtering to do things like removing search results that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to specifically refine your search. Google still has the most useful search, but they've taken away methods to get better results. I remember I was pretty upset when i couldn't search for images by exact dimensions anymore. Bing allows this.Google's product direction has been inching backwards for a decade.
    
    
        
     &gt;It treats its power users like kidsIt's worse than that: Google's power user features used to work reliably and repeatably. Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it. I've recently noticed that Youtube has a similar feature. If you search for a video, you'll only get a small number of results before Youtube will start showing you "recommendations" which are only somewhat related to your original search. Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results. It just seems that raw search is disappearing, and "recommendation engines" are appearing everywhere.
    
    
        
     &gt; Somewhat ironically, the only way to avoid this is to query via Google (site:youtube.com [term]) where you will get a much larger set of results.Even more ironically and many here would have experienced this themselves: the best way to find something on YouTube is to use Bing
    
    
        
     &gt; the best way to find something on YouTube is to use BingWeirdly the same is the case for reddit. What I really want I guess is, a search engine, where i can provide you sites to index, and when I am searching, I only search through those sites. That's it.
    
    
        
      
 What about discovery of sites you don’t know about. The whole purpose of he internet is that we’re all connected, but you seem to want only an extended private network.   
    
        
     A surprsingly large amounts of time I use Google, is to mainly to search on either reddit, stackoverflow, hackernews etc. Even searching for other sites is helpful using those sites i.e. searching for developer blogs gets far better results if I add reddit to it.I think Google has it's place. However, I also think that an additional search engine like the one I described would be a very nice and useful tool. At least for me.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you.Google trying to interpret what you want is, in my opinion, the largest reason that the search has become so bad. It guesses very poorly, and I end up having to try to guess what the magic incantation is to get it to give the what I'm searching for.
    
    
        
     "Now Google tries even harder to figure out what you "want" and filters you results invisibly for you. You can't turn this feature off, and are are unable to easily or obviously avoid it."This. So much this. And it is so...bloody...annoying.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that.Google has removed features that it had 10 years ago.
    
    
        
     I still don’t get why. It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it? What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?I do suspect the main thing people complain about currently with Google is the abundance of ads and the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long.
    
    
        
     &gt; It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it?Greater scale = greater cost of keeping data hot in their search data-warehouses (esp. in light of contention over memory/caches.) Keeping around both a source-text string and its tsvector representation (or whatever Google's version of that is) is a "thing that doesn't scale" that they could provide at 1B queries/day, but probably not at 10B queries/day. &gt; the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked potatoes is now 2000 words long. That's not the algorithm's fault per se; that's instead the fact that recipes can't be copyrighted, and so these sites can freely steal + repost one-another's recipes, and so you'll find the same recipe word-for-word on many sites, thus making an exact match in the recipe part not contribute highly to ranking any particular site. The 2000-word blog post, on the other hand, is actual Intellectual Property unique to the site posting it. So it only appears in the one place; and so when your query matches it, it ranks quite highly indeed.
    
    
        
     &gt; That's not the algorithm's fault per se;Yes, it is. There are good recipe sites out there with authoritative, reliable content and fast loading times. Google says it prioritizes those things, I can identify sites that have them, and yet the algorithm doesn't favour them. That's the algorithm's fault no matter what memes about copyright law cause a proliferation of shitty websites.
    
    
        
     What I'm saying is that the "recipe" part of a recipe website is a commodity – there is no "authoritative" source for a given recipe, unless that recipe is too niche in appeal to end up widely disseminated. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsNLzyqqINw) has a pretty good coverage of the topic.Compare and contrast: phone-number directory listings. Who should Google cite as the authoritative source for lists of name-to-phone number associations? Nobody. All the lists are copying from each-other, curating and correcting the data taken from one-another, gathering their own original data for additions, and everything in between. Every portal overlaps every other portal, but mostly has the same stuff. Compare and contrast, in the physical world: printings of public-domain literature. If Google indexed bookstores, which printing by which publisher would you want them to rank first on a search for e.g. Pride and Prejudice?
    
    
    
        
     What I really want is biased search results of my choosing.$10 a month for a personal search is a bit much. $10 a month for work related search is cheap. Give me results specific to my industry without having a super long query.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 The last time this came up, Google demonstrated that it still worked. Most of the examples of it not working people tried to provide are actually just unexpected exact matches in the HTML that the standard user doesnt see, so they seem like false positives or "surprisingly good" results not based on the page content.   
    
    
        
      
 Exactly. Even within the ad platform they keep pushing advertisers to target ‘broad’ keywords instead of ‘exact match’ ones.   
    
        
      
 Brilliant observation, never thought of it. Now the quality degradation kinda starts to make sense.   
    
        
     &gt; What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search?Control. They've moved from helping you find what you asked for, to trying to influence you to changingnwhat you ask for to the thing that paid them the most. Similarly they're they're forcing creators to alter content to match their metrics or fall into obscurity.
    
    
        
      
 Because somebody could have crafted a superior search using their refined search as an API, destroying the Add Revenue   
    
    
    
        
     Eh, it's not so much that it stopped working as it is that it never worked the way you thought it did.Quotes have ~always been an exact match on the tokenized query text, not a substring match on the corpus text. No synonyms, reordering, gaps, etc, but the matches -- and failures -- are sometimes not obvious at first blush. If you search for "don't stop me now", for instance, that "don't" tokenizes to "don t", so it will match the tokenized strings "don't", "don t", "don-t", "don, t", etc ... but not "dont", because that's outside tokenization. On the other hand, snippets mostly are substring matches of the query text, so if you see a result to a literal query that doesn't have a snippet, you know it's probably one of the weird matches.
    
    
        
     This is just patently false in addition to being condescending.If you use quotes around a phrase, it will reorder terms and make substitutions with synonyms in addition to straight up ignoring the quoted phrase no katter how many times you add +. If you then fiddle with settings (randomly not available depending on star alignment and device) to change it to 'verbatim' it will still reorder and split up tokens in the phrase.
    
    
        
      
 Why is it that exact searches used to actually work reliably, then? What's changed?   
    
        
      
 This has changed:  term -term
 
In the past that Google search returned no results for any search. Today the set of results are altered before they are presented to the user. Sometimes the set of reslts is empty and at other times it contains results.For example:   steve -steve returns 0 results
 test -test returns 4,780,000,000 in my search
 starting with google/youtube videos     
    
        
     That's easy; there are synonyms added for test but not for steve.If you search for ["test" -test] you'll get no results; quoting "test" removes the synonyms. It's probably not new behavior per se, but synonyms have gotten a lot broader over the years, so it was a lot easier to punch [term -term] ten years ago and hit a term which had no synonyms.
    
    
        
     Correct, though it is new in the sense of this conversation, which compares to how a search used to be.The point wasn't as to what the synonyms were for a specific search term but that they have been added as implicit terms, which makes google search no longer exact.
    
    
        
      
 [test -test -tests -tested -testing] returns no results for me - teased out the synonyms!   
    
        
     I mean, I'm confident that the core of how it works -- "an exact match between the tokenized document and the tokenized query" -- hasn't changed in a very long time, but I can't really promise there wasn't another aspect I'm ignorant of that is responsible for the behavior you remember that changed somehow."Exact tokenized matching" can look like "exact string matching" a lot of the time. Until you hit some of the edge cases it's like kerning: https://xkcd.com/1015/
    
    
        
      
 Honestly, Yandex has really good image search. I now do all three (Google, Bing, and Yandex) when I'm researching for a design.   
    
        
     Going backwards and standing still often look the same. I think its both in this case to varying degrees. Google is competing against itself, obvious competitors but also obvious refinements that appear so regardless of actually being implemented. The no-login filter is a refinement that would be useful to many.There are so many obvious improvements that could be made to gmail but there's no real way to do them as a consumer.
    
    
        
     Googles priorities have been long shifted from products to money. They are now deliberately doing evil things for more money.It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation. Google has been came such a monster, even we know it's dying, but its momentum will keep it going for a very long time. And if it can correct its trajectory just a little bit, the collapsing process will be even longer.
    
    
        
     &gt; It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation.Very debatable.
    
    
        
      
 No fun allowed. Or the implication is taking drugs for anything but recreation won't kill you. I need more guidance!   
    
    
        
      
 Hmmm, only if you know when to stop and can actually stop, sure, no it won't kill you.
But what if you cannot stop? Most importantly, I did not even mention which drug as those was never the point.   
    
        
     &gt; I did not even mention which drugExactly. Heroin is pretty addictive, pretty fast. Otoh, there is no lethal dose that we know of for magic mushrooms (psylocibin). You can take a lot and have a hell of a trip but no one ever died from a psylocibin overdose. And it’s not addictive in the sense that you’ll get physical effects of you stop taking it. It builds a tolerance that will make it have much less effect if you take too much too often so it kinda takes care of the problem this way. Alcohol which is freely available to any adult can make you addicted and will Jill you if you take too much of it. What about sugar? We’re pretty much all addicted to it, and it can kill in the long term (obesity, diabetes…) I’m not a drug expert but I think it’s very detrimental to say that all drugs are bad, they’ll make you an addict and kill you, and they’ll liquefy your brain. This is FUD and it results in shaming. It also creates abysmally poor public policy like the “war on drugs” which has been nothing but a colossal failure and a misery generating system.
    
    
        
      
 I agree with you but I think the problem is that majority of internet users are casual users who don't care about complex queries. Maybe good business idea would be to make internet search engine which enables complex queries like the one you described. Google was made for masses not for power users.   
    
        
     Google had a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away.You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about. Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.It is now evident Google is not in the business of making its search any better.
    
    
        
     Which is why we need more competitors in this space.When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the only intrinsic business force is direct monetisation paths... completely different incentives.
    
    
    
        
      
 Because indexing the web and organizing all that information is expensive. It’s also a lot of power so we can’t exactly trust that job to a single government or even a group of allied governments. Universities could potentially handle it by pooling a lot of resources, but I can’t really think of who else I would trust to be The Search Engine. Google isn’t ideal but at least it’s priorities are mostly aligned with the average user’s.   
    
        
     Users?Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still billions worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.
    
    
        
      
 Sadly, that's not realistic. You can get a subset of users to pay, but it's vanishingly small compared to everyone who thinks they are perfectly happy with the "free" status quo. Even a dollar a month, it is infinitely more than zero. I just had this conversation with members of my extended family and almost all of them were of the "I don't care if I'm tracked, I've got nothing interesting to hide" mindset, along with "not a chance in hell I'm going to pay for this, or email, when I get them from Google for free."   
    
        
      
 How about a company that provides a search engine, but as a part of a greater subscription service whose selling point isn't search? Imagine, for example, that paying for Apple One got you access to an Apple-operated search engine.   
    
    
        
      
 There isn't a single scenario for any product or service anywhere that will get every Internet user to pay a monthly fee - not even for 1¢ a month.   
    
        
     It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct payment. Companies can white-label the service or include it as a value-add as part of their offering; for example an ISP or mobile carrier offering this to their customers.At the moment I'm not aware of any company whose primary service is search. I believe the demand would be there - OS manufacturers currently have to either put up with Google (even if their goals diverge - for example it doesn't work well with Apple's privacy-focused marketing) or Bing. A third player whose primary business is search (as opposed to using it as a loss-leader to lure people into their ecosystems, like Google and Bing are) could get some use, not to mention that programmatic access to large web index would no doubt be a service many companies would pay for. Think Algolia or hosted ElasticSearch but pre-seeded with a broad index of the web.
    
    
        
      
 It doesn't have to appeal to every internet user. Not even most internet users. It just has to appeal to enough to make money, which is a substantially smaller number than the total number of internet users.   
    
    
    
        
      
 idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter (among other filters)   
    
    
        
      
 it requires a google account. I like teddit.net's approach of allowing the user to set up preferences and import them as a json.   
    
        
     Shouldn't there be a way to only search multiple forums through some userscript? Only found out about userscript after messing around with an iOS app called HyperWeb.At least in my limited understanding of userscript's capabilities, you'd still need to explicitly specify the forums you want to search, but I imagine that would solve lots of use cases for search filters.
    
    
        
     Google has a limit to how long searches can be. So if it’s a complex one, it can’t be too long.I think you can only specify searching one site at a time. With site: search filter. — Google’s custom search engine’s where you can give a whitelisted amount of sites isn’t very good. At least not any more. It didn’t include lots of pages it’s main index does. Or the rankings were all out of sorts rendering not useful.
    
    
        
      
 Forums were somewhat decentralized. Without attributing motive, platforms are interested in moving in the opposite direction.   
    
        
      
 Are there any wrappers for Google search that try to implement a bag of these sorts of workarounds this with a nice UI?   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 This could be solved with selectable ranking strategies. Of course Google isn't going to offer that.   
    
        
     &gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.Sure, in the sense that someone who had their legs broken sucks at running. Compared to yesterdays, Google today has to deal with a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search. It's easy to fetch good water when the well is clean and no one is trying to actively poison it.
    
    
        
     I partially agree with your comment, but it feels like in some/many cases the Google algorithm has large flaws that were not previously there and that (superficially) seem solvable. For example:* If I search for recipes, the Google algorithm seems to heavily favour recipes with a short novel prepended to them. The “novel” does not have to be particularly relevant to the content - I’ve seen recipes with “novels” that I’m not convinced wasn’t partially algorithmically generated. Every human being I’ve ever spoken to hates this. * Google will search for what it believes to be alternatives to terms, even when those terms are placed into quotes (which used to prevent this behaviour). This can be very irritating when Google’s alternative terms are incorrect. Both of these are regressions over earlier behaviour, and don’t seem to have any obvious benefit to them.
    
    
        
      
 Don't know about regressions. Did it maybe just take people some time to figure out that Google Bot is really, really captivated by a riveting story to accompany that pancake recipe?   
    
        
     &gt; a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their searchI think their #1 problem is their product managers trying to do "something" to add said something to their resume and making the product horrible to use in the process Examples include:
- Grid view tab switcher in Chrome Android
- Removing dislike count on YouTube
    
    
        
      
 As a xoogler, it was clear when the original search quality folks left and were replaced with people whose goal was to grow the product (and the company) without much care for quality.   
    
        
     Different types of these strategies have been around since before google existed. Hell, even web directories (like early yahoo!) had to deal with spam, early google had to deal with keyword spam. Paid backlinks, spammed comment sections with backlinks, copied content sites as backlink farms, all of this existed at least as early as 2005-ish. For some sites (some of them with legitimate info) the meta keywords tag (even though google stopped using it very early) was the bulk of their size for just this reason.What has so radically changed the last couple of years to make spam take top spots on the SERP?
    
    
        
      
 This is not 2005 spam. This is just how people are expected to write now. More people think it's normal. By spam being more content-like, and, in response, content getting inspired by spam and getting more spam-like, spam is getting increasingly indistinguishable from content.   
    
        
     Exactly. Google sucks because the internet that we remembered died long ago, hoovered up into social media.The person passionate about beetles who would have a great website in 2002 now posts 38 post Twitter threads (at best) or Instagram/Facebook posts that are lost forever. It’s sad as we had this amazing “long tail” effect where a company like Google could set out to organize the worlds information. Unfortunately the economics drive new behavior, and the next cohort of big web companies sought to monopolize human attention. The more profitable ones like Facebook are masters of psychological manipulation, and the second string cohorts like Reddit who aren’t very smart/manipulative adopt a more hands off approach where undesirable content like porn juices engagement.
    
    
    
    
        
     Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines.People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't in 2008. Which is obvious because in 2008 there was only reddit and like 3 other sites, now there's dozens of relevant ones.
    
    
        
      
 Yes. There is massively more spam, and they’ve made it do a lot less direct search matching (many results don’t include the actual word that matters for instance)   
    
        
      
 I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.   
    
        
     You don’t give Google enough credit: They totally can add a “report spam site” action in the search results, but they don’t, because they don’t care. It would help immensely to have websites disappear from search after 100 trusted Google users complain about them (after manual review). This stuff already exists and works on Google Maps.Even the data collected from a personal blocklist would be useful for them, without explicitly reporting sites, but again they just don’t care. They’ve been in the business of parsing websites for 25 years, surely they can tell ad-infested spam websites apart from good ones.
    
    
        
      
 I think this is also because of potential abuse: there's nothing to prevent malicious SEO gamers from reporting legitimate sites as 'spam' to remove competition, as a means of extortion, etc.   
    
        
     Yes but I mentioned how to limit that:&gt; trusted Google users &gt; (after manual review) &gt; already exists and works on Google Maps
    
    
    
        
     It is their fault when they've actively pressured real content into being indistinguishable from spam sites.If you don't write like a drunk two year old and fill everything with key phrases now you simply don't appear in results, so any site that can become known has to be rewritten by gpt into barely intelligible garbage that dances around the point for four paragraphs when it could be communicated in four words..
    
    
        
     I've also not noticed. But this is the most common topic on HN so I probably had/have different search habits to have missed the wonderful experience of Google 10 years ago.Google meets my expectations for a search engine but maybe I'm not expecting enough from search?
    
    
        
      
 Honestly I use startpage and I'm blocking ads so aggressively I barely know what Google search is supposed to look like.   
    
        
     &gt; (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).These are all truly excellent and refreshingly imaginative ideas, in a conversation too often starved of critical thinking (elsewhere in this thread commenters, unable to imagine any alternative at all, are incredulously asking "what would you even replace it with?"). I would just say that search in it's traditional form is valuable too, and highly efficient. Or at least it can be when done well. I think millionshort search results are a good example of what traditional search can be.
    
    
        
     Yeah well, that's what you want, and probably a decent couple of power users. And I totally agree.But here is the thing: My mom, dad and even my brother, they don't need that. They need the limitations aka borders, the "simplicity", the synchronisation and the search results. They still stick with Facebook, Google and Amazon because it's easy to use and their gate to the Internet, where all the smart people are living and the "future is real". They do not understand the drawbacks or they just don't care. And I dare to assume that this pictures the vast majority of Internet users.
    
    
        
      
 Good thing there's more of a market than your mom, dad, and even your brother, or alternative search competitors like duckduckgo and others would be completely screwed.   
    
        
     Maybe the market of people that are significantly different from his/her mom is just too small to justify the significant investments needed to build a search engine.Or said another way: If 99% are happy with Google, can the remaining 1% pay enough to finance "Google pro" ?
    
    
        
      
 Is there an alternative search engine right now that is both good and not based heavily on an incumbent by a large tech company (ie: bing)? If not then the argument isn't disproved.   
    
        
     This is actually what I worry about more.I'm browsing with Firefox on Mac with adblockers, and have some knowledge of what the potential scams are. Is Google actually helping the average user more than a hypothetical alternative? Don't know, tricky question to answer, but whatever the answer is it's likely a society wide change, involving regulation and new business models and ethical consumer choices, not just a new search engine.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.Came here to write exactly that Why are we still using it? There's nothing better out there.
    
    
        
      
 I've been starting to use kagi for search. I'm still using google by default, but when I get a screen full of ads and clickbait articles I turn to kagi and it's almost always better.   
    
        
      
 Maybe you should try an opposite approach. When kagi gives you useless results switch to Google.   
    
        
     This is what I do. Kagi gets there 95% of the time. Plus I get to down/up rank results. Plus no ads. Plus I feel confident I’m getting the best result for me and not for advertisers. Truth be told I’ve been using “site:reddit.com” for years now already.Google still has the lead with the answer box and older results. They’ve been collecting data for longer and I suspect their indexing heuristics are incredible.
    
    
        
      
 I wanted to love kagi, but they still have the same fuzzy search that makes it about impossible to find something odd that shares keywords with commonplace things.   
    
        
      
 Google is still my default as 9 out of 10 I get the answer I need quickly. Bing does my other 10% where Google provides junk or stale results.... Google Search really is declining. I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment. On the Maps front, I'm really enjoying Apple Maps as it has less junk - I just want a map!!   
    
        
     &gt; I'm tempted to move my default over to Bing for month or two just to experiment.I switched my default over to Bing about two months ago and it is surprisingly good. Subjectively I would say it is better more often than it is worse.
    
    
    
        
     Untapped potential. exactly. To me the biggest problem isn't the results (even the ads) it's the lack of innovation. The lack of making search an experience and something that generates a value I can store and share.I've been looking at several of the options talked about here. My favorite so far is Neeva (https://neeva.com) due to their "spaces" concept and how it provides a simple building block I can explore to address many of the use cases I have for search. Search needs innovation and people trying new things.
    
    
        
     &gt; I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).Yes, I would love this. I was recently looking for reviews of a certain woodworking tool. The vast majority of websites googled returned were clearly bot created sites. I came away thinking I wanted a curated list of a few sites actually created by humans.
    
    
        
      
 I really missed those days that I could write URLs I visited frequently on notebook. Unfortunately, we might never be no way back to the good old days. There is literally way too much info on the internet, and thus impossible to index contents manually.   
    
        
      
 I dont think it is as hopeless as you think. There are only so many websites people actually use for human-created content. Those should be prioritized. There is still the issue of differentiating between bot blogs and human blogs but I'm sure I could figure something out at a 200k salary, and google has plenty of people like that   
    
    
        
     I think there's also some inertia. I know how to tweak google.I have also used some competitors. They are fine for most things (finding the hours of a local store, a restaurant's menu). However, when the going gets tough (troubleshooting a technical issue, looking for a recommendation) I fall back to google.
    
    
        
     Google works great for most daily tasks software questions, looking for a service/company etcBut when I want to do serious research on things like eczema, diet, backpain, exercise. Google absolutely fails (also Google scholar) I have to buy books, go through Reddit,listen to YouTube lectures etc that point to the correct literature and then you get to know the experts, different opinions etc. All you find is these generic sites with basic advice which is common knowledge lik WebMD. Not bad, but they dominate the entire search. I would think a heavy version of Google focused on in depth/experts would be great.
    
    
        
      
 It generally even fails when you are looking for a product. If you don't know certain brand. I have been hunting reasonably priced stainless steel meat grinder(the grinding parts, not the body), but with google due to all SEO spam it feels like impossible task...   
    
        
     Yes, please bring web directories back!Today we have more possibilities to manage that than in the early days. Many things can be automatically generated/crawled/MLed or crowdsourced. Browser extensions can help to categorize almost all important websites. Data sources like Reddit, Stack Overflow or Wikipedia already have many websites categorized. We just need to combine the data. I did a few experiments myself trying to drive hierarchies from tag data. It works surprisingly well. There is even some academic work in this direction.
    
    
        
      
 Honestly at this point I don't think bing sucks vs google. Bing has less random junk in SERPS for a lot of searches, and seems less gamed by SEO companies, but it isn't really better enough to make a point of switching my chrome url bar over and breaking my habit of just going to google. If things keep going like they have been I wouldn't be surprised if I switch in the near future though.   
    
        
      
 I wonder what do you mean by "vastly superior". For search i use Kagi, for a browser i use Firefox. For mail you can use Protonmail or i guess there are other alternatives also. Only thing i miss is Gmail message threading. Other than that nothing else. So i think people are only used to Google, that's all. I don't think it's vastly superior in any area anymore   
    
        
      
 Plus I strongly suspect Google search no longer gives the most accurate answer, but the one most profitable for Google ads.   
    
        
      
 It would be funny if some site with youtube-style recommendations got popular because that's basically what I believe google is using under the hood already and it would be so easy for them to pivot to that style and then take over all the momentum the recommendation-style site got.   
    
        
      
 Why would an average user use such service? I was thinking about creating such "internet recommendation engine" so to speak but as my hypothetical project was progressing I realized that it started looking more and more like internet search engine as and when I started adding more advanced features. But looking from costs point of view it is cheaper to create internet recommendation engine than internet search engine.   
    
        
      
 I see the problem with Google search of today vs Google search of 10 years ago being that the first page of search has already become a "Youtube-style recommendations for websites". It's more like a curated list of "approved content" now.   
    
        
      
 I think companies have tried, but it simply hasn't worked. Yahoo tried to do a lot of this, and simply failed. Arguably they could have done it better, but I don't think many will have a better shot than them for a while more to come.   
    
    
        
     I'm going to second that. Since switching off Google a couple years ago I have had fewer and fewer "failed" searches which required me to go back to Google to try the search.The more people who use Brave Search (they own their own index), the better it will become. And right now I'd say it's orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others.
    
    
        
     Haven't tried Brave, but I'd say DDG results are much better than Google Search.I think it's down to personal preference or something.
    
    
        
     Right now, DDG gives me the best search results of anything that I've tried. I know people who don't get the same quality results from it as I do, though.I'm 100% convinced that the difference comes down to how searches are formulated. At least, the people who I know that experience poor quality searches seem to enter their queries as natural-language questions rather than search terms.
    
    
        
      
 In my experience Brave is better than DDG for tech topics. But DDG so far is noticeably better for non-english content and image search, so I still use it as a fallback.   
    
        
     &gt; orders of magnitude better than DDG and the othersused brave as my daily search engine for a couple of months and I must say this was not the case for me. Results for global EN topics were indeed better than ddg/bing in some cases (nowhere near an order of magnitude better, though), but results for any non-EN or local queries (think searching for major websites running for 15 yrs) were extremely poor in most cases.
    
    
        
      
 Well that's a good point. I only speak English so I speak for my language. On the point of Brave vs DDG I think my main point is that Brave has its own index and DDG is based on ... Bing? ... I'm not sure. At any rate I don't think there's a comparison there.   
    
        
      
 I made an earnest effort to switch to Brave, but I'm back with Google for almost all searches because 1100ms+ result page loads are simply unworkable here.   
    
        
     I'm sticking it out, but I find that I have to fall back to Google on 1 out of 10 searches. Mostly technical ones.But what really annoys me (and maybe I'm doing something wrong) is that one page of (slow) results is not enough. I understand that Google's 1,000,000+ results is also not necessary. But I often need more than 20. Come to think of it, I rarely need pages 2 and beyond when using Google. So maybe that's saying something about the quality of the Brave results? They're just not as good.
    
    
    
        
      
 Reddit is heavily biased towards new content and you have to know what subreddits to look for to find the interesting stuff. The nice thing with Youtube recommendations (after recent updates) is that it pulls out a lot of older content and it also has a pretty good understanding of contexts and topics, even pretty niche stuff. Plain Google search really has no way of exploring the web in the same way you can just do with Youtube recommendations. Also helps that Youtube is extremely low on spam, you get ads and product placement, but not the bot generated filler that is cluttering up Google search.   
    
    
        
     &gt; Google sucks compared to Google from years agoHow much of that is based on general incompetence, SEO gaming, growing complexity of searches or manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")? Or something else.
    
    
        
      
 I guess another major barrier for higher quality search is the deep web (discord, fb, private forums, etc.)   
    
        
     &gt; manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")?This makes it basically unusable for anything that isn't a technical question, for which it is still reasonably good if you restrict to sites where it will likely get a reasonable answer. If special interest groups aligned with google have a position on what you're searching though, it will simply be spammed outright and any evidence to the contrary either concealed or "fact checks" which consist of minor modifications on the core underlying fact in question spiked with something that is obviously false so that the fact check can say "false" whilst actually the underlying fact in question is not at all false. Even when those special interest groups are right, google is still useless because it will give you such a slanted view of the territory you will be utterly clueless as to what other sides of the debate even exist as anything more than silly strawmen. Most questions in this class people would be better served by just petitioning Blackrock and similar directly and asking them what they should think. For commercial stuff it's almost as bad, I find myself having to figure out the underlying financial realities of the industry that produces x, then getting a summary of the market space by volume and associated data, then speculating on stuff that might exist within that market space that might be nice in light of whatever flaws afflict the market space in question, and maybe if I get lucky I'll find something through the reams and reams of valueless SEO optimised pop-up spewing complete and utter bullshit desperately attempting to capitalise on my assumed stupidity with their cookie cutter a-b tested "sales pitches". Most of the time I end up just going to alibaba or similar, finding vendors shipping actual large units with decent reviews, and then working backwards from there to what I'm looking for. Watching google fall from something amazing to probably-worse-than-microsoft-all-things-considered tier was quite the eye opener.
    
    
    
        
     Search, "what hotel to stay in san francisco soma". You'll see that every single result above the fold is an Ad.In fact it doesn't even give me a single useful piece of information. #1 result is a link to expedia. #2 is to hotels.com, #3 to the trip advisor. Scroll down Google Hotels widget. Then on the 3rd browser viewpoint page I get actual query results.
    
    
        
     The result I got was a list, with maps and prices with an option to refine stay dates.Not sure how that could be improved to be honest. Next entry was a non-ad from Tripadvisor.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 When weird search results get posted on HN, they're sometimes fixed within minutes. I wouldn't doubt that the search term was "fixed" by someone reading HN.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 It's less about paid placement taking priority (as in intentionally degrading results) but more that there's no incentive to spend money improving organic search results where at best it'll do nothing and at worst decrease the profitability of paid results (people are less likely to click on them if the organic results are good), not to mention that crap organic results also benefit Google as these websites often have Google Ads or Analytics.   
    
        
      
 The author missed the most important reason that Google search results often suck: tens of thousands of people are working very hard to make it suck. They call themselves "SEO specialists", and their job is to get their shitty site to the top of the rankings. It's an ongoing battle. Sure, Google wants to make money, but to do that they need to protect their search moneymaker and keep it dominant, so their incentive is to make the users happy. They aren't sucking on purpose.   
    
        
     I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.Right now SEO it's an arms race between google and every SEO agencies, with a keyword being attached to some company that may have 0 relevance to the user. Doesn't help, that depending on the query, the first results are ads only superficially related. You can search for the name of a popular brand of a car/hotel/insurance, and the first results are the competitors. If you don't want to be below the fold, you need to pay, even if your website it's exactly what the user it's looking for.
    
    
        
     &gt; I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.It was never the case. As soon as google started to be popular, people were hired to manipulate its search results. "Natural" SEO was never a thing. You always had to use shady tactics in order to get a good ranking because everybody was doing the same.
    
    
        
      
 Even before Google, people would stuff the bottom of their page with black on black keyword stuffing to game Altavista   
    
        
      
 This exactly. Google was an almost overnight success because in the beginning it gave much more useful results than Altavista and others even when they had indexed a small fraction of what Altavista had.   
    
        
     The internet grew up. I want to hate Google as much as the next guy but it is not their fault that money has corrupted it.In that sense Google's monopoly is actually preferable for marketeers. It would be a lot harder to manipulate search engine results if the public was split among 20 of them.
    
    
        
      
 That would not help. Those kind of effects are inherent in the system. As long as Visitsv lead to any kind of revenue, no matter if by Ad Impressions or Affiliate Programms or whatever, there exists a motivation and people will try to drag visitors to their sites. You will have to remove eCommerce from the Internet to fix that.   
    
        
      
 Search isn’t Google’s moneymaker, advertising is. And those shitty SEO’d sites are choc-a-bloc with advertising. Google has little incentive to downrank them.   
    
        
     Google can trivially reduce the amount of spam by using the amount of ads, analytics, affiliate links, etc as a negative ranking signal.Instead of targeting SEO per-se (as it's difficult to determine a good website with SEO vs a spam website with SEO), target how they're making money. They're not doing so exactly because they have no incentive.
    
    
        
     What incentives do they have to promote affiliate links to Amazon ?It's a bit more complicated than that. Even useful sites in commercially related niches use affiliate links as a source of revenue.
    
    
        
      
 I’m not saying they promote them explicitly. I’m arguing that they should downrank them because it’s a likely indicator of spam - there’s a lot of spam websites out there which are just bullshit listicles or fake review websites whose primary objective is to get you to buy through their affiliated link. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s software out there that can churn out and update these websites automatically. Google has no incentive to downrank these though because those spam websites also often contain Google analytics or ads.   
    
        
      
 Search is their main gateway to the advertising dollars. "Google it" is synonymous with any search regardless of the engine being used.   
    
    
    
        
      
 They serve more ads if they steer you towards the low value SEO website filled with Adsense.   
    
    
    
        
     Google has incentives to degrade the quality of search results for the benefit of its profitability, up to the extent that is able to without turning away too many users.I think it's more like that rather than an either/or.
    
    
        
      
 They have competition: if we get to the point where Bing/DuckDuckGo results are clearly better, people will start moving, and that will hurt their revenue badly.   
    
        
     Yes and those results don’t have to be just better. They have to be clearly better as you stated. The likliehood of that happening any time soon is close to zero.I personally use Bing for 95% of my searches and have done so since it launched. Or re-launched.
    
    
        
      
 I switched precisely because I found that the DuckDuckGo results were indeed better. This was a third attempt though - the first two times it wasn't quite good enough. It improved, and Google got worse.   
    
        
      
 This makes no sense. Google makes more money when users click on some crappy landing page filled with display ads?   
    
        
     The web has - as it inevitably would - adapted to being searched by Google.This makes it much harder to be a good search engine. I have no idea how to quantify how much the decline is because of that.
    
    
        
     While true, this isn’t actually a complicated issue to solve: humans and a heavy hand. Get humans to review everything on page one of every search. Get caught massaging your site? Permanent ban.Google refuses to hire humans to do stuff like this. Their service is terrible. Maps requires free labour of millions of users to get information updated.
    
    
    
        
     Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search.These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that democracy has failed so lets replace it, replace with what? Its the best we can get given the alternatives, and its flaws will always be exploited.
    
    
        
     No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries.It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)
    
    
        
      
 Came here to mention kagi.
Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool.
Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.   
    
        
      
 Wow, they have that? That’s what I always wanted from Google and they never delivered. Im sure they had reasons. I really don’t think they want to empower their users, they are even hostile to search users and content creators, amp comes to mind and am glad it dissapeared already. Meanwhile I’be been using duckduck but i’ll give kagi a go.   
    
    
        
     What happens when you ask it how many Ukrainian generals have died? Does it insist on giving you pages and pages about Russian generals, like Google?I was looking for this and it really annoys me how it thinks it knows what I want.
    
    
        
      
 No, Kagi (unlike Google and DDG) will just stop providing results, it won't make up others with very tenuous links to your search terms like the others do.   
    
        
      
 Just tried that. I did have to put "ukrainian generals" into quotes (which makes sense, that's how it's supposed to work) but then it just showed me 5 results total, all of which contained exactly that phrase.   
    
    
        
      
 Kagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.   
    
        
      
 Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.   
    
        
      
 And as of now, they are listening to users very attentively. Just a few hours ago I suggested they clarify the defualt "Programming" filter since it only searches q&amp;a sites (i.e Stack Overflow) and they have already changed the name to "Programming Help" to make it more clear.   
    
        
      
 I used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically   
    
        
     Is there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit.I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.
    
    
        
     According to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts as an additional search, so you could go through your quota pretty fast.Apparently all of this is to offset the costs from paying Google and Bing to run searches for them (the site basically takes results from Google and Bing and then combines them together with their own special sauce) but with a pricing model like this it seems like Kagi will remain a niche tool solely used by the wealthy.
    
    
        
     Hm, 30 USD/month for good search is not that much - and certainly not "wealthy" territory. Remember that many people pay subscription services they use a lot less (18 USD for Netflix, anyone?).The main paradigm shift necessary will be to pay at all for something that was "free" and is provided "free" to this day - even if the quality is worse.
    
    
        
      
 Monthly subscription and quotas? While I respect and understand the goal I can’t help but feel like we are paywalling what the web has been for the longest time and should be “out of the box”.   
    
        
     Hostile is such a drastic word to apply to a service that is dedicated to making search better by actually listening to the desires of their users.They need to support their efforts somehow. Instead of showing ads or selling your data, they are going to charge a fee to use it.
    
    
        
     Google uses ads to pay for the service, which is available without logging in. Those ad systems can track you. On the other hand, a paid service (even if it is currently in "free" mode) will likely get rid of ads, but requires some authentication to know you are you.I'm logged into Google all the time. I do this to get sharing working across Chrome. Others doe the same with Firefox. Some don't, because privacy. I hear you think logins are 1000x more hostile than paying with your eyeballs. How would you suggest resolving this clearly conflicted view with logging in vs. how the revenue is made on a given site?
    
    
        
     It used to be that if you used a paid service, then that service wouldn't throw you to the wolves of internet marketing/tracking companies. That alone made logins 1000 times less hostile.But that is changing. Internet marketing companies are now teaming up with websites so the websites to their dirty work for them and you end up getting tracked anyway -- but with much higher certainty as to who you are. That means that now, yes, logins are more hostile. The web continues to get smaller and smaller.
    
    
        
      
 And they also intend to charge $10 per month (and that's just for 20 searches per day, which is a WTF low number). There's no way I'm paying that kind of money.   
    
        
      
 +1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding searches…   
    
        
      
 But why would a search engine require an account to use in the first place? Or maybe I took it wrong?   
    
        
     Kagi is probably a lot more usable, right now. Nobody’s trying to game it.As long as it remains niche, it might actually stay that way indefinitely. I’m just worried about Google taking inspiration from them. I bet whatever “tricks” they use now would get a lot less effective if they did.
    
    
        
     What’s the story behind Kagi - are they somehow related to Google?To my knowledge besides the old experiments with client side search, Google has never allowed (even paid) api access to their search. I thought they did not do this, because it would have allowed somebody to jump start a search engine that might eventually become a competitor. Kagi seems to be open about their Google relationship, so I assume they have agreement in place. This even feels like some experiment from Google to create a premium, paid, search product (like what they did with YouTube).
    
    
        
      
 At least Startpage has been serving Google results (via paid API access) for years. There is nothing new about Kagi paying for access to it.   
    
        
      
 I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.   
    
        
     It's substantially better than Google for what I do with it (mostly work-related queries). A few reasons why:* It blocks all the GitHub and Stack Overflow copycat sites out of the box. * I can add additional sites to the block list with two clicks. * It up-ranks (semi-)official documentation like the Python docs or MDN over blog spam sites. * I can manually up-rank sites (and even pin them to the top of the results) if I'd like to see them more often. Kagi is awesome because where Google thinks it can guess what you want, Kagi gives you an easy way to tell it what you want.
    
    
        
      
 I already have an extension that's allow me to block, or highlights results on Google or Bing   
    
        
      
 Kagi's better than Google for me. Proof is that initially I only had it set up as default search on one device but I've progressively switched them all over out of annoyance with crap google results. I haven't yet had to go to google once to finish a search I started on Kagi.   
    
        
      
 This is probably true for me, if we also say that 50% of the queries are orders of magnitude higher quality on Kagi.   
    
        
      
 I use Google without AdBlock on my phone daily and it's not quite that different.   
    
        
      
 I use Google without AdBlock whenever I am in a private browser in addition to going without adblock on both my phone and tablet. I agree, it isn't that much different. At least with search, that is.   
    
        
      
 Do I have to wait for their invitation to join the beta list before I can try Kagi? The comments here are promising and I tried to take a look for myself but apparently only beta users are allowed in at the moment.   
    
        
      
 You have to ask for it by submitting a form in their webpage and they send you an invitation to your mail   
    
        
      
 I think that with current technology, beating google at the scale they run at is impossible. I think with advances it NLP, its possible. But right now, its pie in the sky.   
    
        
      
 Even my grandparents figured out how to scroll by the ads at the top of Google search. Actively hostile is a bit much.   
    
    
        
     The progression that people almost always forget:1) New system comes out that indexes/controls/regulates a naively created dataset 2) Data consumers adopt that system and experience benefits 3) Data suppliers learn rules of system and take advantage of it to improve the positioning of their data, thus breaking the intent of a system built on the assumption of naive creation 4) Users complain about the broken system 5) New entrants realize that the original system actually solved the core problem really well, and there are no easy ways to solve the 'gaming the system' problem 6) Flawed system remains the best available option indefinitely It's like entropy, there's just no fighting it. EDIT: And to extend this beyond Google - do you see a lot of long text blocks in 7 second tik tok videos? That's because the creator found a way to game the algorithm.
    
    
    
    
        
     Email spam? I'd say that's basically solved.For bot detection, when was the golden age? I'd say that, rather than follow the above description, it started as non-existent and there was basically a smooth descent downward to where we are now.
    
    
    
        
     Well let's make this real.Sites with people hired to optimize the robots.txt file are ranked higher than those without. If we ban all websites that hire people to optimize their robots.txt, then a lot of the web isn't indexed and the search results suffer. Or if we ban every creator on tik tok who posts a lot of text in a short video, then a lot of creators are going to be de-platformed and moved elsewhere. The point of what I wrote is that 'humans are really god at following rules, so much so that they often are able to manipulate rules to their advantage, without breaking said rules. That's why this is such a hard problem to counter.
    
    
        
      
 You're ignoring the only insightful part of the article: if a search engine succeeds at all, it cannot ban anyone, because some antitrust bureaucrat somewhere will cluck about it.   
    
        
     If this were true, wouldn't Google display all million pages that are vaguely relevant to my query on the first screen?Their only job is to stack order the internet. Down ranking a site to the 1,000,000th result is the same as banning them. They necessarily do this all the time (like for every search with more than 10 potential hits).
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Define the border between SEO and abuse.Perhaps there is no border to be defined since nearly all SEO is abuse?! The only acceptable SEO should be "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".
    
    
        
     Let's say someone writes a blog article. They publish it on Wordpress with a bunch of unoptimised defaults. Some time after, someone comes along and says "Hey, the search engine will rank your post more highly if you include the name of the post in the URL instead of just having it be blog.example.com/posts?id=1234", so they change the URL. Is that SEO? Should that result in the site being de-listed/banned? It doesn't meet your definition of "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".And where is the line between "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer" and SEO? If I realise that (to take an example from something found on Google) I could take the sentence "Identify the best customers and convert more" and rewrite it as "Marketing automation helps you identify the best customers and convert more", is that SEO because I'm intentionally adding a keyword, or is that making the content more relevant to the user by being more explicit in what I'm saying?
    
    
        
      
 I'm sure there are better examples, but this specific one actually does make the experience better for the reader. People often return to good blog posts and it's a lot easier to remember a title than a numerical id. If you can remember the title and know the url of the blog and it has a simple naming convention, you can bypass the search engine entirely and just go straight there. Sports sites are really good about this. &lt;URL&gt;/&lt;LEAGUE&gt;/stats always gets you the stats. &lt;URL&gt;/&lt;LEAGUE&gt;/standings gets you the standings. If you're curious how a team is doing or who currently leads in scoring or whatever, you know where to go without needing assistance from search.   
    
        
     To my moral standard, all of this is manipulative if the intention is to manipulate the Google ranking instead of seeing an improved Google ranking as a result of delivering better service to the visitor.This does of course not imply that these things can be proven, which implies that no action can be taken. Not everything that is immoral is punishable.
    
    
        
     I believe blocking an honest discussion is never going to do more good than harm. The original post doesn't even suggest that we should overthrow our Google overlord to replace it with whatever we find interesting. It's just pointing various limitations and issues that Google users are facing right now. And apparently from the replies here, there are even more aspects that people are have troubles with.It's true building a good search engine is an gigantic undertaking but if Google (or someone else entirely) is aware of the current issues, they may have ideas to tackle those problems and then we can all share a better internet. Same for the argument with democracy and any other similar arguments, pointing out problems within our current institutions doesn't remotely mean that we want to abolish everything and start from scratch.
    
    
        
     &gt; Nobody is coming along with a better search engine https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail. Edit: Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.
    
    
        
     "See results for
'&lt;my search term&gt;'
Create your free Neeva account.""To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features, create your free account.
Already a Neeva member? Sign in" Yeah, no.
    
    
        
     I get that.But essentially we all have de facto accounts on Google anyway. They track and monitor usage and then map you to a user account when you finally login somewhere. I'm totally fine with that being upfront and made clear from the get go!
    
    
        
      
 Ah, Neeva is eventually going to be a paid product, that's why it's that way. That said, their membership is pretty cheap for what you get.   
    
        
      
 I don't mind giving my email or making an account after I have any inkling that the product might be worth deleting a few spam emails. Neeva was giving me a modal popup in my first minute; that's never going to get my email.   
    
        
      
 (Founder of Neeva here) Appreciate the input and hear your frustration. This is a carryover from changes we made to introduce the free tier earlier in the quarter. We are making imminent improvements on modal frequency and getting them out of your way. Stay posted.   
    
        
     Yo! Neeva is a dope product, imo, but could I offer some suggestions on how I use Neeva?1. I have more than one GitHub account (one is for work, one is for personal stuff). I would like to somehow keep them separate, but at least being able to add multiple GitHub accounts for indexing would be cool. 2. Could Neeva offer something for segmenting the parts of my online presence? For instance, there's personal me and then there's work me. I'd like to turn a different profile on when I'm doing different things. 3. I don't know if it's possible to partner with ProtonMail, but I'd love to index that and my Proton Calendar as well. Also didn't know the free tier is permanent, but I think that's probably a good move. Thanks for what you do!
    
    
        
      
 Hi! Thanks for your notes here. I'll take these suggestions back to our team. re: 2. Being able to connect two accounts is interesting -- right now I solve this by having two Neeva accounts, one associated with my work email and one with my personal email.   
    
        
     Neeva has a free tier (with only access to the search engine, so people can still test the search aspect), but when you pay for it now you ALSO get LastPass premium and Bitdefender VPN Premium as well, along with all their integrations into your system.If you trust these people are doing what they say, it's a pretty good deal for securing your internet spaces and trying to get away from google, imo.
    
    
        
      
 I experimented with neeva, because I'd really like an alternative to Google, even a paid one. However, I found its results pretty disappointing. At least for my work, I had to go back to Google, because I don't want to waste time "on the clock."   
    
    
        
      
 Not sure if you read the post. They don't advocate for replacing Google. They want to add onto Google and other search engines.   
    
    
        
     Not everyone lives in the US and/or an English-speaking country.I can't find shit with DDG and the experience is like using Google from 20 years ago when it didn't have any of its bells and whistles.
    
    
        
     It’s actually because I’m not in an english speaking country that Google is failing me and screwing my searches for anything than can be somewhat pushed to local results…I’m glad it works for you, it just reminds me how different are everyone’s expectations of good search results.
    
    
        
      
 Same here. Traveling and when I search for postgres I don't want to find the local student project as the top result   
    
        
     Some side by side comparisons just now:"pizza near me" - Google suggested a well rated place within 5 miles. DuckDuckGo suggested a pizza place 91 miles away?? "busted kids lip" - Google says gauze and a cold pack. DuckDuckGo says salt water?? "best monitor for mac" - Google says Dell Ultrasharp with 4.5 stars and 738 ratings on amazon. DuckDuckGo says BenQ 4 stars with 174 ratings on amazon? how is this better?
    
    
        
     &gt; Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine.No, they are underestimating the difficulty of funding a good search engine. I liked the runnaroo search very much as did several of my friends. The guy who ran it couldn't fund it. He shut it down. Altavista (Yeah, that far back) had a nice feature where it would draw a cluster graph of your search results. So, if you searched for "python", it would show your results but would also draw a little graph and you could see that "Hey, there are two clusters here--programming and reptiles." You could then click on the "programming" node and the "reptiles" cluster would go away. It allowed you to drill through irrelevant stuff really quickly. Note how that feature doesn't exist today--in spite of orders of magnitude more programmers being thrown at search, graph algorithms, and nifty Javascript web UIs. I wonder why ... (/sarcasm in case you missed it. I don't wonder why. Such a feature would let you drill through irrelevant Ad and SEO garbage too quickly and would impact Google's revenue.)
    
    
        
     building Breeze, which does pretty much that minus the cool UI angle, and yeah, only way for it to work at scale is premium like neeva, kagi, etc.we started out with topics and then moved to web, and are now folding topics into the web search experience, it's really hard stuff to get right our first main filter was blogs, which is getting renamed to posts for a mix of reasons, adding forums shortly, along with other more specific topics re: https://breezethat.com/ -- &amp; better on laptop / desktop atm, premium version will be ad-free
    
    
        
     I'd say you're half right. Things are harder now and the success of Google has contributed to this.However, I think Google has severely degenerated from just two years ago, when most of the problems were fully in effect. Google is a bit of a product of the situation of scams being the easiest way anyone makes online.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back thenHas anyone considered the possibility that all this Machine learning and AI models is what made Google and YouTube searches worse?
    
    
        
      
 I strongly suspect that's a very large part of what is making everything worse. Or, at least, there does seem to be a correlation in time between the implementation of ML and the degradation of the quality of results.   
    
        
     I wouldn't call it so much the implementation of ML but rather from when they decided they were an AI/ML company.The Amazon recommendations engine, the poster child of ML in 2014 isn't any good at recommending products that I actually want to buy either.
    
    
        
      
 People said this about pre-Google search engines. Someone will figure out the next PageRank and give us another 10-20 years of useful search.   
    
        
     There were many multiples less people online. The internet economy was almost nothing back then.There’s no comparing how things were in the 90s and early 00s to now. Every social media company before Facebook faltered or began losing a good chunk of their user base fairly quickly. Until that stopped happening with Facebook and IG for over a decade now. Reddit’s position has also been here for a decade now.
    
    
        
     I don't think these posts should be blocked, because they create discussion, which creates interest, which incentivizes for problem solving.Humans are incredibly good at solving engineering problems they can see from a mile away, although it takes time to solve.
    
    
    
        
        Honestly I think people are completely underestimating 
 the difficulty of a good search engine
 
I suspect that is not difficult so much as expensive.Boutique search engines pop up all the time here on HN, but they can't compete fairly against Google, without the resources to crawl a billion webpages day after day.
    
    
    
        
     Source? But it's definitely possible nowadays when RAM is cheap and modern Google makes the Internet feel incredibly smaller than it was 20 years ago.At the time you would get tons of results from a myriad of small blogs, forums, niche websites. Nowadays it's Pinterest, blogspam and more SEO optimised algorithmic crap. If you're lucky you get a forum result that might actually be relevant. Given the joke that if you can't Google it it doesn't exist, it follows that the Internet has considerably shrunk in the past two decades.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 It looks like I was mistaken. They don't keep all of the documents in RAM, but I'm pretty sure they keep the search index (100 petabytes) in RAM. I'm struggling to find a source but I remember hearing it in a talk given by a Googler on YouTube. I also read somewhere that moving their whole index to RAM is how they brought their response times down from a couple of seconds to a couple hundred milliseconds.   
    
        
      
 Democracy would be best replaced with cashless society. Society based on everyone value of doing what they love doing most (aka hobbyist), and virtually everything else replaced by robots and technology we already have. This is what's coming eventually, but its not something that can be installed on the top of your "operating system"; you will have to format the whole hard-drive (civil war)   
    
        
      
 I suppose in the absence of cash we would just force some people to do the necessary tasks that aren't anyone's favourite hobbies?   
    
        
     Well, ideally people could choose to do whatever they liked to provide for society. Everyone would have a role to play. So those that like to farm (raised on a farm, to be proud of their work) would farm, those that want to commit their life to science could attempt to advance their field. Someone might find an invigorating pride in making sure wastewater treatment is running well, but they don't know how to get into the field and are stuck working a job they don't like for money, currently. Artists could create culture. As long as you are doing something to provide for society, society will provide for you.There will be people that do not have favorite hobbies. There will be people with no ambition who benefit from being told what they can or should do to contribute. Those people, in order to have their needs met could choose to take on a Necessary Task, even if it isn't their favorite thing. Maybe they learn to love it and excel at it. Don't want to do anything to contribute to society despite being physically and mentally able? No needs met. Meet them yourself, you magnificent lone wolf. Want your needs met but don't want to do Necessary Task that you hate? Find a purpose and pursue it.
    
    
    
        
     I don't know how to break it to you, but the system you're looking for that does all the things you're saying is capitalism.Have the talent and desire to be a heart surgeon? Go for it, and you'll be rewarded. Want to make life sized statues of the Beatles out of used printer cartridges? Eh, fine but maybe also get a day job.
    
    
        
     Ah yea. Let me just pay to put myself through med school independently while I struggle to pay for food and housing.Sorry but Capitalism is a broken system that is not meeting mine or million's of others needs, much less enabling us to pursue what we're actually passionate about. I at least know that I am passionate about building and supporting technology but I still struggle to pursue it professionally because I had the poor luck to be born without the resources to get a piece of paper that says I know how.
    
    
        
     It's sort of weird how badly people have become unable to understand what the word capitalism actually means, these daysIt seems like everyone just thinks it's how you describe the contemporary world No, what they're describing isn't capitalism. Not even close
If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30725933
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136
Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories
2022-01-02
None
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 <a href="vote?id=29772532&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.<p>Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.</p><p>The web has become a crappy place to research products as long as money can be made with those through affiliations. I wonder if outlawing affiliate marketing would make the world a better place.</p><p>P.S: Whats most ridiculous about my Youtube Printer research experience, the best and most helpful video was a sales video from a home shopping TV station [0], where they actually showed some printing action and handling of one of the models I was interested in.</p><p>[0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774547&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit. I'm honestly surprised how little I hear about them. Not that any organization is perfect, but they have been the poster child of success via paid content since the 1930s.<p>It also makes me think that part of the problem is not only that Google's results are getting worse, it is that much of the population goes to the internet for all problems. Whether it is googling or asking on social media... the "front-line" information on the internet is simply not reliable anymore.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774796&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.<p>As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.</p><p>When I contacted Consumer Reports to let them know about the many tens of thousands of complaints about the companies they were ranking highest, they referred me to their attorney.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775033&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit.<p>&gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.</p><p>&gt; As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.</p><p>Honestly, "moving companies" is not a category that seems like it would be in Consumer Reports' wheelhouse, and I'm surprised they offered any recommendations in that area at all.</p><p>Also, your anecdote doesn't really support the notion that they're "pay-to-play, just that they did a bad job in some category.</p><p>Are you actually thinking of the Better Business Bureau but got it mixed up with Consumer reports? I would expect the BBB to rate moving services and I've heard that they have some kind of membership program for businesses that seems to allow better control over complaints, which is pretty close to "pay-to-play."
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 <p>This is all a massive deflection. Why is CR okay to make recommendations in an "area they're not good at"? Even the most generous interpretations are more damning than your claims.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think OP was asking whether they were confusing CR for the Better Business Bureau because moving services does not seem to be something CR would review</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29784189&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>But CR did review them, so why can't someone complain that CR recommended a bad service</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29784427&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I don't see any evidence of this. The most likely scenario is the original complaint confused BBB (totally pay-to-play, scam) with CR.<p>CR doesn't review this category and a search of past CR review categories doesn't yield moving services. In general, they don't review <i>anything</i> regional.
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 <a href="vote?id=29784576&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>CR do not review moving companies.<p>They have articles on how to avoid dodgy ones but make no recommendations.
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 <p>Because thats a service not a product. I go to CR for reviews on what the best mattress is, moving companies is not something I would go to them for so that doesn't concern me. Its like saying AAA isn't worth the money because you didn't like the hotel they gave you a discount on.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services. Lying about the quality of a good or service when that is your business, potentially with kickbacks, is not really a defensible position. "It's okay because I don't expect their opinion to be good in this one area" doesn't negate CR providing that opinion.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776585&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>No one can find anything where Consumer Reports has rated moving services. It's likely the grandparent confused them with BBB, which is totally pay-to-play.<p>And--- I appreciate Consumer Reports' accuracy, but I doubt that they are 100% accurate. There are probably recommendation sets that end up as garbage for one reason or another (incorrect weighting for my use case, statistical noise, evolution in products since survey experiences, etc).</p><p>There's also times where I have personal expertise or preferences that outweigh CR's rankings. CR rates computers, after all, and I would probably not weigh them very heavily in my choice.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776603&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>As a long time CR subscriber, agree absolutely. This stuff is hard and clean data sets are nonexistent. I still recommend to my friends to subscribe to CR as independent reviews are important (and worth paying for).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776862&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services.<p>AAA guidebooks do exactly this. I remember using them to pick hotels in the 90s.
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 <a href="vote?id=29784592&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Except you are wrong.<p>CR do not and have never recommended moving firms.</p><p>They in fact have articles on how to avoid being scammed by firms and best practices but make no recommendations.</p><p>I think the burden here is on you or others making this claim to link some evidence.
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 <p>I wonder why people are digging in on the accusation that CR has provided inaccurate ratings of moving companies. Very easy to disprove.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In all the years I've used Consumer Reports I've never seen them rate moving services. I just jumped on their site now, and there are no reviews for moving services.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775864&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not sure if Consumer Reports has ever formally reviewed moving services, though I admit I haven't been looking for this category specifically. CR's website currently doesn't have any reviews for moving services, not even with a disclaimer that the category is no longer being tested (like they do for some categories, such as steam irons: <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/steam-irons.htm">https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/steam-irons.htm</a>).<p>CR's freelance writers have written general advice articles on moving services, like <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/moving/how-to-choose-a-reliable-moving-company/">https://www.consumerreports.org/moving/how-to-choose-a-relia...</a>, which might be useful to some readers but certainly aren't very deep. These articles aren't the same as CR's actual reviews, which have scores and detailed ratings for each product metric.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775095&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.<p>Agreed. As a PSA do not use the True Car services that are "included" in a membership. It's basically a free pass to sell all of the contact information CR has on you to any dealership that's paying them for leads. You will be hounded for weeks if you try to use that service. I recently found out, through a family member, that the deceptive practice still exists when they were trying to get actual dealer invoices (which CR used to provide, but no longer does). I cannot <i>not recommend</i> CR enough.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776012&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Not sure if it's any relation to TrueCar.com, but FWIW I used them 7(?) years ago to purchase a hard to find used car and had nothing but a good experience.<p>From wikipedia, I gather they've tweaked their compensation models and exec team since then, so no idea what they're like now.</p><p>Effectively, everyone is AutoTrader though, and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776337&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; ...and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.<p>That is the point. Given the reputation CR tries to uphold and their relationship and integration with True Car there is not much warning (if any) using that feature in CR will result in dumping your contact information to many dealerships and is a dark pattern one wouldn't expect from CR given the end user is paying for the service. For most non-technical folks I can't imagine this experience is positive after they've handed over their actual phone # and email.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777226&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I can't vouch for whatever the state of True Car is right now, but several years ago (more than once) I went there for information on the average selling price of new cars.<p>They had a nice histogram, showing the range and most common price and how far off msrp it was.</p><p>I don't know how accurate it really was, and if it was accurate, someone might have "gotten to them" in later years to inflate the statistics and preserve profit margins.</p><p>But it seemed to me really valuable information for negotiating a new car purchase. The special True Car price and "services" and all that seemed like a diversion to me.</p><p>It's like some other things on the Internet - a sensible person subsists on the free "teaser" information and never ever engages in any sort of relationship.</p><p>Apart from an indication of what a fair price is, the histogram showed relative discounts between models, and there's frequently/always ones that are being disdained by the public that are very good cars and dealers are desperate to move, versus ones that are in high demand that they won't discount.
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 <p>Possibly confusing this with the better business bureau (which is totally pay to play)?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776060&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've been a subscriber and I am a half hearted fan of Which. IT wise their advice is complete arse: This is a consumer champion that only recommends either Apple or MS - there appears to be no other offerings. To be fair, I last read a Which review at least two years ago.<p>I'd describe Which as a good starter for 10, these days, but no more.</p><p>They do a decent legal angle and always have done, ie consumer rights - that's their forte for me.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775468&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.<p>I find independent YouTubers significantly better.</p><p>To a point! There are a number of obvious non-critical flooded reviews for lots of products.</p><p>I suppose in closing CR is garbage and you have to do relevant research commiserate with how much you want to spend/care.</p><p>If only we had a review organization we could trust!
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 <a href="vote?id=29775570&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.<p>&gt; I find independent YouTubers significantly better.</p><p>Could me <i>extremely</i> skeptical. "Independence" on YouTube is very cheap and easy to fake.</p><p>IMHO, YouTube is mainly useful for video of someone poking at a product, because for some reason retailers and manufacturers don't provide good enough media on product pages to get anywhere close to substituting for seeing something in person.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775928&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I’ve recently used their reviews for doors, roof shingles, and washing machines.<p>YouTube isn’t even a similar product. I assume all reviewers are paid and have no idea their methodology.</p><p>I like CR because their methods are defined and they don’t have any competing agendas (ads, sponsored posts, product placement , etc)
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 <p>How would one know if Youtuber is independent? Say, I need to buy a lawnmower. How do I know which reviewers are good and which are idiots and which are paid shills? It's kinda hard to figure it on YT. If I have a specific product in mind, I can look through YT reviews of this specific one as a point of information. But if I have 100 potential lawnmowers to sort through, I won't watch every YT review for 100 products, I'd have to take a sabbatical for that. YT doesn't fill the niche.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't know if it's pay-to-play, but it sure feels like it. Many years ago, I had a house built, and I decided to outfit it with all the appliances, convinced I could do a better job picking out good equipment, and getting better prices. I settled on Consumer Reports' best pick: GE "Gold" appliances, and I bought them all. Within 2 years, every single one -- oven, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and dryer -- had problems. I will never trust CR for anything again.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29781037&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>If all your major appliances died that quickly there might be something wrong with your houses power.<p>GE’s quality also tanked, but the power thing is worth looking into.
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 <p>I'm talking about plastic breaking, fans dying, switches failing, etc. I only HAD to replace the washer and dryer, and the mismatched, second-hand units I got were still going strong after a decade. I asked the used appliance salesman if he wanted my old ones, for free, to refurbish. He asked what brand they were. I told him. He said no. Those models were THAT bad. But CR said they were the best on the market.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776606&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now<p>Do you mean to say that they receive money to issue reviews (which would be alarming)? Or do you mean to say they charge fees to access review information (which has always been the case AFAICT)?
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 <p>They also pander to their customer base. You'll never hear them say a bad word about the kinds of high end but not "I own a private jet" luxury products that high middle class consumers (who are their target market) tend to own. Nobody resubscribes to media that tells them they're doing it wrong.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774976&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>CR today: "After extensive review, LG Microwave model AX7J3498-2 is best avoided"<p>LG tomorrow: "Announcing LG Microwave model G8A867FL2-B! Also, model AX7J3498-2 will no longer be available"</p><p>Consumers two days from now: "Well, there are no bad reviews for model G8A867FL2-B when I look it up, I guess it's ok to buy"</p><p>I like the idea of Consumer Reports or in depth reviewing but manufacturers have learned to game it too.
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 <p>Haha. It gets even better, which I discovered while researching a TV that was on sale and the store said their price was the lowest on some price matching service. But when I checked the service they were the only one selling the specific model! Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;<i>"Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice."</i><p>No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either want a slightly different featureset, or just want to avoid people doing price-matching. The manufacturers don't really like it.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776308&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Sometimes there's something to those retailer-specific models. When our child was young enough to need a car seat, we looked at the top-rated model on CR. It was rated pretty well by customers at various websites, except consistently for features X, Y, and Z, which seemed pretty significant to me. Lo and behold, we go to store A, and realize they have the "limited edition A model" which actually specifically addressed all the complaints in customer reviews about the generic model. We loved that car seat.<p>Sometimes those retailer-specific tweaks are kinda questionable, but sometimes, if it's the right retailer, they're actually pretty thoughtful.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777368&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This happens with a local store here called "Video Only", and they will typically stock higher end features. Example: A common Samsung Plasma could be found all over town for say, $800. The Video Only one was $900, and would drop to like $650 when it's time to move the new stuff in.<p>Their people will tell you all about doing that too.</p><p>The difference?</p><p>The set I got for $650 (and again, not exact, just representative numbers here) had the faster video processor and ran at 120Hz, which means the 3D capability ran at a full 60Hz for each eye, and game mode was low lag. Both very nice options, and finding them together sometimes meant buying another expensive model that comes with other fat margin, mostly useless features.</p><p>I have no doubt it's all about the price matching, but sometimes, depending on the retailer and their business model, it can be about differentiation, like actually having something better in some distinct way. The Video Only people cater to the home theatre crowd and tend to stock sets that are high technical performers at great prices.</p><p>Seeing it in the other direction, WalMart tends to have their special edition of whatever it is, and it's almost always price / performance, and or some extra pack in, or size change.
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 <p>I used to live across the street from the San Francisco Video Only, and can confirm they are totally legit.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29785489&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>GP:<p>&gt; Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice.</p><p>You:</p><p>&gt; No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either... or just want to avoid people doing price-matching.</p><p>I mean, I don't see the difference. both of you are in agreement it's to fuck people trying to price match. I guess the fact that the retailers insist on it makes it okay in your mind??</p><p>Meanwhile, I doubt there are any real featureset differences for most things with model numbers. There are cheap versions of clothing for Walmart, but that's ironically going the other way and trying to confuse the customer by making them think they are the same items.
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 <p>I worked at a mattress retailer after college. Each retailer would have a slightly different version of the same model. So as an example one would have 2 inches of memory foam and another would have 1.75 inches of memory foam and 0.25 inches of latex foam. But otherwise it’s the same. They did it to make comparison shopping and price matching difficult. In reality I’m not sure how well it worked. Salespeople would match prices anyway to get the sale.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775676&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Its annoying, but I find it worse when the same model of device has different electronics/specifications.<p>Model numbers seem to mean little these days to a lot of manufacturers.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776035&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Model numbers mean a lot to manufacturers and engineers.<p>They just mean very little to sales, who typically get their way for major chain account.
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 <p>Joke's on them. I don't buy things that have only a single review; too easily gamed. I look for products that have a lot of positive reviews. Obscure models probably have worse support too. Unless you really know what you're looking for, something that lots of people enjoy using is generally the safest choice.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's how they can declare "we do price match" without ever doing any price match. Surely you didn't expect the price match for a different model, did you?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Haven't consumers learned the game as well? It seems pretty obvious that if LG sells a bad microwave then I probably shouldn't trust that their other microwaves would be any good either. And why would I buy a microwave with no review over a microwave with a positive review? There's got to be at least one good microwave on their site.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776623&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Manufacturers have 100% control over their website.<p>They can delete reviews, they can keep the reviews and start shipping a slightly different product instead, they can ask certain customers to write positive reviews for incentives. The list goes on and on.</p><p>It's asymmetric warfare and manufacturers hold all the cards. That's why there generally are consumer protection laws, and not the other way around, e.g. protecting manufacturers from consumers (lol).</p><p>The semi-good news is that for most consumer goods like microwaves, it doesn't really matter, because they are all "good enough".
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 <a href="vote?id=29775708&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The manufacturer/seller commonly games the reviews so even new products tend to have a few glowing reviews right off the bat.<p>And if you use the scale that if a manufacturer produces one bad microwave that all their microwaves are bad, I suggest cooking over a fire as no manufacturer is going to meet your judgement scale.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776328&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I know I'm five-gajillion comments in, so this is like spitting in the ocean: call a <i>local</i> repair place (unaffiliated) and ask them what to get. The local fridge/appliance repair (group) -- any of the five of them -- will happily chat for an hour about any major appliance in your house. They'll also gossip like fishmongers about who's good at what services, etc.<p>In general, for very large appliances (large fridges; double-stoves; double ovens) you can just ask them to keep an eye out at the local restaurant auctions. My house came with a 48" prosumer fridge. When my fridge died I got a 10-year-old exact replica from a warehouse for 3500$, rather than 18000$. It's worked flawlessly for 8 years, now.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777395&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I just wrote a couple commments here talking about actually talking to people. It's how I still prefer to buy many things.<p>Reviews? Have pretty much ignored them for many things. It has been hard to see the value, frankly. There are always a lot of them, and the information quality has been high noise and dubious in many cases.
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 <p>+1 for restaurant auctions. I browse them like a child walking past puppies in a window.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Restaurant auctions are great if you have the space. Less good if you have a small kitchen.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29777385&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>When I am able to shop in an actual store, like for appliances, I've always had great luck talking to the service techs.<p>I just ask them which models are coming back to the store, and or for a recommendation.</p><p>My last washer, dryer, dishwasher and stove were all purchased this way and have ran for a long time now. Needed a new element for my dryer and stove a while back and both were available, easy to install.</p><p>And that's the last question: Service. What's available and can I get parts, etc...?
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 <a href="vote?id=29790143&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Another failure mode can be testing the wrong things. Companies will make products to do well in tests or otherwise appeal to consumers even if that makes their product actually worse. For example maybe tyres would only be tested in a straight line (rather than when cornering) or when unworn (so allowing shallow grooves to allow for a thinner wall and shorter life).<p>I recently came across a YouTube channel where a guy does various thorough-seeming tests of a medium range of brands for a bunch of product categories (think spanners and scissors and suchlike) and he’ll talk quickly and provide lots of numbers but when you think a little more, it seems that there isn’t much reason for the test results to correlate with a good product (eg maybe if your Phillips head cams out it is because that is what it’s meant to do and not because it’s bad)
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 <p>Consumer Reports is my first stop whenever I look to purchase some non trivial item. I typically use the top five from their recommended list to quickly narrow down my initial result set. Then I'll cross reference with Wirecutter to see if they are in agreement (usually are). If I'm down to one or two choices at that point I'll try to find some unbiased reviews on YouTube. Not a perfect system, but I find it works pretty well compared to just going right to a Google search result.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774784&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I usually just search the topic plus "reddit." The advice from a subreddit on something will usually be reliable.<p>Then other times I take a chance on Amazon, like the ~$700 Viribus mountain e-bike I got a few months ago. E-bike enthusiasts seem to say that price range is universally junk, but it's been treating me great on trails and the road. Oddly can't find anyone else talking about it online but the Amazon reviews were good.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775552&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Mountain biker here. If I may hate on your decision here for a second.<p>The reason nobody is talking about the bike you got, is because it is simply so bad, nobody who rides remotely seriously as a hobby or otherwise would even consider it as part of the category of mountain bikes.</p><p>I know you probably have fun riding it around on some dirt or gravel or something - but really, it's not a mountain bike.</p><p>Disclaimer - I'm not even that wild a rider at all.</p><p>I would have those breaks burned out in less than one decent, and probably tear the drivetrain apart on my first or second climb (tripple front derailleur? really?)</p><p>The geometry is whack and the tires are trash. That thing that looks like a front fork, is not. I would blow that up first day too, without a doubt.</p><p>I don't think you appreciate the world of difference between something like this, and even a cheap 2.5k ebike. (Yes that is cheap. You have the dollar store equivalent of an ebike.)</p><p>You should have saved your money and gotten a nice second hand kona hard tail or something, rather than buying and rewarding chineesium scrapheap contenders.</p><p>You're probably familiar with laptops and such to some degree.</p><p>This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :)</p><p>Harsh I know but... that's life. Sorry. I hope you enjoy riding and upgrade your bike soon. I just wish that such a e-waste disaster wasn't your stepping stone.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775881&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You can understand I didn't want to spend thousands to start out a hobby I wasn't even sure I'd get into. If it lasts me a year that's good enough. My next step would be doing my own build.<p>You're looking at this one, right? <a href="https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=40675488235674">https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...</a></p><p>I have no illusion that it's the best bike in the world, but it certainly works for my combination of roads and bike trails. I wouldn't put it on some crazy steep obstacle course or huge jumps but I wasn't looking to do any of that anyway.</p><p>But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur?
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 <p>Parent underappreciates that the difference between (nothing) and (anything) is infinite, and the difference between (less good) and (better) is finite.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776230&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>No. I am appreciating that there are better somethings than this something, and I even explicitly recommended one.<p>Take the time to actually read and understand before criticizing.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776307&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>In this instance (as with most of life, sometimes including time), money is the limited resource.<p>Suggesting OP not buy anything or spend 3.5x as much isn't helpful.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776985&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Second hand prices for Kona ebikes don't look nearly in the range of $700.<p>Is there a specific model you're thinking of?
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 <a href="vote?id=29779454&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Or maybe an emtb at that price point is simply unrealistic[1]. Which sucks because ebikes are such an accessibility boon.<p>[1] requiring a reputable manufacturer, even accounting for second-hand bikes. Conversion might be an option, I don't know what those run.
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 <p>To me it just sounds like the PC gamers who insist that anyone who wants to 'game' needs an RTX 3070 at a minimum. They have unrealistic ideas of what the person actually wants to do. Someone who's spending a small amount on mountain bikes isn't going hard downhill.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29807097&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I really don't think any analogies to PCs and games works. This is more like taking an underpowered car on the freeway. Yeah it's going to be able to get up to speed but without the acceleration that's really needed. And I don't know that I would have known better when I'd first gotten my license without being told. We don't know that someone wouldn't take this bike on well-maintained trails a few times and then decide to "graduate" to jumping over roots and rocks or w/e.<p>Not to mention not knowing how well the electric part is done, especially the battery. I'd be ok taking my $200 commuter on some light trail because I'm mechanically inclined and I've got the measure of it. I have no idea about how to assess the electricals but given the cost-cutting, bad workmanship, and bad design I can see in the rest of the bike's build, I'd be really concerned about that.</p><p>"Whether you are a professional athlete" lmao
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 <a href="vote?id=29776299&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I do understand. That's why I recommend the second hand hardtail kona for the same price (or cheaper).<p>&gt; If it lasts me a year that's good enough</p><p>I don't like this attitude because it is wasteful. That's another thing I was taking issue with. Worse because it's an ebike. If it was just some aluminum it wouldn't be nearly as bad, but still kinda bad.</p><p>&gt; But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur?</p><p>More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality.</p><p>Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).
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 <a href="vote?id=29777539&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).<p>... which creates much more chain wear from chain crossing ...</p><p>&gt; More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality.</p><p>I have a 35 year old Shimano Deore XT front derailleur. I raced the bike hard in the 80s during "the prehistory of UK mountain bike racing". I then rode it for another 8 years, doing several multi-thousand mile tours on it (before the name "gravel bike" had come along). Then I used it as a city commuter for another 5 years.</p><p>The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents.</p><p>The fad for 1x setups illuminates some of the pros, but because it's largely a fad, fails to shine a similar light on the cons. For crazy downhill racing, 1x is an obvious choice. For ultra-distance events, long distance off-road touring and general gravel duty, the choice is not quite so obvious.
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 <a href="vote?id=29778212&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I set my cyclocross up with a triple front and a touring rear. The cycle shop questioned me on why I did it. I explained that the last mile was also 600 foot climb. The super fit kid working there was like "that hill is easy, I do that on my speed gears". I said "yea but look at me". He said "true". then proceeded to say he couldn't install it because shimano wouldn't recommend it (too many tooth delta). But he'd adjust it if I put it on my self. So I did. Basically it's a road front with a MTB small, and a mtb cassette in the back.<p>It's got 5k miles on it and works fine. Just needs little tweaks every once and a while and you can't do full crosses like Big Big. But it goes as fast and as torquey as you could please (or can buy).</p><p>These things work pretty well. Just learn to tweak em or get them tuned up.
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 <a href="vote?id=29785963&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents.<p>Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile?</p><p>Wild train of thought.</p><p>Interesting how you assert 1x setups as a fad for mountain bikes, and then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touring? Gravel biking? What are you talking about lol
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 <a href="vote?id=29787723&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touring<p>I guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring. You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike.</p><p>Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder.
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 <a href="vote?id=29793749&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Right, that confirms it. I'm sorry but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.<p>&gt; I guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring.</p><p>That is the most easy going barely off road biking on earth. Thousands of miles of fire and access roads, with a few miles of zero difficulty single track.</p><p>&gt; You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike.</p><p>"A mountain bike". The overwhelming majority of mountain bikes are unsuitable for this. You wouldn't use any of the most popular types: trail, downhill, enduro.</p><p>Gravel biking and mountain biking are world's apart.</p><p>The closest thing to gravel biking or other long distance off road biking in mountain biking is cross country - but even then xc is _way_ more demanding than gravel. You can't ride gravel bikes on xc routes. Gravel biking is not a form of mountain biking. There does not need to be any elevation change of any kind to gravel bike. There are no features on a gravel trail.</p><p>Anyway, sure, a hard tail xc bike is probably the best bike for that trip just due to the comfort of the larger tires. I bet you'd actually be just as happy with a fatty gravel bike though.</p><p>You know, I just went and searched to see what people ride on that trail to confirm my suspicion about big tire gravel bikes. Would you look at that - I'm right. Hard tail xc / gravel bikes with fat tires.</p><p>Additionally, the vast majority of them are running 1x front chainrings.</p><p>Surprise surprise, I know what I'm talking about, and the people that seriously ride the trail you're trying to use to one up me made the same choices I recommend. What a "fad".</p><p><a href="https://bikepacking.com/bikes/tour-divide-rigs-2019/">https://bikepacking.com/bikes/tour-divide-rigs-2019/</a></p><p>&gt; Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder.</p><p>Absolutely clueless. The difference is stark.
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 <a href="vote?id=29815505&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile?<p>Because the GGP -- you? -- didn't specify "the absolute worst of those contemporaries" but just complained about how "front triples" -- which implies <i>all</i> front triples -- "suck". So the GP quite reasonably showed that they don't.</p><p>It's not him moving the goalposts; it's you.
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 <a href="vote?id=29822441&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I mean, if you want to be that literal about it I guess I can't fault you. I would expect someone to scope the conversation appropriately. The tripple I'm talking about is in the context of tripples on brand new 600 dollar e-mountain bikes. They will all be trash.<p>Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?
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 <a href="vote?id=29851100&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?<p>No it isn't and yes I would: Now you're trying to move the conversational goalposts by calling your moving of the goalposts "clarifying".</p><p>This conversation simply never was about your snobbish True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective, and no amount of your attempts at obfuscation will make it have been so.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776392&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I considered secondhand, but a used battery has a good chance of being bad or on the way out, and a good new battery is expensive.<p>I doubt this bike is going to be ewaste soon though. I know a few people I might give it to who might use it. And I drive old cars into the ground instead of buying new so far, so I think I have a good track record on waste.</p><p>Even if I wanted to just throw it out, the battery and frame are recyclable.
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 <a href="vote?id=29779530&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Front triple is a way to extend the range of gearing without spending much. It's also used to dishonestly claim "21 speeds" since a lot of those are in the overlap; the standard is to be explicit, e.g. 3x7.<p>In other words it's a sign that the bike is built to a price, and maybe to a list of features and not actually to a quality standard.</p><p>Not necessarily bad (I'd trust any 3x Shimano drivetrain assuming it's installed correctly) but it's a sign to watch out.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776122&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You're being mean. It's clear that this bike wouldn't work for you, but it apparently does work for your parent. Stop trying to convince people they shouldn't enjoy things.<p>To go with your analogy, if someone bought the laptop you're describing and was having fun playing games, can't we see that as a good thing? We don't have to get them hooked on more powerful more expensive options.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776332&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I’m not so sure. The problem of BSOs… bike-shaped objects, a.k.a. low-quality bicycles, has been a problem for a long time. I rode a BSO for a long time before I knew better.<p>Sometimes you don’t understand what those things are until later. Sometimes the shape is weird and you don’t know how poorly you’re treating your body until you switch to a reasonable bike (and oh, random pains go away). Often the parts are substandard or nonstandard… some part wears down and then you can’t easily repair the bicycle.</p><p>It’s hard to trust comments from random consumers because I see so many bicyclists out there which very obviously lack the knowledge, skill, or will to set up or ride their bicycle reasonably. I see people on the road with horribly maladjusted seats, or people who ride a geared bicycle but have no clue which gear they should be in.</p><p>With a low-quality bicycle, a bad setup, or poor technique, you end up putting more strain on your body. It’s not necessary to go to more expensive options but you should take some care in choosing &amp; setting up your bicycle.
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 <p>The other real problem with cheap bad bikes is quality control matters on a device that (here in Europe) you might effectively be trusting your life to. As a poor student I had a BSO a year for three years, until I could afford a better object. The first died in traffic when the derailleur <i>came out of the frame</i>, leaving a burred hole behind, and a bus honking at me as it just managed to avoid squishing me. The second died <i>when the pedals sheered off the crankshaft</i> when I pushed down hard going up a hill. The third one died when I went over a large pot-hole in the cycle lane, <i>bending the forks</i> in the process. Absolutely <i>none</i> of these things should be able to happen. That they did is, of course, testament to the false economy (and great danger) of BSOs. In the States I understand that they're likely to be viewed as toys, but in Western Europe they're overwhelmingly likely to be used as transportation by those with little money, in busy, city centre traffic. There's a reason Dutch bikes have a reputation for quality, weigh a ton, last forever, and we surprisingly expensive.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29779290&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The difference is that the laptop breaking won't leave the user stranded and potentially eating dirt. I don't know what GGP means by the trails they're riding but I've looked at the homepage[1] and I wouldn't trust the bike on technical terrain. There's a very real safety issue.<p>GP could have been gentler, but they're right to say it's not a mountain bike, and shouldn't be ridden like one.</p><p>And that sucks. The things we buy should be fit for the advertised purpose. Mountain biking should be more accessible and there should be trails that GGP can ride on a <i>safe</i> budget bike without requiring that much fitness.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=40675488235674">https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29782213&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>By trails I mostly mean maintained dirt trails found in state/national parks, but I have hit some good bumps/holes in this thing. I got a suspension seatpost and I hardly feel bumps at all anymore.<p>Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?
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 <a href="vote?id=29786624&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?<p>I'm not sure where the line is, but here is a video of a local mtb park I used to ride a lot and it might give you a good idea: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFYcnQTcmrw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFYcnQTcmrw</a></p><p>It's pretty rocky and you can carry a ton of speed in some parts. It will definitely eat up cheaper bikes if you aren't careful.</p><p>If you want to find more examples of why cheaper bikes struggle to handle that type of stuff, I'd look up "walmart bikes vs mtb trail" or something along those lines on youtube. Lots of videos and they are usually somewhat entertaining. That said, your bike looks better than those and if you respect its limits, then it should be okay. The trails you describe sound fine for that type of bike, just be careful on hard bumps and stuff.
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 <p>I explicitly recommended something more capable and long lasting for the same price, so I really don't know why you're claiming I want them to do something unrealistic.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The whole point for me was that I wasn't fit enough for a normal bicycle and didn't have the motivation to work up to it. With the ebike it feels like I can go anywhere I want and still get some cardio exercise doing it. If they're recommending an expensive non-ebike, that's just silly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29778640&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>As an avid cyclist too, I think the biggest misunderstanding is you mentionned "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path". That Bike Shaped Object mentionned up there would totally be destroyed in a few hours of riding any challenging trail at a decent speed. The fork would bend and lockup itself, the brake pads would be dead before reaching the bottom of the hill.<p>Another problem with buying such a lowend bike online is they are very often badly assembled. You might find quickly that it becomes noisy because some parts were installed without enough grease, or components may become nearly impossible to remove because of oxydation when it will become time to replace them, and it may just be unsafe because something hasn't been torqued to spec. I once had a thorough look at these kind of bikes and a sticker on the fork clearly stated it was not really rated to be used off road. Thanksfully the CE norms have been done so that bicycles do not explode on potholes filled roads so even a bike not made for off-road is made to survive common abuses on and off the pavement.</p><p>My biggest issue with these kind of cheap e-bikes with stupid barely functionnal gimmicks such as (badly) suspended fork and chinese low end electric system is they often turn very quickly to the landfill because something end up being non functionnal and the owner do not know how to fix it himself and which component to replace wit. So to the eyes of many what you really bought appears to be waste (or soon to be) which would have been better replaced by something that might last better. Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance. But how many people will do that instead of sending it to the landfill and replacing it with the same shit when it gets to this point?</p><p>Having said that the good thing with cycling is you don't have to have the newest more expensive bike to enjoy riding and as long as you do it within the capabilities of the bike. And suprisingly a bike can be operated for long while being in a very bad state as long as speed is kept low, squeaking and grinding his way to your destination.
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 <a href="vote?id=29782332&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path"<p>This terminology difference might be meaningful in biking circles, but the places I go are designated as "trails" both colloquially and often by various governments.</p><p>&gt; Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance.</p><p>Wouldn't it be too heavy as a normal bike? From what I understand, ebike frames work out cheaper because they don't have to care about not making them heavy.
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 <a href="vote?id=29808457&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Well terminology is important depending on who you are talking to. Some governments may call that trail but riding down a black track at Whistler or Champery is different than just riding along on a non technically challenging gravel road/path. Besides, trail bike is a term used by the bicycle industry for a category of bikes that are much more capable than a cross-country mountain bike on challenging terrain and downhills while not being as much extreme as a Downhill bike with double crown forks which are pigs uphill.<p>As for your other question it really depends on the kind of e-bike.</p><p>Well integrated e-bike from bigger companies have the engine in the bottom bracket area so you can't remove that and the battery is usually so integrated inside the frame. Most cheap e-bike like yours, if it is the same as the one I see on the viribus website, are regular cheap alu frame on which they have strapped a battery on the standard 2 bolts usually dedicated for the water bottle holder cage and the engine is on the rear wheel. So the frame is pretty standard in that regard. Remove the battery and swap the rear wheel for a regular rear wheel and you have a conventional very entry level hardtail.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776586&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>It is not.<p>Sometimes you can't afford the thigs you want.</p><p>I made a good and realistic recommendation for the price range, that would leave OP well off in the long run.</p><p>I understand that you could say the ebike part is a hard requirement but, well, I don't think someone who knows so little about mountain biking or biking at all is in a position to make that kind of hard requirement in an informed way.</p><p>I also understand that you could read this as really pompous, but please consider what someone saying otherwise amounts to:</p><p>"I NEED an ebike mtb, but I also know nothing about mtbs or ebikes"
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 <a href="vote?id=29776733&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Suggesting a normal bike to me is not good or realistic at all. Electric is a hard requirement because the whole point is that I don't have the time or motivation to build up to riding steep hills and long distances without power. I can do that right away now, and it's rewarding enough that I keep doing it and getting exercise. I also wanted something suitable for dirt and bumpy terrain, so, a mountain bike style made the most sense.<p>I used to ride a road bike occasionally but the difficulty turned me off. If I'm stuck with an unpowered bike I just won't ride.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777062&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Well, that's... something. I'm glad you're out and at least doing some kind of exercise I guess.<p>More (or less?) power to ya.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777393&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The problem is that “mountain bike” means two things. To an MTB rider, it’s a vehicle optimized for mountain riding where the top priority is rider’s safety.<p>To everyone else, it’s a category of vehicles capable of off-pavement riding on trails. They should be referred to off-pavement bikes.
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 <a href="vote?id=29778163&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Mountain bikes are like SUVs. Only a small % of people take either off road or in any way challenge their capabilities.<p>But the same can be said for most bikes. Very few folks actually run the tour de france or any other competitive race. People get all excited by capabilities or let those who do know and use those features influence their buying.
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 <a href="vote?id=29779240&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This is simply untrue. For the standard of bike that someone who knows bikes would call a mountain bike - they are ridden on trails regularly. People are not spending 3k+ on a really inefficient and slow bike to ride around their cities and neighborhoods.<p>You presumably are not actually knowledgeable about mountain bikes and riding them?
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 <a href="vote?id=29788515&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>"No true mountain biker would ever call this a mountain bike"... yet go in any sporting goods store, anything with fat tires and or a suspension, upright handlebars, thumb shifters, it's likely labeled a mountain bike and would probably disintegrate on a downhill or cross trail. It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.<p>And yes, I used to cross trail several times a year in MO and mtb park (duthie hill) downhill (stevens) when I moved to Seattle, then watched several people get massive concussions and stayed with snowboarding.</p><p>If a thing becomes mainstream it gets diluted. The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.
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 <a href="vote?id=29798400&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.<p>Pal, come _on_. Read my initial comment, and any other comment thereafter. I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes.</p><p>You're still not understanding. Those bikes you were talking about - while they may be marketed as 'mountain bikes' (a term anybody can use for anything) - are not fit for the purpose of mountain biking (a set of well establish sports and related types of riding).</p><p>You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.</p><p>&gt; The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.</p><p>Everybody who mountain bikes (more than once har har har) does so on an actual mountain bike. It's not the 1%. It's more like the 99%. People don't repeatedly take these wallmart bikes down trails. Nobody survives that setup long enough to make it in to the group you can by any good standard call mountain bikers.</p><p>Go to your local trail that isn't some fireroad or featureless single track, and tell me how many people you see on shit bikes like this.</p><p>You know, I'd normally agree with you about this diluted point as it relates to many other things, but I can't here. For example - car racing is not just formula 1 or other top tier engineering categories. The vast majority of car racing is amateur and hobby stuff in comparatively low or very low spec vehicles. The difference is that you can "technically" compete with a formula one car on a racetrack in a 1997 nissan micra with 40hp. The micra can cruise around the track basically indefinitely, stopping only for fuel - and complete the race days after the f1 car. A road is a road.</p><p>This is not the case with mountain biking. All non mountain bikes basically explode on contact with mountains. It's self selecting such that people who continue to mountain bike past the first outing or two, must do so on a purpose built good quality bike.</p><p>It is in this distinction, that you are missing the point.</p><p>It's unacceptable to me that when I have _clearly_ been talking in the context of real mountain biking, you are now deciding, it seems, to take the totally walked back, side stepped, and frankly revisionist approach of only now saying "well technically these bikes are labeled mountain bikes so I'm right". Nuh uh.
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 <a href="vote?id=29815595&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes<p>Yeah, and everybody else was pretty clear and explicit that that perspective is irrelevant to, like, 95% of people.</p><p>Edited to add:</p><p>&gt; You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.</p><p>That's not the problem. The problem is that you started out by confusing the "actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein" with this discussion, which was an ordinary amateur consumer talking about ordinary amateur consumer products and reviews thereof, and every time someone tried to steer the discussion back to the topic at hand, you've gotten more and more snitty-snotty about your irrelevant No True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective.</p><p>HTH!
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 <a href="vote?id=29777871&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Tell me, when you learned to drive an automobile, was it on a $55k BMW?<p>It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else. After all, if the hobby doesn't "take" and you move on to a different hobby, at least you haven't wasted too much money.</p><p>&gt; This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box.</p><p>But if the buyer of this laptop was happy with the games he was playing on this laptop, why are you getting bent out of shape? Sure, he can't run the latest AAA game in HD, but it's clear that it is working for him.</p><p>Now I actually get this attitude from gamers often because I have a 1st-gen i7 (from 2011) with no SSDs but a modern video card (GTX 660ti), running <i>Linux</i> of all things.</p><p>I say I use it for work and gaming, and the response I get from gamers is very similar to yours - that my "gaming" machine is trash; I should throw everything out (maybe keep the video card) and get a new machine.</p><p>The thing is, it works for me - I play mostly Starcraft 2 and have played Far Cry [2/3/4/5] on it. Those are demanding AAA games. It works for me.</p><p>Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it).</p><p>You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.
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 <a href="vote?id=29779744&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>All of these analogies are bad.<p>For the "Did you start with a 55k bmw".</p><p>No, but for mountain biking I started with an entry level hardtail cannondale that if it was given to someone today, 15 years later, would still be a fun and safe bike to take down your average mtb trails. (Roughly the same cost as this person's bike, new.)</p><p>The analogy is bad though. Learning to operate something in the category of cars is not analogous to starting what you believe to be mountain biking.</p><p>More apt, would be to ask me about starting a subset of driving as a hobby - like rally driving.</p><p>"If you were going to start rally driving would you start with a 200k race spec subaru, or a 1.5k ali express golf cart car with the word rally written on it?"</p><p>I would answer, as I did - neither. I'd get something second hand and more appropriate at the same price point.</p><p>&gt; It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else.</p><p>If you are ok with 1) rewarding the scam artists that make these 2) contributing to a culture of low quality throwaway goods and 3) using unsafe and inappropriate tools for the job - go ahead.</p><p>&gt; You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.</p><p>Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a dollar store lawnmower that would break in x mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe. And I'll be fitter. And it will last a lifetime.</p><p>&gt; Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it).</p><p>I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies.
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 <a href="vote?id=29780045&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.<p>&gt;</p><p>&gt; Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a lawnmower that would break in 10 mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe.</p><p>Firstly, OP said it lasted a year, not 10m. We aren't comparing something that lasts for 10m with something that lasts a lifetime, we are comparing something that lasted for a year with something that lasted longer (not a lifetime).</p><p>Secondly, does it matter if it is possible to get further with the expensive tool if you're not going that far in the first place? If the cheap tool lasts long enough to never require replacement because it isn't used for the entire distance that the expensive tool would be used for, why bother?</p><p>Thirdly, a scythe is not a replacement for a lawnmower that lasts 10m. If you're mowing a green at the golf course, a lawnmower that lasts 10m beats out a scythe that lasts a lifetime.</p><p>Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it.</p><p>&gt; I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies.</p><p>You'd lose that bet, because I give it all the time. Here's the advice I gave out, and how it turned out.</p><p>(To a nephew, wanting to learn guitar, at start of pandemic) "Why a $500 Yamaha? Buy a $50 guitar if you've never laid hands on one before." He only lost $50 before realising that it was not as easy as he'd thought. He would have lost even less had he simply accepted one of my old guitars.</p><p>(Acquaintance who wanted to learn to weld): "Don't get a $1000 welder; why not take some classes first to see if it's something you want to do?" After three lessons he decided that woodworking is more practical. Saved $1000 dollars there.</p><p>(To my brother-in-law thinking about getting into DIY, four years ago): "Don't get a top-of-range set of tools: Buy a cheap set and then replace the tools as they break with expensive tools." He's not yet replaced any tool in the cheap tool set, because he found that he didn't really enjoy fixing his own stuff. Good thing he didn't spend $1000s on tools.</p><p>If you were to stop and think about it you'd realise that the majority of first-time buyers in any hobby field aren't going to stick with it long enough to make the more expensive option worthwhile. If you were in the hobby for any length of time (i.e. not a newcomer) it'd be obvious as you see people join and then leave. The fact that you haven't seen this tells me that you're still quite new to it. Or maybe you just don't have that many hobbies.</p><p>In fact I still give this same advice wrt all of my hobbies: pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it.</p><p>My hobbies include playing music, painting/drawing/sketching, auto repair, metal-working and wood-working, household DIY (plumbing, plastering, etc), gardening, writing (fiction), electronics (including embedded software), basket-weaving, sewing, cooking ... and a few more that I forget.</p><p>In every single one of those hobbies I meet new people who started with the expensive stuff that would last a lifetime, but they only needed it to the last the 3 weeks it took them to decide that they do not like it. Most hobbies are abandoned before even the cheapest kit breaks.
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 <a href="vote?id=29787624&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it.<p>Gotta heavily disagree with you on this point. Not about the sticking to a hobby, you're spot on about that, but about the advice given being "crap".</p><p>If you walked into an an actual bike shop and asked them if a $700 hardtail e-bike was a good first choice, they would tell you something like: "oh, that's far too cheap for a hardtail e-bike.. they must've cheaped out heavily somewhere to get it at that price point and trust me, you don't want to be on it when you find out what they cheaped out on. If you want an entry level hardtail e-bike, you'll probably need to spend x dollars more or you can spend about the same for a non-e mountain bike that is a decent entry level one. Just depends on what you are looking to try. If that's too much, second hand is probably your best bet."</p><p>Granted, the advice would be different if you already bought it. They would simply warn you that it's probably not strong at all and to be careful taking it on any trails.</p><p>&gt; pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it.</p><p>Great advise. I fully agree. The thing is, entry level hardtail e-bikes typically go for much higher than $700. Ask anyone into biking about this and they will be concerned about the integrity of the bike at the price point for that style of bike. E-bikes are expensive. You are looking at entry level mountain bikes at that price point, not entry level mountain e-bikes.
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 <a href="vote?id=29786126&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>A year for a bike is a dogshit lifespan. You can get decades out of decent bikes. The comparisons is reasonable, given you twisted the conversation to pivot around lawnmowers.<p>I see the rest of your comment is nothing but accusing me of giving bad advice, followed by examples of exactly the same kind of advice I gave or would give, mixed with a dose of bragging about being in touch with pro... welders, cooks, gardeners and other normal jobs that everyone has contacts in. Except basket weavers. I'll give you that one.</p><p>Way to totally miss the mark.</p><p>If you drop the basket weaving and gardening, and add mountain biking, machining, and lockpicking - we're about the same on being over-hobbied individuals.
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 <p>I know someone who dumped 8K on a gaming rig to play Minecraft and 2d games. At the other end, some people will spend too much money just to play “entry level” and have no idea what they actually have or need to be successful (not just video games and computers!).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’m still rocking my aluminum hardtail Trek I bought in college 25 years ago with the (gasp) three front derailleurs and the Rockshox Judy front fork. I had no idea that the tech had changed that much since I don’t ride seriously any more.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29785588&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :)<p>It seems far more like its someone buying that cheap laptop, primarily using it to surf the web and play solitaire (or FPSes from 2001) and talk about how great it is. And it is great for what they're doing. Who needs 8 cores and 32 gigs of RAM? The answer is some subset of people between "everyone" and "no one".
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 <p>eh, you can buy a great hardtails for 800-1.2k, even less if buying second hand. the main thing to point out is that at $700 <i>including</i> all the electronic add ons the components will be worse and trail rideability/durability will suffer significantly compared to even a low end mtb at the same price range. I've let friends use my nice bike while I ride my crap "general purpose" bike and it works on easier trails... (probably) safe enough on those trails, but still wouldn't recommend it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>So obnoxious. "Hey, I really like this entry level bike!". Typical HN response: "no you don't, it's trash. And if you do it's because you're trash."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>FWIW I also got an E-bike in that price range and it began to seriously degrade after a year or so of daily use. It was great for that first year, though. If I were to get another E-bike, I'd move up to the mid-tier price range.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775428&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>What started to degrade specifically? Did you try a new battery?<p>This was my first ebike, so I wanted to test the waters with something cheap. If it starts falling apart, I'll probably build a custom one or two and spend more money since ebike riding's been working great for me to get consistent exercise and go on trails more conveniently.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775732&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I started losing battery life and motor torque (though maybe this is related to the battery -- this is not my area of expertise). Hills that I used to be able to cruise up without much effort started to require real work to assist the motor. Battery life degraded to around 50% of the initial capacity.<p>I think your strategy is totally valid, and I do that with most power tools in my shop. Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade.</p><p>For me, I actually side-graded to a Onewheel electric skateboard (<a href="https://onewheel.com/">https://onewheel.com/</a>) at the very beginning of the pandemic.</p><p>As a commuter vehicle, it's less practical than an e-bike. You can't carry as much (limited to a backpack), and it's almost certainly an order of magnitude more dangerous (but more fun!). The biggest downside for me us the inability to take my dog with me (I used to tow him in one of those bike trailers for kids). But all of these don't really apply in WFH pandemic times.</p><p>On the other hand, being able to pick up and carry the Onewheel opens up a lot more commute options that aren't as easy on an e-bike. In particular, pairing it with public transit is powerful. It's difficult or impossible to load a bike into crowded light rail car, but trivial to fit in with a Onewheel.</p><p>Where I live in Seattle, I can Onewheel 1.5 miles to the nearest light rail station in SoDo, take the train 7 miles north to Greenlake, and then Onewheel another 1 mile to my friend's house. The whole trip takes 40 minutes. It's 30 minutes by car.</p><p>I also go grocery shopping with it. In the store, I just stow it in the bottom shelf of the cart. This makes grocery shopping super frictionless, because I don't have to lock up a bike or anything. I just don't get more than 2 bags of groceries at a time. Grocery shopping is so frictionless for me now, that is not a big deal. It's a 5 minute ride (1 mile) to the store, I'm in and out in 10 minutes, and then back home in 5 more.</p><p>The only times I drive anymore are when I'm not traveling alone or when it's raining heavily (I am fine to Onewheel in the typical light Seattle rail).</p><p>It's really revolutionized mobility for me, much more than the e-bike ever did.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776089&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade.<p>I believe popularized by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, if I'm remembering where it hit internet-widespread from.</p><p>But an excellent point, because people don't realize the % of things they're not going to use regularly. Or the fact that it usually takes (time for the cheapest version to break) to figure out if you're going to use it frequently.</p><p>(Also, side note: absolutely no professional review site has any incentive to remind you that cheaper, used, or previous model gear exists or is viable)
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 <a href="vote?id=29777312&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Adam has definitely advocated that approach. Not that I'm some kind of authority, but I strongly second it.<p>Early in life, my uncle Ray suggested doing that and showed off an impressive collection of tools. And he was that fix it uncle that had a big influence on me as a kid. We tore into basically everything and I never saw him without some book or other close by. One thing he liked to do was stock the car trunk in addition to the shop stuff. Road tools get lost, loaned out, abused, whatever it may take to deal with a scenario on the road. To that end, I've put some of those cheaper high count sets that come in the fold up containers. Perfect for the trunk.</p><p>And a diverse collection is really the other side benefit. Gives a person a lot of options. Most of the time they all see light use except for a few. Going expensive limits the collection unnecessarily and that limits what one can do, or might attempt to do, again unnecessarily.</p><p>The value from having a broad set of stuff generally exceeds the replacements that will come along the way. And that's mostly true, even when there are periods of inactivity. Others may benefit. Doesn't hurt to lend a tool, or a hand to help someone else get through a project.</p><p>And frankly, as people gain experience, learning where tool limits are tends to cut back on the wear and tear on even cheapo tools. It all tends to add right up.</p><p>The other strategy I would suggest is scoring tools every year at yard / garage sale time. Estates are often great for this too.</p><p>Sometimes I will see a collection and just bulk buy if I can. Over time I've lost some while moving and that was a great way to stock back up and have a lot of options for not very many dollars.</p><p>The only variation I would suggest is to avoid very rock bottom stuff, like dollar store, or that crap in the hardware store promo bin. Some of those might not even survive the first use! But, it can be hard to tell too, YMMV.
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 <p>In my shop, the only thing I regret buying the super-cheap model of is a bandsaw. It's just so crappy as to not even be particularly useful for doing bandsaw-type work. But I have so many other cheap tools going strong, the strategy is definitely paying off in aggregate.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776170&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Low torque? Curious what makes a crappy bandsaw crappy.<p>And yup! That was the math: (cost of cheap things) * (total number of things) - (cost to rebuy) * (% of things you end up rebuying) &lt;&lt; (cost of mid-range things) * (total number of things)
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 <a href="vote?id=29776838&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Low rigidity in shop tools leads to sadness. Even cutting thin pieces of sheetmetal can be miserable if the blade doesn't stay straight.<p>Sticking with wood or plastic on cheap saws/drills/mills can be ok, but really limits the kinds of things you can fix.
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 <p>Low horsepower, poor blade tension control, low clearance, generally made of super low quality steel that is prone to deformation.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774914&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Aw man. I just signed up for the $59/yr magazine + online access. I believe the bulk of what you're saying, and that CR's methodology has value. That said the following was also part of my experience on consumerreports.com -<p>In the bottom footer, I click on "Ad Choices". I'm presented with a list of advertisers in a TrustArc-branded dialog. To opt out of being retargeted by consumerreports.com, there are checkboxes for three vendors: Microsoft, LiveRamp Inc. and Google Advertising Products. For seven other vendors, there's no checkbox, just instructions to visit the website: Amazon Advertising, Bidtellect Inc, Comscore B.V, Facebook, Google Inc, Kibo Commerce, and Twitter.</p><p>Also in the footer (maybe only for California residents such as myself?) there is a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link. It opens a OneTrust-branded dialog with the option to disable "Share My Information with Third Parties on Digital". It also declares that "If you are a Print or All-Access Member and receive Consumer Reports magazine or Consumer Reports on Health through the mail, we may share your name and mailing address for direct mail purposes with selected companies offering products or services that we believe will be of interest to you." I followed a link to a separate page, which required me to copy-paste in my just-received membership number, to opt out of this.
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 <p>The upside is that the "positive" results should be good for a reasonable shelf life (or if you can find out the mfg date of what you're buying)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Do you also have to call a phone number and wait on hold for hours to cancel you subscription?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>During sign-up I think I saw a link to a cancellation URL - embedded in the warning that I <i>will</i> be autorenewed in 12 months if I don't cancel first :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wish CR did -more- reviews in each category. I know it's next to impossible to thoroughly review every single product in the world, but I would pay 10x the subscription fee if I could reliably go there and find all the current models available in the different categories.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>RTINGs is doing an excellent job in this space. They have a public queue where subcribers can vote on the next product they buy to review.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776304&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've got two problems with Consumer Reports reviews.<p>1. They aren't often comprehensive enough in their product lineup to be valuable. Obviously a hard problem to solve on product categories like consumer electronics where the product choices can count in the hundreds.</p><p>2. They aren't often including the latest and greatest in their reviews either, so I'm quite often not confident I'm getting the best bang for my buck going with their reviews.
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 <p>Yeah I sing the praises of Consumer Reports all the time. I think I pay $10 annually for a subscription and every time I buy or recommend something I check with them and so far have not been let down. Their reviews almost always include objective measurements and durability testing, it’s really surprising how people miss them among more modern options.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Many local libraries have deals with Consumer Reports to provide their card holders access to the CR member website without charge.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What more can Google even do about the onslaught of ever-evolving SEO spam besides hardcode some arbitrary "winners", which would have its own set of problems? It seems like a very hard problem.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>But that is the point - it is Google's problem, not ours. They don't have the best info anymore, so use someone else. There are other search engines. If Google wants us back, it is their problem to improve.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775182&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I’m guessing OP meant it’s a hard problem in general, not just for Google.<p>Also, the statement that Goggle doesn’t have the best information anymore seems objectively false. We can wish there were other players doing it better, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m open to the idea that Google is just riding their wave, but I’ve yet to see proof. I just see the search industry at large shedding quality results.</p><p>I think Google could step up its ranking game w/ ML eliminating a lot of bad patterns, but I'm not sure they have the will to do it, or are afraid of the consequences (every travel blogger selling an ebook will go apeshit about it for instance).
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 <a href="vote?id=29775334&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The fundamental problem is that the interests of Google do not align with the interests of it's users.<p>Google is not interested in serving us the "best" search results possible, they are interested in serving us their customers ads. In other words, Google search results are crap, because Google wants them to be crap.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775433&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>That's far too simplistic. Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers). I also think it's a multifaceted challenge that failing some genuine ingenuity won't really get solved.<p>Like I said though, maybe they are just riding their wave (dominance) at this point, but then I'd expect to see better results from a scrappy competitor already or soon. Here's hoping, but even as a discerning user, I haven't yet.</p><p>I'm confident that even if Google doesn't solve it, for whatever reason, someone else will eventually. In the meantime, results continue to degrade and the desire / reward to fix it will increase.
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 <a href="vote?id=29786025&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers).<p>I have no idea if that's even possible. The number of people who (a) Google pays to be the default engine for and (b) aren't even aware there are other engines is huge. If the various google search domains went offline, the number of people who wouldn't even be able to find facebook is probably a double-digit percent, let alone those who cannot figure out to fail over to bing, ddg, yahoo, whatever.
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 <a href="vote?id=29786906&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>There are more than enough users aware of search to support a fledgling competitor that managed to deliver higher quality results.<p>That competitor simply doesn’t exist yet, and I think that’s because no one has figured out how to beat Google at search (which is why I think real ingenuity is required).
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 <p>I thought DDG beat google when it first got going. It seems to have declined and in some cases is no longer even usable anymore.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775616&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Google with its hundreds of billions in revenue should be able to solve the problem, right?<p>Not when compared to the trillions of dollars of e commerce revenue that is the reward for getting to the top of Google results - even if you don't deserve it.
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 <a href="vote?id=29786074&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Total ecommerce in 2021 was around 5 trillion dollars. That's revenue, and split across all players.<p>Somehow I think Google with the ability to devote billions to solving the problem has more resources to throw at it than any ecommerce company. Except for possibly Amazon.
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 <a href="vote?id=29786434&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>hardcode some arbitrary "winners"<p>The point of google is to surface good content above bad content. If they can identify what good content is, surface it, by any means necessary.
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 <p>Seconding this. As recently perhaps as 7 or 8 years ago, I used to shake my head sympathetically at how antiquated their business model seemed, and wondered when they'd finally close up shop. Fast forward to today, with bots, review bribery, astroturfed "buying guides", and paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes Wirecutter, CR is now my most trusted source on purchasing anything over $100, or a product that could be crucial to my health.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29785196&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes Wirecutter<p>Evidence for this? Is it just for stuff specifically tagged as paid content, or is there any evidence that their standard reviews might be tainted by money?
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 <a href="vote?id=29790869&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Affiliate link revenue model: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecutter_(website)">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecutter_(website)</a><p>They claim the reviewers go in neutral, but I'm sorry, I just don't trust it. Thr fact that they only test a subset of products in a given competitive space alone makes this too tainted for my liking. (CR also doesn't hit every company in a space, but at least they're not incentivized to pick the ones that pay them.)
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 <p>For now I've been using the NYT wirecutter folks. They do a good job posting their methodology and you can usually dig much further for what problems they found.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29805749&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I had to scroll through a whole lot to get to the part that mentions wirecutter - the only one they really mentioned was webcams, with anecdotes about how that particular webcam they recommend isn't very good. Not much talk about why the methodology is wrong.<p>However I do find the webcam recommendation article wirecutter did to be of worse quality than the others they had. Its a very room dependent item. Its certainly easy to look at that review having played with other webcams and say hey I think their methodology sucks.</p><p>But I recently bought a new toaster oven - I had already had a kitchenaid one that got fine reviews on most sites, but I found it to be really inconsistant. The wirecutter site had photos of the uneven toasting of the same model I had, in the exact same way that mine was. They also showed photos of their recommended toasters. I picked up their recommended one. It toasts exactly as they recommended. So its not a total loss.
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 <p>This thread has now successfully been diverted from a discussion on Google search results to a discussion on CR.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't trust consumer reports any longer. they have amazon affiliate links. I suspect the current CEO is selling them out, bit by bit. Also, their current web format makes it hard to find recommendations on used cars.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775034&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You can buy most any product at Amazon, so the affiliate links are not an incentive for CR to rank one product better than the competitor they would otherwise also link to.<p>Plus Amazon affiliate links are standardized and automated to such a degree that’s there’s no chance they would manually penalize or reward CR for editorial content.
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 <p>I would assume that Amazon affiliate links pay more for more expensive products, so there could easily be incentive to reward expensive over cheap.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>CR has biases, and they leak out in various ways. When I was doing detailed car-shopping in the 1990s, I noticed that drivetrains in American-badged cars would show significant problems while Japanese-badged cars with the <i>same</i> drivetrains from the <i>same supplier</i> would be ranked consistently higher (e.g. Isuzu vs Chevy light trucks, Mazda vs Ford sedans).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>My friend in Germany pointed me to a site like CR but with a better track record. I have to ping him for the name again.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I just learned that you can get the yearbook including all tests from the previous year for like 10€, the other big testing magazine Ökotest (focused on environmental impact) offers this too.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773058&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I unfortunately share your experiences. However in Germany there is a foundation called “Stiftung Warentest” [1], which does independent testing of products. With reviews full of Amazon affiliate links dominating search results, I tend to purchase their tests for ~3 Euros more often than ever.<p>However this only works for popular product categories, but less so for specialized equipment.</p><p>My impression is also
that affiliate links hurt consumers in the long run as they reduce the selection of products in reviews or blogs to those the authors can earn money with. This however leaves out potential alternatives. More often than not the winner of product categories (at least those I was researching) of independent tests were not available from
sites running affiliate programs.
For example a consumer-grade lawn mower from an otherwise professional gardening company or a tent from a Scandinavian brand.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773413&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Sadly, Stiftung Warentest often doesn't have the expertise to properly test many products.
I often notice the shortcomings in product tests for products that I know and use.<p>I was reminded of this with their last test of 3d printers.
Their test results where far from what everyone with experience in the field would consider accurate.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773744&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>For some products, I agree, but realistically its about as good as it gets unless you do thorough research on a given product and are actually able to find a somewhat unbiased review.<p>Take washing machines for example. How do you know which ones are good and which ones are not? Public reviews from any website tend to only be a good indicator if there a lots of bad ones. I have 0 faith in the average consumer to accurately rate a product. Overwhelmingly negative reviews will clearly show a deficiency but positive ones are unfortunately more and more a gamble.</p><p>Stiftung Warentest isn't perfect, but they do, on most occasions, put in a high amount of effort to test products to the best of their abilities without any personal opinions. I don't know of a single other person/organization/website where that is the case.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774273&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Most washing machines offer quit similar features. The key difference is reliability.<p>Testing for reliability is expensive, so most likely Stiftung Warentest and similar companies don't do that.
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 <p>No, that's exactly what they do test and test well. Their model mostly breaks down for computer technology and peripherals in that space. When testing a mouse they would test how often it can click before breaking down, and that's only slight hyperbole. Might be a bit better now in that area than back then when I read their tests regularly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774662&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I bought their test of basmati rice and these monsters had an intern court the broken vs. whole rice grains in a 500g package.<p>I assume they only counted a sample of the the 500g, but it's funnier to imagine otherwise.
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 <p>My brand new LG turbowasher model lasted 3 months before one morning sounded like a hammer smashing something. I ran to the machine and a support bracket inside had broken. It took 2 months for them to replace it I was not impressed. It has since lasted 3 more years no issues but I doubt I would go with LG in the future since it was a horrible customer service experience getting my first one repairs under warranty. Had they helped me better after it breaking I may have said it was just a fluke and still recommended them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I base those sorts of purchases on duration of warranty. Recently bought a dryer, and apart from a brand that cost significantly more, they all came with 2 year warranties. One reasonably priced machine had 4, so I picked that one.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Counterexample: Korean auto manufacturers Hyundai and Kia offer longer warranties than Japanese manufacturers Honda and Toyota because that’s the only way people will buy Korean cars.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Wonder if they are taking advantage of bath tub curve and 8 years is slightly costlier than 5 years to a manufacturer. In India, Toyota is selling rebadged Suzuki cars offering lower cost and more warranty.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776318&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Warranty is ridiculous. Of course it's good to have if something breaks early. But normally I want my stuff to last much longer. Our fridge broke last summer: 30 years old. It had one repair 18 years ago. Our washing machine is 22, zero repairs. I hope it still makes it while. Well, none of them were the cheapest ones. From central European factories which might no longer exist...<p>Some would claim these old appliances waste energy. I am not convinced. We need to heat our buildings here from September to May. Whatever a very modern appliance warms the building less the heating has to substitute. It's all energy and losses produce heat.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777421&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>There is also all the energy required to churn out newer appliances that break and get recycled.<p>Getting one great one that will last for a few decades isn't a bad call. That's what I do personally.</p><p>And there are still ways to save, reduce energy impact. Moderation is a big one. Just be frugal and prudent with the appliances. That has a major impact and everyone could do more and capture those gains right away.
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 <p>They ran 3 machines of each model 1840 times and always exactly recorded the statistics (is the 60C program really using 60C water, etc) and results to test for reliability.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>As long as their methodology is clear you can at least judge their results for yourself and whether you consider them meaningful, even if it wasn’t perhaps as good as an expert could have done.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775366&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Used Gsmarena.com to narrow down which Android-based phone would be the best choice.<p>Ended up with the OnePlus 8T due to good battery life, fast charging and reasonable size.</p><p>Still very happy with that purchase, which wouldn't have been as easy without that site.
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 <p>Finding review of tech gadgets and hardware is quite easy. Even niche products usually have dedicated communities and sites with in-depth knowledge. It's the boring everyday products and large appliances like washing machines that are really hard to evaluate sicne their reviews basically amount to affiliate spam.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thanks for the links, but especially the printer one is exactly what I was talking about: They are all marked as unavailable on the site.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The US has Consumer Reports, which is similar I think... but yeah, only works for major product categories.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774221&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>For kitchen tools, there's America's Test Kitchen reviews (from Cooking magazine, IIRC). It's a limited segment but high quality.<p>On the other hand, it has the same problem as Consumer Reports: they only test and review a single model which will probably be out of production before you need one. On the third hand, if one manufacturer consistently gets good reviews (OXO Goodgrips, for example)...
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 <a href="vote?id=29777533&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Cooks Illustrated is the name of the magazine, and I recommend it to anyone who ever spends time in a kitchen.<p>Some of the purchases I have made with their guidance have been (trivially) life-changing.
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 <p>There’s also the NYT WireCutter which tried to do a good job isolating it away as an independent review source that you can trust.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Some of the WireCutter’s picks were fairly terrible, which makes sense: testing diverse categories of products is too expensive for affiliate links to cover. I’ve gifted dashcams on their recommendation that shot beautiful QHD but had MTBF measured in single digit months. The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773626&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>To be fair, MTBF is not something you can measure in a reasonable time for these kinds of review sites. Far better for this kind of thing is niche-specific youtube channels.<p>But in any case, what you're asking for here is a prediction of your future satisfaction with a product. It's a non-trivial problem even for the most innocuous purchases.</p><p>Will I like Lysol or Clorox wipes more? Who knows, and the reviews aren't going to beat first-hand experience in any circumstances.
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 <p>I’ve written extensively about this recently, but these days with $300+ “gaming” routers using crappy sweatshop software on whatever Atheros router SoC, many users would be much better served with legit SMB routing / switching / wifi systems that are available for around the same price.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773741&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've always found anything tagged as "gaming" to be lower quality and more expensive than the business machines.<p>====</p><p>This message sent from a Thinkpad business machine that I use for gaming (and ML, theoretically).
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 <a href="vote?id=29774042&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I mean this is a known thing in general; the best kitchen supply stuff you can buy is often stuff intended for commercial use, because it quite literally goes through the wringer with near-constant usage over long periods of time.<p>The problem is finding a place that sells commercial things to individual buyers. That, and sometimes what a commercial kitchen needs is vastly oversized for a regular house; you're probably going to set off your residential fire alarm very often with a massive commercial range designed for woks, for example, unless you also upgrade the ventilation, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774091&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I switched to Unifi access points and a wired router and switch and am much happier with the result.<p>The consolidation of router, switch and access point means you can't upgrade individual parts. It's the modern equivalent of the TV-VCR combo and most consumers don't realize they actually can be separated.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774088&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I didn’t know what good Wifi until I switched to using some TP-Link Omada equipment.<p>If you run your own controller, you can set up a small network (router, PoE switch, and AP) for less than $300. Hardware controller is ~$90. A controller isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t recommend doing a standalone setup.</p><p>Downside? It’s business class equipment and you need some idea what you’re doing. It’s not plug-n-play. Also, it’s layer 2 only. If you want mDNS across vlans, you’ll need to run a reflector. (Not difficult. It’s built into avahi.)
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 <p>I'd love to read what you've written. So far, my research into commercial Access points hasn't really been that fruitful. I refuse any cloud based management interface. For the router, I use mikrotik which has been great but I returned the access points from them that I tried. In the end, my access points are Asus home routers because they were the best I found.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773912&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.<p>Can attest. I finally ditched mine, got tired of it falling over multiple times each week.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775357&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've got the A7, which I believe is the same thing except it has some sort of ability to enable Alexa control for something or other.<p>Mine has worked great. The only issues I've seen are (1) the traffic stats don't count IPv6 traffic, and (2) there is something odd that sometimes goes on when a connection ends that can result in packets from the LAN side showing up on the WAN side without the LAN-side IP address being replaced with the WAN-side IP address.</p><p>The first is a bit of annoyance, and the second as far as I saw didn't actually cause any problems.
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 <p>Maybe you got a lemon I've been using mine for a while now. Not as nice as my old one with customer firmware but still consistent.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>My experience with NYT product reviews is pretty awful. I wish I could be more concrete. Tried to look in my history but I could have sworn at least one article was just effectively, "top 10 most popular on Amazon", with quotes from user reviews. Maybe I'm getting my sites mixed up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I believe you're thinking of The Strategist, which is through New York Magazine. That's basically their thing, to summarize Amazon reviews for you and filter through a product category based on that. I also don't really see much of the value in it, but I suppose I can see how someone might.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Bought a pair of audio-technica headphones based on their review. Sound quality was as described but it was so uncomfortable I returned it 5 minutes after picking it up. It was described as comfortable for long wear but it had a hard band with little padding and was uncomfortable for any duration.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Comfort is a pretty subjective thing. Your experience, while valid, is merely a single data point and it would be quite premature to disregard the review or even the whole outlet based on it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That fell to complete shit a while back. They are not wrong but I would ignore their rankings and focus on the review aspects</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I find Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are pretty reasonable for product categories where I just want a reasonable choice and don't necessarily have deep knowledge and preferences myself. And, yes, it's worth reading <i>why</i> they picked something. But if I were buying an interchangeable lens camera or a computer I might read their recommendation but I'd look elsewhere also. For a sprayer for a hose? I'm sure their recommendation is fine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>No, for hoses they recommend ones with the archaic brass threaded fittings common in the US instead of the far superior Gardena type.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’m a subscriber to consumer reports, but as it put Tesla Model 3, the most successful car in the past few years on the back as the least reliable, I feel that I can’t trust its results to be 100% independent reviews. I don’t have a Tesla, but if something grows so fast where people pay a significant amount for it, it can’t be that bad.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775205&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Are you thinking of the Model Y? CR gives the Model 3 average reliability, and gives it the highest overall score in the electric car $45-55k category. The only other car with average reliability in the category is the BMW i3. The Ford Mustang Mach-E and Polestar 2 get the next tier down for reliability, and then the Model Y brings up the rear getting the bottom tier reliability score.<p>In the electric cars over $75k category, everything except the Audi E-Tron gets the tier between worse and average, including the Tesla Models S and X. The Audi gets the bottom tier.</p><p>This article talks about why the Teslas other than the Model 3 get low reliability ratings [1]:</p><p>&gt; Commonly reported issues from Model Y owners included defective sensors that had to be replaced, problems with heat pumps, air conditioning, body panels that didn’t line up and water leaks in the trunk due to missing seals, according to Fisher. Owners also reported a variety of electrical and hardware issues with the higher-priced, and less-popular, Model S sedan and Model X falcon-wing SUV.</p><p>&gt; Older models typically fare better in reliability, as companies tend to make tweaks and redesigns to solve known problems, while sticking with the same parts and suppliers.</p><p>&gt; But Tesla deviates from this approach, Fisher explained. “At almost random times during the year Tesla will switch major components, suppliers or sensors and other units. The more you change, the greater the chances you’re going to have some problems.”</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/consumer-reports-2021-auto-reliability-survey-how-tesla-evs-fared.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/consumer-reports-2021-auto-r...</a>
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 <p>Ford recalled almost all their mach-e cars build until first half of 2021 with unglued roof, so that there was two different risks to roof fly away. 
As of december 2021 they still didn't fix the keys. Software glitch
and a security recall of seatbelt issues. 
And yet, it is more reliable compares to tesla lol :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't know anything about how reliable or not Model 3 is, but surely reliability != popularity?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It’s the growth that’s staggering. What I read is that older car companies changed the rating to include small software bugs in the entertainment system. As Tesla has much more non-essential features, these while these small bugs are not that important for the end user, can bring the ratings down vs other cars that don’t even offer the feature.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775100&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Tesla is well known to whip cars with sometimes dozens of minor issues. It’s a new company and these processes need time and experience.<p>The reliability data also is likely sourced from outside, such as the AAA, insurers, or any other place where car trouble data naturally accumulates.
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 <p>Tesla got it's fair share of issues, but they fix them and detect them fast. They adamant about security. Only Tesla and Volvo got their own testing facilities. 
Last recall of backup camera is actually a positive call. On a very small group of cars they got this issue. They called it a defect and recalled an entire batch ( 500k cars) to fix a potential issue.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776466&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, I was also frustrated. Tesla always been in the top. And boom, suddenly it stoped been there. I don't believe in reincarnation. 
All my peers who owns tesla are the most happy customers every, including me. For 2 years owning Model Y I asked for service twice. Once i damaged the car, they came to my backyard, I found it super convenient.<p>Second time I request a retrofit a speaker from a newer models and hardware + work cost me $100 usd. Engineers did all the job at my home while i was working. I only clicked from the App open the car . Oh well, consumer report doesn't count this things that makes consumers happy.</p><p>Consumer reports also doesn't count that after two years of ownership i received tons of new features and my car still feels fresh. I can put here a huge list. Since I bought the car :</p><p>- my range improved</p><p>- winter regenerative brakes improved</p><p>- automatic blindspot cameras after turn</p><p>- improved climate control, especially automatic seat heat</p><p>- more music/video sources</p><p>- dramatically improved autopilot</p><p>- view cameras from phone</p><p>- updated for free hardware for temperature measurements during one of the 
unrelated visits</p><p>- improved charging time ( faster)</p><p>- charging network doubled</p><p>- automatically synced profiles to my second tesla</p><p>- better charging scheduling, that works well with my local electricity provider incentives, saved me ~600 usd already</p><p>- far better navigation included way points</p><p>- better security when backing up ( sound)</p><p>- improved auto wipers, that become 100% reliable( more a fix)</p><p>- i don't include tons of fun stuff like games, easter eggs etc...</p><p>This are only improvements that are useful to me. The actual list is waay bigger.</p><p>Oh well... someone paid this journalists to portrait it in a bad way. But that basically shows how vulnerable is the system. You pay 10-20 journalists and boom, you got your marketshare of people who trust to some bs like consumer reports.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774610&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I'm in a strange position here. I fundamentally agree that reviews for the most part are absolute steaming pile of crap of a space for many niches. I work in one of the worst - web hosting reviews. It's plagued by fake affiliate reviews dominating basically every search result. I've been trying for 10 years to run a company that did reviews differently in the web hosting space.<p>Full disclosure, I have affiliate links on companies that have them too. But I also list companies without them and it has had zero bearing on any result in 10 years. In fact, when I launched I had to beg the CEO of the top rated company to create a special affiliate program for me. Why? Because he didn't believe in review sites and affiliates in the space. It took months, but I told him if he didn't create one, what I was trying to do would never have a chance because I'd never make a dollar - you're the top rated company. I want to do something different, but it needs to remain somewhat financially viable and if you don't have a program I'm dead before it starts.</p><p>So what happened in those 10 years?</p><p>Honestly, not a whole a lot. I have mediocre rankings (often page 2-5) on some of the most competitive terms on Google. I can't afford to buy the links my competitors do because they make 10x or more what I do pushing the highest paying affiliates and designing for conversion. The site has some traction within niche communities - especially the WordPress hosting space - because I also run annual performance benchmarks (<a href="https://wphostingbenchmarks.com/">https://wphostingbenchmarks.com</a>) where I document and thoroughly test most of the meaningful players in that space.</p><p>It makes a couple grand a month, I've disclosed the revenue publicly on IndieHackers (<a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/reviewsignal-e1ddcc26ac">https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/reviewsignal-e1ddcc26...</a>) and it's gone down since then.</p><p>The data I'm providing is almost surely the most transparent data tracking the industry and maybe the least biased (the reviews work by analyzing Twitter sentiment at scale - everything publicly documented in terms of ranking algorithm and published comments).</p><p>But outside little bubbles in communities that care, nobody noticed. Google doesn't care. Google happily ranks affiliate sites spending six figures buying links off apache.org and other open source projects (look at those sponsor lists on a lot of open source projects - hosting/gambling is a bad sign).</p><p>I got excited when my work fighting against .ORG registry price increases and sale at ICANN (<a href="https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regulatory-capture-at-icann/">https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regula...</a>) got a lot of press, even getting cited by the California AG in his letter which effectively killed it. I got backlinks from a lot of large news sites and traffic. I honestly saw no meaningful improvement in rankings or traffic.</p><p>So I'm stuck, I keep the sites running - part time - mostly between other projects. I've moved back heavily into consulting and other projects because being an honest affiliate - I can't compete. Providing honest, transparent data and presenting it with the goal of informing versus pushing sales is a terrible business model. The majority of people simply don't care. A lot of 'in-the-know' folks read and get informed by my work. They advise their clients using it, and I never see any financial benefit from it. The broader world, especially Google, doesn't know or care.</p><p>Is the root problem affiliate links? It certainly skews incentives and pushes manipulation. If we removed them, what fills the void? Ads? Sponsored content? Something else? I don't think the problem goes away - there is so much money in some of these industries and the stakes are so high. Companies and people will take advantage of it one way or another.</p><p>How do we identify honest / good content from the garbage seems to be the bigger question. After 10 years, I'm don't have an answer and I'm certainly not being noticed.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774993&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This is a perfect example of how fundamentally flawed modern SEO is. @ohashi has been producing the best hosting reviews in the WordPress ecosystem since forever. It seems like at some point in the past decade on page quality signals have been completely drowned out by backlink signals that can be easily amplified by bigger content producers and a resurgence in cheap on page SEO tricks.<p>Sorry Kevin I don't know what the answer is, but I'd thought I'd just say a huge thanks for the great work you do year after year. It might be VERY niche but perhaps some sort of annual premium membership for professionals in the WP ecosytem might be something that <i>might</i> work? I'd certainly be happy to support your work on an ongoing basis with access to niche "members only" performance reports on things like WooCommerce benchmarking tests etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776002&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks edbloom!<p>It really does help motivate me to hear people get value from my work, because it definitely isn't financially motivated at this point.</p><p>I appreciate the offer of premium members only payments. I want my data to be public, I like open sourcing my contributions when possible. I think transparency and openness are the key to better reviews. So I've not ever approached that route. I've also avoided taking any sponsored money from web hosting for any sort of advertising because of even the potential conflict of interest (many have offered to sponsor those benchmarks).</p><p>There might be something in the works to help it financially this year, nothing really concrete, but I'm exploring some new options. Ultimately though, I'd rather it wither and die than just doing what every shitty affiliate ruining the space has done.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775875&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Answer, if you want to make money is play Google's game. Go get some VC funding to buy ads. Google with put the ads on their front page which will boost your search results. Eventually you'll figure out you dont even need a good product, you win with a mediocre product and a lot of SEO/ad spend.<p>Break Google up. Course that will never happen as politicians like the power Google has over the internet in the hands of a US company.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775948&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The whole reason I built what I did was because after a decade in the web hosting world, I still couldn't name a review site that was worth referring anyone to.<p>I wanted to build something different and meaningful. I did. It just hasn't mattered in a broad context.</p><p>If making money was the goal, I'd put whomever wants to pay me $300/sale first and pimp them out as the best company in the universe. Fuck that. I hoped that I could make a reasonable amount (at least enough to keep it going and maybe scale it a bit) and create a more honest review space.</p><p>Winning in this case isn't defined by money earned, you're advocating a race to the bottom I wanted to avoid. Google needs a shakeup and so does search as a whole.
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 <p>Why not go through the direction of having a patreon or other monthly donation? No need to necessarily give rewards, just asking for contributions</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29787906&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I am honestly having a hard time articulating why I don't like the idea of people donating their money to me for what I do. I will try, maybe I am irrational?<p>There is so much money being passed around in web hosting review space, by companies to affiliates. I still make thousands per month off these affiliate deals. If my site were to rank at the top of search engines, I would be plenty compensated. Having individuals sponsor the work and it continuing to languish is a position I'm not really a fan of. A single sale commission can range from a few dollars to high hundreds or occasionally a thousand+. I can't imagine enough people wanting to donate a meaningful amount that would change that equation. I'd personally feel bad for every Patreon sponsor putting in 5,10,20 dollars because I might feel like I'm not doing enough with it. If those people just sent one person who ended up purchasing via a link on my site, it would likely outweigh most donations, it would also spread the reach to places I likely can't get to.</p><p>That's just what is running through my head, I don't know if that makes any sense.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776443&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Is your business model capable of sustaining a paywall of the most useful value, by eliding the information? Your affiliate links still point to your review effort, but the actual top ranking information is behind the paywall.<p>Make it a variation on the "businesses pay for business-class stuff, amateurs get the free stuff" model.</p><p>For the top say, 20% ranks, it is behind a paywall. People will know which vendors are members of the set of the top 20%, but not their ordinal collection. The bottom 80% members of the set's ordinal collection is displayed. If I'm looking for a site to store Grandma's cat pictures, the bottom 80% is probably good enough.</p><p>You could also tilt the paywall so free only reveals who NOT to do business with, and who ranks at the bare minimum acceptability.</p><p>You can have the paywall only enforce an embargo, instead of all historical results. Say some period beyond which the businesses that can afford to pay you will not care for the results, like a year or whatever.</p><p>You can have a "free hour(s)" once a review cycle just before when you publish where the in-the-know crowd can get the results for the newest review cycle, tied to a YouTube livestream, where you do a monetized Q&amp;A.</p><p>There are lots more variations to ponder, but I can't help but think there must be more useful ways to slice and dice the valuation of the information here, and monetize in tranches like finance and entertainment do, instead of all in one go.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776772&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I guess the problem is two fold, could I charge some people a premium for premium information? Absolutely, yes.<p>Does hiding some information behind a paywall fit with my goal of a better review landscape in the web hosting industry? Sadly, no.</p><p>Sure, I would come out financially ahead, but the industry basically wouldn't be any different. I'm not going to rank any better or have my information spread more effectively behind a paywall. The number of folks impacted would also surely go down as many wouldn't pay.</p><p>If the goal is simply profit maximization at this point, there are definitely avenues to explore like what you've suggested. That's boring to me honestly, unless it can have impact to along with it. I do appreciate your thoughts on the matter and suggestions.</p><p>Personally, if it gets to that point I'd rather sell it off and move on to working on something else. Most of us are software developers and entrepreneurs. I'd rather build something more interesting and with more potential. I can make money doing consulting work any day, after 10 years, the allure of simply trying to profit maximize on what I built by introducing barriers doesn't appeal. That might be part of the reason it hasn't been as successful as it maybe could have been. I suppose that's the hill I may die on - open, honest, transparent review data for everyone.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777491&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Aha, that makes it much more clear. You likely can achieve your aim with more marketing, along the lines of setting narrative in the industry.<p>You already have an objective measure to flog, build a "council" or "board" around it, with the "Platinum" members being the providers who were most consistently in the top three ranks in all the past reviews. Get some good writers who can whip up some clickbaity articles that would find placement for some fun.</p><p>"You're getting cheated out of bandwidth if you don't use these web hosting providers!"</p><p>"Most Web hosting providers don't want to let you know this secret council!"</p><p>Make it tongue in cheek, self-parodying maybe to the clickbait industry.</p><p>Intermix with and reference to some more serious PR to avenues where industry people are likely to read it, where you lay out your concerns of improving the industry and the benefits to them. Make the report red-orange-green-easy to at-a-glance interpret for non-technical management for good-enough outcomes, then analyze the results into a historical trend for the aggregate industry's progress.</p><p>Honey versus vinegar, basically.</p><p>Your consulting expertise on designing projects to make it easy to transition between providers, and a calculator to compute when to pull the trigger to perform the transition would probably more than pay the bills.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777981&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Maybe the marketing hasn't been great. But nobody seems to care. The status quo benefits the companies that get the most marketing, why invest in trying to change the rules that benefit them?<p>I tried some more expose type stuff, revealing spam networks operated by hosting companies, publishing pay to play attempts, exposing fake reviews and even getting one CEO on record supporting astroturfing. Despite how outrageous this behavior is, it never gets much attention. That last company I'm talking about tends to be on all those affiliate garbage sites you will see and has popped up in the past few years (<a href="https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2018/07/22/hostinger-review-0-stars-for-lack-of-ethics/">https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2018/07/22/hostinger-review-0-...</a>). I make sure to let as many people know as possible anytime I see the brand. But their marketing/astroturfing campaign certainly dwarfs anything I can do. And most people don't care. The publishers take the money, the company takes the customers and funnels more money into deceiving poor customers via affiliates and search. The only loser is customers as a whole, who have little voice or power in the equation at any level.</p><p>In little bubble communities, I do have some traction and recognition. People may know, but they tend to be echo small chambers. Sure, some people flow in and get recommendations. But the majority of people, it's just who ranks at the top of search results. They don't invest in doing deeper research. They want to see 'X is the best product' and move on.</p><p>That's another problem, nuance. Is there a best web hosting provider? Not even close. Even with a very specific use-case, it's extremely rare to say, yes, this is the best company. I've been tracking 10 years of data and no company comes close to perfect reputation. The extreme top just crack into 80% range in terms of positive sentiment. The generally pretty good are in the 70's. That means 20-30% of people are having bad experiences with the best companies.</p><p>I've publish the review data with ranks based simply on statistical numbers, but I don't do ranking for performance benchmarks. I also encourage that it's one data point, simply being in the fastest tier or having the highest consumer opinion doesn't mean it's the best. There could be other factors which matter.</p><p>For example, Pantheon is the perfect company for has a great reputation but I wouldn't recommend it to most people to consider. First, they specialize in WordPress and Drupal. So if you're not on those platforms, it's not relevant. Even if you do, they are very opinionated hosting. If you have a development team and want strict Git workflows where code moves up and data moves down, they are fabulous. If you're a semi technical person who mostly does marketing, it's probably a terrible fit because you don't want to learn Git, have to push every change through testing, staging and then production to make progress. But their hosting in my tests were fast. They have great consumer reviews. For the people who it makes sense for, they love it. And I would recommend it to probably less than 10% of people who meet the basic criteria of using WP/Drupal for the reason stated above.</p><p>As far as consulting experience goes, I actually end up consulting more for the people who build sites. After running the largest benchmarks for WordPress for ~8 years now, people have brought me on to help test new WordPress products or scale existing sites. That's more interesting and rewarding honestly seeing direct results, being compensated to help them achieve goals. My compensation overall is okay, it's just not coming from reviews these days.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774671&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I was always fascinated by the idea of "field testers" testing products in their daily lives and writing a short review about their experience. A cook would write about a chef knife, a post officer about comfortable all-weather boots, a craftsman about a tool etc.<p>The biggest problem would be how to incentivize such people, but gamification and some monetary rewards from the community could probably solve this.
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 <p>A big part of the best wire cutter reviews are the “why you should trust me” introduction. Some of their reviewers really know their stuff, others obviously less so. You can calibrate your expectations accordingly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773439&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>They are OK, but I remember when they decided a Nokia phone was better than an iPhone.<p>Tests usually have subjective criteria that determine the ranking.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773484&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; which does independent testing of products<p>Can we have some independent testing of web search engines?
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 <p>Just one data point, but I've had a hard time trusting then since reading a headphones section they had in the physical magazine quite a few years back. The number one rated headphone was the Bose QC3. Great noise cancellation and comfort, sure... But certainly not better audio quality than so many other products in that price range. All rock / metal sounded so muddy I had to return my pair within a few weeks.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I have used their tests in the past and I’ve never regretted a purchase influenced by their tests.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773576&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Yep; a huge portion of Google results, especially for spicy searches like “best ______ 2021” are just lists of affiliate links to top 10 selling items on Amazon from made-up brand names that are rotated once a product receives a few bad reviews.<p>It’s really hard to find legit review sites; at least Wirecutter seems to actually test things, but sites like SeriousEats, OutdoorGearLab, Carryology, DCRainMaker, SoundOnSound, Adventure Journal, Magnetic Magazine, The Loam Wolf, etc that are quite niche / domain-specific are where I go for actual trustworthy reviews.</p><p>I agree that Google seems to be dominated by clickbait ad-riddled BS SEO sites now more than ever, and I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the bills. I’ve posted about this before, but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that. The difference to me is that I’m willing to reward actual reviews and effort with rev share if I decide to buy something reviewed, but I’m super unimpressed with all the irrelevant ads we still get in 2021 despite having so much personalization data about users.</p><p>Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced. They seem to be totally missing this signal, showing me ads for some category of thing I already purchased for a very long time after I don’t need any more suggestions.</p><p>Lastly, I would literally pay per month for an Amazon search that filters out all the fake brands. If I search for “webcam”, there are half a dozen brands I want to see, yet instead I’m forced to sift through piles of junk that I would never even consider purchasing to find what I’m looking for. I’ve heard that Amazon knows this is a thing but chooses not to fix it due to some psychological allure of sifting through the junk to find the nuggets of gold. In the worst cases, I have to use Google to find stuff on Amazon because their own search is so horrendous, with the categories being an absolute joke.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775150&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that.<p>Looked at Netflix clicked on a movie that I though may be interesting, it was overdubbed in English since it was a Korean movie. I watched maybe 5 minutes of it then exited. Go to YouTube and suddenly Korean videos are being suggested.</p><p>At a car dealership with my sister she asked me to be there for support when she leased a car. At home same day hours later YouTube again it is plastered with "how to buy a car" videos. I hadn't been looking for a car, never searched for anything like that in the previous days ever.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776683&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You could do a test. Get someone to take your (locked) smartphone into a well-known dealership for something you aren't ordinarily interested in. Blind test, you don't know where they took the phone. Google tracks the physical location of your phone (don't know if it's possible to completely opt out of that)... trivial to match that to "dealership X" given that Google Maps already knows about those. If in the blind test you can tell your friend where they took the phone based on increased ad activity, then there's proof.<p>A day after I started using an Android device: I cycled to work, and my phone gives an alert and asks me to rate X. WTF? Oh right, I cycled by X on the way. I immediately turned off what I could; no more popups like that but do I really think Google doesn't track my location any more?
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 <p>I've had my professional-subscription Wall Street Journal app run a full page ad for frozen jamaican hot beef patties (so good...) that I bought a box of at costco earlier that morning. Pretty amusing, just given how off-brand that is for ads that run on WSJ.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Not sure if guerrilla marketing or not. Nevertheless, it worked, sort of. Sounds like something right up my alley, but alas I'm nowhere near a costco.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29779837&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Pretty amusing<p>Went to a doctor over issues with my feet. Got spammed with ads covering various health issues. Patient data tends to be protected in most countries, no one should have access to when I visit what doctor and I find it insane that Google gets away with using that protected information to sell ads.
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 <p>Fair guess would be that you leaked that information somewhere along the way - putting the address into google maps, pulling up the dr office phone number on google proper etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I have an Android phone, so I wasn't surprised that Googles spyware managed to get that information, I was surprised that they are allowed to collect and use medical information about me without ending on the wrong end of various related data protection laws.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There are no healthcare privacy laws the the USA that apply to Google. Indeed, "medical information" is not generally protected. HIPAA only prevents "healthcare providers and healthcare businesses" from providing that information without your consent. If you disclose or leak medical information to other companies, they are not required to maintain confidentiality and can sell or use that information perfectly legally.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774606&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the bills<p>Google is not that short sighted. They know that if people stop trusting it to give good results then they'll lose their market.</p><p>I suspect the problem is just harder than it seems.
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 <a href="vote?id=29779311&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The problem is that no one is bothering to give you an alternative because they can't make money out of it.<p>Let's say I want to do a '10 best bikes for under $1,000' article. How am I going to do that well without actually going out and buying 10 bikes and being prepared to make hardly anything in return?
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 <a href="vote?id=29781330&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>That kind of article is trash anyway, they should limit it to 3 or 5 bikes not 10. Many best "auto" reviews simply have a category so they dont piss off any one auto manufacture.<p>Even if you look for the top 10 trucks, they will end up showing all the major brands, because they will break it down for: 4x4, extended cab, full size, mid size, ...</p><p>Lists are mostly garbage because you dont care about the top 25, you really only need to know the best item and the next best at a certain budget
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 <p>If Google deindexed the spam, that effort might actually be worth it for a bike shop to do an honest comparison. But so long as you’re just going to get buried by SEO spam, why bother?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>While that would improve things I still think it's rather unlikely that a bike shop would be willing to give anything but a great rating for the bikes the are selling. And if they are their suppliers might not like it. There's still a dependency.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>True, bike shops tend to hock one manufacturer. I still think reducing the SEO ‘reviews’ would create space for honest reviews though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>At the end of the day being shortsighted doesnt matter. They are a publicly traded company that pays their top employees in options. If the problem of spam becomes too difficult they will focus on milking the cow until it dies just like every other massive company that came before it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think they are trying to cater to people who search using questions and in that process they are ruining a good search engine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>And just at this moment, we have hordes of affiliate marketers working 24/7 updating their "articles" to say "best _______ 2022".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775206&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Just today, Google discover suggested me an article titled exactly<p>"Proton &amp; Atom LT vs Nano Air: Key Points ([month_year])"
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 <p>I would be very surprised if there wasn't a Wordpress or similar plugin to automate this.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773682&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced<p>This is a comment sentiment (I’ve already bought a fridge! Don’t need another!) and it is a bit of a failure mode. But, I think value on advertising around recent purchases to people is super high. A recent purchase, although often wrong, is one of the best signals you can get. So much purchasing happens in clusters (setting up a space, picking up a hobby, etc) that a specific person is in buying mode for a specific topic is crazy valuable. And there’s splash damage on the wrong ads. Maybe you don’t buy a second rice cooker, but the ad reminds you to get a toaster.
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 <p>Good point. I bought a wireless router, didn't like it, got another one a month later. I imagine the odds you'll buy a wireless router in the next month if you bought one in the last month are way higher than almost any other signal you could find.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775188&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.<p>This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this falsehood is beyond me. Do you think these advertisers are stupid?</p><p>-&gt; buy refrigerator. gets lost during transport / is damaged / “oh, I wanted the 550T, not 505T” / “works great, let’s also replace the one in the beach house” / etc.</p><p>You have to remember that these possibilities are competing with other ads that have extremely low rates of success.
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 <a href="vote?id=29850651&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.<p>&gt; This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this [...] is beyond me.</p><p>Because it continues to happen.</p><p>&gt; falsehood</p><p>The only falsehood here is your claim that this is a falsehood.</p><p>&gt; Do you think these advertisers are stupid?</p><p>Yes, apparently they are.
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 <p>Dcrainmaker has been "pay for play" for at least the past 10 years. He's very thorough, but not altruistic. There was a guy on Slowtwich that shared a conversation with him that was enlightening to that fact.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Someone has to pay the bills. I don’t think receiving money to do a review is inherently wrong, there are just too many products to afford to review, but having a rigorous process to eliminate or expose bias is important. However, it does suck looking for reviews of a product which is not a main player in the market or category.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I agree. He uses statements like "this was a test unit and I'm sending it back at the end. I will purchase one with my own money" to make it seem like he wasn't compensated. Be really needs to start it off saying he was, but not with the unit.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773793&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that<p>This also seems to be what Amazon is also devolving into. Amazon ads is the fastest growing part of amazon!
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 <p>Yes. Just searched for "cholimex soy sauce". 80% of the search results page was covered by an ad for mayonnaise...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774571&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I never had problems with fake products on Amazon until I looked for a usb thumb drive for the Arlo camera base station.<p>There’s a dramatic difference in price for 1T sizes. Some at $30. Others at $150. I couldn’t understand it.</p><p>One of the 0 star reviews said it was actually a 32Gb drive that somehow fools the OS to think it is bigger. Not sure how that happens but it steered me away from any of the cheaper options as I don’t need a headache.
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 <p>SoundOnSound is great, especially since they still host their entire review history. They tend to show up in my top Google results, when searching for older audio equipment at least. For things like mixers and audio interfaces, they've tested quite a few things.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775329&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>If Google really cared, dropping all pages with affiliate links, would get rid of 99.9999% of the junk.<p>And no, I don't care about the tiny, tiny number of legit reviews with links. I doubt I'd see them anyhow.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775517&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I frequently dream of building a search engine that for this very reason penalizes any type of advertisement. This problem goes way beyond product searches. Every time I look up a how-to for pretty much anything, programming, video games, fixing house stuff, all search results that aren't user provided like Stackoverflow or Reddit, it's always stuffed with useless info that anyone having the problem already knows about ant that's clearly just there for SEO or to create more space for ads. Non-verbatim example from yesterday: search: "Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye underground lake stuck bell" result: "Echoes of the Eye is the first DLC for Outer Wilds...blah...find artifact to enter the dream world...blah". The top, ideal answer should be a single sentence and maybe a screenshot.<p>Of course disincentivizing ads would never fly at google and an ad-free search engine would have a hard time being economically viable.
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 <a href="vote?id=29778710&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>If you would literally pay for an amazon filter, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and buy from dedicated shops?<p>Initially because I hate monopoly but also because looking for something decent on amazon is a major PITA I avoid amazon for nearly everything. If I need a computer, I buy direct to the vendor or to a computer shop. If I need new bicycle parts I go to an online bikeshop, if I want a new sampler groovebox, I go to a store selling home studio gears. Well this isn't totally true as I now favor second hand stuff but the reality is Amazon is not very effective at offering you the best things, and not even at the best price. Most online shops nowadays offer shipping time on par with what you get on Amazon.</p><p>In then end I don't see any good incentive to use Amazon. Some people will say centralized market place but if searching a decent product takes much more time than finding a good specialized store and getting decent product quickly you haven't really gained anything. Single account for all your shopping? Many shops offer buying without creating an account. Others will allow you to seamlessly create the account at ordering time and password managers make it easy to manage multiple accounts.
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 <p>Dedicated shops don't help themselves by having a convoluted check-out process that nearly always involves creating an account, figuring out whether ticking the box or not ticking the box will unleash an avalanche of marketing emails, then entering your payment details via some obscure 3rd party payment system, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Nearly all of them allows Paypal/Google/Apple pay among other. This is definitely not what I would call obscure 3rd party. Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read. And as I said many of them allow for guest access without any account creation.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Snark aside, making the correct check/uncheck often still results in spam emails anyway, such asking for feedback or once a year sales promo. I’ve noticed the majority of independent online retailers do this. I guess it works or they wouldn’t, just like physical spam mail.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29779712&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read.<p>I see what you did there.
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 <p>Not surprising. It's incomparably quicker and more profitable to list a few top selling products with affiliate links and a bunch of relevant keywords, than to spend significant time and money actually researching and comparing these products in a meaningful way.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773636&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; They seem to be totally missing this signal<p>Ok, but how would they know that you already bought the product? As advanced as ads are, they still don't have the Amazon confirmation telling them you already completed the purchase.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773859&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Google partners with at least one major credit card company[1] so their ad network should be aware of purchases if a particular payment system were used. I expect this is far more widespread than we realise (unfortunately) but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45368040">https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45368040</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774357&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.<p>that doesn't make any sense. By that logic they wouldn't want to do targeting at all, because targeting by definition reduces the amount of people you can show ads to.
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 <p>I imagine that Google does in fact use credit card data, but there is no way to tell if you already bought everything you want.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776457&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Is there some aggregation of these domain-specific review sites anywhere?<p>Wirecutter has been pretty hit-and-miss for me recently. I have found my best product recommendations through a bunch of random blogs who have some particular expertise.
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 <p>Isn’t the obvious solution to include the age (or the number of sales) of a product into its rating? This way they can’t just rotate the product/brand names.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773770&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p><i>Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" site.</i><p>I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed. If you aren't a coder and you want to earn a living online, blogging is a way to do that and Amazon links are a way to make it pay.</p><p>People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons.</p><p>If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.</p><p>I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues.</p><p>I've tried for years to take the high road, to not have ads or Amazon links on my sites, etc. The result is starvation and intractable poverty and everyone telling me to get a real job. (I tried. They didn't hire me and continue to cyber stalk me and steal my ideas.)</p><p>Anyway, I know all replies to this comment will boil down to "Quit your bitching. No one gives one damn if you die on the streets of starvation and we are so bored with hearing about your whiny problems." Rest assured, I am not leaving this comment with any expectation whatsoever that it will in any way help me.</p><p>But maybe after I die on the streets someone will pause and think "Maybe she had a point. Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives and we are getting exactly the crap we pay people to give us."</p><p>Because the "high road" where someone tries to add value and respect the fact that you folks don't want ads or affiliate links etc literally doesn't pay to the point of it will keep you underfed and either homeless or underhoused and then your poverty will be a new excuse to have no respect for your observations that "Hey, people, the system you designed is broken and this is why and how."
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 <a href="vote?id=29774257&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Well, there are at least two separate, though not unrelated, problems:<p>1. Good jobs are hard to find, so some people try to make a living instead by influencing what other people buy, in exchange for kickbacks from the sellers.</p><p>2. The sellers offering the largest kickbacks are never the sellers offering the best value for money, because if they are, a reseller can buy the products from them, charge a higher price, and spend some of the markup on kickbacks to product shills. This results in a systematic bias toward overpriced junk in heavily advertised products.</p><p>3. While some knowledgeable people do still take the time to share their knowledge and unbiased judgments, which is for example mostly how Wikipedia is written, Google and other search engines are increasingly directing search traffic to the product shills instead.</p><p>I agree with you that, given problem #1 and problem #3, problem #2 is sort of inevitable, and all three problems tend to mutually reinforce each other. But I think we could reduce either problem #1 or problem #3 by an order of magnitude without significantly reducing the other one. In particular, we might not be able to <i>completely</i> solve the SERP quality problem without solving the jobs problem, but I think we could improve it enormously just by writing a better search engine, which is an easier problem than fixing the entire economy.</p><p>I'm sorry to hear you're back on the streets, and I hope your situation improves before you die. I'm glad you're not dead yet because I often find your comments insightful. Happy new year!
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 <a href="vote?id=29774291&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not back on the streets <i>yet.</i> I moved a few weeks ago. I have been told this is a <i>temporary</i> solution and I live in fear, as I have for several months now, of ending up back on the streets and dying there.<p>I don't see surviving that a second time, for reasons I don't care to dig around in.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777488&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Crap... I have enjoyed reading you here. We have a borked up system where someone who has a keen mind and something to say ends up struggling. Not sure what to say here other than I hate it.<p>Making sure we have the basics available to people should be a top priority. And yeah, some would take advantage. I've reached the point, due to many people I know struggling, where I basically don't care. Let them.</p><p>The net good out of all that would be worth it, and maybe, just maybe a little less money is made, or efficiency or whatever crazy metric being looked at isn't peak optimized... Again, just don't care.</p><p>Given all we have and the smarts, tech, info available, we should not be facing this crap too many of us are.</p><p>That's all, just venting a little and I sure hope your situation can improve.</p><p>Happy Holidays and all that. You are one of the good people, and it shows.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774541&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>We need to solve the housing supply issues in the US. (I don't know where you live, I just don't feel qualified to speak to issues in other countries. I've studied them for mine.)<p>That's off topic for this discussion, but deeply intertwined with why so many people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics in favor of asking themselves "Does it pay enough?"
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 <a href="vote?id=29776517&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics<p>Deliberate social policy.
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 <p>It definitely is not completely unbiased, but the reason it works at all is the people who are trying to be honest, not the shills.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776597&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>That applies to our society at large, as well.<p>As for Wikipedia itself, I stopped contributing a few years ago, since I did not have the energy and the time needed to fight the systemic bias that the editors had (and have) on a variety of topics.</p><p>Also, 2021 was probably the first year in which I did not donate to Wikipedia.
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 <p>I would argue corporate shills keep some information confidential by removing specific things on Wikipedia. Arguably, they do this to protect cut-throat predators in powerful positions. Which is why these cut-throat predators have an artificially cleaner reputation at the expense of exploitable people arguably. I don't completely trust Wikipedia when it comes to information about politicians, rich people, famous celebrities, specific "philanthropists", etc. Ricky Gervais, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Graham Elwood, Lee Camp, Whitney Webb, George Carlin, Aaron Russo, and other people made me not trust Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia comes across as another way to put information online through rose-colored glasses to some extent for protecting people in powerful positions, such as the C.I.A. intelligence agents, by making confidential things nonexistent on public websites. People can claim I went down the rabbit hole all they want. But I know that the rise of Orwellian online surveillance, creepy phone verification systems, dehumanizing censorship, brainwashing social credit scores, decreasing human rights, increasing wealth inequality, cut-throat rulers, mental health issues from not being rich during this pandemic, and younger generations being less professionally skilled than older ones are happening internationally now. I find cut-throat rulers who have lots of money are keeping most people trapped during this pandemic via vaccine passports, not letting them renounce their citizenship, online surveillance, censorship, monopolizing the internet at the expense of online anonymity, not letting them be employees without coronavirus vaccinations despite negative side effects that killed some people or worsened their health significantly, forcing people into coronavirus quarantine needlessly that makes them financially threatened when they are getting unpaid while being quarantined, etc. From what I experienced, Wikipedia has favoritism of information that benefits the ruling class only. I would rather go to other online sources for truly investigative journalists that are not shills for oligarch-owned media companies.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773865&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I genuinely agree with you. People need to eat, and live comfortably and be able to afford things like medical care, a place to live safely etc.<p>I also think the blanket of “all affiliates are bad” is a bit much. I love supporting people who just do a good job. SEO spam is not what I call a good job, it’s a sleazy exploitation of the average consumer.</p><p>With that said, I have purchased many things based on what I consider honest good reviews who linked to affiliate programs and I do not regret this. I wish companies (Amazon for instance, as they’re rent biggest right now) simply policed their affiliate programs better to incentive good unbiased reviews sites that Specialize in high quality, and dropped the SEO spammers
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 <a href="vote?id=29774085&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Three problems here.<p>1. Skewed incentives. A company that buys "organic" product placement wants to show it in the best possible light, and increase sales. They don't need an impartial review, so the blogger has a hard time to produce one.</p><p>2. Fragility and failures. Affiliate links expire and don't get updated. Ads point at things no longer available. Ads spend an inordinate amount of resources on the viewer's machine. Targeting is inaccurate, despite incessant attempts to track and correlate users' profiles.</p><p>3. Direct payment is rarely an option! I personally would greatly appreciate an option to pay $1-2 and read an impartial review of something I'm planning to purchase. Maybe even $5-7 for expensive stuff. But there are very few places that offer this. Those that do try hard to peddle a yearly subscription. Also, it appears that I'm the minority, and the number of visitors willing to pay directly is too low to sustain the authors.</p><p>I still hope that it's Patreon and direct support by consumers what the future looks like, not corporate sponsorship and ads.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774135&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Right. We need direct payments to be an option. If someone is going to pay the reviewer, I'd rather it be me than the product manufacturer.<p>But I also agree that I think we're in the minority, and that most people won't do direct payments. I think this is the reason for the aggressive push for yearly subscriptions, because they know that a) it's hard to get people to pull out their wallet for each transaction, and b) it's hard to get people to <i>come back</i> to spend money in future transactions.</p><p>As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775689&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.<p>That’s my concern as well: I like the idea in theory but al increasingly thinking the reason past attempts have failed is that it’s more of a mirage than a stable alternative. Advertising has worked better for people with no money, people who disagree about what your content is worth, people who want to see before they pay, people who say they want to see before they pay but will cheat, people who don’t want to be constantly asked to make financial decisions, people who don’t want potential surprises of their kid/roommate/etc. uses their computer, etc. That’s definitely not saying that the status quo is great but it avoids a lot of failure modes which immediately become roadblocks if you’re asking people for money.</p><p>This has real societal consequences, too: we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc. but those sites have paywalls while a lot of less principled journalism to outright propaganda is free. I really wish we had a more convincing story for how to support things like that but it’s still unclear whether we do.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777524&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.<p>Man I don't know about that. In some ways, yes I agree with you. But in other ways I can't.</p><p>None of the major entities produces news and commentary from the labor point of view, for example. It's hard to get them to talk about media consolidation, news for profit, and a whole pile of other issues too, and it all boils down to a couple things:</p><p>1) AD driven models favor those who can buy the products and services pitched in the ADS</p><p>2) Conflicts of interest abound! The massive media consolidation we saw after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 really did a number on one of the basic dynamics we depend on, and that is many owners, many models, competition all tended to work as checks and balances. A small, indie house could run a labor story, or talk about Net Neutrality without having a conflict rooted in a big corporation not wanting to publish news and commentary that would impact it's bottom line in a negative way. Just one example.</p><p>Today, we've got investigative journalism relegated to niche players who are doing good, often quite expensive work that isn't being seen due to suppression and a misinformation problem that is not easy or cheap to solve.</p><p>Your point isn't invalid. I am saying it's more complicated than that.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777557&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I don’t disagree that there’s a lot to improve. I was just thinking from the very minimal perspective of how often they knowingly run outright propaganda. None have a perfect track record (Iraq &amp; Judith Miller come to mind) but then I look at the outright fabrications people share on Facebook and that stuff is always free.<p>This is an easy way to get depressed wondering whether we can successfully navigate a global news environment.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777740&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>It is depressing.<p>Those sites run propaganda :( Access journalism, Iraq as you mention, Russiagate... There are other examples not hard to find.</p><p>Kind of a mess really. When I was a kid, we had some class segments on news bias, and actually had to find and identify news and commentary, differentiate fact from opinion, and find pieces written from various points of view: labor, big business, left, right, etc... My own kids did not see any education of that kind. I did it.</p><p>I suppose another angle might be clarity. There is a lot of low clarity "news" being put out there. Fact and opinion are not clearly, nor easily, differentiated. That's a problem, and a major feeder to Uncle Liberty posting on FB...</p><p>I do feel competing with FB would be effective given some entity somewhere can get funded in a way that allows for a labor and or not pro-war point of view, and that's just as an example. Any meaningful differentiation that can contrast with the majors might work.</p><p>On the upside, global is actually a benefit! One thing people can, and I suggest they actually do, is get news from abroad. There does remain some of the older dynamic between nations and their various news services. It's possible to get a diverse take on the US that way, and it's what I do personally.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774401&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed.<p><i>we</i> didn't design that - they did. I used the Internet in the 90s on my 56k modem and it was mostly ad-free. Stuff was still free, but mostly because people created content out of curiosity and because it was their hobby (yes, I had a website and was using frames and image maps heavily) or university sponsored (IRC, NNTP, Mailinglists). I paid 5$/month for a shell account, later shared the cost for a dedicated server with a couple of friends (we had a traffic limit of 50GB/month) to offer content and services to other people - expecting nothing in return.</p><p>Then companies realized how much money was in, and suddenly all good, federated and free services were overrun by spam (mostly NNTP). To this day, companies like FB, Insta, Google etc. try to lure as many content-creators to users their "free" sites, while they actually pay with their data or the data of your content consumers - while the data is used to steal attention to show you ads for stuff you don't need. The amount of GDPR violations by those Megacorps is immense as they very well know that presenting a "reject all tracking" button as demanded by the GDPR ruins their business model (less than 10% actually agree to being tracked when presenting them the choice).</p><p>My solution to all this is easy: Ban all advertising on the internet, or, at least advocate to as many people as possible to use adblockers. Only when ads are gone, will people spend money on products such as FB and Youtube, and only then can there be actually competition - because right now, you can't compete with "free" services with any other model than using ads+tracking yourself.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775166&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons.<p>&gt; If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.</p><p>Even if no one used ad blockers and tips were commonplace, we'd still have these problems with crap SEO and affiliate links. It's like with technology products: they say "if you aren't paying for it, you're the product not the customer," but even if you <i>are</i> paying for it you can still be the product (e.g. your TV manufacturer putting ads in your expensive TV's menus).</p><p>Ultimately the problem is greed and the ridiculous degree of tolerance of it, unchecked by any cultural expectation of quality or virtue.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774743&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not going to say "quit your whining" but rather, maybe this isn't "the world we built", maybe it's "the way the world is". I know I've been guilty of thinking the later when I should think the former but really don't know what we'd change. Do you really think the internet would have flourished if it was pay per view (or similar solution)?<p>I remember using online services in the 80s where they charged by the minute. CompuServe, GEnie, and even just my ISP when I first got internet in the 90s. Data of 1 but I know that gave me a "use it as little as possible" mindset.</p><p>Further, if some groups set out to charge and some other groups offered "free with ads" I'm pretty confident "free with ads" would win (see Radio, TV, Podcasts as other examples of "free with ads"). So, short of outlawing free (which would likely never happen), I don't see how we'd have not gotten where we are at the moment.</p><p>That isn't to say we can't do better now but I'm less confident we could have conscientiously directed ourselves to better. I think natural forces got us her and will take people experiencing better to get them to switch better.</p><p>To put it another way, without tasting the "free with ads" kinda sucks, few would be willing to fork over $ for better.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774886&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I personally do not like paywalls. I had Google ads. I discontinued them.<p>For a long list of reasons, I want my writing to be freely available. I got my very first Amazon payout of like $16 or something a few months ago. I also got an email reminder that I am legally required to very prominently display information telling people I have Amazon links on my site.</p><p>I took the links down and thought about updating my sites to comply with the requirement and so far haven't, in part because I suspect the $16 was from some local asshole unqualified for his job (the job I applied for) buying ugly bike racks and plopping them down in bad locations all over my lovely downtown area like little piles of manure as a daily reminder of how corrupt these people are, how much they have shafted me for no real damn reason other than pathos on their part and they are ruining the town I hope to improve.</p><p>I was unable to readily find (affiliate) links to bike racks I would like to see in this town and I'm angry at what is being done to this town by these immoral, incompetent cretins and it causes me to think that I might actively encourage their shit behavior ruining this town because I'm so desperate for money that $16 on that day meant I could afford a fucking coffee which put an end to my splitting headache.</p><p>I do not wish to make the world and town I live in a worse place because I'm so desperate for money and I think taking the Amazon solution potentially pushes me in that direction.</p><p>Anyway, I don't know how to fix this. I try to tell people what it looks like from where I sit because I know HN has a lot of coders, etc and they aren't daily exposed to the reality that "If you choose to not be a sell out, you go hungry." basically.</p><p>I just want my life to work. I don't actually want to make what sounds like "political" commentary to other people. If my life worked, I would likely be all "Meh. Not my problem. I don't want to fight with these fools and trying to point this out is not worth the drama. Moving on."</p><p>But it does impact me. It impacts me to the point where I literally fear for my life due to my intractable poverty and sometimes I feel compelled to comment, though I don't really expect it to help me. Maybe after I am beyond help, people will stop wondering what's in it for DoreenMichele and think "She had a point. Let's find a solution that incorporates these observations."</p><p>This is possibly rambly at this point. I'm posting it anyway and then will try to stay out of this conversation.
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 <p>Don't mistake "people using adblock" with "I don't have a valid business model". Adblock users are a minority among people browsing the internet.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774087&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.</i><p>The problem is that the sane alternative, where people can get fed while selling quality a-la-carte content directly to the reader, doesn't really exist. If one or more review sites would work to develop a good reputation, I'd be happy to spend a one-shot $3 or $5 on their (for example) wireless earbud reviews. But this thing basically doesn't exist (or at least I can't find it, because of all the aforementioned shit-quality search engine results). Someone upthread mentioned a German site that does this, but then someone replied saying their expertise is limited and their reviews in many product categories aren't that great. Then we have things like Consumer Reports in the US, but I've found the quality of their reviews to have declined over the past decade or so; I've read some of their free content for product categories where I'm already knowledgeable, and I've disagreed heartily with enough of their findings to be skeptical of them.</p><p>When it comes to news and opinion pieces, I'd be fine paying on a per-article basis, but we have no established micropayments system, and I'm not paying $10-$20/mo for each of the 50 sites that come up in various news aggregators I read and have paywalls. There are a few sites and YouTube channels that I read/watch nearly daily, so I subscribe to their Patreon or periodically drop money in their donations bin. But the majority of the content I consume comes from various sources, from a list that changes nearly daily.</p><p>&gt; <i>Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives</i></p><p>Who is the "we" here, though? I would love to change this, but I feel pretty powerless to do so. At least not without making it my life's work, with a very high chance of failing at it regardless.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774198&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.<p>Support Patreon or similar. Leave tips.</p><p>One of my first big successes on HN got 60k pageviews and made me not one thin dime. No one left a tip. No one supported my Patreon.</p><p>I have been writing for years because I am seriously medically handicapped but educated. Writing is something I can do.</p><p>People don't want to hire me for resume work or other freelance writing. I'm a woman and former homemaker and most successful business people are men. They rarely want to talk to me about my work or how to succeed. Most often, if men try to talk to me, they are hoping for a romantic connection and from my end the experience boils down "All you horrible people are watching me starve but you think I will <i>sleep</i> with you??? Seriously?!!!!"</p><p>Leave tips (or support Patreon or similar). Tell people you leave tips on sites with good writing. Promote the various means people can accept cash for their online writing.</p><p>I don't know what else to tell you. But saying you can't make a difference because you are a nobody is part of the problem.</p><p>You don't have to save the world. Just buy a writer lunch or a cup of coffee, so to speak. Spread the word.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777666&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>A while back, I put a little in my budget for small projects. Some are software, others are writing, whatever.<p>It's not much, but I know very well it all adds up, and maybe a little positive energy plays out for you too.</p><p>What I did was quit buying my coffee. :D</p><p>And that worked out!! I have a little percolator, which I love when camping or something. That thing makes the best damn coffee. For the quickie at home, this is corny, but I got an Aeropress and it also makes a fantastic and kind of fun cup of coffee.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774531&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.<p>Or easier, adhere to the GDPR (at least in the EU) and provide a "reject all non-essential" button as demanded right next to "accept all" without any dark patterns, and their ad-business plummet and you <i>have</i> to demand payment for the service to be sustainable. So my point is, the whole thing can be fixed if Megacorps would abide by the law, and law enforcement would also not take &gt;5 years to act on violation lawsuits (see noyb's lawsuits against FB which are going on 8 years and even date prior to the GDPR).
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 <a href="vote?id=29775236&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've been fooling you--kinda for years, but I'm hellbanned. I'll post this anyway.<p>In all honesty, I haven't found a writer, or journalist, I'm giving any money to besides a few honest non-profits. (And yes it's hard to find a honest 501c3.)</p><p>I feel you should put the affiliate links on your writing. It's not selling out. It's selling out when you have good income, security, and a home.</p><p>I don't have any problems with average people putting up affiliate links, or ads.</p><p>It's the wealthy boys who can never get enough monetary praise I have a problem with.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776724&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.<p>People don't/can't pay for things anymore because trillions of dollars have been siphoned out of the holdings of the middle and working classes over the past 50 years. If not for piracy and subscription services, the music and film industries would have collapsed years ago. If you made people pay for the things they used to, they... wouldn't. Because they can't.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775627&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>For my entire life I've tried to become a programmer, went as far as studying CS for three years, never managed to get a diploma as I ran into some financial and health issues... you mention<p>&gt; I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues.</p><p>I think the real issue, is, the world is much bigger than the first world countries. I would love to have a diploma, to get a "real" job as a programmer for some random company, to add that "value" to the internet, to design useful software for actual people, etc. etc. But I was born in Eastern Europe..</p><p>I tried freelancing a few times through gac, rac, and scriptlance which later got "globalized" (all acquired and killed by freelancer.com, yay capitalism).. and I just can't compete with indians on that site, way too many of them, somehow quoting 5% of the price promising double or triple of what I can do somehow...</p><p>So I tried looking for that "Real" job, except I was born ugly as hell with broken teeth, so nobody would even take me seriously. Even one of my professors in uni told me once: "See.. if you could do less drugs and study more, I bet you could get an A, it's a B- for now..".. I never even tried drugs, but apparently I'm so ugly half my profs thought I was drugged. As far as I can tell, It's just nepotism right and left, people only hiring other pretty-looking-people-alike for both normal and startup-like jobs where I come from. Zero chance for me.</p><p>So on the brink of giving up on everything, I took a construction job for 6 months, which allowed me to save enough money for a plane ticked and my first month of rent in UK. Now I'm a Reach Truck driver in a warehouse.. making &gt;triple the salary I could make as a programmer in my home country, but slowly destroying my back and knees every d day.</p><p>Funnily enough, I've met quite a few programmers, lawyers, accountants, pharmacists and even a surgeon through my warehouse jobs in the last two years. Quite smart people, a few broken teeth here and there, a couple disfigured faces, husbands, kids, sick family, plenty stuff...</p><p>The internet is just bullshit, just like most of this society. Making money, jobs, starvation, HA! I don't even know what I'm trying anymore or why I still keep reading on this site.</p><p>Sorry for the rambling, your message just resonated somehow for me so I felt I should say something. Good luck to you!
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 <a href="vote?id=29776905&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I'm sorry the world treated you the way it did. We've set up a quite harshly unforgiving environment that in many ways impoverishes our souls in similar ways the harsh elements of the physical world impoverished our bodies before the rise of civilization.<p>If you have studied that much CS, then you likely have fulfilled many of the ACM recommended curricula [1] for at least an associates degree if not more. If that is true, then you have some options. Do not discount your dual fluency in English and your mother tongue. There is no shame in taking a good small-scale Internet business idea implemented in the Anglosphere and reproducing it in your mother tongue. There are numerous tiny ideas mentioned in comments here on HN that bring in modest sums, but fill a niche unlikely to have already been implemented in your home country. If it is enough to pay for a laptop upgrade once every 3-5 years, and maybe some beer money, then that's as good a start as any.</p><p>Bonus points if you find a Net-based business opportunity that also leverages your current UK geographic location.</p><p>Lift weights, eat right, sleep enough, and take good care of your body in the meantime, those warehouse jobs are no joke, and you are ahead of the pack by already recognizing that. If I was single, living alone, young, and working a warehouse job while working on my coding, then I'd abandon all real estate-oriented shelter, stealth vandwell, and digital nomad between free WiFi hotspots for my connection to free-tier cloud resources (CLI and tmux for the win on high-latency, low-bandwidth connections); rent-to-wage ratios are completely insane in developed nations' urban, suburban and exurban areas.</p><p>Stay out of the rentier trap. Trying to rent a room cost me a few years of unnecessary toil when I started out that contributed nothing towards my advancement, when for all practical purposes, I lived out of my car with the hours I was spending at a part-time job, on campus classrooms, labs, and libraries, napping in my car, and about every other day crashing back in my rented room that really was more a storage shed than used as an apartment. If I had a stealth van and student gym membership back then, then I would have been better off, but I was too stupidly proud to do that ("gasp, I'll be <i>homeless</i>!" was a complete red herring).</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations">https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations</a>
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 <p>You can raise funds for a software project as a pseudonymous founder these days, if you can explain your ideas clearly or can put together an MVP. That might help with the "other people judging by appearance" problem.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776664&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>After reading your comment, I visited your page and glanced around. Am I right in interpreting your specialty is coming up with how to turn a better phrase (writing)?<p>If so, then that's a very underappreciated domain at this time (much to our detriment, but that's for a different discussion). Not just in tech, but everywhere. The entire field has been aggressively monetized to near extinction; whatever writing doesn't directly impact revenue/profits, gets dumped onto line workers. And the results show.</p><p>The quality of writing and lucid ideas found in advertisements and landing pages is markedly higher than from say, in a somewhat-technical presentation to managers-of-managers. I've sat through more than a few quite underwhelming presentations that violated some of the most basic principles of presenting ("don't mumble hoping the slide will carry the presentation", "don't read the slide word-for-word", <i>etc.</i>).</p><p>There is a dearth of assistance for coaches to help improve those kinds of "writing". And a huge number of aspiring, gung-ho FAANG employees who are wondering why management won't listen to them. There's a gap to be filled here, and people with the disposable income to pay for outcomes.</p><p>Leverage your non-technical sphere as a strength (I liked your pull request journey, it is true that coders don't normally perceive and accommodate skill stratifications in our docs, a byproduct of the monetization of writing that killed too many technical writing/librarian positions in our industry). Perhaps look into positioning the writing assistance you offer to technical staff as a way to communicate to non-technical managers, where you help translate the technical concepts that have to be broken down to you due to your non-technical background, into ideas the managers readily grasp. It would help if you retained a lot of the corporate-speak that Rands in Repose sometimes writes about that you doubtless saw in your Aflac stint, and knew when to judiciously use it.</p><p>Maybe investigate some offer like helping coders write emails to managers. If that gains traction, offer small-medium-large presentation improvement coaching, based upon the length of the presentation (15, 30, 60 minutes). Where shorter lengths <i>increase</i> in cost. Then if that gains traction, offer coaching linked to an annual performance goal of "improve communicating with managers".
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 <a href="vote?id=29779540&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I agree with you. I think Google works very well. People expect to go on Google, pay nothing, and get good information. So industries have arisen that do just that. I find it amazing that I can type obscure questions into Google and get content custom crafted to answer my question.<p>Often the answers are not the best. What can I expect? I paid nothing for them! When I want good information, I pay for it.
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 <p>Both. It works very well for what it is. Considering that I paid absolutely nothing for it, it's great.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29781046&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Most SEO spam I've seen lately looks like it's produced by neural networks and maybe curated by people afterwards.<p>Have you tried making some content available only to subscribers?
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 <p>Even if you use patreon, people get greedy and eventually will sell out and put up reviews of stuff for affiliate links, free products for reviews, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You can't even search for GitHub issues anymore. You'll get some mirrored site that has the discussion, and from that webpage, you can't even get a direct link back to GitHub.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774308&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Github issue clones and StackOverflow clones pretty much dominate most of my programming related search results these days.<p>Unfortunately DDG isn't much better.</p><p>It takes a lot of effort to finesse a search query such that I can get a good result, like a link to documentation or a personal website where someone wrote something up (which is often more thoughtful than what Medium and Dev.to offer).
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 <p>At this point google is a shortcut to documentation. I look for the first link that looks like a readthedocs page. You could even short-circuit this and bookmark the documentation for the tool you want. It's going "backwards" in a sense but learning to read a manual well can be quicker than letting google think for you.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776091&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This surprises me because it's a major problem for me, particularly for GitHub. I end up doing this for clones that don't even link back to the orginal:<p>1. Search for something
 2. See the cloned issue but no results for the original
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 4. Search the repo directly for that text</p><p>It's awful. Seems to be a very recent problem? Maybe the last few months?
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 <p>It might be a function of your programming niche, but is it possible that you just didn't realize you were looking at a clone? These sites are <i>everywhere</i>.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's a portion of the content that's cloned: the question and subsequent answers or discussion. The styling is usually totally different, even the page structure is different, to the point that I don't realize I'm looking at a clone unless I recognize the copy from a specific github or stackoverflow page that I had looked at previously in my search session.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774540&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I run <a href="https://github-wiki-see.page/">https://github-wiki-see.page</a>. Please read the about page link at the bottom or visit <a href="https://github-wiki-see.page/">https://github-wiki-see.page</a> for an explanation. I put it up after realizing my GitHub wiki contributions weren't available via Google.<p>GitHub blocks <a href="https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/Languages">https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/Languages</a> and many other wikis from being indexed. In the case of the page you linked, GitHub serves the content with "X-Robots-Tag: none". The content of that page currently does not exist in Google at all. You can see the robot blocking header by looking at the Network tab in Chrome while loading the page in incognito mode or equivalent in other browsers.</p><p>As for having no link to GitHub, my service provides a huge button at the top and a direct URL to the original content. Please use those controls at the top to get to the content on GitHub. I do not selectively redirect to not trip cloaking detection or automatically redirect which risks the indexing helper being classified as a redirect in search engines.</p><p>If you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774728&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>From <a href="https://github-wiki-see.page/">https://github-wiki-see.page/</a><p>GitHub Wiki Search Engine Enablement (GHWSEE) allows non-indexed GitHub Wikis to be indexed by search engines.</p><p>This site will be decommissioned to redirect old links once the block is lifted or GitHub produces some other solution to index GitHub Wikis in harmony with their SEO concerns.</p><p>I do not see any wrongdoing from github-wiki-see.page here. They don't even amke money from it. Quite contrary, I do think that this is a useful project.
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 <p>Hah, yeah I don't make any money from it. I think I'm like currently $300 in the hole from experiments and queries with it until I had settled on the current ramen architecture.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Just cheap, low cost hosting. I didn't expect the tool to take off so I was just hosting it on Cloud Run. I host it on fly.io now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774430&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>That might be fixable, if people want to expend the effort. Wiki pages are almost certainly copyrightable, so the owners could send DMCA takedown notices to github-wiki-see.page. If they're not responsive, send the DMCA notices to Google, which should be required to delist them. Unfortunately you have to do it on a URL-by-URL basis, and you can only send notices for pages you actually own copyright for, so it would mean a big coordinated effort to get them brought down.<p>I just don't understand why Google themselves allows this and doesn't rank these sorts of sites lower. They're clearly garbage sites with low utility.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774548&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Please read my explanation at <a href="http://github-wiki-see.page/">http://github-wiki-see.page/</a> and observe why it exists. I believe it to be a site with extremely high utility.<p>It has already recently convinced/defrosted GitHub to gradually change their policy to not let GitHub wiki pages be indexed since 2012. For at least 9 years, people were writing content into GitHub and not realizing it wasn't indexed at all.</p><p>I'm happy to answer any questions or suggestions you have.
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 <p>I also do not host the content at all. That said, people have submitted outdated content requests if they move off GitHub Wikis to Google and they are honored.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774715&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Google puts substantial effort into identifying copycat content. The main way they do that is to see which site had the content first.<p>Unfortunately with smaller sites, it could be a few days till their search bot finds the content, and often the copycat sites have agressive scrapers so appear to have the content first.</p><p>From googles point of view, the copycat is the original, and the original is the copycat.</p><p>There are also some kinds of copycat content which users actually prefer. For example, sites which bypass paywalls, sites which quote other sites, sites that display decrapified content from another site, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774841&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>In the case of <a href="http://github-wiki-see.page/">http://github-wiki-see.page/</a>, the original isn't even on Google! That's why my copycat wins.<p>FWIW, GitHub seems to be letting some Wikis be indexed on a test basis and I am very happy to see they are outranking GHWSEE. That said, with the current guessed criteria, there are still many publicly editable wikis with many stars and publically un-editable wikis on repos with few stars but useful information out there that aren't being indexed.
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 <a href="vote?id=29772694&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>yeah, had this experience myself while purchasing holiday gifts. amusingly, it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.<p>it's funny because internet shopping became popular in the face of salespeople becoming corrupt under commission and performance schemes, now a big part of the commerce related internet is worse for pretty much the same reasons.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773161&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.<p>I still remember being in Best Buy and hearing the salespeople scamming less knowledgeable customers about how much computer they need or how important expensive cables are. I don't think there was ever a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".
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 <p>There was a time - the smaller the store the better. I agree big box stores were rarely good. But Radio Shack had excellent, helpful employees. Probably because RS vetted their employees carefully and paid pretty well (I know this from trying and failing to get a job there when I was around 16 years old).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773692&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I worked at Radio Shack. They had an extensive training program that all employees went through. There were multiple 50-page manuals for each product category. This meant training in A/V equipment and how to hook up TVs (which splitters and switches did what, how to wire many different audio setups, how VCR outputs worked, telephony equipment, pagers and Blackberries... etc.)<p>We had to go through all the certifications within something like six weeks of hire in order to be eligible for pay bumps and promotions. This even meant training on circuit components (at least knowing what they were, and how they were organized).</p><p>Any Radio Shack clerk that wasn't completely green went through this training, so we all knew our stuff.</p><p>One of the cool things about the job was getting to talk to "elder geeks" that would come in for components. One guy I helped had set up an old IBM 360 mainframe in his garage. The university he worked at didn't want it any more. He used it for messing around with assembly and as a space heater.</p><p>It was still a retail job, but it was better than most for a tech-head like me. I would've been flipping burgers or selling shoes (Payless was next door), so Radio Shack was a better stepping stone for me. It did nothing for getting me into a programming career, but it was a stop-gap to get there.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774128&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I worked at radio shack. We didn't have certification program but you are forced to learn quickly.<p>It was less about selling and more about people walking in knowing what they wanted or wanting to browse around and once in awhile someone with a problem that you had to piece together components to help. It was unlike other electronic stores I worked. You had to understand how invertors worked, rc cars and sell computers while trying to maintain an 80% names/address recorded.</p><p>You did sell. You entire got paid minimum wage or a % of what you earned for a two week period. 4% for name brand stuff 10% for store brand. My first two week period I sold computer after computer got highest sales in the district. For the next month or longer the minimum. Replacing the computer inventory took forever and I wasn't as good selling all of their other products. Great fun learning experience.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774377&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>As far back as the 01990s my memories of Radio Shack are:<p>1. The only place around where you could go to buy a breadboard, or a transistor, or a resistor, or a headphone cable connector. Component selection unparalleled in the places where I lived. I don't want to exaggerate --- they had maybe ten kinds of transistors, not a hundred like Fry's, but I didn't live within 1000 km of a Fry's. And certainly not forty thousand like Digi-Key has today.</p><p>2. Salespeople who apparently didn't know anything but tried to get my phone number (!?) and, later, sell me cellphones. And cellphone plans. Jesus.</p><p>3. Stuff for makers getting gradually crowded out by worthless goods for mere consumers, stuff I could have bought at Best Buy or Sears if I wanted it. Things like TVs, VCRs, pagers, and Blackberries.</p><p>I still use a store-brand Radio Shack multimeter sometimes, and in the 01980s a lot of my early years of programming were on store-brand Radio Shack computers in my day care and elementary schools, both TRS-80 Model III and the CoCo.
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 <p>Thank you for the correction. We currently think heat death is around 10^3247 years, so we're back to Lisp bignum to express years. Might be a corollary to Greenspun's tenth rule: any sufficiently optimistic date package contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of Common Lisp bignum?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773634&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>It wasn't really a golden era.<p>Small local camera stores didn't carry much and were expensive. They tended to recommend something that they had in stock. Was still a pretty regular customer though because mail order wasn't as developed and you couldn't easily showroom gear locally.</p><p>And Radio Shack was certainly convenient for cables etc. and had often knowledgable employees. But most of the actual stereo equipment and other gear they carried just wasn't very good.
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 <p>While not perfect, it was often good enough. Go in, see 6 cameras in three price ranges, choose the one fitting the best for the price you're willing to pay, then walk home happy. Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29777000&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p><i>&gt; Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase.</i><p>The challenge I have now in most product categories is filtering out the sewage-offerings from the genuine values. I don't mind lots of choice if presented with an adequate McMaster-Carr type information-oriented UI (as opposed to the ad-friendly UI's we suffer through these days). I mind when most of the choices are dumpster fire quality, and I have no way to filter them out.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774525&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The (somewhat disputed) thesis of the paradox of choice.<p>But I don't really disagree especially for relatively commodity purchases. Yes, I actually looked up a spray nozzle for a hose on Wirecutter. But would I have been perfectly fine just walking into Home Depot and grabbing one? Probably.</p><p>That said. I'm probably better off researching thins like dishwashers rather than walking into a store (then or now) and picking one that catches my eye or that the salesperson recommends.</p><p>But you can certainly get into analysis-paralysis with any number of things from travel to cameras. And you're often better off just shutting the analysis down at some point.
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 <p>Ah best buy sales incentives. It reminds of the time I watched a salesman force the wrong case on an old lady's iPad, cracking the screen, and then blaming her for it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>My favorite line was some salesperson saying "you wouldn't want to connect a $2k tv with a cheap cable!". It certainly made me laugh.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The folks at Frys (particularly in hardware) were a useful resource (and good source of shop talk) all the way up until Fry's faded into irrelevance. They helped me sort through a good number of hardware-related issues</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Micro Center staff still are like this, and that's much more than anything else why I buy whatever I can from them before looking anywhere else. I <i>want</i> them to stay in business, because otherwise I have to do my own research every time, and who has the time for that? - well, this, and also because I just delight in being still able to walk into one brick-and-mortar store where I know for sure I won't have wasted the trip.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774679&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>We kid and joke about expensive cables, but we're at a point where it's become true. It's hit or miss buying USB cables. For fast-charging as an example (double-trouble if you don't have a quality or compatible charger to pair it with). Likewise for USB transfer rates (e.g. for the Oculus Quest that I was <i>not</i> planning on testing with 10 different 5m USB cables to see which worked).<p>Same goes for the connectors. All the IEEE and ISO standards out there in the world and the damn USB plugs stick out half the time (nevermind the Chinese-made ones I had that were 1.5x the normal length). In other instances 3.5mm jacks don't stay in or something or other becomes loose. And trying to find reviews or info about this online, or filtering it out to some level on purchase sites like Amazon is...<i>tiring</i>.
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 <p>At least that was better than Fry’s or Home Depot, where salespeople actively walk away when they see you approaching, and have zero knowledge of what is even carried by the place they work. After a while I figured out that it’s better to just look myself on the shelves and endcaps vs trying to ask anything of the sales drones. Kinda like a physical Amazon. I’m sad that they’re out of business now, and with no more MicroCenter left in the Bay Area, the choices are now basically Amazon, eBay, or small online shops (if Central Computer and Halted, now closed as they sold to Excess Solutions @ 1555 S, 7th St. San Jose, CA 95112 don’t have what I’m after).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Odd, I’ve never had much trouble at Home Depot or Lowe’s getting an employee to help me find something. Usually they at least know where things are even if they couldn’t tell you how to use or install said item.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>As much as I love Microcenter, even there I've had a salesman give me uninformed advice, throw his bar code sticker on the thing he told me to get, and walk away.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773571&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>So don't talk to that guy again. The others should be fine, unless your local store happens to have a lousy GM.<p>Initially I dealt with this concern by benchmarking the advice I got on a topic I <i>do</i> know a lot about. I haven't worried about that in a while; at least in the Towson store, the quality of advice and discussion has been such that the next time they steer me wrong will be the first.
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 <p>I was recently in a Best Buy and overheard an employee explain the difference between a Pixel 6 and a 6 Pro as, "EVERYTHING is better". I had personally just compared the two side-by-side and concluded that the pro's only material differences were more RAM, worse build quality due to the curved screen edges, and the addition of a telephoto camera.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29778828&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".<p>Remember RadioShack?
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 <a href="vote?id=29773063&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Rose colored glasses. Workers in stores were the original "affiliate marketers", in a lot of stores (especially electronic ones) workers were/are being paid to push the most expensive products.<p>Then when you try to pay, you get upsold warranties.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773216&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Actually it would make more sense for them to push the highest margin products. This could quite often be lower cost or in-house brands since prestige brands can dictate lower margins to the retailer.<p>Agree sales guys pushing warranties is a real pain but I'm almost nostalgic for it compared to dodging Prime sign-up every time and other online anti-patterns.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773114&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Guessing Migrine’s?
Probably easier to search FL-41 glasses.<p>I like my axon brand, very helpful.
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 <a href="vote?id=29772712&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.<p>Uhhh, you can still do that, you know.
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 <p>With all this lamentation about electronics stores of years past, nothing will compare to the malicious incompetence of car dealerships and service departments. Their business model these days is “if we all keep behaving badly together, consumers will have no choice but to accept our lies, markups, and chicanery”. The dealer groups paying politicians through campaign contributions to allow them to block manufacturer-direct sales (look up how you can’t buy a Tesla in Michigan, home of The Motor City, for example) is just the cherry on top.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774625&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to do - even worse then doing my taxes. I will avoid it at all costs.<p>Current vehicle is coming up on 10 years old, hoping to get another 10 out of it - not because I can't afford a new one (I can), but because I feel like I have to take a shower every time I walk out of a car dealer.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777604&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>LOL, I spent a number of years working with some very adept sales people. I was in a supporting role, but learned a ton.<p>For a while, I was buying cars for people because they hated it. I would save them a ton, and get a nice spiff for each one.</p><p>What I did was work through their whole process and then work them, usually getting out of there at invoice plus a few percent. Average deal took 4 to 6 hours. And the work would involve a dry run purchase somewhere other than where the target buy would happen. Sometimes a second one just find where the pivot points are and what it takes to swing them in buyers favor.</p><p>Started the whole thing on a new Expedition purchase in the '00s. It worked well, the MSRP was something like $45K, and I got the rig for $32K and some change. Not all the deals were that dramatic. Depended on the target car and time of year, but there was always mid to high 4 figures that could come out of the deal.</p><p>I've never purchased a new car for myself since. And I quit doing it for others a few years in.</p><p>The whole thing is generally terrible. While it was a sort of sport, fine! Game on. But it got soul draining very quickly.</p><p>Many dealers have responded with a hard line, "no bullshit" kind of approach, being willing to push people away and just take the ones who will pay and appreciate a smooth transaction. And those people will just pay more and just don't generally care.</p><p>And no judgement. That's worth... about mid to high 4 figures apparently.</p><p>Right now? No way. Sellers have all the advantages, and even better used car deals are crazy due to the shortages and the impact all that has on car pricing.</p><p>Could not imagine attempting it again today. Would be a mess, and probably would get told to pound sand. Look at the Ford dealers putting the squeeze on people who pre-ordered the EV F150! Pay an extra $30k right now, or continue to wait for it... Brutal.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776290&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to do<p>It's still annoying, but do it online and have your own financing.</p><p>Most dealerships are stupid, but a couple have figured out that if they offer a reasonable price online they can move cars with very little touch.</p><p>Having your own financing prevents idiocy from when you walk into the dealership to sign the paperwork. Unless the dealer has something special, you're never going to do better than your own financing.</p><p>Do be aware, buying a car right now is simply totally apeshit. Until the supply and demand equilibrate, things are going to be weird.
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 <p>Yeah right. Two days ago I go into our local electrical goods store. I would like a USB-C to HDMI adaptor, I say. Sales guy looks around, scratches his nut. Sorry don't have one he says. Then he wanders off. I turn around and see one on the shelf. The price is double what you can get online. I tell him this. He shrugs and scratches his other nut and wanders off again. I walk out.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah, I went into a Home Depot store that wasn't my regular location a couple weeks back looking for dowel rods. Trying to speed up my trip I asked two different employees on my way to the general area of the store which specific aisle they would be on. Neither of them even knew what a dowel rod was, let alone what aisle it might be on, and obviously neither of them would be qualified to proactively try to help avoid the ones with knots or badly angled grain. It's not just that sales staff are ignorant nowadays, it's that the job itself has practically vanished.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>On that very topic, I saw a customer ask an employee manning the wood cutting station at a Home Depot if he could cut a dowel rod in half. The employee didn't know if it was possible because it was "round." I think they realized they can get away with just not training their employees.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Cutting round things in a saw can be dangerous if they aren't clamped correctly: they can spin. (Don't know of a link, this was taught to me at community college in the context of cutting round metal stock in a band saw.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774509&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I mean, yeah? Train the staff on how to clamp correctly?<p>I would expect all cuts to be fully clamped in a store.
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 <p>Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience. It's possible that there are just less people with that experience, that also want to work at a store like Home Depot.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774588&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt;Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience.<p>I think they used to hire people with industry experience - i.e. semi-retired or retired plumbers, electricians, carpenters handymen etc and that worked pretty well coming of the 2008 RE meltdown and economic mess at that time - but now any halfway qualified tradesperson can make close to or more than a six figure salary - so working at HD for $15/hr doesn't seem all that attractive anymore.</p><p>I don't even try to ask the employees any actual 'technical' questions - I am happy if they can just point me to the correct aisle to find what I need these days.
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 <p>In that specific situation there’s likely training because operating a saw can be dangerous and incurs liability, not because Home Depot wants to impart knowledge to customers.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>With Home Depot/Lowes the employee (or you) can look up on the item on the web site and it will show you the row/bay its located in. Dont be surprised when you see staff know even less about where things are located.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29772897&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The good news is that there isn't enough volume to justify the corruption of the salesperson, so he is often more honest nowadays.<p>The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773215&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.<p>Is that a "nowadays" thing though? At least in my location, the reason a lot of us flocked to the online option was the diversity of options available. Physical stores (for understandable reasons) stocked only the few top-selling options, knew about a few other options enough to say "no we haven't got that", and anything else would get a blank stare and a "is that a company's name?"</p><p>If you had put effort into your search and optimized the selection for your specific needs, you were much more likely to find the product online - the physical stores often forced you into a choice between different suboptimal products.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773104&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays<p>They never did, you just didn't realize they didn't before the internet exposed you to the options.
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 <p>I think there’s lots of factors going on here too. Products were less often considered disposable two or three generations ago. A manufacturer wouldn’t offer 6 versions of nearly the same thing to capture all price points. Things used to be predominantly manufactured by hand, which also meant they were inspectable and repairable by hand. Manufacturing businesses typically kept less products on the market for longer periods (model numbers have become quarterly iterations or specific to a retailer). There’s now 50 options that appear identical for nearly every product when previously there might have been 5. It all contributes to it being difficult for staff to meaningfully “know” what’s being sold even if they wanted to, and businesses aren’t going to spend that time and money training employees on a product they won’t be selling in a month.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29772958&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.<p>yes, that is why i was shopping online.
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 <p>Salespeople nowadays are basically recruited from the same pool as Uber Eats delivery people. They don't care about what they sell, they just want to make it to the end of the month.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773829&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?<p>Knowledgable retail sales employees have completely vanished outside of niche "passionate enthusiast turned their hobby into a business". Homebrew shops, gun stores, marijuana dispensaries, comic and table top gaming stores, etc, but even many of those are plagued with the same cheap shit you can find on Alibaba or Amazon and a good chunk of the time if it's not the business owner you're dealing with you might as well skip asking questions. Outside of those niche interest stores there's often not even sales staff present, there are just people who stock shelves and operate the point of sale system but they don't even attempt to present themselves as knowledgable and can at best only point you to the right aisle of the store.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773986&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?<p>Don't trust. Ask questions. If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774242&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>At this point in my life I've mostly given up asking employees questions. There's only "fishy" answers to be had in retail and there's not generally a competing store with more knowledgable employees. It seems like most of the time I can choose between bad and another brand of bad. Think Hobby Lobby vs. Michaels or Home Depot vs Lowes, Target vs. WalMart, Sams vs. Costco, Macy's vs. Dillards, Dicks vs. Academy Sports, a Ford dealer vs. a Toyota dealer, or worse they've consolidated operations like Bass Pro vs. Cabelas. There might be reasons to choose one over the other for reasons like employee welfare and return policies, but typically prices are all in line with each other and the retail staff are equally useless.<p>There's only a couple of nationwide exceptions that come to mind like REI and Microcenter but even then people might have to travel prohibitive distances to have those options and they might as well just buy online.</p><p>Small regional stores and mom n' pop operations trend towards having more passionate employees that might have an interest in the products (like a ski shop is generally only staffed by people who've at skied, bike shops tend to only be staffed by people who enjoy cycling, etc) but it's still pretty infrequent.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774648&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.<p>If you know enough to know whether or not the answers you might get are fishy, you probably already know more than the guy you are trying to get advice from.
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 <p>Arguably, small mom &amp; pop shops already started dying in large numbers when big box stores started taking over, and online shopping is continuing the small shop’s march to extinction. Globalization of commerce has only added to the margin pressures. Add a global pandemic for good measure, and it’s been a brutal few decades for small shops in increasingly many parts of the world.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah but it is not a good experience, except for a few types of products. I needed a car jump starter so I tried going to AutoZone instead of Amazon. The only one AutoZone had was 3x what I could find on Amazon.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773165&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Most auto parts stores are terrible places these days with low quality parts at high prices, and staff that are just competent enough to check out your items.<p>It used to be (20-25 years ago) you could go in tell them what you were doing and they could tell you which brands to avoid, what other parts you might need, and any secrets that might help you get the job done faster or without having to remove quite as much stuff. These days, the people they hire are so incompetent if you asked them for Headlight Fluid they would take you over to the fluids aisle to look for it.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776112&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Name one (chain) store you can go in and ask employees about the product and get a competent answer?<p>Retail is just about pushing a product these days. The moment they can fire the staff and still have a brick and mortar store they will.
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 <p>I've had great success with the Gooloo jump starter. It has saved me from grief many times, most recently when I left the headlights on.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The Noco ones are decent, but the Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry is the only thing approaching a BIFL (buy it for life) quality jump starter that I’m aware of. User-replaceable sealed lead acid battery like a quality UPS (which if you’re looking, grab an Eaton 5PX off eBay for a couple hundred bucks shipped…my 3 have outlasted half a dozen consumer APC junk units).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Lead acid batteries self-destruct after they've been left to discharge. Not something you want to keep in a trunk or store at home unplugged. The lithium jump starters have much more dependable passive storage life.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773566&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.<p>When you use Google you are walking into their shop. That salesperson is very knowlegeable, but about you.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773474&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>"it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you."<p>THAT is retail. The craptastic experiment we see these days, online and in meatspace are scams masquerading as retail. I miss Sears.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777175&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>The challenge has been to monetize that experience. I wonder if either an explicit membership model to access advice or a sales advice Uber service that rates both sales person and customer to assist with improving sales transaction communication, can be one part of a solution to preserve the immediacy of brick and mortar. I doubt it; there is likely more value to identifying those items that consumers will buy without waiting for delivery, more emergency-type purchases, marking them up to the limit, abandoning all other products to online ordering, and optimize brick and mortar floor space to cater exclusively to those need-right-now purchases.<p>And even that might not last long. Warehouse demand is exploding across the world right now. We're in the midst of a massive commerce transformation where there are a lot of giants racing to establish JIT delivery footprints in the most high-margin MSA's containing 80% of every nation's population. It won't be long before we're in a Stephenson'ian <i>Snow Crash</i>-esque world where we're getting an ML-computed 80% of goods everyone orders within 30 minutes, 15% of goods in 4 hours, 4% of goods in a day, and the remaining 1% in five days.</p><p>Once that happens, I would be surprised to see supermarkets or even small groceries outside of very niche segments like ethnic and farmer's markets, or hyper niche high-end shops like butchers specializing in rare quality cuts, exist in brick and mortar form, unless you go to where 20% of the population lives in low-density areas not served by these logistical nets.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773591&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Same experience here. Researching high-quality products on Google is very frustrating:<p>- Results 1-3 are ads</p><p>- Results 3-5 are blogs that get sponsored</p><p>- Results 5-10 are full of astroturfed user reviews</p><p>Finding trustworthy and consistent information is so hard that I mostly rely on Reddit for product research. There is a subreddit for literally every product category, and posting a request with your requirements takes much less time than cutting through all the noise on Google.</p><p>To make this whole mess a better experience, I'm now working on my own startup that tries to solve these issues.
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 <p>In the end search is about relevancy. Trustworthiness of a blog or article is hard to discern by machines. The blogs likely rank high because of relevancy as well as clicks. Sponsored doesnt always mean that the reviews are biased. Reviews on reddit aren’t exactly trustworthy too - there are always going to be competing arguments and reviews for a product, you just have to use your own judgment which plays into your personality, risk tolerance etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Indeed but as to the linked thread's point, it's an opportunity for a startup to come in. A startup which could tackle the quality problem not just relevancy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29792042&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Here is what we do:<p>- Let the community vote on the most trusted sources</p><p>- Include results from enthusiasts that have little incentive to write biased reviews (Reddit, HN, expert forums)</p><p>- Look at the ownership of the site and how transparent they are about it</p><p>- Regularly reassess these criteria</p><p>Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
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 <p>YouTube's latest brilliant "innovation" to hide the dislike count made this problem so much worse too. When e.g. trying to make a purchase decision, you can't quickly skim through a bunch of search results any longer. Instead you are forced to sit through so much bad content that you could've previously avoided. Maybe that was their real motivation too – to boost some watchtime metrics.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Even before that, I hate hate HATE how they don't have a way to say "don't ever display this channel in search results". So much spam.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>B-b-b-b-b-but I've been told that some people don't look at likes/dislikes and that makes it ok! Oh well, I'm sure some product manager got their raise for removing such a useless feature</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773040&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I am in the exact same quagmire trying to research water softeners and drinking water (RO) systems. I am having to pull fragments of information from many different sites / videos and having to discard large amounts of contradictory and misleading information.<p>At this point, I’ve had to resort to reading scientific papers on how some of these technologies work (and how some don’t work) just to avoid the bad information. Unfortunately, the more I research the farther I get from making a purchase. This is not where I want to be, however, since the water in my area is very hard and everything gets scaled up all the time. I’m looking to purchase an espresso machine to get into the hobby but I’m not going to drop the money in expensive equipment until I can get access to water which will not damage it in short order.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773108&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>It isn't just me noticing this.<p>I had a project take me into an unfamiliar knowledge space. Up until... 2018? I could have relied on Google to find the meaningful information.</p><p>The reason people accepted Google was that it dramatically lowered information acquisition costs through the Internet. That benefit doesn't seem as common now. Back to webrings.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773083&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I bought my home water filter based on a Consumer Reports recommendation. I feel that's still a reliable source. I think you can sign up for online access for a month to do all your research.<p>I also really like the Wirecutter but I know not everyone here agrees with me.
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 <p>Wirecutter advice seems dubiously linked to how much they can get paid by their "winners". It's not all bad advice, it often seems quite good, but it has the same corruption as top SEO blogs.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You guys had a bad time trying to search things that are at least a little complicated and obscure. I had the same experience trying to find a basic brownie recipe last week.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Recipes have somehow become one of the absolute worst parts of the internet. Google results are consistently dominated by websites that will require scrolling past multiple screens of narrative and increasingly some clicks to see the actual recipe. And when you start looking, you quickly discover that most of the time these websites are just repeating recipes from well known sources like The Joy of Cooking, or worse they have made changes that it's not clear they ever actually tested.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773118&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Same for my experience buying a furnace. Science journal articles were my best source of information, because I worried the manufacturers and installers would be biased.<p>I'm not sure how this could be otherwise. Who's going to pay for someone to stay current on such things and publish an easy to understand summary?
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 <a href="vote?id=29775017&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Most people’s experience with HVAC specialists comes from dealing with the technicians who install and service these systems in our homes. It turns out there’s an entire subfield of mechanical engineering dedicated to inventing, designing, and improving HVAC systems.<p>Wherever there are engineers, there are academics who do engineering research. They have journals of their own to publish this research.</p><p>As to the question of reviews, I’m not sure any articles actually review specific furnace models. The point of reading the papers is to educate yourself on the principles behind the technology so you can read manufacturer’s technical specifications and avoid the non-technical marketing language.
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 <p>Yeah, I didn't get specific furnace models out of the articles. I was trying to decide between single-stage, two-stage, and many-stage designs. It turns out that the installers' claims about efficiency are bogus. Once you realize that you need the same number of BTUs regardless about how they're distributed, it's obvious. It's true that it might be more pleasant to have a little heat and a low fan constantly, rather than a blast periodically. In my opinion that's not worth the difference in upfront cost, increased maintenance cost, and reduced reliability.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774726&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Thanks for this! James Hoffmann is how I got into the hobby. I binge watched all of his videos, including this one. But then I forgot a lot of the useful information he gives here, only remembering his frustration at the complexity of the problem. Upon second viewing I think there is some good stuff for me here.<p>I had been following Jim Shulman’s research which Hoffmann mentions in this video. It’s very dry and technical though and doesn’t provide much in the way of actionable advice on what equipment to purchase, instead recommending bottled water which I absolutely refuse to use (my household is already addicted to bottled water and I’m trying to break that addiction).
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 <p>Ha! I was searching for the same (water softening systems) for Mexico... the amount of signal to noise ratio is so small in google, that it's mostly unusable.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've been there and it's a hell of a rabbit hole, one that is easy to lose days to. Whatever you do don't fall for the Berkey scam.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29778281&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Google could modify their ranking to include these biases:<p>- affiliate links? Down ranked</p><p>- affiliate links to Amazon? Down ranked further</p><p>- page contains advertising? Down ranked</p><p>- page contains extensive javascript? Down ranked</p><p>- page contains links to Social Media? Down ranked</p><p>- post _is_ on Social Media? Down ranked further</p><p>- page contains duplicate text, found elsewhere? Down ranked</p><p>- page contains many links? Down ranked</p><p>- page contains grammatical errors or bad sentence structure? Down ranked</p><p>But why would they do it, their whole business is built on these things to exist.</p><p>Let's look at some things for upranking:</p><p>- page uses a static site generator, e.g. jekyll, mkdocs, hugo? Upranked</p><p>- page has a balanced ratio of pictures/text and the text actually refers to picture (+ pictures are not stock imagery): Up ranked</p><p>- ... (you continue)
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 <a href="vote?id=29772810&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>It's a policy problem, there's no easy fix.<p>Design a system of rules to rank content. Watch as highly incentivized participants work harder than everyone else to game the system to their advantage.</p><p>"But I can see these results are obviously bad, surely something can be done?". Leads to System-Amendment#5796 = <i>Gather user feedback to alter results</i>. Leads to highly incentivized users gaming the feedback system.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773605&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This sounds more like a Google curse - the inability to do something extraordinarily simple because it can't be sufficiently automated.<p>Like there is no reason to have a site like "<a href="https://gitmemory.cn/">https://gitmemory.cn/</a>" in the index, ever. It is pure and utter spam. Ban the domain.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774131&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>In the meantime, check out the uBlackList extension to block individual sites from Google's (and a few other sites') results</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29778492&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You need to attach a trigger warning to that URL.<p>I swear there's an opportunity for an enterprising startup to create a search engine that leverages a friends/family/contacts network for consensus domain credibility, and scrubs "non-credible" domains from all results.
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 <p>Would here possible go PG route and do those thing that do not scale. Meaning building very curated list and doing intedexing and searching against that eg searches for programmers(stackoverflow, github and official documentation).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773011&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This assumes the rules are black and white and there's no concept of bad faith.<p>A system could very well have rules/guidelines and then have humans review &amp; monitor the system and user-submitted complaints for any abuse, and harshly penalize such abuse with a temporary or permanent ban.</p><p>It could end up in a situation where it's technically possible to gain a slight advantage by gaming the system but no participant will risk a complete ban and the system ends up working well for everyone.
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 <p>I <i>would</i> want that, but that puts Google (and other companies) in the legal position of a <i>publisher</i>, which means that they're liable for "a bad thing".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Most websites and platforms moderate for abuse and aren't classified as publishers, I don't see why this would be any different here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I can't remember the precise reason, but if I remember correctly the reason is that because the poster is the originator in most sites including YouTube, while in Google's case it curates links instead without input from the general public. This is also the reason why Wikipedia still only officially operates in the US: the relatively freer publication rules as opposed to UK or Brazil for example shields them from a lot of lawsuits.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774657&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>There exists no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as far as Section 230 protections from online liability goes. It's entirely decided by who produced the content: users are responsible for content that they upload, the sites hosting user-generated content are not. It doesn't matter if the site selectively promotes, or otherwise acts as a "publisher", so long as it's the user's content.<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230">https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774663&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Ah yes, US laws are the only laws applicable to Google.<p>I should have prefaced that with "outside the United States": notably UK moves the bar to the middle, which will put Google in legal jeopardy (and libel cases!) there.
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 <p>I wonder if we just would disallow affiliate links in general. I.e. you can still create your own webshop, take orders and forward to someone else (similar to dropshipping) but basically outlaw the process of collecting money/commission just for a single placement of links. Or at least, force those sites to correctly mark themselves as "Advertising".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The people doing actual, good reviews/guides also use affiliate links. Getting rid of affiliate links to get rid of the bad actors gets rid of people trying to do it right. The bad actors will have another path in within a month while the person who was run out of their honest business is left hanging.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think affiliate links are positive for Amazon, because they crowdsource aggressive sales and marketing, but are negative for Google (and everyone else). I think if Google could somehow ban affiliate links, they would.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776814&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Right.<p>A hypothetical honest reviewer would genuinely be recommending products to buy, and if affiliate links pay, then why not?</p><p>Just like any other tool, it’s not the affiliate links, it’s the user.
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 <p>A second order policy problem is to design good policy to make good policy makers. Meaning that it's hard for a public company entity to codify company policy so that their people in charge of search results are not at all susceptible themselves to sliding in an advantage here or there to assist some group that they become financially enmeshed with.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I ran into the same problem when building finclout's feedback loop. In my opinion, there is no way around keyword matching for search. As a result SEO is unlikely to be preventable. However, if the feedback can be collected at scale and is actually incentivised (i.e., did this link solve your problem ? ) this might actually work.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've also had the same problem. For a while i could get good recommendations/reviews by adding "reddit" to the query as i could find good information there, however i think that the sites have caught up on that and now i only get 1-2 results from reddit.com and then the rest are other sites that reference reddit so they are in the results.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773217&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>At the risk of any SEO-blogspam people reading this and adjusting their tactics, you can filter by domain, eg.<p>product name review site:reddit.com
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 <a href="vote?id=29773616&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>As long as only a few people use a successful white hat trick, that trick isn’t generally worthwhile for the darker hats to combat.<p>So the problem isn’t so much that blog spam people will read your comment, but that many ordinary readers will start using the trick, and thus make it worthwhile for the dark hats to address.</p><p>So the unfortunate side effect of kindness in information sharing is that it decreases the value of that information.</p><p>Therefore, I don’t think there’s a practical way out of endless arms races between $good and $evil
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 <p>The problem with using Reddit specifically is that you can't filter by date anymore. Reddit has poisoned their results to show old posts with new dates on Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Huh, I wonder, can I download reddit? Like, all the text posts, ignoring images. I wonder how big of a db that is and how hard would it be to crawl it myself. It can't be more than a few gb of data. I mean, at this point there is a lot of information there that is just begging to be leveraged.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773515&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Great tip, thanks. Funny how much i used to do google dorks (that got introduce to me in a college course), but overtime i completely forgot about them.<p>About the risk though: it's happened already. Remember the "to find any book free online just do "filetype:pdf book-name"" tips that were popular online a while ago? Now it's all just PDFs on public google drives with tons of book names and a single link leading to some sketchy site.
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 <a href="vote?id=29772762&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I use DDG which is backed by Bing and it’s much the same. Product reviews and some how to questions are just a couple pages of SEO garbage.<p>Google used to measure engagement to try to get feedback on the quality of the links, but perhaps clickbait has broken that as well.
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 <p>One thing what helps me getting better results is adding the keyword 'forum'. Usually still have okayish results. 
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 <p>That's a good tip. I too do this quite a lot; forums can be quite noisy but also a great source of first-hand experiences.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google used to have a great discussion search mode that only showed forum results. I miss it dearly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I always just append the word "Reddit" to any review type searches, it's been tremendously helpful. The peer reviews on Reddit are top notch, give it a go and I bet you'll be pleased.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm just amazed by how many people do this. I always do this too since it seems hard to find quality content just by searching on Google. I try to search HN too sometimes like this but the crowd and topics here a lot more narrow.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773196&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This is far worse in a place like india. It’s pretty much impossible to find anything technical or product related that’s localized. The only non blogspam source often is &lt;vomit/&gt; quora.<p>For example. Most construction happening in india now uses something called M-Sand. I actually CANNOT find what the hell it is except from some company websites or random YouTubers blabbering non engineering garbage about it.
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 <a href="vote?id=29773658&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>You've probably already google-fu'ed this, but its ~4mm crushed granite used as a concrete-sand substitute where granite/gneiss sand isn't available.<p>Most construction materials businesses sell locally by word of mouth, and if they paid for a website at all it's old and still using http. So Google drops them.
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 <p>It was really fascinating watching the Grand Tour Vietnam special on Amazon, you could see all this sand mining happening in the Mekong river, though no one commented on it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Honestly disappointed at the documentary but curious about the topic. They kept repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again, dripping little bits of info.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775245&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I don’t blame google for this. The web is dead. Facebook and Twitter and Discord took over individual passion publishing, to the point that interesting people are forced to do hideous shit like post 30 post Twitter threads to make a point.<p>Even in the tech space, while exceptions like Stackoverflow targeted google as an UI, lots of content is buried in unindexed GitHub issues, etc.
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 <p>At least in the past (haven't checked in years), the Amazon affiliate program rewarded the affiliate for the next purchase made (within a pretty long time window) after clicking an affiliate link, even if it's not of the product linked; so there's no downside to sending you to an arbitrary, unavailable, irrelevant product as long as you're clicking on links when you're in a shopping mode and likely to make a purchase soon.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>24 hours, any purchases made, and it's still a thing. Though rates are much lower nowadays than they were 3+ years ago.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775046&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.<p>This. The web would be a much better place if Netizens didn't continue to monetize garbage like MKBHD, Unbox Therapy and others that provide absolutely no value in "reviews". They're all just shills for product placement at this point. And yet these paid for commercials rack up millions of views and get pushed to the top of YouTube results whether they're of value or not. YouTube doesn't want new creators - instead they've invested in a few that push the content they want based on the advertising dollars that are rolling in. Google isn't search comparative to the early days of the web. Now it's garbage results driven by SEO hackers. A world without Google would be a much better place IMO.
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 <a href="vote?id=29772945&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>In photography I have struggled to choose products, often I have to rely on my experience (e.g. it takes six months to discover that your Epson EcoTank printer makes prints that fade in six months) and specialized forums (DPReviews) You might find lightfastness rankings for some printers at<p><a href="http://wilhelm-research.com/">http://wilhelm-research.com/</a></p><p><i>if</i> somebody paid them to do the research otherwise you might have rely on heuristic 'pigment based inks are relatively lightfast' and that at least one other person who does similar work, has similar skills, and uses similar method gets good results. That still doesn't help with problems like '90% of instances of this Sigma lens seem to be pretty good but 10% have defective autofocus'.</p><p>I find online reviews are close to worthless because there are so many people who don't know how to use gear or have unrealistic expectations. At Best Buy I saw a review of a printer where somebody showed pictures of prints they made where they printed on the wrong side of photo paper and blamed the printer, for instance.
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 <p>I find myself appending the word "forum" to a large percentage of my google queries these days, to avoid the dynamic you mentioned. This essentially filters the results for real/original content of other people that were looking for the same information as me.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774846&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Sorry but what do you expect apart from blogs and review sites? Like what’s the magical result here?<p>I feel like the fallacy here is assuming that the problem is that Google isn’t finding the good websites. There’s also a simple explanation that the content simply doesn’t exist.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774464&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro &lt;power tool&gt;“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.<p>I think the interesting question is this: why is this happening? There’s always been a battle between Google and SEO black hats, but I can’t remember the last time it got this bad. Is Google just temporarily losing, or have they lost the will to fix this at all?
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 <a href="vote?id=29777341&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've given up using Google or any search engine for that matter when it comes to tools purchasing decisions (other product categories too, for that matter). First use, I buy from Hazard Fright. If it gets janky on first use or wears out with enough use, I search in the forums where the trades hang out in discussing what they use, wince while reaching into my wallet, and pay for a built-for-business grade tool. There are a few YouTube channels I refer to as well (examples are Project Farm and Mike Festiva) for tools and consumables recommendations.<p>I always observe what tools trades carry when they work on my properties, and chat with them over the drinks and snacks I offer them, on what they like and don't like. That figures heavily into my decisions.</p><p>Google's main purpose these days for me is non-mainstream, far niche searches. I've taken to looking into deploying my own ArchiveBox to just store my own curated search results that I like. When I initially noticed the SEO spam around 20 years ago, I began to prepare for it by manually saving into text files the page links off of search results that I used, and that has helped me a lot. Ironically, I'm building my own personal Yahoo Directory. I don't see any solution on the horizon to SEO pollution getting better, so I want to scale up my solution.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775063&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro &lt;power tool&gt;“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.<p>Cannot reproduce.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777265&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again<p>And the removal of the "Dislike" count so that you too can avoid non-informative content i.e. unbox spam, just furthers how shit this situation is getting.
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 <a href="vote?id=29777409&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Giving Google more data about yourself will help. Improve relevance and Google revenues.<p>Online advertising will make Google better and that will make you and the world better, too. Therefore, always support online advertising in every way you can.</p><p>Look for the helpful crafting printer ads (after you purchase a crafting printer).</p><p>In case the reader is unsure, this is sarcasm.
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 <a href="vote?id=29774444&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.<p>This should not be considered "especially sad" in my view. It would be worse if these links worked, thus generating additional revenue for these "web players" (pun intended).
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 <p>The problem is, they do. Once I clicked the link, <i>all</i> my purchases in the next 24h will be credited to the affiliate. They are incentivised <i>not</i> to remove content about products that are no longer manufactured.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773501&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>In the USA, Consumer Reports exists to help deal with this. It's a yearly fee to subscribe, but it's as unbiased of reviews as you can get!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773549&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Right, but the majority of folks on here squeal when consumer reports or wirecutter want to be paid for their recommendations. Buying the devices, comparing them, etc all cost money, and refusing to pay inevitably leads to the state we're in...<p>I don't have a solution for this; I just think we're in the exact state we would expect.
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 <p>I don't mind paying for my subscription, just like I don't mind donating to Firefox and Signal. But I get that I'm probably in the minority for that. I try to put my money where my mouth is, and not the other way around!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Consumer reports vehicle recommendations and sales process is just an affiliate scam like wire cutter. Same with Costco's vehicle sales program now. I think they use the same back end. That basically is an affiliate program. They give your contact info to tons of dealers who call you with prices higher than what they have on their lots listed.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Pro tip: You can often get free access to Consumer Reports paywalled website with a library membership.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29777767&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Do a google image search for a strawberry. See how long it takes you to find actual pictures of strawberries that arn't from ecom sites and/or stock photos. I ran into this problem because I wanted to train an AI to recognize a strawberry.<p>Also note, probably none of these are actual strawberries. they are probably fake plastic representations for sales
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 <p>I did this. Results 1 &amp; 4 were from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica respectively. Doesn't seem that bad to me.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29777991&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>I've found that searching for a subreddit related to whatever hobby is a fine way to go. People are showing off their creations &amp; results and chatting about recommendations for equipment &amp; techniques.<p>The "front door" of the Web has become the gift shop. It's time to find another way in :-)
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 <a href="vote?id=29774677&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The web has become a crappy place to research products<p>I'd say most people's interface to the web has become crappy.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775784&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I'd say the web has just become a crappy place. It was better when everything didn't have to make money, but was just done for the love of it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774329&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Seibel doesn't seem to understand how affiliate ads work either, Google doesn't make money from them. Google would be better off just applying a ranking penalty for any page that has numerous Amazon affiliate links. 99% of dedicated affiliate sites are trash</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29779215&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Or at least allow us to block them in the search settings, but Google shows zero interest in doing so. Just as they do not want to have a flag "do not show paywalled content" which is often asked for.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774655&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I've also noticed something similar when researching mobile phones. Device pages that are clearly automatically created with poor and often nonsensical sentences and repition created by some script. And ranking top of Google. Similarly on YouTube videos that are collection of still images with robot voice reading clearly copy texts with almost zero original content. Again ranking near the top for a topic.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773124&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>The only reviews I respect nowadays are... tear downs. No innards, no fun.
Unfortunately printers would be proper hard to tear down on a review.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775740&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I'm just imagining this rule meaning the only printer you can buy is the one from Office Space. Beating the crap out of a machine counts as tearing it down, right?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776514&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>You used Google Search and then used Google (Video) Search. The issue is an advertising company being the Internet’s default for information.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774069&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>This is something I have a problem with as well. Search results typically include the first five results being paid ads.<p>Everything else for the first couple pages are typically review sites that are not really reviews.</p><p>YouTube isn’t much better.</p><p>I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.
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 <a href="vote?id=29775028&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.<p>Link?
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 <a href="vote?id=29774056&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>When I do product research I generally search for whatever the enthusiast community lives and usually there are guides there. Blogs are exactly as you describe, either built in ads or useless.<p>For common items it's kinda difficult, but still possible! (Printers had a pretty active subreddit/community for example.)
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 <a href="vote?id=29775071&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>yup, I was compiling a wish list and searched for a list of good programming books and ran into the same issue. any website that promises a "list" like "top 10 programming books" is usually affiliate spam, with poor recommendations and grammatical errors</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29778415&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>That's true. At least YT is still better than generic WWW search when you are looking for some specific model or some DIY technique. It's still harder to make a SEO-optimized video than a webpage.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776536&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I wouldn't say the web is a crappy place just because of Google search kind of stinks and affiliate marketing ( which has been around forever anyway )</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29777992&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>When I am researching something I often use this filter:<p>site:reddit.com + "search phrase"</p><p>At least if I want to hear from "real" people.
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 <a href="vote?id=29778619&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>until reddit starts getting native content too. We already know people game that site as well.<p>Also reddit can unfortunately be unsufferable.
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 <a href="vote?id=29776503&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I have been consistently adding -amazon to any product search on google lately. These “blogs” are so annoying…</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29779461&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I almost always start my product searches by googling the term and then adding "reddit" nowadays.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29775024&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Also because YouTube removed downvotes, it becomes basically useless for searching product reviews.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29774066&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Buy a Brother Color Laser printer. $250 and the ink never dries. I haven't thought about printing other than pressing "print" in 6 months.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29776888&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>I have Brother printer, full can of paint and sensor saying that is empty, I cannot do anything with it, and that is just one in long list of issues I had with printer...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29773448&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29772136"></a> </td><td><p>Consumers laments the effect of consumers consuming too much stuff.<p>Maybe buying more useless stuff isn't the solution???
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</td></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login                                 
                                  

  Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories ( twitter.com/mwseibel )                               
 2813 points by lando2319 on Jan 2, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 1275 comments                                 
                                  
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 2, 2022 | next [–]                                  
                                  
 Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.                             
                                  
 Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.                            
                                  
 The web has become a crappy place to research products as long as money can be made with those through affiliations. I wonder if outlawing affiliate marketing would make the world a better place.                               
                                  
 P.S: Whats most ridiculous about my Youtube Printer research experience, the best and most helpful video was a sales video from a home shopping TV station [0], where they actually showed some printing action and handling of one of the models I was interested in.                              
                                  
 [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0                                 
                                  
                                  
 codingdave on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit. I'm honestly surprised how little I hear about them. Not that any organization is perfect, but they have been the poster child of success via paid content since the 1930s.                           
                                  
 It also makes me think that part of the problem is not only that Google's results are getting worse, it is that much of the population goes to the internet for all problems. Whether it is googling or asking on social media... the "front-line" information on the internet is simply not reliable anymore.                             
                                  
                                  
 23B1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products & services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.                               
                                  
 As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.                              
                                  
 When I contacted Consumer Reports to let them know about the many tens of thousands of complaints about the companies they were ranking highest, they referred me to their attorney.                               
                                  
                                  
 tablespoon on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >> If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit.                              
                                  
 > Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products & services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.                               
                                  
 > As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts.                              
                                  
 Honestly, "moving companies" is not a category that seems like it would be in Consumer Reports' wheelhouse, and I'm surprised they offered any recommendations in that area at all.                               
                                  
 Also, your anecdote doesn't really support the notion that they're "pay-to-play, just that they did a bad job in some category.                                
                                  
 Are you actually thinking of the Better Business Bureau but got it mixed up with Consumer reports? I would expect the BBB to rate moving services and I've heard that they have some kind of membership program for businesses that seems to allow better control over complaints, which is pretty close to "pay-to-play."                             
                                  
                                  
 willis936 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is all a massive deflection. Why is CR okay to make recommendations in an "area they're not good at"? Even the most generous interpretations are more damning than your claims.                               
                                  
                                  
 petejodo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I think OP was asking whether they were confusing CR for the Better Business Bureau because moving services does not seem to be something CR would review                                
                                  
                                  
 cauthon on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 But CR did review them, so why can't someone complain that CR recommended a bad service                                 
                                  
                                  
 mlyle on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't see any evidence of this. The most likely scenario is the original complaint confused BBB (totally pay-to-play, scam) with CR.                                
                                  
 CR doesn't review this category and a search of past CR review categories doesn't yield moving services. In general, they don't review anything regional.                                
                                  
                                  
 jamiek88 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 CR do not review moving companies.                                  
                                  
 They have articles on how to avoid dodgy ones but make no recommendations.                                 
                                  
                                  
 impalallama on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Because thats a service not a product. I go to CR for reviews on what the best mattress is, moving companies is not something I would go to them for so that doesn't concern me. Its like saying AAA isn't worth the money because you didn't like the hotel they gave you a discount on.                              
                                  
                                  
 willis936 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services. Lying about the quality of a good or service when that is your business, potentially with kickbacks, is not really a defensible position. "It's okay because I don't expect their opinion to be good in this one area" doesn't negate CR providing that opinion.                             
                                  
                                  
 mlyle on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 No one can find anything where Consumer Reports has rated moving services. It's likely the grandparent confused them with BBB, which is totally pay-to-play.                                
                                  
 And--- I appreciate Consumer Reports' accuracy, but I doubt that they are 100% accurate. There are probably recommendation sets that end up as garbage for one reason or another (incorrect weighting for my use case, statistical noise, evolution in products since survey experiences, etc).                              
                                  
 There's also times where I have personal expertise or preferences that outweigh CR's rankings. CR rates computers, after all, and I would probably not weigh them very heavily in my choice.                               
                                  
                                  
 rsj_hn on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As a long time CR subscriber, agree absolutely. This stuff is hard and clean data sets are nonexistent. I still recommend to my friends to subscribe to CR as independent reviews are important (and worth paying for).                               
                                  
                                  
 kube-system on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services.                                 
                                  
 AAA guidebooks do exactly this. I remember using them to pick hotels in the 90s.                                 
                                  
                                  
 cush on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You deflected the deflection.                                  
                                  
                                  
 willis936 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Which is called a course correction.                                  
                                  
                                  
 jamiek88 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Except you are wrong.                                  
                                  
 CR do not and have never recommended moving firms.                                 
                                  
 They in fact have articles on how to avoid being scammed by firms and best practices but make no recommendations.                                
                                  
 I think the burden here is on you or others making this claim to link some evidence.                                 
                                  
                                  
 Breza on Jan 7, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I wonder why people are digging in on the accusation that CR has provided inaccurate ratings of moving companies. Very easy to disprove.                                
                                  
                                  
 cush on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You deflected the deflected deflection.                                  
                                  
                                  
 unkeptbarista on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In all the years I've used Consumer Reports I've never seen them rate moving services. I just jumped on their site now, and there are no reviews for moving services.                                
                                  
                                  
 commoner on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm not sure if Consumer Reports has ever formally reviewed moving services, though I admit I haven't been looking for this category specifically. CR's website currently doesn't have any reviews for moving services, not even with a disclaimer that the category is no longer being tested (like they do for some categories, such as steam irons: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/steam-irons.htm ).                            
                                  
 CR's freelance writers have written general advice articles on moving services, like https://www.consumerreports.org/moving/how-to-choose-a-relia..., which might be useful to some readers but certainly aren't very deep. These articles aren't the same as CR's actual reviews, which have scores and detailed ratings for each product metric.                             
                                  
                                  
 windexh8er on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products & services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.                               
                                  
 Agreed. As a PSA do not use the True Car services that are "included" in a membership. It's basically a free pass to sell all of the contact information CR has on you to any dealership that's paying them for leads. You will be hounded for weeks if you try to use that service. I recently found out, through a family member, that the deceptive practice still exists when they were trying to get actual dealer invoices (which CR used to provide, but no longer does). I cannot not recommend CR enough.                          
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Not sure if it's any relation to TrueCar.com, but FWIW I used them 7(?) years ago to purchase a hard to find used car and had nothing but a good experience.                                
                                  
 From wikipedia, I gather they've tweaked their compensation models and exec team since then, so no idea what they're like now.                                
                                  
 Effectively, everyone is AutoTrader though, and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.                                
                                  
                                  
 windexh8er on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > ...and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.                                
                                  
 That is the point. Given the reputation CR tries to uphold and their relationship and integration with True Car there is not much warning (if any) using that feature in CR will result in dumping your contact information to many dealerships and is a dark pattern one wouldn't expect from CR given the end user is paying for the service. For most non-technical folks I can't imagine this experience is positive after they've handed over their actual phone # and email.                           
                                  
                                  
 perl4ever on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I can't vouch for whatever the state of True Car is right now, but several years ago (more than once) I went there for information on the average selling price of new cars.                               
                                  
 They had a nice histogram, showing the range and most common price and how far off msrp it was.                                 
                                  
 I don't know how accurate it really was, and if it was accurate, someone might have "gotten to them" in later years to inflate the statistics and preserve profit margins.                               
                                  
 But it seemed to me really valuable information for negotiating a new car purchase. The special True Car price and "services" and all that seemed like a diversion to me.                               
                                  
 It's like some other things on the Internet - a sensible person subsists on the free "teaser" information and never ever engages in any sort of relationship.                                
                                  
 Apart from an indication of what a fair price is, the histogram showed relative discounts between models, and there's frequently/always ones that are being disdained by the public that are very good cars and dealers are desperate to move, versus ones that are in high demand that they won't discount.                             
                                  
                                  
 rapind on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Possibly confusing this with the better business bureau (which is totally pay to play)?                                 
                                  
                                  
 wolfv on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Consumer Reports 5-Year Index does not contain the word "moving": https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/...                                
                                  
                                  
 MaxBarraclough on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 What do you make of the UK-based Which? which (I think) does something somewhat similar?                                 
                                  
 It's pay-to-access, but as I understand it they don't make money from ads or from borderline extortion.                                 
                                  
 https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/printers-and-ink                                 
                                  
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Which%3F                                  
                                  
                                  
 gerdesj on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've been a subscriber and I am a half hearted fan of Which. IT wise their advice is complete arse: This is a consumer champion that only recommends either Apple or MS - there appears to be no other offerings. To be fair, I last read a Which review at least two years ago.                              
                                  
 I'd describe Which as a good starter for 10, these days, but no more.                                 
                                  
 They do a decent legal angle and always have done, ie consumer rights - that's their forte for me.                                 
                                  
                                  
 snthd on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's a charity, but it (indirectly?) pays some eyebrow-raisingly-high salaries: https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/charity-pay-study-2019-highest...                                
                                  
                                  
 BikiniPrince on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.                                
                                  
 I find independent YouTubers significantly better.                                 
                                  
 To a point! There are a number of obvious non-critical flooded reviews for lots of products.                                 
                                  
 I suppose in closing CR is garbage and you have to do relevant research commiserate with how much you want to spend/care.                                
                                  
 If only we had a review organization we could trust!                                 
                                  
                                  
 tablespoon on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.                                
                                  
 > I find independent YouTubers significantly better.                                 
                                  
 Could me extremely skeptical. "Independence" on YouTube is very cheap and easy to fake.                                 
                                  
 IMHO, YouTube is mainly useful for video of someone poking at a product, because for some reason retailers and manufacturers don't provide good enough media on product pages to get anywhere close to substituting for seeing something in person.                              
                                  
                                  
 prepend on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’ve recently used their reviews for doors, roof shingles, and washing machines.                                 
                                  
 YouTube isn’t even a similar product. I assume all reviewers are paid and have no idea their methodology.                                
                                  
 I like CR because their methods are defined and they don’t have any competing agendas (ads, sponsored posts, product placement , etc)                                
                                  
                                  
 smsm42 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 How would one know if Youtuber is independent? Say, I need to buy a lawnmower. How do I know which reviewers are good and which are idiots and which are paid shills? It's kinda hard to figure it on YT. If I have a specific product in mind, I can look through YT reviews of this specific one as a point of information. But if I have 100 potential lawnmowers to sort through, I won't watch every YT review for 100 products, I'd have to take a sabbatical for that. YT doesn't fill the niche.                           
                                  
                                  
 TheRealDunkirk on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't know if it's pay-to-play, but it sure feels like it. Many years ago, I had a house built, and I decided to outfit it with all the appliances, convinced I could do a better job picking out good equipment, and getting better prices. I settled on Consumer Reports' best pick: GE "Gold" appliances, and I bought them all. Within 2 years, every single one -- oven, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and dryer -- had problems. I will never trust CR for anything again.                           
                                  
                                  
 Retric on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If all your major appliances died that quickly there might be something wrong with your houses power.                                 
                                  
 GE’s quality also tanked, but the power thing is worth looking into.                                 
                                  
                                  
 TheRealDunkirk on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm talking about plastic breaking, fans dying, switches failing, etc. I only HAD to replace the washer and dryer, and the mismatched, second-hand units I got were still going strong after a decade. I asked the used appliance salesman if he wanted my old ones, for free, to refurbish. He asked what brand they were. I told him. He said no. Those models were THAT bad. But CR said they were the best on the market.                            
                                  
                                  
 wwweston on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now                                 
                                  
 Do you mean to say that they receive money to issue reviews (which would be alarming)? Or do you mean to say they charge fees to access review information (which has always been the case AFAICT)?                               
                                  
                                  
 seventytwo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Are you sure you aren’t thinking about the Better Business Bureau?                                 
                                  
                                  
 throwaway0a5e on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 They also pander to their customer base. You'll never hear them say a bad word about the kinds of high end but not "I own a private jet" luxury products that high middle class consumers (who are their target market) tend to own. Nobody resubscribes to media that tells them they're doing it wrong.                             
                                  
                                  
 dcist on Jan 8, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't think Consumer Reports recommends moving companies.                                 
                                  
                                  
 akimball on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Consumer Labs is high integrity, however                                  
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 CR today: "After extensive review, LG Microwave model AX7J3498-2 is best avoided"                                 
                                  
 LG tomorrow: "Announcing LG Microwave model G8A867FL2-B! Also, model AX7J3498-2 will no longer be available"                                
                                  
 Consumers two days from now: "Well, there are no bad reviews for model G8A867FL2-B when I look it up, I guess it's ok to buy"                                
                                  
 I like the idea of Consumer Reports or in depth reviewing but manufacturers have learned to game it too.                                 
                                  
                                  
 Thlom on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Haha. It gets even better, which I discovered while researching a TV that was on sale and the store said their price was the lowest on some price matching service. But when I checked the service they were the only one selling the specific model! Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice.                            
                                  
                                  
 nickff on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > "Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice."                                 
                                  
 No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either want a slightly different featureset, or just want to avoid people doing price-matching. The manufacturers don't really like it.                               
                                  
                                  
 derbOac on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Sometimes there's something to those retailer-specific models. When our child was young enough to need a car seat, we looked at the top-rated model on CR. It was rated pretty well by customers at various websites, except consistently for features X, Y, and Z, which seemed pretty significant to me. Lo and behold, we go to store A, and realize they have the "limited edition A model" which actually specifically addressed all the complaints in customer reviews about the generic model. We loved that car seat.                          
                                  
 Sometimes those retailer-specific tweaks are kinda questionable, but sometimes, if it's the right retailer, they're actually pretty thoughtful.                                
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This happens with a local store here called "Video Only", and they will typically stock higher end features. Example: A common Samsung Plasma could be found all over town for say, $800. The Video Only one was $900, and would drop to like $650 when it's time to move the new stuff in.                              
                                  
 Their people will tell you all about doing that too.                                 
                                  
 The difference?                                  
                                  
 The set I got for $650 (and again, not exact, just representative numbers here) had the faster video processor and ran at 120Hz, which means the 3D capability ran at a full 60Hz for each eye, and game mode was low lag. Both very nice options, and finding them together sometimes meant buying another expensive model that comes with other fat margin, mostly useless features.                            
                                  
 I have no doubt it's all about the price matching, but sometimes, depending on the retailer and their business model, it can be about differentiation, like actually having something better in some distinct way. The Video Only people cater to the home theatre crowd and tend to stock sets that are high technical performers at great prices.                             
                                  
 Seeing it in the other direction, WalMart tends to have their special edition of whatever it is, and it's almost always price / performance, and or some extra pack in, or size change.                               
                                  
                                  
 fmajid on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I used to live across the street from the San Francisco Video Only, and can confirm they are totally legit.                                
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 GP:                                  
                                  
 > Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice.                               
                                  
 You:                                  
                                  
 > No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either... or just want to avoid people doing price-matching.                                
                                  
 I mean, I don't see the difference. both of you are in agreement it's to fuck people trying to price match. I guess the fact that the retailers insist on it makes it okay in your mind??                               
                                  
 Meanwhile, I doubt there are any real featureset differences for most things with model numbers. There are cheap versions of clothing for Walmart, but that's ironically going the other way and trying to confuse the customer by making them think they are the same items.                              
                                  
                                  
 importantbrian on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I worked at a mattress retailer after college. Each retailer would have a slightly different version of the same model. So as an example one would have 2 inches of memory foam and another would have 1.75 inches of memory foam and 0.25 inches of latex foam. But otherwise it’s the same. They did it to make comparison shopping and price matching difficult. In reality I’m not sure how well it worked. Salespeople would match prices anyway to get the sale.                           
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Its annoying, but I find it worse when the same model of device has different electronics/specifications.                                
                                  
 Model numbers seem to mean little these days to a lot of manufacturers.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Model numbers mean a lot to manufacturers and engineers.                                 
                                  
 They just mean very little to sales, who typically get their way for major chain account.                                 
                                  
                                  
 mcv on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Joke's on them. I don't buy things that have only a single review; too easily gamed. I look for products that have a lot of positive reviews. Obscure models probably have worse support too. Unless you really know what you're looking for, something that lots of people enjoy using is generally the safest choice.                             
                                  
                                  
 smsm42 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That's how they can declare "we do price match" without ever doing any price match. Surely you didn't expect the price match for a different model, did you?                                
                                  
                                  
 xmprt on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Haven't consumers learned the game as well? It seems pretty obvious that if LG sells a bad microwave then I probably shouldn't trust that their other microwaves would be any good either. And why would I buy a microwave with no review over a microwave with a positive review? There's got to be at least one good microwave on their site.                             
                                  
                                  
 antisthenes on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Manufacturers have 100% control over their website.                                 
                                  
 They can delete reviews, they can keep the reviews and start shipping a slightly different product instead, they can ask certain customers to write positive reviews for incentives. The list goes on and on.                               
                                  
 It's asymmetric warfare and manufacturers hold all the cards. That's why there generally are consumer protection laws, and not the other way around, e.g. protecting manufacturers from consumers (lol).                               
                                  
 The semi-good news is that for most consumer goods like microwaves, it doesn't really matter, because they are all "good enough".                                
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The manufacturer/seller commonly games the reviews so even new products tend to have a few glowing reviews right off the bat.                                
                                  
 And if you use the scale that if a manufacturer produces one bad microwave that all their microwaves are bad, I suggest cooking over a fire as no manufacturer is going to meet your judgement scale.                               
                                  
                                  
 thechao on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I know I'm five-gajillion comments in, so this is like spitting in the ocean: call a local repair place (unaffiliated) and ask them what to get. The local fridge/appliance repair (group) -- any of the five of them -- will happily chat for an hour about any major appliance in your house. They'll also gossip like fishmongers about who's good at what services, etc.                            
                                  
 In general, for very large appliances (large fridges; double-stoves; double ovens) you can just ask them to keep an eye out at the local restaurant auctions. My house came with a 48" prosumer fridge. When my fridge died I got a 10-year-old exact replica from a warehouse for 3500$, rather than 18000$. It's worked flawlessly for 8 years, now.                             
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I just wrote a couple commments here talking about actually talking to people. It's how I still prefer to buy many things.                                
                                  
 Reviews? Have pretty much ignored them for many things. It has been hard to see the value, frankly. There are always a lot of them, and the information quality has been high noise and dubious in many cases.                               
                                  
                                  
 semireg on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 +1 for restaurant auctions. I browse them like a child walking past puppies in a window.                                 
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Restaurant auctions are great if you have the space. Less good if you have a small kitchen.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 When I am able to shop in an actual store, like for appliances, I've always had great luck talking to the service techs.                                
                                  
 I just ask them which models are coming back to the store, and or for a recommendation.                                 
                                  
 My last washer, dryer, dishwasher and stove were all purchased this way and have ran for a long time now. Needed a new element for my dryer and stove a while back and both were available, easy to install.                               
                                  
 And that's the last question: Service. What's available and can I get parts, etc...?                                 
                                  
                                  
 dan-robertson on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Another failure mode can be testing the wrong things. Companies will make products to do well in tests or otherwise appeal to consumers even if that makes their product actually worse. For example maybe tyres would only be tested in a straight line (rather than when cornering) or when unworn (so allowing shallow grooves to allow for a thinner wall and shorter life).                            
                                  
 I recently came across a YouTube channel where a guy does various thorough-seeming tests of a medium range of brands for a bunch of product categories (think spanners and scissors and suchlike) and he’ll talk quickly and provide lots of numbers but when you think a little more, it seems that there isn’t much reason for the test results to correlate with a good product (eg maybe if your Phillips head cams out it is because that is what it’s meant to do and not because it’s bad)                           
                                  
                                  
 KB on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Consumer Reports is my first stop whenever I look to purchase some non trivial item. I typically use the top five from their recommended list to quickly narrow down my initial result set. Then I'll cross reference with Wirecutter to see if they are in agreement (usually are). If I'm down to one or two choices at that point I'll try to find some unbiased reviews on YouTube. Not a perfect system, but I find it works pretty well compared to just going right to a Google search result.                           
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I usually just search the topic plus "reddit." The advice from a subreddit on something will usually be reliable.                                
                                  
 Then other times I take a chance on Amazon, like the ~$700 Viribus mountain e-bike I got a few months ago. E-bike enthusiasts seem to say that price range is universally junk, but it's been treating me great on trails and the road. Oddly can't find anyone else talking about it online but the Amazon reviews were good.                             
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Mountain biker here. If I may hate on your decision here for a second.                                 
                                  
 The reason nobody is talking about the bike you got, is because it is simply so bad, nobody who rides remotely seriously as a hobby or otherwise would even consider it as part of the category of mountain bikes.                               
                                  
 I know you probably have fun riding it around on some dirt or gravel or something - but really, it's not a mountain bike.                                
                                  
 Disclaimer - I'm not even that wild a rider at all.                                 
                                  
 I would have those breaks burned out in less than one decent, and probably tear the drivetrain apart on my first or second climb (tripple front derailleur? really?)                                
                                  
 The geometry is whack and the tires are trash. That thing that looks like a front fork, is not. I would blow that up first day too, without a doubt.                                
                                  
 I don't think you appreciate the world of difference between something like this, and even a cheap 2.5k ebike. (Yes that is cheap. You have the dollar store equivalent of an ebike.)                               
                                  
 You should have saved your money and gotten a nice second hand kona hard tail or something, rather than buying and rewarding chineesium scrapheap contenders.                                
                                  
 You're probably familiar with laptops and such to some degree.                                 
                                  
 This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :)                             
                                  
 Harsh I know but... that's life. Sorry. I hope you enjoy riding and upgrade your bike soon. I just wish that such a e-waste disaster wasn't your stepping stone.                                
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You can understand I didn't want to spend thousands to start out a hobby I wasn't even sure I'd get into. If it lasts me a year that's good enough. My next step would be doing my own build.                               
                                  
 You're looking at this one, right? https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...                                 
                                  
 I have no illusion that it's the best bike in the world, but it certainly works for my combination of roads and bike trails. I wouldn't put it on some crazy steep obstacle course or huge jumps but I wasn't looking to do any of that anyway.                              
                                  
 But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur?                                 
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Parent underappreciates that the difference between (nothing) and (anything) is infinite, and the difference between (less good) and (better) is finite.                                
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 No. I am appreciating that there are better somethings than this something, and I even explicitly recommended one.                                
                                  
 Take the time to actually read and understand before criticizing.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In this instance (as with most of life, sometimes including time), money is the limited resource.                                 
                                  
 Suggesting OP not buy anything or spend 3.5x as much isn't helpful.                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I suggested they buy a second hand kona hard tail for the same price or cheaper.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Second hand prices for Kona ebikes don't look nearly in the range of $700.                                 
                                  
 Is there a specific model you're thinking of?                                 
                                  
                                  
 TulliusCicero on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 They make it pretty clear that they’re sneering at the idea of the “e” part being a hard requirement.                                 
                                  
                                  
 andreareina on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Or maybe an emtb at that price point is simply unrealistic[1]. Which sucks because ebikes are such an accessibility boon.                                
                                  
 [1] requiring a reputable manufacturer, even accounting for second-hand bikes. Conversion might be an option, I don't know what those run.                                
                                  
                                  
 TulliusCicero on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 To me it just sounds like the PC gamers who insist that anyone who wants to 'game' needs an RTX 3070 at a minimum. They have unrealistic ideas of what the person actually wants to do. Someone who's spending a small amount on mountain bikes isn't going hard downhill.                              
                                  
                                  
 andreareina on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I really don't think any analogies to PCs and games works. This is more like taking an underpowered car on the freeway. Yeah it's going to be able to get up to speed but without the acceleration that's really needed. And I don't know that I would have known better when I'd first gotten my license without being told. We don't know that someone wouldn't take this bike on well-maintained trails a few times and then decide to "graduate" to jumping over roots and rocks or w/e.                           
                                  
 Not to mention not knowing how well the electric part is done, especially the battery. I'd be ok taking my $200 commuter on some light trail because I'm mechanically inclined and I've got the measure of it. I have no idea about how to assess the electricals but given the cost-cutting, bad workmanship, and bad design I can see in the rest of the bike's build, I'd be really concerned about that.                            
                                  
 "Whether you are a professional athlete" lmao                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I do understand. That's why I recommend the second hand hardtail kona for the same price (or cheaper).                                 
                                  
 > If it lasts me a year that's good enough                                 
                                  
 I don't like this attitude because it is wasteful. That's another thing I was taking issue with. Worse because it's an ebike. If it was just some aluminum it wouldn't be nearly as bad, but still kinda bad.                               
                                  
 > But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur?                                 
                                  
 More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality.                                 
                                  
 Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).                                 
                                  
                                  
 PaulDavisThe1st on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).                                 
                                  
 ... which creates much more chain wear from chain crossing ...                                 
                                  
 > More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality.                                 
                                  
 I have a 35 year old Shimano Deore XT front derailleur. I raced the bike hard in the 80s during "the prehistory of UK mountain bike racing". I then rode it for another 8 years, doing several multi-thousand mile tours on it (before the name "gravel bike" had come along). Then I used it as a city commuter for another 5 years.                             
                                  
 The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents.                                
                                  
 The fad for 1x setups illuminates some of the pros, but because it's largely a fad, fails to shine a similar light on the cons. For crazy downhill racing, 1x is an obvious choice. For ultra-distance events, long distance off-road touring and general gravel duty, the choice is not quite so obvious.                             
                                  
                                  
 grogenaut on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I set my cyclocross up with a triple front and a touring rear. The cycle shop questioned me on why I did it. I explained that the last mile was also 600 foot climb. The super fit kid working there was like "that hill is easy, I do that on my speed gears". I said "yea but look at me". He said "true". then proceeded to say he couldn't install it because shimano wouldn't recommend it (too many tooth delta). But he'd adjust it if I put it on my self. So I did. Basically it's a road front with a MTB small, and a mtb cassette in the back.                          
                                  
 It's got 5k miles on it and works fine. Just needs little tweaks every once and a while and you can't do full crosses like Big Big. But it goes as fast and as torquey as you could please (or can buy).                               
                                  
 These things work pretty well. Just learn to tweak em or get them tuned up.                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents.                                
                                  
 Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile?                              
                                  
 Wild train of thought.                                  
                                  
 Interesting how you assert 1x setups as a fad for mountain bikes, and then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touring? Gravel biking? What are you talking about lol                               
                                  
                                  
 PaulDavisThe1st on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touring                                 
                                  
 I guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring. You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike.                               
                                  
 Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder.                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Right, that confirms it. I'm sorry but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.                                 
                                  
 > I guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring.                                 
                                  
 That is the most easy going barely off road biking on earth. Thousands of miles of fire and access roads, with a few miles of zero difficulty single track.                                
                                  
 > You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike.                                 
                                  
 "A mountain bike". The overwhelming majority of mountain bikes are unsuitable for this. You wouldn't use any of the most popular types: trail, downhill, enduro.                                
                                  
 Gravel biking and mountain biking are world's apart.                                 
                                  
 The closest thing to gravel biking or other long distance off road biking in mountain biking is cross country - but even then xc is _way_ more demanding than gravel. You can't ride gravel bikes on xc routes. Gravel biking is not a form of mountain biking. There does not need to be any elevation change of any kind to gravel bike. There are no features on a gravel trail.                            
                                  
 Anyway, sure, a hard tail xc bike is probably the best bike for that trip just due to the comfort of the larger tires. I bet you'd actually be just as happy with a fatty gravel bike though.                               
                                  
 You know, I just went and searched to see what people ride on that trail to confirm my suspicion about big tire gravel bikes. Would you look at that - I'm right. Hard tail xc / gravel bikes with fat tires.                               
                                  
 Additionally, the vast majority of them are running 1x front chainrings.                                 
                                  
 Surprise surprise, I know what I'm talking about, and the people that seriously ride the trail you're trying to use to one up me made the same choices I recommend. What a "fad".                               
                                  
 https://bikepacking.com/bikes/tour-divide-rigs-2019/                                 
                                  
 > Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder.                                 
                                  
 Absolutely clueless. The difference is stark.                                 
                                  
                                  
 CRConrad on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile?                             
                                  
 Because the GGP -- you? -- didn't specify "the absolute worst of those contemporaries" but just complained about how "front triples" -- which implies all front triples -- "suck". So the GP quite reasonably showed that they don't.                               
                                  
 It's not him moving the goalposts; it's you.                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 6, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I mean, if you want to be that literal about it I guess I can't fault you. I would expect someone to scope the conversation appropriately. The tripple I'm talking about is in the context of tripples on brand new 600 dollar e-mountain bikes. They will all be trash.                              
                                  
 Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?                                
                                  
                                  
 CRConrad on Jan 8, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?                                
                                  
 No it isn't and yes I would: Now you're trying to move the conversational goalposts by calling your moving of the goalposts "clarifying".                                
                                  
 This conversation simply never was about your snobbish True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective, and no amount of your attempts at obfuscation will make it have been so.                               
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I considered secondhand, but a used battery has a good chance of being bad or on the way out, and a good new battery is expensive.                                
                                  
 I doubt this bike is going to be ewaste soon though. I know a few people I might give it to who might use it. And I drive old cars into the ground instead of buying new so far, so I think I have a good track record on waste.                               
                                  
 Even if I wanted to just throw it out, the battery and frame are recyclable.                                 
                                  
                                  
 EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If you use an e-bike, should you be called e-athlete?                                 
                                  
                                  
 andreareina on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Front triple is a way to extend the range of gearing without spending much. It's also used to dishonestly claim "21 speeds" since a lot of those are in the overlap; the standard is to be explicit, e.g. 3x7.                               
                                  
 In other words it's a sign that the bike is built to a price, and maybe to a list of features and not actually to a quality standard.                                
                                  
 Not necessarily bad (I'd trust any 3x Shimano drivetrain assuming it's installed correctly) but it's a sign to watch out.                                
                                  
                                  
 jefftk on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You're being mean. It's clear that this bike wouldn't work for you, but it apparently does work for your parent. Stop trying to convince people they shouldn't enjoy things.                               
                                  
 To go with your analogy, if someone bought the laptop you're describing and was having fun playing games, can't we see that as a good thing? We don't have to get them hooked on more powerful more expensive options.                               
                                  
                                  
 klodolph on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’m not so sure. The problem of BSOs… bike-shaped objects, a.k.a. low-quality bicycles, has been a problem for a long time. I rode a BSO for a long time before I knew better.                               
                                  
 Sometimes you don’t understand what those things are until later. Sometimes the shape is weird and you don’t know how poorly you’re treating your body until you switch to a reasonable bike (and oh, random pains go away). Often the parts are substandard or nonstandard… some part wears down and then you can’t easily repair the bicycle.                             
                                  
 It’s hard to trust comments from random consumers because I see so many bicyclists out there which very obviously lack the knowledge, skill, or will to set up or ride their bicycle reasonably. I see people on the road with horribly maladjusted seats, or people who ride a geared bicycle but have no clue which gear they should be in.                             
                                  
 With a low-quality bicycle, a bad setup, or poor technique, you end up putting more strain on your body. It’s not necessary to go to more expensive options but you should take some care in choosing & setting up your bicycle.                               
                                  
                                  
 azalemeth on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The other real problem with cheap bad bikes is quality control matters on a device that (here in Europe) you might effectively be trusting your life to. As a poor student I had a BSO a year for three years, until I could afford a better object. The first died in traffic when the derailleur came out of the frame , leaving a burred hole behind, and a bus honking at me as it just managed to avoid squishing me. The second died when the pedals sheered off the crankshaft when I pushed down hard going up a hill. The third one died when I went over a large pot-hole in the cycle lane, bending the forks in the process. Absolutely none of these things should be able to happen. That they did is, of course, testament to the false economy (and great danger) of BSOs. In the States I understand that they're likely to be viewed as toys, but in Western Europe they're overwhelmingly likely to be used as transportation by those with little money, in busy, city centre traffic. There's a reason Dutch bikes have a reputation for quality, weigh a ton, last forever, and we surprisingly expensive.                 
                                  
                                  
 andreareina on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The difference is that the laptop breaking won't leave the user stranded and potentially eating dirt. I don't know what GGP means by the trails they're riding but I've looked at the homepage[1] and I wouldn't trust the bike on technical terrain. There's a very real safety issue.                              
                                  
 GP could have been gentler, but they're right to say it's not a mountain bike, and shouldn't be ridden like one.                                
                                  
 And that sucks. The things we buy should be fit for the advertised purpose. Mountain biking should be more accessible and there should be trails that GGP can ride on a safe budget bike without requiring that much fitness.                               
                                  
 [1] https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...                                 
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 By trails I mostly mean maintained dirt trails found in state/national parks, but I have hit some good bumps/holes in this thing. I got a suspension seatpost and I hardly feel bumps at all anymore.                               
                                  
 Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?                                 
                                  
                                  
 OGWhales on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?                                 
                                  
 I'm not sure where the line is, but here is a video of a local mtb park I used to ride a lot and it might give you a good idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFYcnQTcmrw                               
                                  
 It's pretty rocky and you can carry a ton of speed in some parts. It will definitely eat up cheaper bikes if you aren't careful.                                
                                  
 If you want to find more examples of why cheaper bikes struggle to handle that type of stuff, I'd look up "walmart bikes vs mtb trail" or something along those lines on youtube. Lots of videos and they are usually somewhat entertaining. That said, your bike looks better than those and if you respect its limits, then it should be okay. The trails you describe sound fine for that type of bike, just be careful on hard bumps and stuff.                           
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I explicitly recommended something more capable and long lasting for the same price, so I really don't know why you're claiming I want them to do something unrealistic.                                
                                  
                                  
 jefftk on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It doesn't look to me like your recommendation is an e-bike?                                 
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The whole point for me was that I wasn't fit enough for a normal bicycle and didn't have the motivation to work up to it. With the ebike it feels like I can go anywhere I want and still get some cardio exercise doing it. If they're recommending an expensive non-ebike, that's just silly.                              
                                  
                                  
 prmoustache on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As an avid cyclist too, I think the biggest misunderstanding is you mentionned "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path". That Bike Shaped Object mentionned up there would totally be destroyed in a few hours of riding any challenging trail at a decent speed. The fork would bend and lockup itself, the brake pads would be dead before reaching the bottom of the hill.                            
                                  
 Another problem with buying such a lowend bike online is they are very often badly assembled. You might find quickly that it becomes noisy because some parts were installed without enough grease, or components may become nearly impossible to remove because of oxydation when it will become time to replace them, and it may just be unsafe because something hasn't been torqued to spec. I once had a thorough look at these kind of bikes and a sticker on the fork clearly stated it was not really rated to be used off road. Thanksfully the CE norms have been done so that bicycles do not explode on potholes filled roads so even a bike not made for off-road is made to survive common abuses on and off the pavement.                       
                                  
 My biggest issue with these kind of cheap e-bikes with stupid barely functionnal gimmicks such as (badly) suspended fork and chinese low end electric system is they often turn very quickly to the landfill because something end up being non functionnal and the owner do not know how to fix it himself and which component to replace wit. So to the eyes of many what you really bought appears to be waste (or soon to be) which would have been better replaced by something that might last better. Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance. But how many people will do that instead of sending it to the landfill and replacing it with the same shit when it gets to this point?                      
                                  
 Having said that the good thing with cycling is you don't have to have the newest more expensive bike to enjoy riding and as long as you do it within the capabilities of the bike. And suprisingly a bike can be operated for long while being in a very bad state as long as speed is kept low, squeaking and grinding his way to your destination.                             
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path"                                 
                                  
 This terminology difference might be meaningful in biking circles, but the places I go are designated as "trails" both colloquially and often by various governments.                                
                                  
 > Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance.                               
                                  
 Wouldn't it be too heavy as a normal bike? From what I understand, ebike frames work out cheaper because they don't have to care about not making them heavy.                                
                                  
                                  
 prmoustache on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Well terminology is important depending on who you are talking to. Some governments may call that trail but riding down a black track at Whistler or Champery is different than just riding along on a non technically challenging gravel road/path. Besides, trail bike is a term used by the bicycle industry for a category of bikes that are much more capable than a cross-country mountain bike on challenging terrain and downhills while not being as much extreme as a Downhill bike with double crown forks which are pigs uphill.                          
                                  
 As for your other question it really depends on the kind of e-bike.                                 
                                  
 Well integrated e-bike from bigger companies have the engine in the bottom bracket area so you can't remove that and the battery is usually so integrated inside the frame. Most cheap e-bike like yours, if it is the same as the one I see on the viribus website, are regular cheap alu frame on which they have strapped a battery on the standard 2 bolts usually dedicated for the water bottle holder cage and the engine is on the rear wheel. So the frame is pretty standard in that regard. Remove the battery and swap the rear wheel for a regular rear wheel and you have a conventional very entry level hardtail.                         
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It is not.                                  
                                  
 Sometimes you can't afford the thigs you want.                                 
                                  
 I made a good and realistic recommendation for the price range, that would leave OP well off in the long run.                                
                                  
 I understand that you could say the ebike part is a hard requirement but, well, I don't think someone who knows so little about mountain biking or biking at all is in a position to make that kind of hard requirement in an informed way.                              
                                  
 I also understand that you could read this as really pompous, but please consider what someone saying otherwise amounts to:                                
                                  
 "I NEED an ebike mtb, but I also know nothing about mtbs or ebikes"                                 
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Suggesting a normal bike to me is not good or realistic at all. Electric is a hard requirement because the whole point is that I don't have the time or motivation to build up to riding steep hills and long distances without power. I can do that right away now, and it's rewarding enough that I keep doing it and getting exercise. I also wanted something suitable for dirt and bumpy terrain, so, a mountain bike style made the most sense.                           
                                  
 I used to ride a road bike occasionally but the difficulty turned me off. If I'm stuck with an unpowered bike I just won't ride.                                
                                  
                                  
 MartinCron on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Don’t let the gatekeepers get you down. Enjoy your ebike.                                 
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Well, that's... something. I'm glad you're out and at least doing some kind of exercise I guess.                                 
                                  
 More (or less?) power to ya.                                  
                                  
                                  
 wiseleo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The problem is that “mountain bike” means two things. To an MTB rider, it’s a vehicle optimized for mountain riding where the top priority is rider’s safety.                                
                                  
 To everyone else, it’s a category of vehicles capable of off-pavement riding on trails. They should be referred to off-pavement bikes.                                
                                  
                                  
 grogenaut on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Mountain bikes are like SUVs. Only a small % of people take either off road or in any way challenge their capabilities.                                
                                  
 But the same can be said for most bikes. Very few folks actually run the tour de france or any other competitive race. People get all excited by capabilities or let those who do know and use those features influence their buying.                               
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is simply untrue. For the standard of bike that someone who knows bikes would call a mountain bike - they are ridden on trails regularly. People are not spending 3k+ on a really inefficient and slow bike to ride around their cities and neighborhoods.                              
                                  
 You presumably are not actually knowledgeable about mountain bikes and riding them?                                 
                                  
                                  
 grogenaut on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 "No true mountain biker would ever call this a mountain bike"... yet go in any sporting goods store, anything with fat tires and or a suspension, upright handlebars, thumb shifters, it's likely labeled a mountain bike and would probably disintegrate on a downhill or cross trail. It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.                             
                                  
 And yes, I used to cross trail several times a year in MO and mtb park (duthie hill) downhill (stevens) when I moved to Seattle, then watched several people get massive concussions and stayed with snowboarding.                               
                                  
 If a thing becomes mainstream it gets diluted. The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.                                
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.                                 
                                  
 Pal, come _on_. Read my initial comment, and any other comment thereafter. I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes.                               
                                  
 You're still not understanding. Those bikes you were talking about - while they may be marketed as 'mountain bikes' (a term anybody can use for anything) - are not fit for the purpose of mountain biking (a set of well establish sports and related types of riding).                              
                                  
 You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.                               
                                  
 > The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.                                 
                                  
 Everybody who mountain bikes (more than once har har har) does so on an actual mountain bike. It's not the 1%. It's more like the 99%. People don't repeatedly take these wallmart bikes down trails. Nobody survives that setup long enough to make it in to the group you can by any good standard call mountain bikers.                             
                                  
 Go to your local trail that isn't some fireroad or featureless single track, and tell me how many people you see on shit bikes like this.                                
                                  
 You know, I'd normally agree with you about this diluted point as it relates to many other things, but I can't here. For example - car racing is not just formula 1 or other top tier engineering categories. The vast majority of car racing is amateur and hobby stuff in comparatively low or very low spec vehicles. The difference is that you can "technically" compete with a formula one car on a racetrack in a 1997 nissan micra with 40hp. The micra can cruise around the track basically indefinitely, stopping only for fuel - and complete the race days after the f1 car. A road is a road.                         
                                  
 This is not the case with mountain biking. All non mountain bikes basically explode on contact with mountains. It's self selecting such that people who continue to mountain bike past the first outing or two, must do so on a purpose built good quality bike.                              
                                  
 It is in this distinction, that you are missing the point.                                 
                                  
 It's unacceptable to me that when I have _clearly_ been talking in the context of real mountain biking, you are now deciding, it seems, to take the totally walked back, side stepped, and frankly revisionist approach of only now saying "well technically these bikes are labeled mountain bikes so I'm right". Nuh uh.                             
                                  
                                  
 CRConrad on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes                                
                                  
 Yeah, and everybody else was pretty clear and explicit that that perspective is irrelevant to, like, 95% of people.                                
                                  
 Edited to add:                                  
                                  
 > You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein.                               
                                  
 That's not the problem. The problem is that you started out by confusing the "actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein" with this discussion, which was an ordinary amateur consumer talking about ordinary amateur consumer products and reviews thereof, and every time someone tried to steer the discussion back to the topic at hand, you've gotten more and more snitty-snotty about your irrelevant No True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective.                           
                                  
 HTH!                                  
                                  
                                  
 lelanthran on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Tell me, when you learned to drive an automobile, was it on a $55k BMW?                                 
                                  
 It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else. After all, if the hobby doesn't "take" and you move on to a different hobby, at least you haven't wasted too much money.                               
                                  
 > This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box.                              
                                  
 But if the buyer of this laptop was happy with the games he was playing on this laptop, why are you getting bent out of shape? Sure, he can't run the latest AAA game in HD, but it's clear that it is working for him.                               
                                  
 Now I actually get this attitude from gamers often because I have a 1st-gen i7 (from 2011) with no SSDs but a modern video card (GTX 660ti), running Linux of all things.                               
                                  
 I say I use it for work and gaming, and the response I get from gamers is very similar to yours - that my "gaming" machine is trash; I should throw everything out (maybe keep the video card) and get a new machine.                               
                                  
 The thing is, it works for me - I play mostly Starcraft 2 and have played Far Cry [2/3/4/5] on it. Those are demanding AAA games. It works for me.                                
                                  
 Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it).                               
                                  
 You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.                                
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 All of these analogies are bad.                                  
                                  
 For the "Did you start with a 55k bmw".                                  
                                  
 No, but for mountain biking I started with an entry level hardtail cannondale that if it was given to someone today, 15 years later, would still be a fun and safe bike to take down your average mtb trails. (Roughly the same cost as this person's bike, new.)                              
                                  
 The analogy is bad though. Learning to operate something in the category of cars is not analogous to starting what you believe to be mountain biking.                                
                                  
 More apt, would be to ask me about starting a subset of driving as a hobby - like rally driving.                                 
                                  
 "If you were going to start rally driving would you start with a 200k race spec subaru, or a 1.5k ali express golf cart car with the word rally written on it?"                                
                                  
 I would answer, as I did - neither. I'd get something second hand and more appropriate at the same price point.                                
                                  
 > It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else.                                 
                                  
 If you are ok with 1) rewarding the scam artists that make these 2) contributing to a culture of low quality throwaway goods and 3) using unsafe and inappropriate tools for the job - go ahead.                               
                                  
 > You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.                                
                                  
 Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a dollar store lawnmower that would break in x mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe. And I'll be fitter. And it will last a lifetime.                              
                                  
 > Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it).                               
                                  
 I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies.                                 
                                  
                                  
 lelanthran on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >> You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.                                
                                  
 >                                  
                                  
 > Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a lawnmower that would break in 10 mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe.                               
                                  
 Firstly, OP said it lasted a year, not 10m. We aren't comparing something that lasts for 10m with something that lasts a lifetime, we are comparing something that lasted for a year with something that lasted longer (not a lifetime).                               
                                  
 Secondly, does it matter if it is possible to get further with the expensive tool if you're not going that far in the first place? If the cheap tool lasts long enough to never require replacement because it isn't used for the entire distance that the expensive tool would be used for, why bother?                              
                                  
 Thirdly, a scythe is not a replacement for a lawnmower that lasts 10m. If you're mowing a green at the golf course, a lawnmower that lasts 10m beats out a scythe that lasts a lifetime.                               
                                  
 Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it.                          
                                  
 > I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies.                                 
                                  
 You'd lose that bet, because I give it all the time. Here's the advice I gave out, and how it turned out.                                
                                  
 (To a nephew, wanting to learn guitar, at start of pandemic) "Why a $500 Yamaha? Buy a $50 guitar if you've never laid hands on one before." He only lost $50 before realising that it was not as easy as he'd thought. He would have lost even less had he simply accepted one of my old guitars.                              
                                  
 (Acquaintance who wanted to learn to weld): "Don't get a $1000 welder; why not take some classes first to see if it's something you want to do?" After three lessons he decided that woodworking is more practical. Saved $1000 dollars there.                              
                                  
 (To my brother-in-law thinking about getting into DIY, four years ago): "Don't get a top-of-range set of tools: Buy a cheap set and then replace the tools as they break with expensive tools." He's not yet replaced any tool in the cheap tool set, because he found that he didn't really enjoy fixing his own stuff. Good thing he didn't spend $1000s on tools.                             
                                  
 If you were to stop and think about it you'd realise that the majority of first-time buyers in any hobby field aren't going to stick with it long enough to make the more expensive option worthwhile. If you were in the hobby for any length of time (i.e. not a newcomer) it'd be obvious as you see people join and then leave. The fact that you haven't seen this tells me that you're still quite new to it. Or maybe you just don't have that many hobbies.                           
                                  
 In fact I still give this same advice wrt all of my hobbies: pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it.                                
                                  
 My hobbies include playing music, painting/drawing/sketching, auto repair, metal-working and wood-working, household DIY (plumbing, plastering, etc), gardening, writing (fiction), electronics (including embedded software), basket-weaving, sewing, cooking ... and a few more that I forget.                              
                                  
 In every single one of those hobbies I meet new people who started with the expensive stuff that would last a lifetime, but they only needed it to the last the 3 weeks it took them to decide that they do not like it. Most hobbies are abandoned before even the cheapest kit breaks.                              
                                  
                                  
 OGWhales on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it.                          
                                  
 Gotta heavily disagree with you on this point. Not about the sticking to a hobby, you're spot on about that, but about the advice given being "crap".                                
                                  
 If you walked into an an actual bike shop and asked them if a $700 hardtail e-bike was a good first choice, they would tell you something like: "oh, that's far too cheap for a hardtail e-bike.. they must've cheaped out heavily somewhere to get it at that price point and trust me, you don't want to be on it when you find out what they cheaped out on. If you want an entry level hardtail e-bike, you'll probably need to spend x dollars more or you can spend about the same for a non-e mountain bike that is a decent entry level one. Just depends on what you are looking to try. If that's too much, second hand is probably your best bet."                        
                                  
 Granted, the advice would be different if you already bought it. They would simply warn you that it's probably not strong at all and to be careful taking it on any trails.                               
                                  
 > pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it.                                
                                  
 Great advise. I fully agree. The thing is, entry level hardtail e-bikes typically go for much higher than $700. Ask anyone into biking about this and they will be concerned about the integrity of the bike at the price point for that style of bike. E-bikes are expensive. You are looking at entry level mountain bikes at that price point, not entry level mountain e-bikes.                            
                                  
                                  
 theelous3 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 A year for a bike is a dogshit lifespan. You can get decades out of decent bikes. The comparisons is reasonable, given you twisted the conversation to pivot around lawnmowers.                               
                                  
 I see the rest of your comment is nothing but accusing me of giving bad advice, followed by examples of exactly the same kind of advice I gave or would give, mixed with a dose of bragging about being in touch with pro... welders, cooks, gardeners and other normal jobs that everyone has contacts in. Except basket weavers. I'll give you that one.                             
                                  
 Way to totally miss the mark.                                  
                                  
 If you drop the basket weaving and gardening, and add mountain biking, machining, and lockpicking - we're about the same on being over-hobbied individuals.                                
                                  
                                  
 withinboredom on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I know someone who dumped 8K on a gaming rig to play Minecraft and 2d games. At the other end, some people will spend too much money just to play “entry level” and have no idea what they actually have or need to be successful (not just video games and computers!).                              
                                  
                                  
 matthias509 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’m still rocking my aluminum hardtail Trek I bought in college 25 years ago with the (gasp) three front derailleurs and the Rockshox Judy front fork. I had no idea that the tech had changed that much since I don’t ride seriously any more.                              
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :)                             
                                  
 It seems far more like its someone buying that cheap laptop, primarily using it to surf the web and play solitaire (or FPSes from 2001) and talk about how great it is. And it is great for what they're doing. Who needs 8 cores and 32 gigs of RAM? The answer is some subset of people between "everyone" and "no one".                             
                                  
                                  
 jeffe on Jan 7, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 eh, you can buy a great hardtails for 800-1.2k, even less if buying second hand. the main thing to point out is that at $700 including all the electronic add ons the components will be worse and trail rideability/durability will suffer significantly compared to even a low end mtb at the same price range. I've let friends use my nice bike while I ride my crap "general purpose" bike and it works on easier trails... (probably) safe enough on those trails, but still wouldn't recommend it.                          
                                  
                                  
 WheatM on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 So obnoxious. "Hey, I really like this entry level bike!". Typical HN response: "no you don't, it's trash. And if you do it's because you're trash."                                
                                  
                                  
 gamegoblin on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 FWIW I also got an E-bike in that price range and it began to seriously degrade after a year or so of daily use. It was great for that first year, though. If I were to get another E-bike, I'd move up to the mid-tier price range.                               
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 What started to degrade specifically? Did you try a new battery?                                 
                                  
 This was my first ebike, so I wanted to test the waters with something cheap. If it starts falling apart, I'll probably build a custom one or two and spend more money since ebike riding's been working great for me to get consistent exercise and go on trails more conveniently.                              
                                  
                                  
 gamegoblin on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I started losing battery life and motor torque (though maybe this is related to the battery -- this is not my area of expertise). Hills that I used to be able to cruise up without much effort started to require real work to assist the motor. Battery life degraded to around 50% of the initial capacity.                             
                                  
 I think your strategy is totally valid, and I do that with most power tools in my shop. Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade.                                
                                  
 For me, I actually side-graded to a Onewheel electric skateboard (https://onewheel.com/) at the very beginning of the pandemic.                                
                                  
 As a commuter vehicle, it's less practical than an e-bike. You can't carry as much (limited to a backpack), and it's almost certainly an order of magnitude more dangerous (but more fun!). The biggest downside for me us the inability to take my dog with me (I used to tow him in one of those bike trailers for kids). But all of these don't really apply in WFH pandemic times.                            
                                  
 On the other hand, being able to pick up and carry the Onewheel opens up a lot more commute options that aren't as easy on an e-bike. In particular, pairing it with public transit is powerful. It's difficult or impossible to load a bike into crowded light rail car, but trivial to fit in with a Onewheel.                             
                                  
 Where I live in Seattle, I can Onewheel 1.5 miles to the nearest light rail station in SoDo, take the train 7 miles north to Greenlake, and then Onewheel another 1 mile to my friend's house. The whole trip takes 40 minutes. It's 30 minutes by car.                              
                                  
 I also go grocery shopping with it. In the store, I just stow it in the bottom shelf of the cart. This makes grocery shopping super frictionless, because I don't have to lock up a bike or anything. I just don't get more than 2 bags of groceries at a time. Grocery shopping is so frictionless for me now, that is not a big deal. It's a 5 minute ride (1 mile) to the store, I'm in and out in 10 minutes, and then back home in 5 more.                           
                                  
 The only times I drive anymore are when I'm not traveling alone or when it's raining heavily (I am fine to Onewheel in the typical light Seattle rail).                                
                                  
 It's really revolutionized mobility for me, much more than the e-bike ever did.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade.                                 
                                  
 I believe popularized by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, if I'm remembering where it hit internet-widespread from.                                
                                  
 But an excellent point, because people don't realize the % of things they're not going to use regularly. Or the fact that it usually takes (time for the cheapest version to break) to figure out if you're going to use it frequently.                               
                                  
 (Also, side note: absolutely no professional review site has any incentive to remind you that cheaper, used, or previous model gear exists or is viable)                                
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Adam has definitely advocated that approach. Not that I'm some kind of authority, but I strongly second it.                                
                                  
 Early in life, my uncle Ray suggested doing that and showed off an impressive collection of tools. And he was that fix it uncle that had a big influence on me as a kid. We tore into basically everything and I never saw him without some book or other close by. One thing he liked to do was stock the car trunk in addition to the shop stuff. Road tools get lost, loaned out, abused, whatever it may take to deal with a scenario on the road. To that end, I've put some of those cheaper high count sets that come in the fold up containers. Perfect for the trunk.                         
                                  
 And a diverse collection is really the other side benefit. Gives a person a lot of options. Most of the time they all see light use except for a few. Going expensive limits the collection unnecessarily and that limits what one can do, or might attempt to do, again unnecessarily.                              
                                  
 The value from having a broad set of stuff generally exceeds the replacements that will come along the way. And that's mostly true, even when there are periods of inactivity. Others may benefit. Doesn't hurt to lend a tool, or a hand to help someone else get through a project.                              
                                  
 And frankly, as people gain experience, learning where tool limits are tends to cut back on the wear and tear on even cheapo tools. It all tends to add right up.                                
                                  
 The other strategy I would suggest is scoring tools every year at yard / garage sale time. Estates are often great for this too.                                
                                  
 Sometimes I will see a collection and just bulk buy if I can. Over time I've lost some while moving and that was a great way to stock back up and have a lot of options for not very many dollars.                               
                                  
 The only variation I would suggest is to avoid very rock bottom stuff, like dollar store, or that crap in the hardware store promo bin. Some of those might not even survive the first use! But, it can be hard to tell too, YMMV.                               
                                  
                                  
 gamegoblin on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In my shop, the only thing I regret buying the super-cheap model of is a bandsaw. It's just so crappy as to not even be particularly useful for doing bandsaw-type work. But I have so many other cheap tools going strong, the strategy is definitely paying off in aggregate.                              
                                  
                                  
 ethbr0 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Low torque? Curious what makes a crappy bandsaw crappy.                                 
                                  
 And yup! That was the math: (cost of cheap things) * (total number of things) - (cost to rebuy) * (% of things you end up rebuying) << (cost of mid-range things) * (total number of things)                               
                                  
                                  
 NathanielK on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Low rigidity in shop tools leads to sadness. Even cutting thin pieces of sheetmetal can be miserable if the blade doesn't stay straight.                                
                                  
 Sticking with wood or plastic on cheap saws/drills/mills can be ok, but really limits the kinds of things you can fix.                                
                                  
                                  
 gamegoblin on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Low horsepower, poor blade tension control, low clearance, generally made of super low quality steel that is prone to deformation.                                
                                  
                                  
 bbarnett on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Reddit is filled sockpuppets.                                  
                                  
                                  
 andrewf on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Aw man. I just signed up for the $59/yr magazine + online access. I believe the bulk of what you're saying, and that CR's methodology has value. That said the following was also part of my experience on consumerreports.com -                               
                                  
 In the bottom footer, I click on "Ad Choices". I'm presented with a list of advertisers in a TrustArc-branded dialog. To opt out of being retargeted by consumerreports.com, there are checkboxes for three vendors: Microsoft, LiveRamp Inc. and Google Advertising Products. For seven other vendors, there's no checkbox, just instructions to visit the website: Amazon Advertising, Bidtellect Inc, Comscore B.V, Facebook, Google Inc, Kibo Commerce, and Twitter.                           
                                  
 Also in the footer (maybe only for California residents such as myself?) there is a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link. It opens a OneTrust-branded dialog with the option to disable "Share My Information with Third Parties on Digital". It also declares that "If you are a Print or All-Access Member and receive Consumer Reports magazine or Consumer Reports on Health through the mail, we may share your name and mailing address for direct mail purposes with selected companies offering products or services that we believe will be of interest to you." I followed a link to a separate page, which required me to copy-paste in my just-received membership number, to opt out of this.                       
                                  
                                  
 stjohnswarts on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The upside is that the "positive" results should be good for a reasonable shelf life (or if you can find out the mfg date of what you're buying)                                
                                  
                                  
 nottorp on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Do you also have to call a phone number and wait on hold for hours to cancel you subscription?                                 
                                  
                                  
 marcolussetti on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 When I last signed up a few years ago, no, it didn't even auto-renew.                                 
                                  
                                  
 andrewf on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 During sign-up I think I saw a link to a cancellation URL - embedded in the warning that I will be autorenewed in 12 months if I don't cancel first :)                                
                                  
                                  
 stanmancan on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I wish CR did -more- reviews in each category. I know it's next to impossible to thoroughly review every single product in the world, but I would pay 10x the subscription fee if I could reliably go there and find all the current models available in the different categories.                              
                                  
                                  
 NathanielK on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 RTINGs is doing an excellent job in this space. They have a public queue where subcribers can vote on the next product they buy to review.                                
                                  
                                  
 gorbachev on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've got two problems with Consumer Reports reviews.                                 
                                  
 1. They aren't often comprehensive enough in their product lineup to be valuable. Obviously a hard problem to solve on product categories like consumer electronics where the product choices can count in the hundreds.                               
                                  
 2. They aren't often including the latest and greatest in their reviews either, so I'm quite often not confident I'm getting the best bang for my buck going with their reviews.                               
                                  
                                  
 jerkstate on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah I sing the praises of Consumer Reports all the time. I think I pay $10 annually for a subscription and every time I buy or recommend something I check with them and so far have not been let down. Their reviews almost always include objective measurements and durability testing, it’s really surprising how people miss them among more modern options.                             
                                  
                                  
 tssva on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Many local libraries have deals with Consumer Reports to provide their card holders access to the CR member website without charge.                                
                                  
                                  
 doktorhladnjak on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's $10/month or $39/year                                  
                                  
                                  
 jimmaswell on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 What more can Google even do about the onslaught of ever-evolving SEO spam besides hardcode some arbitrary "winners", which would have its own set of problems? It seems like a very hard problem.                               
                                  
                                  
 codingdave on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 But that is the point - it is Google's problem, not ours. They don't have the best info anymore, so use someone else. There are other search engines. If Google wants us back, it is their problem to improve.                               
                                  
                                  
 rapind on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’m guessing OP meant it’s a hard problem in general, not just for Google.                                 
                                  
 Also, the statement that Goggle doesn’t have the best information anymore seems objectively false. We can wish there were other players doing it better, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m open to the idea that Google is just riding their wave, but I’ve yet to see proof. I just see the search industry at large shedding quality results.                             
                                  
 I think Google could step up its ranking game w/ ML eliminating a lot of bad patterns, but I'm not sure they have the will to do it, or are afraid of the consequences (every travel blogger selling an ebook will go apeshit about it for instance).                              
                                  
                                  
 datenarsch on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The fundamental problem is that the interests of Google do not align with the interests of it's users.                                 
                                  
 Google is not interested in serving us the "best" search results possible, they are interested in serving us their customers ads. In other words, Google search results are crap, because Google wants them to be crap.                               
                                  
                                  
 rapind on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That's far too simplistic. Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers). I also think it's a multifaceted challenge that failing some genuine ingenuity won't really get solved.                               
                                  
 Like I said though, maybe they are just riding their wave (dominance) at this point, but then I'd expect to see better results from a scrappy competitor already or soon. Here's hoping, but even as a discerning user, I haven't yet.                               
                                  
 I'm confident that even if Google doesn't solve it, for whatever reason, someone else will eventually. In the meantime, results continue to degrade and the desire / reward to fix it will increase.                               
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers).                                 
                                  
 I have no idea if that's even possible. The number of people who (a) Google pays to be the default engine for and (b) aren't even aware there are other engines is huge. If the various google search domains went offline, the number of people who wouldn't even be able to find facebook is probably a double-digit percent, let alone those who cannot figure out to fail over to bing, ddg, yahoo, whatever.                            
                                  
                                  
 rapind on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There are more than enough users aware of search to support a fledgling competitor that managed to deliver higher quality results.                                
                                  
 That competitor simply doesn’t exist yet, and I think that’s because no one has figured out how to beat Google at search (which is why I think real ingenuity is required).                               
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I thought DDG beat google when it first got going. It seems to have declined and in some cases is no longer even usable anymore.                                
                                  
                                  
 lozenge on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google with its hundreds of billions in revenue should be able to solve the problem, right?                                 
                                  
 Not when compared to the trillions of dollars of e commerce revenue that is the reward for getting to the top of Google results - even if you don't deserve it.                                
                                  
                                  
 HWR_14 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Total ecommerce in 2021 was around 5 trillion dollars. That's revenue, and split across all players.                                 
                                  
 Somehow I think Google with the ability to devote billions to solving the problem has more resources to throw at it than any ecommerce company. Except for possibly Amazon.                               
                                  
                                  
 basch on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 hardcode some arbitrary "winners"                                  
                                  
 The point of google is to surface good content above bad content. If they can identify what good content is, surface it, by any means necessary.                                
                                  
                                  
 lr4444lr on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Seconding this. As recently perhaps as 7 or 8 years ago, I used to shake my head sympathetically at how antiquated their business model seemed, and wondered when they'd finally close up shop. Fast forward to today, with bots, review bribery, astroturfed "buying guides", and paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes Wirecutter, CR is now my most trusted source on purchasing anything over $100, or a product that could be crucial to my health.                           
                                  
                                  
 SamBam on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes Wirecutter                                 
                                  
 Evidence for this? Is it just for stuff specifically tagged as paid content, or is there any evidence that their standard reviews might be tainted by money?                                
                                  
                                  
 lr4444lr on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Affiliate link revenue model: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecutter_(website)                                 
                                  
 They claim the reviewers go in neutral, but I'm sorry, I just don't trust it. Thr fact that they only test a subset of products in a given competitive space alone makes this too tainted for my liking. (CR also doesn't hit every company in a space, but at least they're not incentivized to pick the ones that pay them.)                             
                                  
                                  
 taurath on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For now I've been using the NYT wirecutter folks. They do a good job posting their methodology and you can usually dig much further for what problems they found.                                
                                  
                                  
 fmajid on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Dan Liu has some choice comments on Wirecutter reviews:                                 
                                  
 https://danluu.com/why-benchmark/                                  
                                  
 Whenever I visit them I get the opposite of Gell-Mann amnesia syndrome and remember how terrible their recommendations are on products I am familiar with.                                
                                  
                                  
 taurath on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I had to scroll through a whole lot to get to the part that mentions wirecutter - the only one they really mentioned was webcams, with anecdotes about how that particular webcam they recommend isn't very good. Not much talk about why the methodology is wrong.                              
                                  
 However I do find the webcam recommendation article wirecutter did to be of worse quality than the others they had. Its a very room dependent item. Its certainly easy to look at that review having played with other webcams and say hey I think their methodology sucks.                              
                                  
 But I recently bought a new toaster oven - I had already had a kitchenaid one that got fine reviews on most sites, but I found it to be really inconsistant. The wirecutter site had photos of the uneven toasting of the same model I had, in the exact same way that mine was. They also showed photos of their recommended toasters. I picked up their recommended one. It toasts exactly as they recommended. So its not a total loss.                           
                                  
                                  
 lenkite on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This thread has now successfully been diverted from a discussion on Google search results to a discussion on CR.                                
                                  
                                  
 JumpCrisscross on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The New York Times’ Wirecutter is also quite good.                                 
                                  
                                  
 fnord77 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't trust consumer reports any longer. they have amazon affiliate links. I suspect the current CEO is selling them out, bit by bit. Also, their current web format makes it hard to find recommendations on used cars.                               
                                  
                                  
 KarlKemp on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You can buy most any product at Amazon, so the affiliate links are not an incentive for CR to rank one product better than the competitor they would otherwise also link to.                               
                                  
 Plus Amazon affiliate links are standardized and automated to such a degree that’s there’s no chance they would manually penalize or reward CR for editorial content.                                
                                  
                                  
 kadoban on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I would assume that Amazon affiliate links pay more for more expensive products, so there could easily be incentive to reward expensive over cheap.                                
                                  
                                  
 DrScump on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 CR has biases, and they leak out in various ways. When I was doing detailed car-shopping in the 1990s, I noticed that drivetrains in American-badged cars would show significant problems while Japanese-badged cars with the same drivetrains from the same supplier would be ranked consistently higher (e.g. Isuzu vs Chevy light trucks, Mazda vs Ford sedans).                             
                                  
                                  
 tmaly on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 My friend in Germany pointed me to a site like CR but with a better track record. I have to ping him for the name again.                                
                                  
                                  
 distances on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You probably mean Stiftung Warentest. It is indeed the gold standard of product test organisations.                                 
                                  
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest                                 
                                  
                                  
 vestrigi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I just learned that you can get the yearbook including all tests from the previous year for like 10€, the other big testing magazine Ökotest (focused on environmental impact) offers this too.                               
                                  
                                  
 CoastalCoder on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Please post when you get it!                                  
                                  
                                  
 trevex on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I unfortunately share your experiences. However in Germany there is a foundation called “Stiftung Warentest” [1], which does independent testing of products. With reviews full of Amazon affiliate links dominating search results, I tend to purchase their tests for ~3 Euros more often than ever.                              
                                  
 However this only works for popular product categories, but less so for specialized equipment.                                 
                                  
 My impression is also that affiliate links hurt consumers in the long run as they reduce the selection of products in reviews or blogs to those the authors can earn money with. This however leaves out potential alternatives. More often than not the winner of product categories (at least those I was researching) of independent tests were not available from sites running affiliate programs. For example a consumer-grade lawn mower from an otherwise professional gardening company or a tent from a Scandinavian brand.                          
                                  
 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest                                 
                                  
                                  
 tucosan on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Sadly, Stiftung Warentest often doesn't have the expertise to properly test many products. I often notice the shortcomings in product tests for products that I know and use.                               
                                  
 I was reminded of this with their last test of 3d printers. Their test results where far from what everyone with experience in the field would consider accurate.                                
                                  
                                  
 mschild on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For some products, I agree, but realistically its about as good as it gets unless you do thorough research on a given product and are actually able to find a somewhat unbiased review.                               
                                  
 Take washing machines for example. How do you know which ones are good and which ones are not? Public reviews from any website tend to only be a good indicator if there a lots of bad ones. I have 0 faith in the average consumer to accurately rate a product. Overwhelmingly negative reviews will clearly show a deficiency but positive ones are unfortunately more and more a gamble.                            
                                  
 Stiftung Warentest isn't perfect, but they do, on most occasions, put in a high amount of effort to test products to the best of their abilities without any personal opinions. I don't know of a single other person/organization/website where that is the case.                              
                                  
                                  
 petra on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Most washing machines offer quit similar features. The key difference is reliability.                                 
                                  
 Testing for reliability is expensive, so most likely Stiftung Warentest and similar companies don't do that.                                
                                  
                                  
 onli on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 No, that's exactly what they do test and test well. Their model mostly breaks down for computer technology and peripherals in that space. When testing a mouse they would test how often it can click before breaking down, and that's only slight hyperbole. Might be a bit better now in that area than back then when I read their tests regularly.                             
                                  
                                  
 turbinerneiter on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I bought their test of basmati rice and these monsters had an intern court the broken vs. whole rice grains in a 500g package.                                
                                  
 I assume they only counted a sample of the the 500g, but it's funnier to imagine otherwise.                                 
                                  
                                  
 aitchnyu on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Wonder if Count Things can do that https://countthings.com/                                 
                                  
 But then Basmati rice is judged on grain length too. Wonder if they report like "22 cm of broken pieces per km of grains".                                
                                  
                                  
 saimiam on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 s/court/count/.                                  
                                  
 It took me a while to understand what you meant.                                 
                                  
                                  
 turbinerneiter on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I mean that would be even funnier. Sorry for the typo.                                 
                                  
                                  
 14 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 My brand new LG turbowasher model lasted 3 months before one morning sounded like a hammer smashing something. I ran to the machine and a support bracket inside had broken. It took 2 months for them to replace it I was not impressed. It has since lasted 3 more years no issues but I doubt I would go with LG in the future since it was a horrible customer service experience getting my first one repairs under warranty. Had they helped me better after it breaking I may have said it was just a fluke and still recommended them.                          
                                  
                                  
 brnt on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I base those sorts of purchases on duration of warranty. Recently bought a dryer, and apart from a brand that cost significantly more, they all came with 2 year warranties. One reasonably priced machine had 4, so I picked that one.                               
                                  
                                  
 pooper on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Counterexample: Korean auto manufacturers Hyundai and Kia offer longer warranties than Japanese manufacturers Honda and Toyota because that’s the only way people will buy Korean cars.                               
                                  
                                  
 aitchnyu on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Wonder if they are taking advantage of bath tub curve and 8 years is slightly costlier than 5 years to a manufacturer. In India, Toyota is selling rebadged Suzuki cars offering lower cost and more warranty.                               
                                  
                                  
 usr1106 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Warranty is ridiculous. Of course it's good to have if something breaks early. But normally I want my stuff to last much longer. Our fridge broke last summer: 30 years old. It had one repair 18 years ago. Our washing machine is 22, zero repairs. I hope it still makes it while. Well, none of them were the cheapest ones. From central European factories which might no longer exist...                            
                                  
 Some would claim these old appliances waste energy. I am not convinced. We need to heat our buildings here from September to May. Whatever a very modern appliance warms the building less the heating has to substitute. It's all energy and losses produce heat.                              
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There is also all the energy required to churn out newer appliances that break and get recycled.                                 
                                  
 Getting one great one that will last for a few decades isn't a bad call. That's what I do personally.                                 
                                  
 And there are still ways to save, reduce energy impact. Moderation is a big one. Just be frugal and prudent with the appliances. That has a major impact and everyone could do more and capture those gains right away.                               
                                  
                                  
 mschild on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 They ran 3 machines of each model 1840 times and always exactly recorded the statistics (is the 60C program really using 60C water, etc) and results to test for reliability.                               
                                  
                                  
 nkrisc on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As long as their methodology is clear you can at least judge their results for yourself and whether you consider them meaningful, even if it wasn’t perhaps as good as an expert could have done.                               
                                  
                                  
 thih9 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Rtings seems a similar project; some of their test results are free, some are paid. They have a wide set of comparison tools, they test for a lot of features and they document their testing procedures well; it's a really nice change from SEO spam articles.                              
                                  
 I recommend their tests of headphones [1], I especially like how they measure breatability [2]. They also have a page about printers [3].                                
                                  
 [1]: https://www.rtings.com/headphones                                  
                                  
 [2]: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tests/design/breathability                                 
                                  
 [3]: https://www.rtings.com/printer                                  
                                  
                                  
 sharken on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Used Gsmarena.com to narrow down which Android-based phone would be the best choice.                                 
                                  
 Ended up with the OnePlus 8T due to good battery life, fast charging and reasonable size.                                 
                                  
 Still very happy with that purchase, which wouldn't have been as easy without that site.                                 
                                  
                                  
 thirdsun on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Finding review of tech gadgets and hardware is quite easy. Even niche products usually have dedicated communities and sites with in-depth knowledge. It's the boring everyday products and large appliances like washing machines that are really hard to evaluate sicne their reviews basically amount to affiliate spam.                             
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Thanks for the links, but especially the printer one is exactly what I was talking about: They are all marked as unavailable on the site.                                
                                  
                                  
 cortesoft on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The US has Consumer Reports, which is similar I think... but yeah, only works for major product categories.                                
                                  
                                  
 mcguire on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For kitchen tools, there's America's Test Kitchen reviews (from Cooking magazine, IIRC). It's a limited segment but high quality.                                
                                  
 On the other hand, it has the same problem as Consumer Reports: they only test and review a single model which will probably be out of production before you need one. On the third hand, if one manufacturer consistently gets good reviews (OXO Goodgrips, for example)...                              
                                  
                                  
 MartinCron on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Cooks Illustrated is the name of the magazine, and I recommend it to anyone who ever spends time in a kitchen.                                
                                  
 Some of the purchases I have made with their guidance have been (trivially) life-changing.                                 
                                  
                                  
 mcguire on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You are absolutely right! Sorry about that --- I zoned out on the magazine's name.                                 
                                  
                                  
 vlovich123 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There’s also the NYT WireCutter which tried to do a good job isolating it away as an independent review source that you can trust.                                
                                  
                                  
 hnav on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Some of the WireCutter’s picks were fairly terrible, which makes sense: testing diverse categories of products is too expensive for affiliate links to cover. I’ve gifted dashcams on their recommendation that shot beautiful QHD but had MTBF measured in single digit months. The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.                            
                                  
                                  
 m0lecules on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 To be fair, MTBF is not something you can measure in a reasonable time for these kinds of review sites. Far better for this kind of thing is niche-specific youtube channels.                               
                                  
 But in any case, what you're asking for here is a prediction of your future satisfaction with a product. It's a non-trivial problem even for the most innocuous purchases.                               
                                  
 Will I like Lysol or Clorox wipes more? Who knows, and the reviews aren't going to beat first-hand experience in any circumstances.                                
                                  
                                  
 seanp2k2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’ve written extensively about this recently, but these days with $300+ “gaming” routers using crappy sweatshop software on whatever Atheros router SoC, many users would be much better served with legit SMB routing / switching / wifi systems that are available for around the same price.                              
                                  
                                  
 disgruntledphd2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've always found anything tagged as "gaming" to be lower quality and more expensive than the business machines.                                
                                  
 ====                                  
                                  
 This message sent from a Thinkpad business machine that I use for gaming (and ML, theoretically).                                 
                                  
                                  
 bobthepanda on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I mean this is a known thing in general; the best kitchen supply stuff you can buy is often stuff intended for commercial use, because it quite literally goes through the wringer with near-constant usage over long periods of time.                               
                                  
 The problem is finding a place that sells commercial things to individual buyers. That, and sometimes what a commercial kitchen needs is vastly oversized for a regular house; you're probably going to set off your residential fire alarm very often with a massive commercial range designed for woks, for example, unless you also upgrade the ventilation, etc.                             
                                  
                                  
 bentcorner on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I switched to Unifi access points and a wired router and switch and am much happier with the result.                                 
                                  
 The consolidation of router, switch and access point means you can't upgrade individual parts. It's the modern equivalent of the TV-VCR combo and most consumers don't realize they actually can be separated.                               
                                  
                                  
 kayodelycaon on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I didn’t know what good Wifi until I switched to using some TP-Link Omada equipment.                                 
                                  
 If you run your own controller, you can set up a small network (router, PoE switch, and AP) for less than $300. Hardware controller is ~$90. A controller isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t recommend doing a standalone setup.                               
                                  
 Downside? It’s business class equipment and you need some idea what you’re doing. It’s not plug-n-play. Also, it’s layer 2 only. If you want mDNS across vlans, you’ll need to run a reflector. (Not difficult. It’s built into avahi.)                               
                                  
                                  
 sersi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'd love to read what you've written. So far, my research into commercial Access points hasn't really been that fruitful. I refuse any cloud based management interface. For the router, I use mikrotik which has been great but I returned the access points from them that I tried. In the end, my access points are Asus home routers because they were the best I found.                            
                                  
                                  
 Sunspark on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The C7 is a good router if you put OpenWRT on it.                                 
                                  
                                  
 macintux on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.                                 
                                  
 Can attest. I finally ditched mine, got tired of it falling over multiple times each week.                                 
                                  
                                  
 tzs on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've got the A7, which I believe is the same thing except it has some sort of ability to enable Alexa control for something or other.                                
                                  
 Mine has worked great. The only issues I've seen are (1) the traffic stats don't count IPv6 traffic, and (2) there is something odd that sometimes goes on when a connection ends that can result in packets from the LAN side showing up on the WAN side without the LAN-side IP address being replaced with the WAN-side IP address.                             
                                  
 The first is a bit of annoyance, and the second as far as I saw didn't actually cause any problems.                                 
                                  
                                  
 michaelmrose on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Maybe you got a lemon I've been using mine for a while now. Not as nice as my old one with customer firmware but still consistent.                                
                                  
                                  
 sumoboy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 wirecutter's picks are definitely bad, more like products to avoid.                                 
                                  
                                  
 greggman3 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 My experience with NYT product reviews is pretty awful. I wish I could be more concrete. Tried to look in my history but I could have sworn at least one article was just effectively, "top 10 most popular on Amazon", with quotes from user reviews. Maybe I'm getting my sites mixed up.                              
                                  
                                  
 derbOac on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I believe you're thinking of The Strategist, which is through New York Magazine. That's basically their thing, to summarize Amazon reviews for you and filter through a product category based on that. I also don't really see much of the value in it, but I suppose I can see how someone might.                              
                                  
                                  
 KarlKemp on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yes, you are definitely confusing something. And someone.                                 
                                  
                                  
 michaelmrose on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Bought a pair of audio-technica headphones based on their review. Sound quality was as described but it was so uncomfortable I returned it 5 minutes after picking it up. It was described as comfortable for long wear but it had a hard band with little padding and was uncomfortable for any duration.                             
                                  
                                  
 thirdsun on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Comfort is a pretty subjective thing. Your experience, while valid, is merely a single data point and it would be quite premature to disregard the review or even the whole outlet based on it.                               
                                  
                                  
 short12 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That fell to complete shit a while back. They are not wrong but I would ignore their rankings and focus on the review aspects                                
                                  
                                  
 ghaff on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I find Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are pretty reasonable for product categories where I just want a reasonable choice and don't necessarily have deep knowledge and preferences myself. And, yes, it's worth reading why they picked something. But if I were buying an interchangeable lens camera or a computer I might read their recommendation but I'd look elsewhere also. For a sprayer for a hose? I'm sure their recommendation is fine.                           
                                  
                                  
 fmajid on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 No, for hoses they recommend ones with the archaic brass threaded fittings common in the US instead of the far superior Gardena type.                                
                                  
                                  
 awslattery on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Rtings is my go-to for most things. Been satisfied with several purchases researched there.                                 
                                  
                                  
 xiphias2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I’m a subscriber to consumer reports, but as it put Tesla Model 3, the most successful car in the past few years on the back as the least reliable, I feel that I can’t trust its results to be 100% independent reviews. I don’t have a Tesla, but if something grows so fast where people pay a significant amount for it, it can’t be that bad.                             
                                  
                                  
 tzs on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Are you thinking of the Model Y? CR gives the Model 3 average reliability, and gives it the highest overall score in the electric car $45-55k category. The only other car with average reliability in the category is the BMW i3. The Ford Mustang Mach-E and Polestar 2 get the next tier down for reliability, and then the Model Y brings up the rear getting the bottom tier reliability score.                            
                                  
 In the electric cars over $75k category, everything except the Audi E-Tron gets the tier between worse and average, including the Tesla Models S and X. The Audi gets the bottom tier.                               
                                  
 This article talks about why the Teslas other than the Model 3 get low reliability ratings [1]:                                 
                                  
 > Commonly reported issues from Model Y owners included defective sensors that had to be replaced, problems with heat pumps, air conditioning, body panels that didn’t line up and water leaks in the trunk due to missing seals, according to Fisher. Owners also reported a variety of electrical and hardware issues with the higher-priced, and less-popular, Model S sedan and Model X falcon-wing SUV.                            
                                  
 > Older models typically fare better in reliability, as companies tend to make tweaks and redesigns to solve known problems, while sticking with the same parts and suppliers.                               
                                  
 > But Tesla deviates from this approach, Fisher explained. “At almost random times during the year Tesla will switch major components, suppliers or sensors and other units. The more you change, the greater the chances you’re going to have some problems.”                              
                                  
 [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/consumer-reports-2021-auto-r...                                 
                                  
                                  
 maxdo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Ford recalled almost all their mach-e cars build until first half of 2021 with unglued roof, so that there was two different risks to roof fly away. As of december 2021 they still didn't fix the keys. Software glitch and a security recall of seatbelt issues. And yet, it is more reliable compares to tesla lol :)                             
                                  
                                  
 aix1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't know anything about how reliable or not Model 3 is, but surely reliability != popularity?                                 
                                  
                                  
 xiphias2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It’s the growth that’s staggering. What I read is that older car companies changed the rating to include small software bugs in the entertainment system. As Tesla has much more non-essential features, these while these small bugs are not that important for the end user, can bring the ratings down vs other cars that don’t even offer the feature.                             
                                  
                                  
 KarlKemp on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Tesla is well known to whip cars with sometimes dozens of minor issues. It’s a new company and these processes need time and experience.                                
                                  
 The reliability data also is likely sourced from outside, such as the AAA, insurers, or any other place where car trouble data naturally accumulates.                                
                                  
                                  
 xiphias2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I see...it's interesting that they can get away with it while growing so fast                                 
                                  
                                  
 maxdo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Tesla got it's fair share of issues, but they fix them and detect them fast. They adamant about security. Only Tesla and Volvo got their own testing facilities. Last recall of backup camera is actually a positive call. On a very small group of cars they got this issue. They called it a defect and recalled an entire batch ( 500k cars) to fix a potential issue.                            
                                  
                                  
 derbOac on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Well, there was just a recall of 500000 Tesla vehicles, including Model 3s, for safety issues:                                 
                                  
 https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-recall-model-3-s-fr...                                 
                                  
                                  
 maxdo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah, I was also frustrated. Tesla always been in the top. And boom, suddenly it stoped been there. I don't believe in reincarnation. All my peers who owns tesla are the most happy customers every, including me. For 2 years owning Model Y I asked for service twice. Once i damaged the car, they came to my backyard, I found it super convenient.                             
                                  
 Second time I request a retrofit a speaker from a newer models and hardware + work cost me $100 usd. Engineers did all the job at my home while i was working. I only clicked from the App open the car . Oh well, consumer report doesn't count this things that makes consumers happy.                              
                                  
 Consumer reports also doesn't count that after two years of ownership i received tons of new features and my car still feels fresh. I can put here a huge list. Since I bought the car :                               
                                  
 - my range improved                                  
                                  
 - winter regenerative brakes improved                                  
                                  
 - automatic blindspot cameras after turn                                  
                                  
 - improved climate control, especially automatic seat heat                                 
                                  
 - more music/video sources                                  
                                  
 - dramatically improved autopilot                                  
                                  
 - view cameras from phone                                  
                                  
 - updated for free hardware for temperature measurements during one of the unrelated visits                                 
                                  
 - improved charging time ( faster)                                  
                                  
 - charging network doubled                                  
                                  
 - automatically synced profiles to my second tesla                                 
                                  
 - better charging scheduling, that works well with my local electricity provider incentives, saved me ~600 usd already                                
                                  
 - far better navigation included way points                                 
                                  
 - better security when backing up ( sound)                                 
                                  
 - improved auto wipers, that become 100% reliable( more a fix)                                 
                                  
 - i don't include tons of fun stuff like games, easter eggs etc...                                 
                                  
 This are only improvements that are useful to me. The actual list is waay bigger.                                 
                                  
 Oh well... someone paid this journalists to portrait it in a bad way. But that basically shows how vulnerable is the system. You pay 10-20 journalists and boom, you got your marketshare of people who trust to some bs like consumer reports.                              
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm in a strange position here. I fundamentally agree that reviews for the most part are absolute steaming pile of crap of a space for many niches. I work in one of the worst - web hosting reviews. It's plagued by fake affiliate reviews dominating basically every search result. I've been trying for 10 years to run a company that did reviews differently in the web hosting space.                            
                                  
 Full disclosure, I have affiliate links on companies that have them too. But I also list companies without them and it has had zero bearing on any result in 10 years. In fact, when I launched I had to beg the CEO of the top rated company to create a special affiliate program for me. Why? Because he didn't believe in review sites and affiliates in the space. It took months, but I told him if he didn't create one, what I was trying to do would never have a chance because I'd never make a dollar - you're the top rated company. I want to do something different, but it needs to remain somewhat financially viable and if you don't have a program I'm dead before it starts.                        
                                  
 So what happened in those 10 years?                                  
                                  
 Honestly, not a whole a lot. I have mediocre rankings (often page 2-5) on some of the most competitive terms on Google. I can't afford to buy the links my competitors do because they make 10x or more what I do pushing the highest paying affiliates and designing for conversion. The site has some traction within niche communities - especially the WordPress hosting space - because I also run annual performance benchmarks (https://wphostingbenchmarks.com) where I document and thoroughly test most of the meaningful players in that space.                          
                                  
 It makes a couple grand a month, I've disclosed the revenue publicly on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/reviewsignal-e1ddcc26...) and it's gone down since then.                               
                                  
 The data I'm providing is almost surely the most transparent data tracking the industry and maybe the least biased (the reviews work by analyzing Twitter sentiment at scale - everything publicly documented in terms of ranking algorithm and published comments).                              
                                  
 But outside little bubbles in communities that care, nobody noticed. Google doesn't care. Google happily ranks affiliate sites spending six figures buying links off apache.org and other open source projects (look at those sponsor lists on a lot of open source projects - hosting/gambling is a bad sign).                             
                                  
 I got excited when my work fighting against .ORG registry price increases and sale at ICANN (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regula...) got a lot of press, even getting cited by the California AG in his letter which effectively killed it. I got backlinks from a lot of large news sites and traffic. I honestly saw no meaningful improvement in rankings or traffic.                            
                                  
 So I'm stuck, I keep the sites running - part time - mostly between other projects. I've moved back heavily into consulting and other projects because being an honest affiliate - I can't compete. Providing honest, transparent data and presenting it with the goal of informing versus pushing sales is a terrible business model. The majority of people simply don't care. A lot of 'in-the-know' folks read and get informed by my work. They advise their clients using it, and I never see any financial benefit from it. The broader world, especially Google, doesn't know or care.                         
                                  
 Is the root problem affiliate links? It certainly skews incentives and pushes manipulation. If we removed them, what fills the void? Ads? Sponsored content? Something else? I don't think the problem goes away - there is so much money in some of these industries and the stakes are so high. Companies and people will take advantage of it one way or another.                             
                                  
 How do we identify honest / good content from the garbage seems to be the bigger question. After 10 years, I'm don't have an answer and I'm certainly not being noticed.                                
                                  
                                  
 edbloom on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is a perfect example of how fundamentally flawed modern SEO is. @ohashi has been producing the best hosting reviews in the WordPress ecosystem since forever. It seems like at some point in the past decade on page quality signals have been completely drowned out by backlink signals that can be easily amplified by bigger content producers and a resurgence in cheap on page SEO tricks.                            
                                  
 Sorry Kevin I don't know what the answer is, but I'd thought I'd just say a huge thanks for the great work you do year after year. It might be VERY niche but perhaps some sort of annual premium membership for professionals in the WP ecosytem might be something that might work? I'd certainly be happy to support your work on an ongoing basis with access to niche "members only" performance reports on things like WooCommerce benchmarking tests etc.                           
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Thanks edbloom!                                  
                                  
 It really does help motivate me to hear people get value from my work, because it definitely isn't financially motivated at this point.                                
                                  
 I appreciate the offer of premium members only payments. I want my data to be public, I like open sourcing my contributions when possible. I think transparency and openness are the key to better reviews. So I've not ever approached that route. I've also avoided taking any sponsored money from web hosting for any sort of advertising because of even the potential conflict of interest (many have offered to sponsor those benchmarks).                           
                                  
 There might be something in the works to help it financially this year, nothing really concrete, but I'm exploring some new options. Ultimately though, I'd rather it wither and die than just doing what every shitty affiliate ruining the space has done.                              
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Answer, if you want to make money is play Google's game. Go get some VC funding to buy ads. Google with put the ads on their front page which will boost your search results. Eventually you'll figure out you dont even need a good product, you win with a mediocre product and a lot of SEO/ad spend.                              
                                  
 Break Google up. Course that will never happen as politicians like the power Google has over the internet in the hands of a US company.                                
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The whole reason I built what I did was because after a decade in the web hosting world, I still couldn't name a review site that was worth referring anyone to.                                
                                  
 I wanted to build something different and meaningful. I did. It just hasn't mattered in a broad context.                                 
                                  
 If making money was the goal, I'd put whomever wants to pay me $300/sale first and pimp them out as the best company in the universe. Fuck that. I hoped that I could make a reasonable amount (at least enough to keep it going and maybe scale it a bit) and create a more honest review space.                              
                                  
 Winning in this case isn't defined by money earned, you're advocating a race to the bottom I wanted to avoid. Google needs a shakeup and so does search as a whole.                                
                                  
                                  
 sersi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Why not go through the direction of having a patreon or other monthly donation? No need to necessarily give rewards, just asking for contributions                                
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I am honestly having a hard time articulating why I don't like the idea of people donating their money to me for what I do. I will try, maybe I am irrational?                                
                                  
 There is so much money being passed around in web hosting review space, by companies to affiliates. I still make thousands per month off these affiliate deals. If my site were to rank at the top of search engines, I would be plenty compensated. Having individuals sponsor the work and it continuing to languish is a position I'm not really a fan of. A single sale commission can range from a few dollars to high hundreds or occasionally a thousand+. I can't imagine enough people wanting to donate a meaningful amount that would change that equation. I'd personally feel bad for every Patreon sponsor putting in 5,10,20 dollars because I might feel like I'm not doing enough with it. If those people just sent one person who ended up purchasing via a link on my site, it would likely outweigh most donations, it would also spread the reach to places I likely can't get to.                     
                                  
 That's just what is running through my head, I don't know if that makes any sense.                                 
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Is your business model capable of sustaining a paywall of the most useful value, by eliding the information? Your affiliate links still point to your review effort, but the actual top ranking information is behind the paywall.                               
                                  
 Make it a variation on the "businesses pay for business-class stuff, amateurs get the free stuff" model.                                 
                                  
 For the top say, 20% ranks, it is behind a paywall. People will know which vendors are members of the set of the top 20%, but not their ordinal collection. The bottom 80% members of the set's ordinal collection is displayed. If I'm looking for a site to store Grandma's cat pictures, the bottom 80% is probably good enough.                             
                                  
 You could also tilt the paywall so free only reveals who NOT to do business with, and who ranks at the bare minimum acceptability.                                
                                  
 You can have the paywall only enforce an embargo, instead of all historical results. Say some period beyond which the businesses that can afford to pay you will not care for the results, like a year or whatever.                               
                                  
 You can have a "free hour(s)" once a review cycle just before when you publish where the in-the-know crowd can get the results for the newest review cycle, tied to a YouTube livestream, where you do a monetized Q&A.                               
                                  
 There are lots more variations to ponder, but I can't help but think there must be more useful ways to slice and dice the valuation of the information here, and monetize in tranches like finance and entertainment do, instead of all in one go.                              
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I guess the problem is two fold, could I charge some people a premium for premium information? Absolutely, yes.                                
                                  
 Does hiding some information behind a paywall fit with my goal of a better review landscape in the web hosting industry? Sadly, no.                                
                                  
 Sure, I would come out financially ahead, but the industry basically wouldn't be any different. I'm not going to rank any better or have my information spread more effectively behind a paywall. The number of folks impacted would also surely go down as many wouldn't pay.                              
                                  
 If the goal is simply profit maximization at this point, there are definitely avenues to explore like what you've suggested. That's boring to me honestly, unless it can have impact to along with it. I do appreciate your thoughts on the matter and suggestions.                              
                                  
 Personally, if it gets to that point I'd rather sell it off and move on to working on something else. Most of us are software developers and entrepreneurs. I'd rather build something more interesting and with more potential. I can make money doing consulting work any day, after 10 years, the allure of simply trying to profit maximize on what I built by introducing barriers doesn't appeal. That might be part of the reason it hasn't been as successful as it maybe could have been. I suppose that's the hill I may die on - open, honest, transparent review data for everyone.                         
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Aha, that makes it much more clear. You likely can achieve your aim with more marketing, along the lines of setting narrative in the industry.                                
                                  
 You already have an objective measure to flog, build a "council" or "board" around it, with the "Platinum" members being the providers who were most consistently in the top three ranks in all the past reviews. Get some good writers who can whip up some clickbaity articles that would find placement for some fun.                             
                                  
 "You're getting cheated out of bandwidth if you don't use these web hosting providers!"                                 
                                  
 "Most Web hosting providers don't want to let you know this secret council!"                                 
                                  
 Make it tongue in cheek, self-parodying maybe to the clickbait industry.                                 
                                  
 Intermix with and reference to some more serious PR to avenues where industry people are likely to read it, where you lay out your concerns of improving the industry and the benefits to them. Make the report red-orange-green-easy to at-a-glance interpret for non-technical management for good-enough outcomes, then analyze the results into a historical trend for the aggregate industry's progress.                            
                                  
 Honey versus vinegar, basically.                                  
                                  
 Your consulting expertise on designing projects to make it easy to transition between providers, and a calculator to compute when to pull the trigger to perform the transition would probably more than pay the bills.                               
                                  
                                  
 ohashi on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Maybe the marketing hasn't been great. But nobody seems to care. The status quo benefits the companies that get the most marketing, why invest in trying to change the rules that benefit them?                               
                                  
 I tried some more expose type stuff, revealing spam networks operated by hosting companies, publishing pay to play attempts, exposing fake reviews and even getting one CEO on record supporting astroturfing. Despite how outrageous this behavior is, it never gets much attention. That last company I'm talking about tends to be on all those affiliate garbage sites you will see and has popped up in the past few years (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2018/07/22/hostinger-review-0-...). I make sure to let as many people know as possible anytime I see the brand. But their marketing/astroturfing campaign certainly dwarfs anything I can do. And most people don't care. The publishers take the money, the company takes the customers and funnels more money into deceiving poor customers via affiliates and search. The only loser is customers as a whole, who have little voice or power in the equation at any level.                    
                                  
 In little bubble communities, I do have some traction and recognition. People may know, but they tend to be echo small chambers. Sure, some people flow in and get recommendations. But the majority of people, it's just who ranks at the top of search results. They don't invest in doing deeper research. They want to see 'X is the best product' and move on.                             
                                  
 That's another problem, nuance. Is there a best web hosting provider? Not even close. Even with a very specific use-case, it's extremely rare to say, yes, this is the best company. I've been tracking 10 years of data and no company comes close to perfect reputation. The extreme top just crack into 80% range in terms of positive sentiment. The generally pretty good are in the 70's. That means 20-30% of people are having bad experiences with the best companies.                           
                                  
 I've publish the review data with ranks based simply on statistical numbers, but I don't do ranking for performance benchmarks. I also encourage that it's one data point, simply being in the fastest tier or having the highest consumer opinion doesn't mean it's the best. There could be other factors which matter.                             
                                  
 For example, Pantheon is the perfect company for has a great reputation but I wouldn't recommend it to most people to consider. First, they specialize in WordPress and Drupal. So if you're not on those platforms, it's not relevant. Even if you do, they are very opinionated hosting. If you have a development team and want strict Git workflows where code moves up and data moves down, they are fabulous. If you're a semi technical person who mostly does marketing, it's probably a terrible fit because you don't want to learn Git, have to push every change through testing, staging and then production to make progress. But their hosting in my tests were fast. They have great consumer reviews. For the people who it makes sense for, they love it. And I would recommend it to probably less than 10% of people who meet the basic criteria of using WP/Drupal for the reason stated above.                    
                                  
 As far as consulting experience goes, I actually end up consulting more for the people who build sites. After running the largest benchmarks for WordPress for ~8 years now, people have brought me on to help test new WordPress products or scale existing sites. That's more interesting and rewarding honestly seeing direct results, being compensated to help them achieve goals. My compensation overall is okay, it's just not coming from reviews these days.                           
                                  
                                  
 hubraumhugo on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I was always fascinated by the idea of "field testers" testing products in their daily lives and writing a short review about their experience. A cook would write about a chef knife, a post officer about comfortable all-weather boots, a craftsman about a tool etc.                              
                                  
 The biggest problem would be how to incentivize such people, but gamification and some monetary rewards from the community could probably solve this.                                
                                  
                                  
 MartinCron on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 A big part of the best wire cutter reviews are the “why you should trust me” introduction. Some of their reviewers really know their stuff, others obviously less so. You can calibrate your expectations accordingly.                               
                                  
                                  
 kkjjkgjjgg on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 They are OK, but I remember when they decided a Nokia phone was better than an iPhone.                                 
                                  
 Tests usually have subjective criteria that determine the ranking.                                 
                                  
                                  
 amelius on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > which does independent testing of products                                 
                                  
 Can we have some independent testing of web search engines?                                 
                                  
                                  
 frabcus on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Which? https://www.which.co.uk/ is great, based in the UK, not very expensive to join for a month to look up one product.                                
                                  
                                  
 SirYandi on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Just one data point, but I've had a hard time trusting then since reading a headphones section they had in the physical magazine quite a few years back. The number one rated headphone was the Bose QC3. Great noise cancellation and comfort, sure... But certainly not better audio quality than so many other products in that price range. All rock / metal sounded so muddy I had to return my pair within a few weeks.                            
                                  
                                  
 emsy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I have used their tests in the past and I’ve never regretted a purchase influenced by their tests.                                 
                                  
                                  
 seanp2k2 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yep; a huge portion of Google results, especially for spicy searches like “best ______ 2021” are just lists of affiliate links to top 10 selling items on Amazon from made-up brand names that are rotated once a product receives a few bad reviews.                              
                                  
 It’s really hard to find legit review sites; at least Wirecutter seems to actually test things, but sites like SeriousEats, OutdoorGearLab, Carryology, DCRainMaker, SoundOnSound, Adventure Journal, Magnetic Magazine, The Loam Wolf, etc that are quite niche / domain-specific are where I go for actual trustworthy reviews.                             
                                  
 I agree that Google seems to be dominated by clickbait ad-riddled BS SEO sites now more than ever, and I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the bills. I’ve posted about this before, but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that. The difference to me is that I’m willing to reward actual reviews and effort with rev share if I decide to buy something reviewed, but I’m super unimpressed with all the irrelevant ads we still get in 2021 despite having so much personalization data about users.                         
                                  
 Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced. They seem to be totally missing this signal, showing me ads for some category of thing I already purchased for a very long time after I don’t need any more suggestions.                            
                                  
 Lastly, I would literally pay per month for an Amazon search that filters out all the fake brands. If I search for “webcam”, there are half a dozen brands I want to see, yet instead I’m forced to sift through piles of junk that I would never even consider purchasing to find what I’m looking for. I’ve heard that Amazon knows this is a thing but chooses not to fix it due to some psychological allure of sifting through the junk to find the nuggets of gold. In the worst cases, I have to use Google to find stuff on Amazon because their own search is so horrendous, with the categories being an absolute joke.                         
                                  
                                  
 dghughes on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that.                                 
                                  
 Looked at Netflix clicked on a movie that I though may be interesting, it was overdubbed in English since it was a Korean movie. I watched maybe 5 minutes of it then exited. Go to YouTube and suddenly Korean videos are being suggested.                              
                                  
 At a car dealership with my sister she asked me to be there for support when she leased a car. At home same day hours later YouTube again it is plastered with "how to buy a car" videos. I hadn't been looking for a car, never searched for anything like that in the previous days ever.                              
                                  
                                  
 MarkusWandel on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You could do a test. Get someone to take your (locked) smartphone into a well-known dealership for something you aren't ordinarily interested in. Blind test, you don't know where they took the phone. Google tracks the physical location of your phone (don't know if it's possible to completely opt out of that)... trivial to match that to "dealership X" given that Google Maps already knows about those. If in the blind test you can tell your friend where they took the phone based on increased ad activity, then there's proof.                          
                                  
 A day after I started using an Android device: I cycled to work, and my phone gives an alert and asks me to rate X. WTF? Oh right, I cycled by X on the way. I immediately turned off what I could; no more popups like that but do I really think Google doesn't track my location any more?                              
                                  
                                  
 pxmpxm on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've had my professional-subscription Wall Street Journal app run a full page ad for frozen jamaican hot beef patties (so good...) that I bought a box of at costco earlier that morning. Pretty amusing, just given how off-brand that is for ads that run on WSJ.                              
                                  
                                  
 esyir on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Not sure if guerrilla marketing or not. Nevertheless, it worked, sort of. Sounds like something right up my alley, but alas I'm nowhere near a costco.                                
                                  
                                  
 josefx on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Pretty amusing                                  
                                  
 Went to a doctor over issues with my feet. Got spammed with ads covering various health issues. Patient data tends to be protected in most countries, no one should have access to when I visit what doctor and I find it insane that Google gets away with using that protected information to sell ads.                             
                                  
                                  
 pxmpxm on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Fair guess would be that you leaked that information somewhere along the way - putting the address into google maps, pulling up the dr office phone number on google proper etc.                               
                                  
                                  
 josefx on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I have an Android phone, so I wasn't surprised that Googles spyware managed to get that information, I was surprised that they are allowed to collect and use medical information about me without ending on the wrong end of various related data protection laws.                              
                                  
                                  
 shkkmo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There are no healthcare privacy laws the the USA that apply to Google. Indeed, "medical information" is not generally protected. HIPAA only prevents "healthcare providers and healthcare businesses" from providing that information without your consent. If you disclose or leak medical information to other companies, they are not required to maintain confidentiality and can sell or use that information perfectly legally.                            
                                  
                                  
 greggman3 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the bills                                 
                                  
 Google is not that short sighted. They know that if people stop trusting it to give good results then they'll lose their market.                                
                                  
 I suspect the problem is just harder than it seems.                                 
                                  
                                  
 dazc on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The problem is that no one is bothering to give you an alternative because they can't make money out of it.                                
                                  
 Let's say I want to do a '10 best bikes for under $1,000' article. How am I going to do that well without actually going out and buying 10 bikes and being prepared to make hardly anything in return?                               
                                  
                                  
 pers0n on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That kind of article is trash anyway, they should limit it to 3 or 5 bikes not 10. Many best "auto" reviews simply have a category so they dont piss off any one auto manufacture.                               
                                  
 Even if you look for the top 10 trucks, they will end up showing all the major brands, because they will break it down for: 4x4, extended cab, full size, mid size, ...                                
                                  
 Lists are mostly garbage because you dont care about the top 25, you really only need to know the best item and the next best at a certain budget                                
                                  
                                  
 eloisius on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If Google deindexed the spam, that effort might actually be worth it for a bike shop to do an honest comparison. But so long as you’re just going to get buried by SEO spam, why bother?                               
                                  
                                  
 thirdsun on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 While that would improve things I still think it's rather unlikely that a bike shop would be willing to give anything but a great rating for the bikes the are selling. And if they are their suppliers might not like it. There's still a dependency.                              
                                  
                                  
 eloisius on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 True, bike shops tend to hock one manufacturer. I still think reducing the SEO ‘reviews’ would create space for honest reviews though.                                
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At the end of the day being shortsighted doesnt matter. They are a publicly traded company that pays their top employees in options. If the problem of spam becomes too difficult they will focus on milking the cow until it dies just like every other massive company that came before it.                              
                                  
                                  
 anthropodie on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I think they are trying to cater to people who search using questions and in that process they are ruining a good search engine.                                
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 And just at this moment, we have hordes of affiliate marketers working 24/7 updating their "articles" to say "best _______ 2022".                                
                                  
                                  
 hyperhopper on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Just today, Google discover suggested me an article titled exactly                                 
                                  
 "Proton & Atom LT vs Nano Air: Key Points ([month_year])"                                 
                                  
                                  
 Nextgrid on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I would be very surprised if there wasn't a Wordpress or similar plugin to automate this.                                 
                                  
                                  
 wingworks on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There is...                                  
                                  
                                  
 travisjungroth on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced                                
                                  
 This is a comment sentiment (I’ve already bought a fridge! Don’t need another!) and it is a bit of a failure mode. But, I think value on advertising around recent purchases to people is super high. A recent purchase, although often wrong, is one of the best signals you can get. So much purchasing happens in clusters (setting up a space, picking up a hobby, etc) that a specific person is in buying mode for a specific topic is crazy valuable. And there’s splash damage on the wrong ads. Maybe you don’t buy a second rice cooker, but the ad reminds you to get a toaster.                         
                                  
                                  
 Retric on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Not just that, the odds some one will return a product are non trivial.                                 
                                  
                                  
 travisjungroth on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Good point. I bought a wireless router, didn't like it, got another one a month later. I imagine the odds you'll buy a wireless router in the next month if you bought one in the last month are way higher than almost any other signal you could find.                              
                                  
                                  
 KarlKemp on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.                              
                                  
 This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this falsehood is beyond me. Do you think these advertisers are stupid?                                
                                  
 -> buy refrigerator. gets lost during transport / is damaged / “oh, I wanted the 550T, not 505T” / “works great, let’s also replace the one in the beach house” / etc.                                
                                  
 You have to remember that these possibilities are competing with other ads that have extremely low rates of success.                                
                                  
                                  
 CRConrad on Jan 8, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >> Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.                              
                                  
 > This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this [...] is beyond me.                                 
                                  
 Because it continues to happen.                                  
                                  
 > falsehood                                  
                                  
 The only falsehood here is your claim that this is a falsehood.                                 
                                  
 > Do you think these advertisers are stupid?                                 
                                  
 Yes, apparently they are.                                  
                                  
                                  
 enduroman on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Dcrainmaker has been "pay for play" for at least the past 10 years. He's very thorough, but not altruistic. There was a guy on Slowtwich that shared a conversation with him that was enlightening to that fact.                               
                                  
                                  
 jwagenet on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Someone has to pay the bills. I don’t think receiving money to do a review is inherently wrong, there are just too many products to afford to review, but having a rigorous process to eliminate or expose bias is important. However, it does suck looking for reviews of a product which is not a main player in the market or category.                             
                                  
                                  
 enduroman on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I agree. He uses statements like "this was a test unit and I'm sending it back at the end. I will purchase one with my own money" to make it seem like he wasn't compensated. Be really needs to start it off saying he was, but not with the unit.                              
                                  
                                  
 jeromecornet on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Can you share a link to this ?                                  
                                  
                                  
 fault1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that                                 
                                  
 This also seems to be what Amazon is also devolving into. Amazon ads is the fastest growing part of amazon!                                
                                  
                                  
 fxtentacle on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yes. Just searched for "cholimex soy sauce". 80% of the search results page was covered by an ad for mayonnaise...                                
                                  
                                  
 cwilkes on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I never had problems with fake products on Amazon until I looked for a usb thumb drive for the Arlo camera base station.                                
                                  
 There’s a dramatic difference in price for 1T sizes. Some at $30. Others at $150. I couldn’t understand it.                                
                                  
 One of the 0 star reviews said it was actually a 32Gb drive that somehow fools the OS to think it is bigger. Not sure how that happens but it steered me away from any of the cheaper options as I don’t need a headache.                               
                                  
                                  
 jinto36 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 SoundOnSound is great, especially since they still host their entire review history. They tend to show up in my top Google results, when searching for older audio equipment at least. For things like mixers and audio interfaces, they've tested quite a few things.                              
                                  
                                  
 bbarnett on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If Google really cared, dropping all pages with affiliate links, would get rid of 99.9999% of the junk.                                 
                                  
 And no, I don't care about the tiny, tiny number of legit reviews with links. I doubt I'd see them anyhow.                                
                                  
                                  
 ajmurmann on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I frequently dream of building a search engine that for this very reason penalizes any type of advertisement. This problem goes way beyond product searches. Every time I look up a how-to for pretty much anything, programming, video games, fixing house stuff, all search results that aren't user provided like Stackoverflow or Reddit, it's always stuffed with useless info that anyone having the problem already knows about ant that's clearly just there for SEO or to create more space for ads. Non-verbatim example from yesterday: search: "Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye underground lake stuck bell" result: "Echoes of the Eye is the first DLC for Outer Wilds...blah...find artifact to enter the dream world...blah". The top, ideal answer should be a single sentence and maybe a screenshot.                      
                                  
 Of course disincentivizing ads would never fly at google and an ad-free search engine would have a hard time being economically viable.                                
                                  
                                  
 prmoustache on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If you would literally pay for an amazon filter, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and buy from dedicated shops?                                
                                  
 Initially because I hate monopoly but also because looking for something decent on amazon is a major PITA I avoid amazon for nearly everything. If I need a computer, I buy direct to the vendor or to a computer shop. If I need new bicycle parts I go to an online bikeshop, if I want a new sampler groovebox, I go to a store selling home studio gears. Well this isn't totally true as I now favor second hand stuff but the reality is Amazon is not very effective at offering you the best things, and not even at the best price. Most online shops nowadays offer shipping time on par with what you get on Amazon.                         
                                  
 In then end I don't see any good incentive to use Amazon. Some people will say centralized market place but if searching a decent product takes much more time than finding a good specialized store and getting decent product quickly you haven't really gained anything. Single account for all your shopping? Many shops offer buying without creating an account. Others will allow you to seamlessly create the account at ordering time and password managers make it easy to manage multiple accounts.                          
                                  
                                  
 dazc on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Dedicated shops don't help themselves by having a convoluted check-out process that nearly always involves creating an account, figuring out whether ticking the box or not ticking the box will unleash an avalanche of marketing emails, then entering your payment details via some obscure 3rd party payment system, etc.                             
                                  
                                  
 prmoustache on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Nearly all of them allows Paypal/Google/Apple pay among other. This is definitely not what I would call obscure 3rd party. Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read. And as I said many of them allow for guest access without any account creation.                              
                                  
                                  
 renjimen on Jan 7, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Snark aside, making the correct check/uncheck often still results in spam emails anyway, such asking for feedback or once a year sales promo. I’ve noticed the majority of independent online retailers do this. I guess it works or they wouldn’t, just like physical spam mail.                              
                                  
                                  
 dazc on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read.                                 
                                  
 I see what you did there.                                  
                                  
                                  
 mad182 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Not surprising. It's incomparably quicker and more profitable to list a few top selling products with affiliate links and a bunch of relevant keywords, than to spend significant time and money actually researching and comparing these products in a meaningful way.                              
                                  
                                  
 coliveira on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > They seem to be totally missing this signal                                 
                                  
 Ok, but how would they know that you already bought the product? As advanced as ads are, they still don't have the Amazon confirmation telling them you already completed the purchase.                               
                                  
                                  
 tagawa on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google partners with at least one major credit card company[1] so their ad network should be aware of purchases if a particular payment system were used. I expect this is far more widespread than we realise (unfortunately) but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.                             
                                  
 [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45368040                                 
                                  
                                  
 gruez on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.                                 
                                  
 that doesn't make any sense. By that logic they wouldn't want to do targeting at all, because targeting by definition reduces the amount of people you can show ads to.                                
                                  
                                  
 coliveira on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I imagine that Google does in fact use credit card data, but there is no way to tell if you already bought everything you want.                                
                                  
                                  
 bfirsh on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Is there some aggregation of these domain-specific review sites anywhere?                                 
                                  
 Wirecutter has been pretty hit-and-miss for me recently. I have found my best product recommendations through a bunch of random blogs who have some particular expertise.                               
                                  
                                  
 basch on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 time for a community maintained Programmable Search https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/                                 
                                  
 When I find a review site I like, I add it to mine. (https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=dc408db269da4e769) Then I have a bookmark bar button that searches just my whitelisted review sites.                               
                                  
                                  
 Siira on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Isn’t the obvious solution to include the age (or the number of sales) of a product into its rating? This way they can’t just rotate the product/brand names.                                
                                  
                                  
 tomcam on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > trying to be more than that                                  
                                  
 Citation needed ;)                                  
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" site.                             
                                  
 I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed. If you aren't a coder and you want to earn a living online, blogging is a way to do that and Amazon links are a way to make it pay.                               
                                  
 People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons.                               
                                  
 If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.                              
                                  
 I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues.                                
                                  
 I've tried for years to take the high road, to not have ads or Amazon links on my sites, etc. The result is starvation and intractable poverty and everyone telling me to get a real job. (I tried. They didn't hire me and continue to cyber stalk me and steal my ideas.)                              
                                  
 Anyway, I know all replies to this comment will boil down to "Quit your bitching. No one gives one damn if you die on the streets of starvation and we are so bored with hearing about your whiny problems." Rest assured, I am not leaving this comment with any expectation whatsoever that it will in any way help me.                             
                                  
 But maybe after I die on the streets someone will pause and think "Maybe she had a point. Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives and we are getting exactly the crap we pay people to give us."                               
                                  
 Because the "high road" where someone tries to add value and respect the fact that you folks don't want ads or affiliate links etc literally doesn't pay to the point of it will keep you underfed and either homeless or underhoused and then your poverty will be a new excuse to have no respect for your observations that "Hey, people, the system you designed is broken and this is why and how."                            
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Well, there are at least two separate, though not unrelated, problems:                                 
                                  
 1. Good jobs are hard to find, so some people try to make a living instead by influencing what other people buy, in exchange for kickbacks from the sellers.                                
                                  
 2. The sellers offering the largest kickbacks are never the sellers offering the best value for money, because if they are, a reseller can buy the products from them, charge a higher price, and spend some of the markup on kickbacks to product shills. This results in a systematic bias toward overpriced junk in heavily advertised products.                             
                                  
 3. While some knowledgeable people do still take the time to share their knowledge and unbiased judgments, which is for example mostly how Wikipedia is written, Google and other search engines are increasingly directing search traffic to the product shills instead.                              
                                  
 I agree with you that, given problem #1 and problem #3, problem #2 is sort of inevitable, and all three problems tend to mutually reinforce each other. But I think we could reduce either problem #1 or problem #3 by an order of magnitude without significantly reducing the other one. In particular, we might not be able to completely solve the SERP quality problem without solving the jobs problem, but I think we could improve it enormously just by writing a better search engine, which is an easier problem than fixing the entire economy.                          
                                  
 I'm sorry to hear you're back on the streets, and I hope your situation improves before you die. I'm glad you're not dead yet because I often find your comments insightful. Happy new year!                               
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm not back on the streets yet. I moved a few weeks ago. I have been told this is a temporary solution and I live in fear, as I have for several months now, of ending up back on the streets and dying there.                               
                                  
 I don't see surviving that a second time, for reasons I don't care to dig around in.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Crap... I have enjoyed reading you here. We have a borked up system where someone who has a keen mind and something to say ends up struggling. Not sure what to say here other than I hate it.                               
                                  
 Making sure we have the basics available to people should be a top priority. And yeah, some would take advantage. I've reached the point, due to many people I know struggling, where I basically don't care. Let them.                               
                                  
 The net good out of all that would be worth it, and maybe, just maybe a little less money is made, or efficiency or whatever crazy metric being looked at isn't peak optimized... Again, just don't care.                               
                                  
 Given all we have and the smarts, tech, info available, we should not be facing this crap too many of us are.                                
                                  
 That's all, just venting a little and I sure hope your situation can improve.                                 
                                  
 Happy Holidays and all that. You are one of the good people, and it shows.                                 
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I understand. Condolences. I'm at least a few months away from that.                                 
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 We need to solve the housing supply issues in the US. (I don't know where you live, I just don't feel qualified to speak to issues in other countries. I've studied them for mine.)                               
                                  
 That's off topic for this discussion, but deeply intertwined with why so many people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics in favor of asking themselves "Does it pay enough?"                               
                                  
                                  
 worik on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics                                 
                                  
 Deliberate social policy.                                  
                                  
                                  
 Warlockcraft on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Wikipedia is not a completely unbiased source despite it having editors and an anti-spammer system.                                 
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It definitely is not completely unbiased, but the reason it works at all is the people who are trying to be honest, not the shills.                                
                                  
                                  
 sigmaml on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That applies to our society at large, as well.                                 
                                  
 As for Wikipedia itself, I stopped contributing a few years ago, since I did not have the energy and the time needed to fight the systemic bias that the editors had (and have) on a variety of topics.                               
                                  
 Also, 2021 was probably the first year in which I did not donate to Wikipedia.                                 
                                  
                                  
 Warlockcraft on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I would argue corporate shills keep some information confidential by removing specific things on Wikipedia. Arguably, they do this to protect cut-throat predators in powerful positions. Which is why these cut-throat predators have an artificially cleaner reputation at the expense of exploitable people arguably. I don't completely trust Wikipedia when it comes to information about politicians, rich people, famous celebrities, specific "philanthropists", etc. Ricky Gervais, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Graham Elwood, Lee Camp, Whitney Webb, George Carlin, Aaron Russo, and other people made me not trust Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia comes across as another way to put information online through rose-colored glasses to some extent for protecting people in powerful positions, such as the C.I.A. intelligence agents, by making confidential things nonexistent on public websites. People can claim I went down the rabbit hole all they want. But I know that the rise of Orwellian online surveillance, creepy phone verification systems, dehumanizing censorship, brainwashing social credit scores, decreasing human rights, increasing wealth inequality, cut-throat rulers, mental health issues from not being rich during this pandemic, and younger generations being less professionally skilled than older ones are happening internationally now. I find cut-throat rulers who have lots of money are keeping most people trapped during this pandemic via vaccine passports, not letting them renounce their citizenship, online surveillance, censorship, monopolizing the internet at the expense of online anonymity, not letting them be employees without coronavirus vaccinations despite negative side effects that killed some people or worsened their health significantly, forcing people into coronavirus quarantine needlessly that makes them financially threatened when they are getting unpaid while being quarantined, etc. From what I experienced, Wikipedia has favoritism of information that benefits the ruling class only. I would rather go to other online sources for truly investigative journalists that are not shills for oligarch-owned media companies.
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Eh, maybe.                                  
                                  
                                  
 no_wizard on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I genuinely agree with you. People need to eat, and live comfortably and be able to afford things like medical care, a place to live safely etc.                                
                                  
 I also think the blanket of “all affiliates are bad” is a bit much. I love supporting people who just do a good job. SEO spam is not what I call a good job, it’s a sleazy exploitation of the average consumer.                               
                                  
 With that said, I have purchased many things based on what I consider honest good reviews who linked to affiliate programs and I do not regret this. I wish companies (Amazon for instance, as they’re rent biggest right now) simply policed their affiliate programs better to incentive good unbiased reviews sites that Specialize in high quality, and dropped the SEO spammers                            
                                  
                                  
 nine_k on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Three problems here.                                  
                                  
 1. Skewed incentives. A company that buys "organic" product placement wants to show it in the best possible light, and increase sales. They don't need an impartial review, so the blogger has a hard time to produce one.                               
                                  
 2. Fragility and failures. Affiliate links expire and don't get updated. Ads point at things no longer available. Ads spend an inordinate amount of resources on the viewer's machine. Targeting is inaccurate, despite incessant attempts to track and correlate users' profiles.                              
                                  
 3. Direct payment is rarely an option! I personally would greatly appreciate an option to pay $1-2 and read an impartial review of something I'm planning to purchase. Maybe even $5-7 for expensive stuff. But there are very few places that offer this. Those that do try hard to peddle a yearly subscription. Also, it appears that I'm the minority, and the number of visitors willing to pay directly is too low to sustain the authors.                           
                                  
 I still hope that it's Patreon and direct support by consumers what the future looks like, not corporate sponsorship and ads.                                
                                  
                                  
 kelnos on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Right. We need direct payments to be an option. If someone is going to pay the reviewer, I'd rather it be me than the product manufacturer.                                
                                  
 But I also agree that I think we're in the minority, and that most people won't do direct payments. I think this is the reason for the aggressive push for yearly subscriptions, because they know that a) it's hard to get people to pull out their wallet for each transaction, and b) it's hard to get people to come back to spend money in future transactions.                             
                                  
 As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.                              
                                  
                                  
 acdha on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.                              
                                  
 That’s my concern as well: I like the idea in theory but al increasingly thinking the reason past attempts have failed is that it’s more of a mirage than a stable alternative. Advertising has worked better for people with no money, people who disagree about what your content is worth, people who want to see before they pay, people who say they want to see before they pay but will cheat, people who don’t want to be constantly asked to make financial decisions, people who don’t want potential surprises of their kid/roommate/etc. uses their computer, etc. That’s definitely not saying that the status quo is great but it avoids a lot of failure modes which immediately become roadblocks if you’re asking people for money.                       
                                  
 This has real societal consequences, too: we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc. but those sites have paywalls while a lot of less principled journalism to outright propaganda is free. I really wish we had a more convincing story for how to support things like that but it’s still unclear whether we do.                             
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.                                 
                                  
 Man I don't know about that. In some ways, yes I agree with you. But in other ways I can't.                                 
                                  
 None of the major entities produces news and commentary from the labor point of view, for example. It's hard to get them to talk about media consolidation, news for profit, and a whole pile of other issues too, and it all boils down to a couple things:                              
                                  
 1) AD driven models favor those who can buy the products and services pitched in the ADS                                 
                                  
 2) Conflicts of interest abound! The massive media consolidation we saw after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 really did a number on one of the basic dynamics we depend on, and that is many owners, many models, competition all tended to work as checks and balances. A small, indie house could run a labor story, or talk about Net Neutrality without having a conflict rooted in a big corporation not wanting to publish news and commentary that would impact it's bottom line in a negative way. Just one example.                          
                                  
 Today, we've got investigative journalism relegated to niche players who are doing good, often quite expensive work that isn't being seen due to suppression and a misinformation problem that is not easy or cheap to solve.                               
                                  
 Your point isn't invalid. I am saying it's more complicated than that.                                 
                                  
                                  
 acdha on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don’t disagree that there’s a lot to improve. I was just thinking from the very minimal perspective of how often they knowingly run outright propaganda. None have a perfect track record (Iraq & Judith Miller come to mind) but then I look at the outright fabrications people share on Facebook and that stuff is always free.                             
                                  
 This is an easy way to get depressed wondering whether we can successfully navigate a global news environment.                                
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It is depressing.                                  
                                  
 Those sites run propaganda :( Access journalism, Iraq as you mention, Russiagate... There are other examples not hard to find.                                
                                  
 Kind of a mess really. When I was a kid, we had some class segments on news bias, and actually had to find and identify news and commentary, differentiate fact from opinion, and find pieces written from various points of view: labor, big business, left, right, etc... My own kids did not see any education of that kind. I did it.                             
                                  
 I suppose another angle might be clarity. There is a lot of low clarity "news" being put out there. Fact and opinion are not clearly, nor easily, differentiated. That's a problem, and a major feeder to Uncle Liberty posting on FB...                               
                                  
 I do feel competing with FB would be effective given some entity somewhere can get funded in a way that allows for a labor and or not pro-war point of view, and that's just as an example. Any meaningful differentiation that can contrast with the majors might work.                              
                                  
 On the upside, global is actually a benefit! One thing people can, and I suggest they actually do, is get news from abroad. There does remain some of the older dynamic between nations and their various news services. It's possible to get a diverse take on the US that way, and it's what I do personally.                             
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed.                                 
                                  
 we didn't design that - they did. I used the Internet in the 90s on my 56k modem and it was mostly ad-free. Stuff was still free, but mostly because people created content out of curiosity and because it was their hobby (yes, I had a website and was using frames and image maps heavily) or university sponsored (IRC, NNTP, Mailinglists). I paid 5$/month for a shell account, later shared the cost for a dedicated server with a couple of friends (we had a traffic limit of 50GB/month) to offer content and services to other people - expecting nothing in return.                         
                                  
 Then companies realized how much money was in, and suddenly all good, federated and free services were overrun by spam (mostly NNTP). To this day, companies like FB, Insta, Google etc. try to lure as many content-creators to users their "free" sites, while they actually pay with their data or the data of your content consumers - while the data is used to steal attention to show you ads for stuff you don't need. The amount of GDPR violations by those Megacorps is immense as they very well know that presenting a "reject all tracking" button as demanded by the GDPR ruins their business model (less than 10% actually agree to being tracked when presenting them the choice).                        
                                  
 My solution to all this is easy: Ban all advertising on the internet, or, at least advocate to as many people as possible to use adblockers. Only when ads are gone, will people spend money on products such as FB and Youtube, and only then can there be actually competition - because right now, you can't compete with "free" services with any other model than using ads+tracking yourself.                            
                                  
                                  
 tablespoon on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons.                               
                                  
 > If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.                              
                                  
 Even if no one used ad blockers and tips were commonplace, we'd still have these problems with crap SEO and affiliate links. It's like with technology products: they say "if you aren't paying for it, you're the product not the customer," but even if you are paying for it you can still be the product (e.g. your TV manufacturer putting ads in your expensive TV's menus).                            
                                  
 Ultimately the problem is greed and the ridiculous degree of tolerance of it, unchecked by any cultural expectation of quality or virtue.                                
                                  
                                  
 greggman3 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm not going to say "quit your whining" but rather, maybe this isn't "the world we built", maybe it's "the way the world is". I know I've been guilty of thinking the later when I should think the former but really don't know what we'd change. Do you really think the internet would have flourished if it was pay per view (or similar solution)?                             
                                  
 I remember using online services in the 80s where they charged by the minute. CompuServe, GEnie, and even just my ISP when I first got internet in the 90s. Data of 1 but I know that gave me a "use it as little as possible" mindset.                               
                                  
 Further, if some groups set out to charge and some other groups offered "free with ads" I'm pretty confident "free with ads" would win (see Radio, TV, Podcasts as other examples of "free with ads"). So, short of outlawing free (which would likely never happen), I don't see how we'd have not gotten where we are at the moment.                             
                                  
 That isn't to say we can't do better now but I'm less confident we could have conscientiously directed ourselves to better. I think natural forces got us her and will take people experiencing better to get them to switch better.                               
                                  
 To put it another way, without tasting the "free with ads" kinda sucks, few would be willing to fork over $ for better.                                
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I personally do not like paywalls. I had Google ads. I discontinued them.                                 
                                  
 For a long list of reasons, I want my writing to be freely available. I got my very first Amazon payout of like $16 or something a few months ago. I also got an email reminder that I am legally required to very prominently display information telling people I have Amazon links on my site.                              
                                  
 I took the links down and thought about updating my sites to comply with the requirement and so far haven't, in part because I suspect the $16 was from some local asshole unqualified for his job (the job I applied for) buying ugly bike racks and plopping them down in bad locations all over my lovely downtown area like little piles of manure as a daily reminder of how corrupt these people are, how much they have shafted me for no real damn reason other than pathos on their part and they are ruining the town I hope to improve.                          
                                  
 I was unable to readily find (affiliate) links to bike racks I would like to see in this town and I'm angry at what is being done to this town by these immoral, incompetent cretins and it causes me to think that I might actively encourage their shit behavior ruining this town because I'm so desperate for money that $16 on that day meant I could afford a fucking coffee which put an end to my splitting headache.                            
                                  
 I do not wish to make the world and town I live in a worse place because I'm so desperate for money and I think taking the Amazon solution potentially pushes me in that direction.                               
                                  
 Anyway, I don't know how to fix this. I try to tell people what it looks like from where I sit because I know HN has a lot of coders, etc and they aren't daily exposed to the reality that "If you choose to not be a sell out, you go hungry." basically.                              
                                  
 I just want my life to work. I don't actually want to make what sounds like "political" commentary to other people. If my life worked, I would likely be all "Meh. Not my problem. I don't want to fight with these fools and trying to point this out is not worth the drama. Moving on."                              
                                  
 But it does impact me. It impacts me to the point where I literally fear for my life due to my intractable poverty and sometimes I feel compelled to comment, though I don't really expect it to help me. Maybe after I am beyond help, people will stop wondering what's in it for DoreenMichele and think "She had a point. Let's find a solution that incorporates these observations."                            
                                  
 This is possibly rambly at this point. I'm posting it anyway and then will try to stay out of this conversation.                                
                                  
                                  
 prmoustache on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Don't mistake "people using adblock" with "I don't have a valid business model". Adblock users are a minority among people browsing the internet.                                
                                  
                                  
 kelnos on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.                              
                                  
 The problem is that the sane alternative, where people can get fed while selling quality a-la-carte content directly to the reader, doesn't really exist. If one or more review sites would work to develop a good reputation, I'd be happy to spend a one-shot $3 or $5 on their (for example) wireless earbud reviews. But this thing basically doesn't exist (or at least I can't find it, because of all the aforementioned shit-quality search engine results). Someone upthread mentioned a German site that does this, but then someone replied saying their expertise is limited and their reviews in many product categories aren't that great. Then we have things like Consumer Reports in the US, but I've found the quality of their reviews to have declined over the past decade or so; I've read some of their free content for product categories where I'm already knowledgeable, and I've disagreed heartily with enough of their findings to be skeptical of them.                   
                                  
 When it comes to news and opinion pieces, I'd be fine paying on a per-article basis, but we have no established micropayments system, and I'm not paying $10-$20/mo for each of the 50 sites that come up in various news aggregators I read and have paywalls. There are a few sites and YouTube channels that I read/watch nearly daily, so I subscribe to their Patreon or periodically drop money in their donations bin. But the majority of the content I consume comes from various sources, from a list that changes nearly daily.                          
                                  
 > Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives                                 
                                  
 Who is the "we" here, though? I would love to change this, but I feel pretty powerless to do so. At least not without making it my life's work, with a very high chance of failing at it regardless.                               
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.                                 
                                  
 Support Patreon or similar. Leave tips.                                  
                                  
 One of my first big successes on HN got 60k pageviews and made me not one thin dime. No one left a tip. No one supported my Patreon.                                
                                  
 I have been writing for years because I am seriously medically handicapped but educated. Writing is something I can do.                                
                                  
 People don't want to hire me for resume work or other freelance writing. I'm a woman and former homemaker and most successful business people are men. They rarely want to talk to me about my work or how to succeed. Most often, if men try to talk to me, they are hoping for a romantic connection and from my end the experience boils down "All you horrible people are watching me starve but you think I will sleep with you??? Seriously?!!!!"                           
                                  
 Leave tips (or support Patreon or similar). Tell people you leave tips on sites with good writing. Promote the various means people can accept cash for their online writing.                               
                                  
 I don't know what else to tell you. But saying you can't make a difference because you are a nobody is part of the problem.                                
                                  
 You don't have to save the world. Just buy a writer lunch or a cup of coffee, so to speak. Spread the word.                                
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I just signed up for a coffee a month. Good luck!                                 
                                  
                                  
 DoreenMichele on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Thank you!                                  
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 A while back, I put a little in my budget for small projects. Some are software, others are writing, whatever.                                
                                  
 It's not much, but I know very well it all adds up, and maybe a little positive energy plays out for you too.                                
                                  
 What I did was quit buying my coffee. :D                                  
                                  
 And that worked out!! I have a little percolator, which I love when camping or something. That thing makes the best damn coffee. For the quickie at home, this is corny, but I got an Aeropress and it also makes a fantastic and kind of fun cup of coffee.                              
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.                                 
                                  
 Or easier, adhere to the GDPR (at least in the EU) and provide a "reject all non-essential" button as demanded right next to "accept all" without any dark patterns, and their ad-business plummet and you have to demand payment for the service to be sustainable. So my point is, the whole thing can be fixed if Megacorps would abide by the law, and law enforcement would also not take >5 years to act on violation lawsuits (see noyb's lawsuits against FB which are going on 8 years and even date prior to the GDPR).                          
                                  
                                  
 hellbannedguy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've been fooling you--kinda for years, but I'm hellbanned. I'll post this anyway.                                 
                                  
 In all honesty, I haven't found a writer, or journalist, I'm giving any money to besides a few honest non-profits. (And yes it's hard to find a honest 501c3.)                                
                                  
 I feel you should put the affiliate links on your writing. It's not selling out. It's selling out when you have good income, security, and a home.                                
                                  
 I don't have any problems with average people putting up affiliate links, or ads.                                 
                                  
 It's the wealthy boys who can never get enough monetary praise I have a problem with.                                 
                                  
                                  
 bsanr on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.                              
                                  
 People don't/can't pay for things anymore because trillions of dollars have been siphoned out of the holdings of the middle and working classes over the past 50 years. If not for piracy and subscription services, the music and film industries would have collapsed years ago. If you made people pay for the things they used to, they... wouldn't. Because they can't.                            
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Roughly 40 Trillion since the late 70's.                                  
                                  
                                  
 iypx on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For my entire life I've tried to become a programmer, went as far as studying CS for three years, never managed to get a diploma as I ran into some financial and health issues... you mention                               
                                  
 > I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues.                                
                                  
 I think the real issue, is, the world is much bigger than the first world countries. I would love to have a diploma, to get a "real" job as a programmer for some random company, to add that "value" to the internet, to design useful software for actual people, etc. etc. But I was born in Eastern Europe..                             
                                  
 I tried freelancing a few times through gac, rac, and scriptlance which later got "globalized" (all acquired and killed by freelancer.com, yay capitalism).. and I just can't compete with indians on that site, way too many of them, somehow quoting 5% of the price promising double or triple of what I can do somehow...                             
                                  
 So I tried looking for that "Real" job, except I was born ugly as hell with broken teeth, so nobody would even take me seriously. Even one of my professors in uni told me once: "See.. if you could do less drugs and study more, I bet you could get an A, it's a B- for now..".. I never even tried drugs, but apparently I'm so ugly half my profs thought I was drugged. As far as I can tell, It's just nepotism right and left, people only hiring other pretty-looking-people-alike for both normal and startup-like jobs where I come from. Zero chance for me.                          
                                  
 So on the brink of giving up on everything, I took a construction job for 6 months, which allowed me to save enough money for a plane ticked and my first month of rent in UK. Now I'm a Reach Truck driver in a warehouse.. making >triple the salary I could make as a programmer in my home country, but slowly destroying my back and knees every d day.                             
                                  
 Funnily enough, I've met quite a few programmers, lawyers, accountants, pharmacists and even a surgeon through my warehouse jobs in the last two years. Quite smart people, a few broken teeth here and there, a couple disfigured faces, husbands, kids, sick family, plenty stuff...                              
                                  
 The internet is just bullshit, just like most of this society. Making money, jobs, starvation, HA! I don't even know what I'm trying anymore or why I still keep reading on this site.                               
                                  
 Sorry for the rambling, your message just resonated somehow for me so I felt I should say something. Good luck to you!                                
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm sorry the world treated you the way it did. We've set up a quite harshly unforgiving environment that in many ways impoverishes our souls in similar ways the harsh elements of the physical world impoverished our bodies before the rise of civilization.                              
                                  
 If you have studied that much CS, then you likely have fulfilled many of the ACM recommended curricula [1] for at least an associates degree if not more. If that is true, then you have some options. Do not discount your dual fluency in English and your mother tongue. There is no shame in taking a good small-scale Internet business idea implemented in the Anglosphere and reproducing it in your mother tongue. There are numerous tiny ideas mentioned in comments here on HN that bring in modest sums, but fill a niche unlikely to have already been implemented in your home country. If it is enough to pay for a laptop upgrade once every 3-5 years, and maybe some beer money, then that's as good a start as any.                       
                                  
 Bonus points if you find a Net-based business opportunity that also leverages your current UK geographic location.                                
                                  
 Lift weights, eat right, sleep enough, and take good care of your body in the meantime, those warehouse jobs are no joke, and you are ahead of the pack by already recognizing that. If I was single, living alone, young, and working a warehouse job while working on my coding, then I'd abandon all real estate-oriented shelter, stealth vandwell, and digital nomad between free WiFi hotspots for my connection to free-tier cloud resources (CLI and tmux for the win on high-latency, low-bandwidth connections); rent-to-wage ratios are completely insane in developed nations' urban, suburban and exurban areas.                         
                                  
 Stay out of the rentier trap. Trying to rent a room cost me a few years of unnecessary toil when I started out that contributed nothing towards my advancement, when for all practical purposes, I lived out of my car with the hours I was spending at a part-time job, on campus classrooms, labs, and libraries, napping in my car, and about every other day crashing back in my rented room that really was more a storage shed than used as an apartment. If I had a stealth van and student gym membership back then, then I would have been better off, but I was too stupidly proud to do that ("gasp, I'll be homeless!" was a complete red herring).                        
                                  
 [1] https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations                                 
                                  
                                  
 literallycancer on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You can raise funds for a software project as a pseudonymous founder these days, if you can explain your ideas clearly or can put together an MVP. That might help with the "other people judging by appearance" problem.                               
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 After reading your comment, I visited your page and glanced around. Am I right in interpreting your specialty is coming up with how to turn a better phrase (writing)?                                
                                  
 If so, then that's a very underappreciated domain at this time (much to our detriment, but that's for a different discussion). Not just in tech, but everywhere. The entire field has been aggressively monetized to near extinction; whatever writing doesn't directly impact revenue/profits, gets dumped onto line workers. And the results show.                             
                                  
 The quality of writing and lucid ideas found in advertisements and landing pages is markedly higher than from say, in a somewhat-technical presentation to managers-of-managers. I've sat through more than a few quite underwhelming presentations that violated some of the most basic principles of presenting ("don't mumble hoping the slide will carry the presentation", "don't read the slide word-for-word", etc.).                            
                                  
 There is a dearth of assistance for coaches to help improve those kinds of "writing". And a huge number of aspiring, gung-ho FAANG employees who are wondering why management won't listen to them. There's a gap to be filled here, and people with the disposable income to pay for outcomes.                              
                                  
 Leverage your non-technical sphere as a strength (I liked your pull request journey, it is true that coders don't normally perceive and accommodate skill stratifications in our docs, a byproduct of the monetization of writing that killed too many technical writing/librarian positions in our industry). Perhaps look into positioning the writing assistance you offer to technical staff as a way to communicate to non-technical managers, where you help translate the technical concepts that have to be broken down to you due to your non-technical background, into ideas the managers readily grasp. It would help if you retained a lot of the corporate-speak that Rands in Repose sometimes writes about that you doubtless saw in your Aflac stint, and knew when to judiciously use it.                      
                                  
 Maybe investigate some offer like helping coders write emails to managers. If that gains traction, offer small-medium-large presentation improvement coaching, based upon the length of the presentation (15, 30, 60 minutes). Where shorter lengths increase in cost. Then if that gains traction, offer coaching linked to an annual performance goal of "improve communicating with managers".                            
                                  
                                  
 massysett on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I agree with you. I think Google works very well. People expect to go on Google, pay nothing, and get good information. So industries have arisen that do just that. I find it amazing that I can type obscure questions into Google and get content custom crafted to answer my question.                              
                                  
 Often the answers are not the best. What can I expect? I paid nothing for them! When I want good information, I pay for it.                                
                                  
                                  
 tonyedgecombe on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >I think Google works very well.                                  
                                  
 >Often the answers are not the best.                                  
                                  
 Well, which is it?                                  
                                  
                                  
 massysett on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Both. It works very well for what it is. Considering that I paid absolutely nothing for it, it's great.                                 
                                  
                                  
 literallycancer on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Most SEO spam I've seen lately looks like it's produced by neural networks and maybe curated by people afterwards.                                
                                  
 Have you tried making some content available only to subscribers?                                 
                                  
                                  
 pers0n on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Even if you use patreon, people get greedy and eventually will sell out and put up reviews of stuff for affiliate links, free products for reviews, etc.                                
                                  
                                  
 88913527 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You can't even search for GitHub issues anymore. You'll get some mirrored site that has the discussion, and from that webpage, you can't even get a direct link back to GitHub.                               
                                  
                                  
 ljm on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Github issue clones and StackOverflow clones pretty much dominate most of my programming related search results these days.                                
                                  
 Unfortunately DDG isn't much better.                                  
                                  
 It takes a lot of effort to finesse a search query such that I can get a good result, like a link to documentation or a personal website where someone wrote something up (which is often more thoughtful than what Medium and Dev.to offer).                              
                                  
                                  
 noobermin on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At this point google is a shortcut to documentation. I look for the first link that looks like a readthedocs page. You could even short-circuit this and bookmark the documentation for the tool you want. It's going "backwards" in a sense but learning to read a manual well can be quicker than letting google think for you.                             
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I have never seen a Github issue clone or StackOverflow clone in my life.                                 
                                  
                                  
 icambron on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This surprises me because it's a major problem for me, particularly for GitHub. I end up doing this for clones that don't even link back to the orginal:                                
                                  
 1. Search for something 2. See the cloned issue but no results for the original 3. Copy some unique-looking text from the clone 4. Search the repo directly for that text                               
                                  
 It's awful. Seems to be a very recent problem? Maybe the last few months?                                 
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If I google "winforms change title bar color", I stackoverflow on top and on the first page:                                 
                                  
 https://newbedev.com/changing-the-color-of-the-title-bar-in-...                                 
                                  
 http://ostack.cn/?qa=707394/                                  
                                  
 But this blocks it:                                  
                                  
 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arosh/ublacklist-stackover...                                 
                                  
                                  
 hidden-spyder on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 uBlacklist [0] solves this. The filters in [1] let me block all those clone sites.                                 
                                  
 [0]: https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist                                 
                                  
 [1]: https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist                                 
                                  
                                  
 nmfisher on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It might be a function of your programming niche, but is it possible that you just didn't realize you were looking at a clone? These sites are everywhere .                                
                                  
                                  
 guynamedloren on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's a portion of the content that's cloned: the question and subsequent answers or discussion. The styling is usually totally different, even the page structure is different, to the point that I don't realize I'm looking at a clone unless I recognize the copy from a specific github or stackoverflow page that I had looked at previously in my search session.                             
                                  
                                  
 fxtentacle on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah, I also noticed that for "tiptoi wiki" Google ranks                                 
                                  
 https://github-wiki-see.page/m/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/...                                 
                                  
 higher than the actual GitHub wiki that all of the content was copied from                                 
                                  
 https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/Languages                                 
                                  
 BTW, building my own interactive book was a great thing to do over Christmas.                                 
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I run https://github-wiki-see.page . Please read the about page link at the bottom or visit https://github-wiki-see.page for an explanation. I put it up after realizing my GitHub wiki contributions weren't available via Google.                               
                                  
 GitHub blocks https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/Languages and many other wikis from being indexed. In the case of the page you linked, GitHub serves the content with "X-Robots-Tag: none". The content of that page currently does not exist in Google at all. You can see the robot blocking header by looking at the Network tab in Chrome while loading the page in incognito mode or equivalent in other browsers.                            
                                  
 As for having no link to GitHub, my service provides a huge button at the top and a direct URL to the original content. Please use those controls at the top to get to the content on GitHub. I do not selectively redirect to not trip cloaking detection or automatically redirect which risks the indexing helper being classified as a redirect in search engines.                             
                                  
 If you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know.                                 
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 From https://github-wiki-see.page/                                  
                                  
 GitHub Wiki Search Engine Enablement (GHWSEE) allows non-indexed GitHub Wikis to be indexed by search engines.                                
                                  
 This site will be decommissioned to redirect old links once the block is lifted or GitHub produces some other solution to index GitHub Wikis in harmony with their SEO concerns.                               
                                  
 I do not see any wrongdoing from github-wiki-see.page here. They don't even amke money from it. Quite contrary, I do think that this is a useful project.                                
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Hah, yeah I don't make any money from it. I think I'm like currently $300 in the hole from experiments and queries with it until I had settled on the current ramen architecture.                               
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 What's ramen architecture?                                  
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Just cheap, low cost hosting. I didn't expect the tool to take off so I was just hosting it on Cloud Run. I host it on fly.io now.                                
                                  
                                  
 kelnos on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That might be fixable, if people want to expend the effort. Wiki pages are almost certainly copyrightable, so the owners could send DMCA takedown notices to github-wiki-see.page. If they're not responsive, send the DMCA notices to Google, which should be required to delist them. Unfortunately you have to do it on a URL-by-URL basis, and you can only send notices for pages you actually own copyright for, so it would mean a big coordinated effort to get them brought down.                           
                                  
 I just don't understand why Google themselves allows this and doesn't rank these sorts of sites lower. They're clearly garbage sites with low utility.                                
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Please read my explanation at http://github-wiki-see.page/ and observe why it exists. I believe it to be a site with extremely high utility.                                
                                  
 It has already recently convinced/defrosted GitHub to gradually change their policy to not let GitHub wiki pages be indexed since 2012. For at least 9 years, people were writing content into GitHub and not realizing it wasn't indexed at all.                              
                                  
 I'm happy to answer any questions or suggestions you have.                                 
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I also do not host the content at all. That said, people have submitted outdated content requests if they move off GitHub Wikis to Google and they are honored.                                
                                  
                                  
 londons_explore on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google puts substantial effort into identifying copycat content. The main way they do that is to see which site had the content first.                                
                                  
 Unfortunately with smaller sites, it could be a few days till their search bot finds the content, and often the copycat sites have agressive scrapers so appear to have the content first.                               
                                  
 From googles point of view, the copycat is the original, and the original is the copycat.                                 
                                  
 There are also some kinds of copycat content which users actually prefer. For example, sites which bypass paywalls, sites which quote other sites, sites that display decrapified content from another site, etc.                               
                                  
                                  
 crazysim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In the case of http://github-wiki-see.page/ , the original isn't even on Google! That's why my copycat wins.                                
                                  
 FWIW, GitHub seems to be letting some Wikis be indexed on a test basis and I am very happy to see they are outranking GHWSEE. That said, with the current guessed criteria, there are still many publicly editable wikis with many stars and publically un-editable wikis on repos with few stars but useful information out there that aren't being indexed.                             
                                  
                                  
 hidden-spyder on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 uBlacklist [0] solves this. The filters in [1] let me block all those clone sites.                                 
                                  
 [0]: https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist                                 
                                  
 [1]: https://github.com/rjaus/awesome-ublacklist                                 
                                  
                                  
 FranksTV on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Add "site:github.com" to your search and just get results from github.                                 
                                  
                                  
 a-dub on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 yeah, had this experience myself while purchasing holiday gifts. amusingly, it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.                               
                                  
 it's funny because internet shopping became popular in the face of salespeople becoming corrupt under commission and performance schemes, now a big part of the commerce related internet is worse for pretty much the same reasons.                               
                                  
                                  
 JoshTriplett on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.                                
                                  
 I still remember being in Best Buy and hearing the salespeople scamming less knowledgeable customers about how much computer they need or how important expensive cables are. I don't think there was ever a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".                             
                                  
                                  
 carlivar on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There was a time - the smaller the store the better. I agree big box stores were rarely good. But Radio Shack had excellent, helpful employees. Probably because RS vetted their employees carefully and paid pretty well (I know this from trying and failing to get a job there when I was around 16 years old).                             
                                  
                                  
 slowmovintarget on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I worked at Radio Shack. They had an extensive training program that all employees went through. There were multiple 50-page manuals for each product category. This meant training in A/V equipment and how to hook up TVs (which splitters and switches did what, how to wire many different audio setups, how VCR outputs worked, telephony equipment, pagers and Blackberries... etc.)                            
                                  
 We had to go through all the certifications within something like six weeks of hire in order to be eligible for pay bumps and promotions. This even meant training on circuit components (at least knowing what they were, and how they were organized).                              
                                  
 Any Radio Shack clerk that wasn't completely green went through this training, so we all knew our stuff.                                 
                                  
 One of the cool things about the job was getting to talk to "elder geeks" that would come in for components. One guy I helped had set up an old IBM 360 mainframe in his garage. The university he worked at didn't want it any more. He used it for messing around with assembly and as a space heater.                              
                                  
 It was still a retail job, but it was better than most for a tech-head like me. I would've been flipping burgers or selling shoes (Payless was next door), so Radio Shack was a better stepping stone for me. It did nothing for getting me into a programming career, but it was a stop-gap to get there.                             
                                  
                                  
 ipaddr on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I worked at radio shack. We didn't have certification program but you are forced to learn quickly.                                 
                                  
 It was less about selling and more about people walking in knowing what they wanted or wanting to browse around and once in awhile someone with a problem that you had to piece together components to help. It was unlike other electronic stores I worked. You had to understand how invertors worked, rc cars and sell computers while trying to maintain an 80% names/address recorded.                            
                                  
 You did sell. You entire got paid minimum wage or a % of what you earned for a two week period. 4% for name brand stuff 10% for store brand. My first two week period I sold computer after computer got highest sales in the district. For the next month or longer the minimum. Replacing the computer inventory took forever and I wasn't as good selling all of their other products. Great fun learning experience.                            
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As far back as the 01990s my memories of Radio Shack are:                                 
                                  
 1. The only place around where you could go to buy a breadboard, or a transistor, or a resistor, or a headphone cable connector. Component selection unparalleled in the places where I lived. I don't want to exaggerate --- they had maybe ten kinds of transistors, not a hundred like Fry's, but I didn't live within 1000 km of a Fry's. And certainly not forty thousand like Digi-Key has today.                            
                                  
 2. Salespeople who apparently didn't know anything but tried to get my phone number (!?) and, later, sell me cellphones. And cellphone plans. Jesus.                                
                                  
 3. Stuff for makers getting gradually crowded out by worthless goods for mere consumers, stuff I could have bought at Best Buy or Sears if I wanted it. Things like TVs, VCRs, pagers, and Blackberries.                               
                                  
 I still use a store-brand Radio Shack multimeter sometimes, and in the 01980s a lot of my early years of programming were on store-brand Radio Shack computers in my day care and elementary schools, both TRS-80 Model III and the CoCo.                              
                                  
                                  
 Cederfjard on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Complete side note, why are you adding a leading zero to you years (or decades, in this case)?                                 
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 See this LongNow article [1]. While I love the sentiment behind it, it creates an implicit fixed-length field which I think is not optimistic enough.                                
                                  
 I'd rather make software handle an unsigned long long as a year: I want our optimism to extend beyond the presumed heat death of our universe, and into, if not finding a multiverse, creating it.                               
                                  
 [1] https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...                                 
                                  
                                  
 kragen on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Long long isn't nearly long enough to get to the heat death of the universe.                                 
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Thank you for the correction. We currently think heat death is around 10^3247 years, so we're back to Lisp bignum to express years. Might be a corollary to Greenspun's tenth rule: any sufficiently optimistic date package contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of Common Lisp bignum?                             
                                  
                                  
 jhugo on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's to get people to ask that question.                                  
                                  
                                  
 bdowling on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's his conceit.                                  
                                  
                                  
 ghaff on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It wasn't really a golden era.                                  
                                  
 Small local camera stores didn't carry much and were expensive. They tended to recommend something that they had in stock. Was still a pretty regular customer though because mail order wasn't as developed and you couldn't easily showroom gear locally.                              
                                  
 And Radio Shack was certainly convenient for cables etc. and had often knowledgable employees. But most of the actual stereo equipment and other gear they carried just wasn't very good.                               
                                  
                                  
 matsemann on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 While not perfect, it was often good enough. Go in, see 6 cameras in three price ranges, choose the one fitting the best for the price you're willing to pay, then walk home happy. Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase.                              
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase.                                 
                                  
 The challenge I have now in most product categories is filtering out the sewage-offerings from the genuine values. I don't mind lots of choice if presented with an adequate McMaster-Carr type information-oriented UI (as opposed to the ad-friendly UI's we suffer through these days). I mind when most of the choices are dumpster fire quality, and I have no way to filter them out.                            
                                  
                                  
 ghaff on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The (somewhat disputed) thesis of the paradox of choice.                                 
                                  
 But I don't really disagree especially for relatively commodity purchases. Yes, I actually looked up a spray nozzle for a hose on Wirecutter. But would I have been perfectly fine just walking into Home Depot and grabbing one? Probably.                              
                                  
 That said. I'm probably better off researching thins like dishwashers rather than walking into a store (then or now) and picking one that catches my eye or that the salesperson recommends.                               
                                  
 But you can certainly get into analysis-paralysis with any number of things from travel to cameras. And you're often better off just shutting the analysis down at some point.                               
                                  
                                  
 carlivar on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Also support a small business owner and his or her family.                                 
                                  
                                  
 datavirtue on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Ah best buy sales incentives. It reminds of the time I watched a salesman force the wrong case on an old lady's iPad, cracking the screen, and then blaming her for it.                                
                                  
                                  
 bcrosby95 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 My favorite line was some salesperson saying "you wouldn't want to connect a $2k tv with a cheap cable!". It certainly made me laugh.                                
                                  
                                  
 tomc1985 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The folks at Frys (particularly in hardware) were a useful resource (and good source of shop talk) all the way up until Fry's faded into irrelevance. They helped me sort through a good number of hardware-related issues                               
                                  
                                  
 throwanem on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Micro Center staff still are like this, and that's much more than anything else why I buy whatever I can from them before looking anywhere else. I want them to stay in business, because otherwise I have to do my own research every time, and who has the time for that? - well, this, and also because I just delight in being still able to walk into one brick-and-mortar store where I know for sure I won't have wasted the trip.                           
                                  
                                  
 zo1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 We kid and joke about expensive cables, but we're at a point where it's become true. It's hit or miss buying USB cables. For fast-charging as an example (double-trouble if you don't have a quality or compatible charger to pair it with). Likewise for USB transfer rates (e.g. for the Oculus Quest that I was not planning on testing with 10 different 5m USB cables to see which worked).                            
                                  
 Same goes for the connectors. All the IEEE and ISO standards out there in the world and the damn USB plugs stick out half the time (nevermind the Chinese-made ones I had that were 1.5x the normal length). In other instances 3.5mm jacks don't stay in or something or other becomes loose. And trying to find reviews or info about this online, or filtering it out to some level on purchase sites like Amazon is...tiring.                            
                                  
                                  
 seanp2k2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At least that was better than Fry’s or Home Depot, where salespeople actively walk away when they see you approaching, and have zero knowledge of what is even carried by the place they work. After a while I figured out that it’s better to just look myself on the shelves and endcaps vs trying to ask anything of the sales drones. Kinda like a physical Amazon. I’m sad that they’re out of business now, and with no more MicroCenter left in the Bay Area, the choices are now basically Amazon, eBay, or small online shops (if Central Computer and Halted, now closed as they sold to Excess Solutions @ 1555 S, 7th St. San Jose, CA 95112 don’t have what I’m after).                        
                                  
                                  
 sgerenser on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Odd, I’ve never had much trouble at Home Depot or Lowe’s getting an employee to help me find something. Usually they at least know where things are even if they couldn’t tell you how to use or install said item.                               
                                  
                                  
 colechristensen on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've only ever overheard good quality advice at Microcenter.                                 
                                  
                                  
 wetmore on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As much as I love Microcenter, even there I've had a salesman give me uninformed advice, throw his bar code sticker on the thing he told me to get, and walk away.                                
                                  
                                  
 throwanem on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 So don't talk to that guy again. The others should be fine, unless your local store happens to have a lousy GM.                                
                                  
 Initially I dealt with this concern by benchmarking the advice I got on a topic I do know a lot about. I haven't worried about that in a while; at least in the Towson store, the quality of advice and discussion has been such that the next time they steer me wrong will be the first.                              
                                  
                                  
 sgtnoodle on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I was recently in a Best Buy and overheard an employee explain the difference between a Pixel 6 and a 6 Pro as, "EVERYTHING is better". I had personally just compared the two side-by-side and concluded that the pro's only material differences were more RAM, worse build quality due to the curved screen edges, and the addition of a telephoto camera.                             
                                  
                                  
 tehaugmenter on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".                                 
                                  
 Remember RadioShack?                                  
                                  
                                  
 kristofferR on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Rose colored glasses. Workers in stores were the original "affiliate marketers", in a lot of stores (especially electronic ones) workers were/are being paid to push the most expensive products.                               
                                  
 Then when you try to pay, you get upsold warranties.                                 
                                  
                                  
 taffronaut on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Actually it would make more sense for them to push the highest margin products. This could quite often be lower cost or in-house brands since prestige brands can dictate lower margins to the retailer.                               
                                  
 Agree sales guys pushing warranties is a real pain but I'm almost nostalgic for it compared to dodging Prime sign-up every time and other online anti-patterns.                                
                                  
                                  
 treeman79 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Guessing Migrine’s? Probably easier to search FL-41 glasses.                                 
                                  
 I like my axon brand, very helpful.                                  
                                  
                                  
 1over137 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.                                
                                  
 Uhhh, you can still do that, you know.                                  
                                  
                                  
 seanp2k2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 With all this lamentation about electronics stores of years past, nothing will compare to the malicious incompetence of car dealerships and service departments. Their business model these days is “if we all keep behaving badly together, consumers will have no choice but to accept our lies, markups, and chicanery”. The dealer groups paying politicians through campaign contributions to allow them to block manufacturer-direct sales (look up how you can’t buy a Tesla in Michigan, home of The Motor City, for example) is just the cherry on top.                          
                                  
                                  
 ejb999 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to do - even worse then doing my taxes. I will avoid it at all costs.                                
                                  
 Current vehicle is coming up on 10 years old, hoping to get another 10 out of it - not because I can't afford a new one (I can), but because I feel like I have to take a shower every time I walk out of a car dealer.                               
                                  
                                  
 ddingus on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 LOL, I spent a number of years working with some very adept sales people. I was in a supporting role, but learned a ton.                                
                                  
 For a while, I was buying cars for people because they hated it. I would save them a ton, and get a nice spiff for each one.                                
                                  
 What I did was work through their whole process and then work them, usually getting out of there at invoice plus a few percent. Average deal took 4 to 6 hours. And the work would involve a dry run purchase somewhere other than where the target buy would happen. Sometimes a second one just find where the pivot points are and what it takes to swing them in buyers favor.                            
                                  
 Started the whole thing on a new Expedition purchase in the '00s. It worked well, the MSRP was something like $45K, and I got the rig for $32K and some change. Not all the deals were that dramatic. Depended on the target car and time of year, but there was always mid to high 4 figures that could come out of the deal.                             
                                  
 I've never purchased a new car for myself since. And I quit doing it for others a few years in.                                 
                                  
 The whole thing is generally terrible. While it was a sort of sport, fine! Game on. But it got soul draining very quickly.                                
                                  
 Many dealers have responded with a hard line, "no bullshit" kind of approach, being willing to push people away and just take the ones who will pay and appreciate a smooth transaction. And those people will just pay more and just don't generally care.                              
                                  
 And no judgement. That's worth... about mid to high 4 figures apparently.                                 
                                  
 Right now? No way. Sellers have all the advantages, and even better used car deals are crazy due to the shortages and the impact all that has on car pricing.                                
                                  
 Could not imagine attempting it again today. Would be a mess, and probably would get told to pound sand. Look at the Ford dealers putting the squeeze on people who pre-ordered the EV F150! Pay an extra $30k right now, or continue to wait for it... Brutal.                              
                                  
                                  
 bsder on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to do                                 
                                  
 It's still annoying, but do it online and have your own financing.                                 
                                  
 Most dealerships are stupid, but a couple have figured out that if they offer a reasonable price online they can move cars with very little touch.                                
                                  
 Having your own financing prevents idiocy from when you walk into the dealership to sign the paperwork. Unless the dealer has something special, you're never going to do better than your own financing.                               
                                  
 Do be aware, buying a car right now is simply totally apeshit. Until the supply and demand equilibrate, things are going to be weird.                                
                                  
                                  
 injidup on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah right. Two days ago I go into our local electrical goods store. I would like a USB-C to HDMI adaptor, I say. Sales guy looks around, scratches his nut. Sorry don't have one he says. Then he wanders off. I turn around and see one on the shelf. The price is double what you can get online. I tell him this. He shrugs and scratches his other nut and wanders off again. I walk out.                            
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah, I went into a Home Depot store that wasn't my regular location a couple weeks back looking for dowel rods. Trying to speed up my trip I asked two different employees on my way to the general area of the store which specific aisle they would be on. Neither of them even knew what a dowel rod was, let alone what aisle it might be on, and obviously neither of them would be qualified to proactively try to help avoid the ones with knots or badly angled grain. It's not just that sales staff are ignorant nowadays, it's that the job itself has practically vanished.                         
                                  
                                  
 MiddleEndian on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 On that very topic, I saw a customer ask an employee manning the wood cutting station at a Home Depot if he could cut a dowel rod in half. The employee didn't know if it was possible because it was "round." I think they realized they can get away with just not training their employees.                              
                                  
                                  
 tsomctl on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Cutting round things in a saw can be dangerous if they aren't clamped correctly: they can spin. (Don't know of a link, this was taught to me at community college in the context of cutting round metal stock in a band saw.)                               
                                  
                                  
 taeric on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I mean, yeah? Train the staff on how to clamp correctly?                                 
                                  
 I would expect all cuts to be fully clamped in a store.                                 
                                  
                                  
 MerelyMortal on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience. It's possible that there are just less people with that experience, that also want to work at a store like Home Depot.                              
                                  
                                  
 ejb999 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >>Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience.                                
                                  
 I think they used to hire people with industry experience - i.e. semi-retired or retired plumbers, electricians, carpenters handymen etc and that worked pretty well coming of the 2008 RE meltdown and economic mess at that time - but now any halfway qualified tradesperson can make close to or more than a six figure salary - so working at HD for $15/hr doesn't seem all that attractive anymore.                            
                                  
 I don't even try to ask the employees any actual 'technical' questions - I am happy if they can just point me to the correct aisle to find what I need these days.                                
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In that specific situation there’s likely training because operating a saw can be dangerous and incurs liability, not because Home Depot wants to impart knowledge to customers.                               
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 With Home Depot/Lowes the employee (or you) can look up on the item on the web site and it will show you the row/bay its located in. Dont be surprised when you see staff know even less about where things are located.                               
                                  
                                  
 marcosdumay on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The good news is that there isn't enough volume to justify the corruption of the salesperson, so he is often more honest nowadays.                                
                                  
 The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.                                
                                  
                                  
 sundarurfriend on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.                                
                                  
 Is that a "nowadays" thing though? At least in my location, the reason a lot of us flocked to the online option was the diversity of options available. Physical stores (for understandable reasons) stocked only the few top-selling options, knew about a few other options enough to say "no we haven't got that", and anything else would get a blank stare and a "is that a company's name?"                            
                                  
 If you had put effort into your search and optimized the selection for your specific needs, you were much more likely to find the product online - the physical stores often forced you into a choice between different suboptimal products.                              
                                  
                                  
 cortesoft on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays                                 
                                  
 They never did, you just didn't realize they didn't before the internet exposed you to the options.                                 
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I think there’s lots of factors going on here too. Products were less often considered disposable two or three generations ago. A manufacturer wouldn’t offer 6 versions of nearly the same thing to capture all price points. Things used to be predominantly manufactured by hand, which also meant they were inspectable and repairable by hand. Manufacturing businesses typically kept less products on the market for longer periods (model numbers have become quarterly iterations or specific to a retailer). There’s now 50 options that appear identical for nearly every product when previously there might have been 5. It all contributes to it being difficult for staff to meaningfully “know” what’s being sold even if they wanted to, and businesses aren’t going to spend that time and money training employees on a product they won’t be selling in a month.                     
                                  
                                  
 datavirtue on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Microcenter blows Amazon out of the water. Selection is rediculous.                                 
                                  
                                  
 cortesoft on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There are exceptions, but most people don't live near a store that has good selection.                                 
                                  
                                  
 a-dub on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.                                
                                  
 yes, that is why i was shopping online.                                  
                                  
                                  
 amelius on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Salespeople nowadays are basically recruited from the same pool as Uber Eats delivery people. They don't care about what they sell, they just want to make it to the end of the month.                               
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?                                 
                                  
 Knowledgable retail sales employees have completely vanished outside of niche "passionate enthusiast turned their hobby into a business". Homebrew shops, gun stores, marijuana dispensaries, comic and table top gaming stores, etc, but even many of those are plagued with the same cheap shit you can find on Alibaba or Amazon and a good chunk of the time if it's not the business owner you're dealing with you might as well skip asking questions. Outside of those niche interest stores there's often not even sales staff present, there are just people who stock shelves and operate the point of sale system but they don't even attempt to present themselves as knowledgable and can at best only point you to the right aisle of the store.                       
                                  
                                  
 theteapot on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?                                 
                                  
 Don't trust. Ask questions. If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.                                 
                                  
                                  
 evilduck on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At this point in my life I've mostly given up asking employees questions. There's only "fishy" answers to be had in retail and there's not generally a competing store with more knowledgable employees. It seems like most of the time I can choose between bad and another brand of bad. Think Hobby Lobby vs. Michaels or Home Depot vs Lowes, Target vs. WalMart, Sams vs. Costco, Macy's vs. Dillards, Dicks vs. Academy Sports, a Ford dealer vs. a Toyota dealer, or worse they've consolidated operations like Bass Pro vs. Cabelas. There might be reasons to choose one over the other for reasons like employee welfare and return policies, but typically prices are all in line with each other and the retail staff are equally useless.                       
                                  
 There's only a couple of nationwide exceptions that come to mind like REI and Microcenter but even then people might have to travel prohibitive distances to have those options and they might as well just buy online.                               
                                  
 Small regional stores and mom n' pop operations trend towards having more passionate employees that might have an interest in the products (like a ski shop is generally only staffed by people who've at skied, bike shops tend to only be staffed by people who enjoy cycling, etc) but it's still pretty infrequent.                             
                                  
                                  
 ejb999 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 >> If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.                                 
                                  
 If you know enough to know whether or not the answers you might get are fishy, you probably already know more than the guy you are trying to get advice from.                                
                                  
                                  
 selimthegrim on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The knowledgeable RadioShack employees were probably canary in the coal mine for RadioShack                                 
                                  
                                  
 Nextgrid on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Online shopping is a major threat to small mom & pop shops.                                 
                                  
                                  
 noizejoy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Arguably, small mom & pop shops already started dying in large numbers when big box stores started taking over, and online shopping is continuing the small shop’s march to extinction. Globalization of commerce has only added to the margin pressures. Add a global pandemic for good measure, and it’s been a brutal few decades for small shops in increasingly many parts of the world.                            
                                  
                                  
 chana_masala on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah but it is not a good experience, except for a few types of products. I needed a car jump starter so I tried going to AutoZone instead of Amazon. The only one AutoZone had was 3x what I could find on Amazon.                               
                                  
                                  
 asciimov on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Most auto parts stores are terrible places these days with low quality parts at high prices, and staff that are just competent enough to check out your items.                                
                                  
 It used to be (20-25 years ago) you could go in tell them what you were doing and they could tell you which brands to avoid, what other parts you might need, and any secrets that might help you get the job done faster or without having to remove quite as much stuff. These days, the people they hire are so incompetent if you asked them for Headlight Fluid they would take you over to the fluids aisle to look for it.                            
                                  
                                  
 leeoniya on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 thats why i always buy my headlight fluid on amazon                                 
                                  
 https://www.amazon.com/Headlight-Hilarious-Automobile-Hyster...                                 
                                  
                                  
 pixl97 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Name one (chain) store you can go in and ask employees about the product and get a competent answer?                                 
                                  
 Retail is just about pushing a product these days. The moment they can fire the staff and still have a brick and mortar store they will.                                
                                  
                                  
 WalterBright on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've had great success with the Gooloo jump starter. It has saved me from grief many times, most recently when I left the headlights on.                                
                                  
                                  
 seanp2k2 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The Noco ones are decent, but the Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry is the only thing approaching a BIFL (buy it for life) quality jump starter that I’m aware of. User-replaceable sealed lead acid battery like a quality UPS (which if you’re looking, grab an Eaton 5PX off eBay for a couple hundred bucks shipped…my 3 have outlasted half a dozen consumer APC junk units).                            
                                  
                                  
 kevin_thibedeau on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Lead acid batteries self-destruct after they've been left to discharge. Not something you want to keep in a trunk or store at home unplugged. The lithium jump starters have much more dependable passive storage life.                               
                                  
                                  
 cheese_van on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.                                
                                  
 When you use Google you are walking into their shop. That salesperson is very knowlegeable, but about you.                                
                                  
                                  
 futuretaint on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google should be paying you for using their search engine. There's your solution to affiliate links.                                 
                                  
                                  
 datavirtue on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 "it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you."                                
                                  
 THAT is retail. The craptastic experiment we see these days, online and in meatspace are scams masquerading as retail. I miss Sears.                                
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The challenge has been to monetize that experience. I wonder if either an explicit membership model to access advice or a sales advice Uber service that rates both sales person and customer to assist with improving sales transaction communication, can be one part of a solution to preserve the immediacy of brick and mortar. I doubt it; there is likely more value to identifying those items that consumers will buy without waiting for delivery, more emergency-type purchases, marking them up to the limit, abandoning all other products to online ordering, and optimize brick and mortar floor space to cater exclusively to those need-right-now purchases.                        
                                  
 And even that might not last long. Warehouse demand is exploding across the world right now. We're in the midst of a massive commerce transformation where there are a lot of giants racing to establish JIT delivery footprints in the most high-margin MSA's containing 80% of every nation's population. It won't be long before we're in a Stephenson'ian Snow Crash-esque world where we're getting an ML-computed 80% of goods everyone orders within 30 minutes, 15% of goods in 4 hours, 4% of goods in a day, and the remaining 1% in five days.                          
                                  
 Once that happens, I would be surprised to see supermarkets or even small groceries outside of very niche segments like ethnic and farmer's markets, or hyper niche high-end shops like butchers specializing in rare quality cuts, exist in brick and mortar form, unless you go to where 20% of the population lives in low-density areas not served by these logistical nets.                            
                                  
                                  
 megablast on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You want someone to pick gifts for your family and friends?                                 
                                  
                                  
 hubraumhugo on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Same experience here. Researching high-quality products on Google is very frustrating:                                 
                                  
 - Results 1-3 are ads                                  
                                  
 - Results 3-5 are blogs that get sponsored                                 
                                  
 - Results 5-10 are full of astroturfed user reviews                                 
                                  
 Finding trustworthy and consistent information is so hard that I mostly rely on Reddit for product research. There is a subreddit for literally every product category, and posting a request with your requirements takes much less time than cutting through all the noise on Google.                              
                                  
 To make this whole mess a better experience, I'm now working on my own startup that tries to solve these issues.                                
                                  
                                  
 hw on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In the end search is about relevancy. Trustworthiness of a blog or article is hard to discern by machines. The blogs likely rank high because of relevancy as well as clicks. Sponsored doesnt always mean that the reviews are biased. Reviews on reddit aren’t exactly trustworthy too - there are always going to be competing arguments and reviews for a product, you just have to use your own judgment which plays into your personality, risk tolerance etc.                           
                                  
                                  
 Karrot_Kream on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Indeed but as to the linked thread's point, it's an opportunity for a startup to come in. A startup which could tackle the quality problem not just relevancy.                                
                                  
                                  
 baddash on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Curious about your startup; how are you planning to solve these issues?                                 
                                  
                                  
 hubraumhugo on Jan 4, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Here is what we do:                                  
                                  
 - Let the community vote on the most trusted sources                                 
                                  
 - Include results from enthusiasts that have little incentive to write biased reviews (Reddit, HN, expert forums)                                
                                  
 - Look at the ownership of the site and how transparent they are about it                                 
                                  
 - Regularly reassess these criteria                                  
                                  
 Curious to hear your thoughts on this.                                  
                                  
                                  
 s4i on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 YouTube's latest brilliant "innovation" to hide the dislike count made this problem so much worse too. When e.g. trying to make a purchase decision, you can't quickly skim through a bunch of search results any longer. Instead you are forced to sit through so much bad content that you could've previously avoided. Maybe that was their real motivation too – to boost some watchtime metrics.                            
                                  
                                  
 Blackthorn on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Even before that, I hate hate HATE how they don't have a way to say "don't ever display this channel in search results". So much spam.                                
                                  
                                  
 asddubs on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 install the blocktube addon, it can do just that                                 
                                  
                                  
 annadane on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 B-b-b-b-b-but I've been told that some people don't look at likes/dislikes and that makes it ok! Oh well, I'm sure some product manager got their raise for removing such a useless feature                               
                                  
                                  
 chongli on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I am in the exact same quagmire trying to research water softeners and drinking water (RO) systems. I am having to pull fragments of information from many different sites / videos and having to discard large amounts of contradictory and misleading information.                              
                                  
 At this point, I’ve had to resort to reading scientific papers on how some of these technologies work (and how some don’t work) just to avoid the bad information. Unfortunately, the more I research the farther I get from making a purchase. This is not where I want to be, however, since the water in my area is very hard and everything gets scaled up all the time. I’m looking to purchase an espresso machine to get into the hobby but I’m not going to drop the money in expensive equipment until I can get access to water which will not damage it in short order.                         
                                  
                                  
 tomrod on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It isn't just me noticing this.                                  
                                  
 I had a project take me into an unfamiliar knowledge space. Up until... 2018? I could have relied on Google to find the meaningful information.                                
                                  
 The reason people accepted Google was that it dramatically lowered information acquisition costs through the Internet. That benefit doesn't seem as common now. Back to webrings.                               
                                  
                                  
 exhilaration on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I bought my home water filter based on a Consumer Reports recommendation. I feel that's still a reliable source. I think you can sign up for online access for a month to do all your research.                               
                                  
 I also really like the Wirecutter but I know not everyone here agrees with me.                                 
                                  
                                  
 colechristensen on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Wirecutter advice seems dubiously linked to how much they can get paid by their "winners". It's not all bad advice, it often seems quite good, but it has the same corruption as top SEO blogs.                               
                                  
                                  
 Fricken on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You guys had a bad time trying to search things that are at least a little complicated and obscure. I had the same experience trying to find a basic brownie recipe last week.                               
                                  
                                  
 jcrawfordor on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Recipes have somehow become one of the absolute worst parts of the internet. Google results are consistently dominated by websites that will require scrolling past multiple screens of narrative and increasingly some clicks to see the actual recipe. And when you start looking, you quickly discover that most of the time these websites are just repeating recipes from well known sources like The Joy of Cooking, or worse they have made changes that it's not clear they ever actually tested.                          
                                  
                                  
 iamacyborg on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For stuff like that you should probably just buy a recipe book from a reliable author.                                 
                                  
                                  
 xapata on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Same for my experience buying a furnace. Science journal articles were my best source of information, because I worried the manufacturers and installers would be biased.                               
                                  
 I'm not sure how this could be otherwise. Who's going to pay for someone to stay current on such things and publish an easy to understand summary?                                
                                  
                                  
 Sunspark on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Which science journals review furnaces?                                  
                                  
                                  
 chongli on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Most people’s experience with HVAC specialists comes from dealing with the technicians who install and service these systems in our homes. It turns out there’s an entire subfield of mechanical engineering dedicated to inventing, designing, and improving HVAC systems.                              
                                  
 Wherever there are engineers, there are academics who do engineering research. They have journals of their own to publish this research.                                
                                  
 As to the question of reviews, I’m not sure any articles actually review specific furnace models. The point of reading the papers is to educate yourself on the principles behind the technology so you can read manufacturer’s technical specifications and avoid the non-technical marketing language.                              
                                  
                                  
 xapata on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Yeah, I didn't get specific furnace models out of the articles. I was trying to decide between single-stage, two-stage, and many-stage designs. It turns out that the installers' claims about efficiency are bogus. Once you realize that you need the same number of BTUs regardless about how they're distributed, it's obvious. It's true that it might be more pleasant to have a little heat and a low fan constantly, rather than a blast periodically. In my opinion that's not worth the difference in upfront cost, increased maintenance cost, and reduced reliability.                         
                                  
                                  
 jansimonek on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 If you are reading papers on water softeners you might already know everything this video contains. For me it was a good intro to the topic of good water for making coffee: https://youtu.be/jfElZfrmlRs                               
                                  
                                  
 chongli on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Thanks for this! James Hoffmann is how I got into the hobby. I binge watched all of his videos, including this one. But then I forgot a lot of the useful information he gives here, only remembering his frustration at the complexity of the problem. Upon second viewing I think there is some good stuff for me here.                             
                                  
 I had been following Jim Shulman’s research which Hoffmann mentions in this video. It’s very dry and technical though and doesn’t provide much in the way of actionable advice on what equipment to purchase, instead recommending bottled water which I absolutely refuse to use (my household is already addicted to bottled water and I’m trying to break that addiction).                            
                                  
                                  
 xtracto on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Ha! I was searching for the same (water softening systems) for Mexico... the amount of signal to noise ratio is so small in google, that it's mostly unusable.                                
                                  
                                  
 replwoacause on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've been there and it's a hell of a rabbit hole, one that is easy to lose days to. Whatever you do don't fall for the Berkey scam.                                
                                  
                                  
 DaftDank on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Check out APEC RO systems.                                  
                                  
                                  
 Helmut10001 on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google could modify their ranking to include these biases:                                 
                                  
 - affiliate links? Down ranked                                  
                                  
 - affiliate links to Amazon? Down ranked further                                 
                                  
 - page contains advertising? Down ranked                                  
                                  
 - page contains extensive javascript? Down ranked                                 
                                  
 - page contains links to Social Media? Down ranked                                 
                                  
 - post _is_ on Social Media? Down ranked further                                 
                                  
 - page contains duplicate text, found elsewhere? Down ranked                                 
                                  
 - page contains many links? Down ranked                                  
                                  
 - page contains grammatical errors or bad sentence structure? Down ranked                                 
                                  
 But why would they do it, their whole business is built on these things to exist.                                 
                                  
 Let's look at some things for upranking:                                  
                                  
 - page uses a static site generator, e.g. jekyll, mkdocs, hugo? Upranked                                 
                                  
 - page has a balanced ratio of pictures/text and the text actually refers to picture (+ pictures are not stock imagery): Up ranked                                
                                  
 - ... (you continue)                                  
                                  
                                  
 tdsamardzhiev on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'd pay for a search engine where I get to customize this kind of stuff.                                 
                                  
                                  
 freediver on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is exactly what we do at Kagi Search.                                 
                                  
                                  
 jerrre on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 They could, but why would they?                                  
                                  
 Perhaps you mean: a new incumbent could                                  
                                  
                                  
 riazrizvi on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It's a policy problem, there's no easy fix.                                 
                                  
 Design a system of rules to rank content. Watch as highly incentivized participants work harder than everyone else to game the system to their advantage.                                
                                  
 "But I can see these results are obviously bad, surely something can be done?". Leads to System-Amendment#5796 = Gather user feedback to alter results. Leads to highly incentivized users gaming the feedback system.                               
                                  
                                  
 stefan_ on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This sounds more like a Google curse - the inability to do something extraordinarily simple because it can't be sufficiently automated.                                
                                  
 Like there is no reason to have a site like "https://gitmemory.cn/" in the index, ever. It is pure and utter spam. Ban the domain.                                
                                  
                                  
 MiddleEndian on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In the meantime, check out the uBlackList extension to block individual sites from Google's (and a few other sites') results                                
                                  
                                  
 nmfisher on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You need to attach a trigger warning to that URL.                                 
                                  
 I swear there's an opportunity for an enterprising startup to create a search engine that leverages a friends/family/contacts network for consensus domain credibility, and scrubs "non-credible" domains from all results.                               
                                  
                                  
 antupis on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Would here possible go PG route and do those thing that do not scale. Meaning building very curated list and doing intedexing and searching against that eg searches for programmers(stackoverflow, github and official documentation).                               
                                  
                                  
 Nextgrid on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This assumes the rules are black and white and there's no concept of bad faith.                                 
                                  
 A system could very well have rules/guidelines and then have humans review & monitor the system and user-submitted complaints for any abuse, and harshly penalize such abuse with a temporary or permanent ban.                               
                                  
 It could end up in a situation where it's technically possible to gain a slight advantage by gaming the system but no participant will risk a complete ban and the system ends up working well for everyone.                               
                                  
                                  
 zinekeller on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I would want that, but that puts Google (and other companies) in the legal position of a publisher , which means that they're liable for "a bad thing".                                
                                  
                                  
 Nextgrid on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Most websites and platforms moderate for abuse and aren't classified as publishers, I don't see why this would be any different here.                                
                                  
                                  
 zinekeller on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I can't remember the precise reason, but if I remember correctly the reason is that because the poster is the originator in most sites including YouTube, while in Google's case it curates links instead without input from the general public. This is also the reason why Wikipedia still only officially operates in the US: the relatively freer publication rules as opposed to UK or Brazil for example shields them from a lot of lawsuits.                           
                                  
                                  
 Manuel_D on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 There exists no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as far as Section 230 protections from online liability goes. It's entirely decided by who produced the content: users are responsible for content that they upload, the sites hosting user-generated content are not. It doesn't matter if the site selectively promotes, or otherwise acts as a "publisher", so long as it's the user's content.                            
                                  
 https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230                                 
                                  
                                  
 zinekeller on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Ah yes, US laws are the only laws applicable to Google.                                 
                                  
 I should have prefaced that with "outside the United States": notably UK moves the bar to the middle, which will put Google in legal jeopardy (and libel cases!) there.                                
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I wonder if we just would disallow affiliate links in general. I.e. you can still create your own webshop, take orders and forward to someone else (similar to dropshipping) but basically outlaw the process of collecting money/commission just for a single placement of links. Or at least, force those sites to correctly mark themselves as "Advertising".                             
                                  
                                  
 mkr-hn on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The people doing actual, good reviews/guides also use affiliate links. Getting rid of affiliate links to get rid of the bad actors gets rid of people trying to do it right. The bad actors will have another path in within a month while the person who was run out of their honest business is left hanging.                             
                                  
                                  
 creato on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I think affiliate links are positive for Amazon, because they crowdsource aggressive sales and marketing, but are negative for Google (and everyone else). I think if Google could somehow ban affiliate links, they would.                               
                                  
                                  
 seventytwo on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Right.                                  
                                  
 A hypothetical honest reviewer would genuinely be recommending products to buy, and if affiliate links pay, then why not?                                
                                  
 Just like any other tool, it’s not the affiliate links, it’s the user.                                 
                                  
                                  
 riazrizvi on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 A second order policy problem is to design good policy to make good policy makers. Meaning that it's hard for a public company entity to codify company policy so that their people in charge of search results are not at all susceptible themselves to sliding in an advantage here or there to assist some group that they become financially enmeshed with.                             
                                  
                                  
 jsemrau on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I ran into the same problem when building finclout's feedback loop. In my opinion, there is no way around keyword matching for search. As a result SEO is unlikely to be preventable. However, if the feedback can be collected at scale and is actually incentivised (i.e., did this link solve your problem ? ) this might actually work.                             
                                  
                                  
 Beta-7 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've also had the same problem. For a while i could get good recommendations/reviews by adding "reddit" to the query as i could find good information there, however i think that the sites have caught up on that and now i only get 1-2 results from reddit.com and then the rest are other sites that reference reddit so they are in the results.                             
                                  
                                  
 ghostpepper on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At the risk of any SEO-blogspam people reading this and adjusting their tactics, you can filter by domain, eg.                                
                                  
 product name review site:reddit.com                                  
                                  
                                  
 noizejoy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 As long as only a few people use a successful white hat trick, that trick isn’t generally worthwhile for the darker hats to combat.                                
                                  
 So the problem isn’t so much that blog spam people will read your comment, but that many ordinary readers will start using the trick, and thus make it worthwhile for the dark hats to address.                               
                                  
 So the unfortunate side effect of kindness in information sharing is that it decreases the value of that information.                                
                                  
 Therefore, I don’t think there’s a practical way out of endless arms races between $good and $evil                                 
                                  
                                  
 throwitawayfam on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The problem with using Reddit specifically is that you can't filter by date anymore. Reddit has poisoned their results to show old posts with new dates on Google.                                
                                  
                                  
 RealityVoid on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Huh, I wonder, can I download reddit? Like, all the text posts, ignoring images. I wonder how big of a db that is and how hard would it be to crawl it myself. It can't be more than a few gb of data. I mean, at this point there is a lot of information there that is just begging to be leveraged.                              
                                  
                                  
 Beta-7 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Pushshift has a monthly comment[1] and submission data dump that you can download. Last June 2021's (comment) size was 20+ GB compressed in ZS.                                
                                  
 [1]- https://files.pushshift.io/reddit/comments/                                 
                                  
                                  
 Beta-7 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Great tip, thanks. Funny how much i used to do google dorks (that got introduce to me in a college course), but overtime i completely forgot about them.                                
                                  
 About the risk though: it's happened already. Remember the "to find any book free online just do "filetype:pdf book-name"" tips that were popular online a while ago? Now it's all just PDFs on public google drives with tons of book names and a single link leading to some sketchy site.                              
                                  
                                  
 hinkley on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I use DDG which is backed by Bing and it’s much the same. Product reviews and some how to questions are just a couple pages of SEO garbage.                                
                                  
 Google used to measure engagement to try to get feedback on the quality of the links, but perhaps clickbait has broken that as well.                                
                                  
                                  
 holoduke on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 One thing what helps me getting better results is adding the keyword 'forum'. Usually still have okayish results. Forums are nowadays the only source information not spoiled by SEO etc                               
                                  
                                  
 aix1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That's a good tip. I too do this quite a lot; forums can be quite noisy but also a great source of first-hand experiences.                                
                                  
                                  
 tcoff91 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Google used to have a great discussion search mode that only showed forum results. I miss it dearly.                                 
                                  
                                  
 pxmpxm on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Beat me to it                                  
                                  
                                  
 costcofries on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I always just append the word "Reddit" to any review type searches, it's been tremendously helpful. The peer reviews on Reddit are top notch, give it a go and I bet you'll be pleased.                               
                                  
                                  
 sjs7007 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm just amazed by how many people do this. I always do this too since it seems hard to find quality content just by searching on Google. I try to search HN too sometimes like this but the crowd and topics here a lot more narrow.                               
                                  
                                  
 costcofries on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Reddit has an API, sounds like a cool idea! Roogle - the best of Reddit + Google                                 
                                  
                                  
 ramraj07 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is far worse in a place like india. It’s pretty much impossible to find anything technical or product related that’s localized. The only non blogspam source often is <vomit/> quora.                               
                                  
 For example. Most construction happening in india now uses something called M-Sand. I actually CANNOT find what the hell it is except from some company websites or random YouTubers blabbering non engineering garbage about it.                               
                                  
                                  
 otherotherchris on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You've probably already google-fu'ed this, but its ~4mm crushed granite used as a concrete-sand substitute where granite/gneiss sand isn't available.                                
                                  
 Most construction materials businesses sell locally by word of mouth, and if they paid for a website at all it's old and still using http. So Google drops them.                                
                                  
                                  
 ummonk on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 What is there to know about it? Looks like it's just sand that's produced by crushing stones in an industrial process, rather than relying on rivers to do it for you. It's probably used as an aggregate for concrete.                               
                                  
 Edit: a quick search on Google Scholar brings up papers like http://www.kresttechnology.com/krest-academic-projects/krest...                                
                                  
                                  
 d0gsg0w00f on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Could be due to the difficulty of getting sand in the region. I watched this fascinating Vice documentary about illegal sand mining in the region. I had no idea it was such a big deal.                               
                                  
 https://www.vice.com/en/article/4av9jm/illegal-sand-mining-i...                                 
                                  
                                  
 iamacyborg on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 It was really fascinating watching the Grand Tour Vietnam special on Amazon, you could see all this sand mining happening in the Mekong river, though no one commented on it.                               
                                  
                                  
 zo1 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Honestly disappointed at the documentary but curious about the topic. They kept repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again, dripping little bits of info.                               
                                  
                                  
 Spooky23 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don’t blame google for this. The web is dead. Facebook and Twitter and Discord took over individual passion publishing, to the point that interesting people are forced to do hideous shit like post 30 post Twitter threads to make a point.                              
                                  
 Even in the tech space, while exceptions like Stackoverflow targeted google as an UI, lots of content is buried in unindexed GitHub issues, etc.                                
                                  
                                  
 kevin_thibedeau on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Github issues are cloned now by SEO sites.                                 
                                  
                                  
 addaon on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 At least in the past (haven't checked in years), the Amazon affiliate program rewarded the affiliate for the next purchase made (within a pretty long time window) after clicking an affiliate link, even if it's not of the product linked; so there's no downside to sending you to an arbitrary, unavailable, irrelevant product as long as you're clicking on links when you're in a shopping mode and likely to make a purchase soon.                           
                                  
                                  
 geerlingguy on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 24 hours, any purchases made, and it's still a thing. Though rates are much lower nowadays than they were 3+ years ago.                                
                                  
                                  
 windexh8er on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.                            
                                  
 This. The web would be a much better place if Netizens didn't continue to monetize garbage like MKBHD, Unbox Therapy and others that provide absolutely no value in "reviews". They're all just shills for product placement at this point. And yet these paid for commercials rack up millions of views and get pushed to the top of YouTube results whether they're of value or not. YouTube doesn't want new creators - instead they've invested in a few that push the content they want based on the advertising dollars that are rolling in. Google isn't search comparative to the early days of the web. Now it's garbage results driven by SEO hackers. A world without Google would be a much better place IMO.                       
                                  
                                  
 PaulHoule on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In photography I have struggled to choose products, often I have to rely on my experience (e.g. it takes six months to discover that your Epson EcoTank printer makes prints that fade in six months) and specialized forums (DPReviews) You might find lightfastness rankings for some printers at                              
                                  
 http://wilhelm-research.com/                                  
                                  
 if somebody paid them to do the research otherwise you might have rely on heuristic 'pigment based inks are relatively lightfast' and that at least one other person who does similar work, has similar skills, and uses similar method gets good results. That still doesn't help with problems like '90% of instances of this Sigma lens seem to be pretty good but 10% have defective autofocus'.                            
                                  
 I find online reviews are close to worthless because there are so many people who don't know how to use gear or have unrealistic expectations. At Best Buy I saw a review of a printer where somebody showed pictures of prints they made where they printed on the wrong side of photo paper and blamed the printer, for instance.                             
                                  
                                  
 pxmpxm on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I find myself appending the word "forum" to a large percentage of my google queries these days, to avoid the dynamic you mentioned. This essentially filters the results for real/original content of other people that were looking for the same information as me.                              
                                  
                                  
 rtpg on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Sorry but what do you expect apart from blogs and review sites? Like what’s the magical result here?                                 
                                  
 I feel like the fallacy here is assuming that the problem is that Google isn’t finding the good websites. There’s also a simple explanation that the content simply doesn’t exist.                               
                                  
                                  
 ashtonkem on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro <power tool>“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.                                
                                  
 I think the interesting question is this: why is this happening? There’s always been a battle between Google and SEO black hats, but I can’t remember the last time it got this bad. Is Google just temporarily losing, or have they lost the will to fix this at all?                              
                                  
                                  
 yourapostasy on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've given up using Google or any search engine for that matter when it comes to tools purchasing decisions (other product categories too, for that matter). First use, I buy from Hazard Fright. If it gets janky on first use or wears out with enough use, I search in the forums where the trades hang out in discussing what they use, wince while reaching into my wallet, and pay for a built-for-business grade tool. There are a few YouTube channels I refer to as well (examples are Project Farm and Mike Festiva) for tools and consumables recommendations.                         
                                  
 I always observe what tools trades carry when they work on my properties, and chat with them over the drinks and snacks I offer them, on what they like and don't like. That figures heavily into my decisions.                               
                                  
 Google's main purpose these days for me is non-mainstream, far niche searches. I've taken to looking into deploying my own ArchiveBox to just store my own curated search results that I like. When I initially noticed the SEO spam around 20 years ago, I began to prepare for it by manually saving into text files the page links off of search results that I used, and that has helped me a lot. Ironically, I'm building my own personal Yahoo Directory. I don't see any solution on the horizon to SEO pollution getting better, so I want to scale up my solution.                         
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro <power tool>“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.                                
                                  
 Cannot reproduce.                                  
                                  
                                  
 teh_klev on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again                                 
                                  
 And the removal of the "Dislike" count so that you too can avoid non-informative content i.e. unbox spam, just furthers how shit this situation is getting.                                
                                  
                                  
 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Giving Google more data about yourself will help. Improve relevance and Google revenues.                                 
                                  
 Online advertising will make Google better and that will make you and the world better, too. Therefore, always support online advertising in every way you can.                                
                                  
 Look for the helpful crafting printer ads (after you purchase a crafting printer).                                 
                                  
 In case the reader is unsure, this is sarcasm.                                 
                                  
                                  
 ranit on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.                                
                                  
 This should not be considered "especially sad" in my view. It would be worse if these links worked, thus generating additional revenue for these "web players" (pun intended).                               
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The problem is, they do. Once I clicked the link, all my purchases in the next 24h will be credited to the affiliate. They are incentivised not to remove content about products that are no longer manufactured.                               
                                  
                                  
 freeqaz on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 In the USA, Consumer Reports exists to help deal with this. It's a yearly fee to subscribe, but it's as unbiased of reviews as you can get!                                
                                  
                                  
 x0x0 on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Right, but the majority of folks on here squeal when consumer reports or wirecutter want to be paid for their recommendations. Buying the devices, comparing them, etc all cost money, and refusing to pay inevitably leads to the state we're in...                              
                                  
 I don't have a solution for this; I just think we're in the exact state we would expect.                                 
                                  
                                  
 freeqaz on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I don't mind paying for my subscription, just like I don't mind donating to Firefox and Signal. But I get that I'm probably in the minority for that. I try to put my money where my mouth is, and not the other way around!                               
                                  
                                  
 silexia on Jan 5, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Consumer reports vehicle recommendations and sales process is just an affiliate scam like wire cutter. Same with Costco's vehicle sales program now. I think they use the same back end. That basically is an affiliate program. They give your contact info to tons of dealers who call you with prices higher than what they have on their lots listed.                             
                                  
                                  
 mthoms on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Pro tip: You can often get free access to Consumer Reports paywalled website with a library membership.                                 
                                  
                                  
 autokad on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Do a google image search for a strawberry. See how long it takes you to find actual pictures of strawberries that arn't from ecom sites and/or stock photos. I ran into this problem because I wanted to train an AI to recognize a strawberry.                              
                                  
 Also note, probably none of these are actual strawberries. they are probably fake plastic representations for sales                                
                                  
                                  
 hidden-spyder on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I did this. Results 1 & 4 were from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica respectively. Doesn't seem that bad to me.                                
                                  
                                  
 clarkmoody on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've found that searching for a subreddit related to whatever hobby is a fine way to go. People are showing off their creations & results and chatting about recommendations for equipment & techniques.                               
                                  
 The "front door" of the Web has become the gift shop. It's time to find another way in :-)                                 
                                  
                                  
 fnord77 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > The web has become a crappy place to research products                                 
                                  
 I'd say most people's interface to the web has become crappy.                                 
                                  
                                  
 mcv on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'd say the web has just become a crappy place. It was better when everything didn't have to make money, but was just done for the love of it.                                
                                  
                                  
 ren_engineer on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Seibel doesn't seem to understand how affiliate ads work either, Google doesn't make money from them. Google would be better off just applying a ranking penalty for any page that has numerous Amazon affiliate links. 99% of dedicated affiliate sites are trash                              
                                  
                                  
 littlecranky67 on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Or at least allow us to block them in the search settings, but Google shows zero interest in doing so. Just as they do not want to have a flag "do not show paywalled content" which is often asked for.                               
                                  
                                  
 thelittleone on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I've also noticed something similar when researching mobile phones. Device pages that are clearly automatically created with poor and often nonsensical sentences and repition created by some script. And ranking top of Google. Similarly on YouTube videos that are collection of still images with robot voice reading clearly copy texts with almost zero original content. Again ranking near the top for a topic.                            
                                  
                                  
 xxs on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 The only reviews I respect nowadays are... tear downs. No innards, no fun. Unfortunately printers would be proper hard to tear down on a review.                                
                                  
                                  
 Mezzie on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I'm just imagining this rule meaning the only printer you can buy is the one from Office Space. Beating the crap out of a machine counts as tearing it down, right?                                
                                  
                                  
 NetOpWibby on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 You used Google Search and then used Google (Video) Search. The issue is an advertising company being the Internet’s default for information.                                
                                  
                                  
 rejor121 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This is something I have a problem with as well. Search results typically include the first five results being paid ads.                                
                                  
 Everything else for the first couple pages are typically review sites that are not really reviews.                                 
                                  
 YouTube isn’t much better.                                  
                                  
 I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.                                
                                  
                                  
 Volker_W on Jan 2, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 > I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.                                
                                  
 Link?                                  
                                  
                                  
 hemloc_io on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 When I do product research I generally search for whatever the enthusiast community lives and usually there are guides there. Blogs are exactly as you describe, either built in ads or useless.                               
                                  
 For common items it's kinda difficult, but still possible! (Printers had a pretty active subreddit/community for example.)                                
                                  
                                  
 asddubs on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 yup, I was compiling a wish list and searched for a list of good programming books and ran into the same issue. any website that promises a "list" like "top 10 programming books" is usually affiliate spam, with poor recommendations and grammatical errors                              
                                  
                                  
 8bitsrule on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 This may help: [ https://millionshort.com/search?keywords=crafting_printers&r... ]                                 
                                  
                                  
 orthoxerox on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 That's true. At least YT is still better than generic WWW search when you are looking for some specific model or some DIY technique. It's still harder to make a SEO-optimized video than a webpage.                               
                                  
                                  
 BikiniPrince on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Try a few alternative search engines. Google has other priorities these days.                                 
                                  
                                  
 schleck8 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Affiliate marketing reviewers are the internet's parasites                                 
                                  
                                  
 cokeandpepsi on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I wouldn't say the web is a crappy place just because of Google search kind of stinks and affiliate marketing ( which has been around forever anyway )                                
                                  
                                  
 systematical on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 When I am researching something I often use this filter:                                 
                                  
 site:reddit.com + "search phrase"                                  
                                  
 At least if I want to hear from "real" people.                                 
                                  
                                  
 noobermin on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 until reddit starts getting native content too. We already know people game that site as well.                                 
                                  
 Also reddit can unfortunately be unsufferable.                                 
                                  
                                  
 d--b on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I have been consistently adding -amazon to any product search on google lately. These “blogs” are so annoying…                                
                                  
                                  
 Vadoff on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I almost always start my product searches by googling the term and then adding "reddit" nowadays.                                 
                                  
                                  
 temp8964 on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Also because YouTube removed downvotes, it becomes basically useless for searching product reviews.                                 
                                  
                                  
 2muchcoffeeman on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 For a couple of items I turned to Reddit for some guidance to narrow things down ...                                 
                                  
                                  
 sahaj on Jan 3, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 We need a new Yahoo Directory.                                  
                                  
                                  
 nicoffeine on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Buy a Brother Color Laser printer. $250 and the ink never dries. I haven't thought about printing other than pressing "print" in 6 months.                                
                                  
                                  
 NiceWayToDoIT on Jan 3, 2022 | root | parent | next [–]                                 
                                  
 I have Brother printer, full can of paint and sensor saying that is empty, I cannot do anything with it, and that is just one in long list of issues I had with printer...                               
                                  
                                  
 megablast on Jan 2, 2022 | parent | prev | next [–]                                 
                                  
 Consumers laments the effect of consumers consuming too much stuff.                                 
                                  
 Maybe buying more useless stuff isn't the solution???                                 
                                  
                                  
                                  
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Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description. The web has become a crappy place to research products as long as money can be made with those through affiliations. I wonder if outlawing affiliate marketing would make the world a better place. P.S: Whats most ridiculous about my Youtube Printer research experience, the best and most helpful video was a sales video from a home shopping TV station [0], where they actually showed some printing action and handling of one of the models I was interested in. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytMXgjCReO0
    
    
        
     If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit. I'm honestly surprised how little I hear about them. Not that any organization is perfect, but they have been the poster child of success via paid content since the 1930s.It also makes me think that part of the problem is not only that Google's results are getting worse, it is that much of the population goes to the internet for all problems. Whether it is googling or asking on social media... the "front-line" information on the internet is simply not reliable anymore.
    
    
        
     Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts. When I contacted Consumer Reports to let them know about the many tens of thousands of complaints about the companies they were ranking highest, they referred me to their attorney.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; If you want to solve the problem of product research in an old-school way, Consumer Reports still exists. Their business model for almost a century has been to produce independent reviews of products, and charge for the reviews. It is also run as a non-profit.&gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad. &gt; As an example, I used them for moving services for a state-to-state move. Turns out the top three or four moving services are merely dispatchers run by a single company, run by a convicted felon out of Florida under a rotating number of businesses and cutouts. Honestly, "moving companies" is not a category that seems like it would be in Consumer Reports' wheelhouse, and I'm surprised they offered any recommendations in that area at all. Also, your anecdote doesn't really support the notion that they're "pay-to-play, just that they did a bad job in some category. Are you actually thinking of the Better Business Bureau but got it mixed up with Consumer reports? I would expect the BBB to rate moving services and I've heard that they have some kind of membership program for businesses that seems to allow better control over complaints, which is pretty close to "pay-to-play."
    
    
        
      
 This is all a massive deflection. Why is CR okay to make recommendations in an "area they're not good at"? Even the most generous interpretations are more damning than your claims.   
    
        
      
 I think OP was asking whether they were confusing CR for the Better Business Bureau because moving services does not seem to be something CR would review   
    
        
      
 But CR did review them, so why can't someone complain that CR recommended a bad service   
    
        
     I don't see any evidence of this. The most likely scenario is the original complaint confused BBB (totally pay-to-play, scam) with CR.CR doesn't review this category and a search of past CR review categories doesn't yield moving services. In general, they don't review anything regional.
    
    
        
     CR do not review moving companies.They have articles on how to avoid dodgy ones but make no recommendations.
    
    
        
      
 Because thats a service not a product. I go to CR for reviews on what the best mattress is, moving companies is not something I would go to them for so that doesn't concern me. Its like saying AAA isn't worth the money because you didn't like the hotel they gave you a discount on.   
    
        
      
 Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services. Lying about the quality of a good or service when that is your business, potentially with kickbacks, is not really a defensible position. "It's okay because I don't expect their opinion to be good in this one area" doesn't negate CR providing that opinion.   
    
        
     No one can find anything where Consumer Reports has rated moving services. It's likely the grandparent confused them with BBB, which is totally pay-to-play.And--- I appreciate Consumer Reports' accuracy, but I doubt that they are 100% accurate. There are probably recommendation sets that end up as garbage for one reason or another (incorrect weighting for my use case, statistical noise, evolution in products since survey experiences, etc). There's also times where I have personal expertise or preferences that outweigh CR's rankings. CR rates computers, after all, and I would probably not weigh them very heavily in my choice.
    
    
        
      
 As a long time CR subscriber, agree absolutely. This stuff is hard and clean data sets are nonexistent. I still recommend to my friends to subscribe to CR as independent reviews are important (and worth paying for).   
    
        
     &gt; Right except AAA's service is not providing opinions on the quality of anything, goods or services.AAA guidebooks do exactly this. I remember using them to pick hotels in the 90s.
    
    
    
    
        
     Except you are wrong.CR do not and have never recommended moving firms. They in fact have articles on how to avoid being scammed by firms and best practices but make no recommendations. I think the burden here is on you or others making this claim to link some evidence.
    
    
        
      
 I wonder why people are digging in on the accusation that CR has provided inaccurate ratings of moving companies. Very easy to disprove.   
    
    
        
      
 In all the years I've used Consumer Reports I've never seen them rate moving services. I just jumped on their site now, and there are no reviews for moving services.   
    
        
     I'm not sure if Consumer Reports has ever formally reviewed moving services, though I admit I haven't been looking for this category specifically. CR's website currently doesn't have any reviews for moving services, not even with a disclaimer that the category is no longer being tested (like they do for some categories, such as steam irons: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/steam-irons.htm).CR's freelance writers have written general advice articles on moving services, like https://www.consumerreports.org/moving/how-to-choose-a-relia..., which might be useful to some readers but certainly aren't very deep. These articles aren't the same as CR's actual reviews, which have scores and detailed ratings for each product metric.
    
    
        
     &gt; Sorry I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service now, where often the worst products &amp; services are not the best, and often times criminally bad.Agreed. As a PSA do not use the True Car services that are "included" in a membership. It's basically a free pass to sell all of the contact information CR has on you to any dealership that's paying them for leads. You will be hounded for weeks if you try to use that service. I recently found out, through a family member, that the deceptive practice still exists when they were trying to get actual dealer invoices (which CR used to provide, but no longer does). I cannot not recommend CR enough.
    
    
        
     Not sure if it's any relation to TrueCar.com, but FWIW I used them 7(?) years ago to purchase a hard to find used car and had nothing but a good experience.From wikipedia, I gather they've tweaked their compensation models and exec team since then, so no idea what they're like now. Effectively, everyone is AutoTrader though, and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.
    
    
        
     &gt; ...and you should never give any insurance or auto quote company a real phone number or non-spam email.That is the point. Given the reputation CR tries to uphold and their relationship and integration with True Car there is not much warning (if any) using that feature in CR will result in dumping your contact information to many dealerships and is a dark pattern one wouldn't expect from CR given the end user is paying for the service. For most non-technical folks I can't imagine this experience is positive after they've handed over their actual phone # and email.
    
    
        
     I can't vouch for whatever the state of True Car is right now, but several years ago (more than once) I went there for information on the average selling price of new cars.They had a nice histogram, showing the range and most common price and how far off msrp it was. I don't know how accurate it really was, and if it was accurate, someone might have "gotten to them" in later years to inflate the statistics and preserve profit margins. But it seemed to me really valuable information for negotiating a new car purchase. The special True Car price and "services" and all that seemed like a diversion to me. It's like some other things on the Internet - a sensible person subsists on the free "teaser" information and never ever engages in any sort of relationship. Apart from an indication of what a fair price is, the histogram showed relative discounts between models, and there's frequently/always ones that are being disdained by the public that are very good cars and dealers are desperate to move, versus ones that are in high demand that they won't discount.
    
    
        
      
 Possibly confusing this with the better business bureau (which is totally pay to play)?   
    
    
    
        
     I've been a subscriber and I am a half hearted fan of Which. IT wise their advice is complete arse: This is a consumer champion that only recommends either Apple or MS - there appears to be no other offerings. To be fair, I last read a Which review at least two years ago.I'd describe Which as a good starter for 10, these days, but no more. They do a decent legal angle and always have done, ie consumer rights - that's their forte for me.
    
    
    
        
     CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.I find independent YouTubers significantly better. To a point! There are a number of obvious non-critical flooded reviews for lots of products. I suppose in closing CR is garbage and you have to do relevant research commiserate with how much you want to spend/care. If only we had a review organization we could trust!
    
    
        
     &gt; CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.&gt; I find independent YouTubers significantly better. Could me extremely skeptical. "Independence" on YouTube is very cheap and easy to fake. IMHO, YouTube is mainly useful for video of someone poking at a product, because for some reason retailers and manufacturers don't provide good enough media on product pages to get anywhere close to substituting for seeing something in person.
    
    
        
     I’ve recently used their reviews for doors, roof shingles, and washing machines.YouTube isn’t even a similar product. I assume all reviewers are paid and have no idea their methodology. I like CR because their methods are defined and they don’t have any competing agendas (ads, sponsored posts, product placement , etc)
    
    
        
      
 How would one know if Youtuber is independent? Say, I need to buy a lawnmower. How do I know which reviewers are good and which are idiots and which are paid shills? It's kinda hard to figure it on YT. If I have a specific product in mind, I can look through YT reviews of this specific one as a point of information. But if I have 100 potential lawnmowers to sort through, I won't watch every YT review for 100 products, I'd have to take a sabbatical for that. YT doesn't fill the niche.   
    
        
      
 I don't know if it's pay-to-play, but it sure feels like it. Many years ago, I had a house built, and I decided to outfit it with all the appliances, convinced I could do a better job picking out good equipment, and getting better prices. I settled on Consumer Reports' best pick: GE "Gold" appliances, and I bought them all. Within 2 years, every single one -- oven, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and dryer -- had problems. I will never trust CR for anything again.   
    
        
     If all your major appliances died that quickly there might be something wrong with your houses power.GE’s quality also tanked, but the power thing is worth looking into.
    
    
        
      
 I'm talking about plastic breaking, fans dying, switches failing, etc. I only HAD to replace the washer and dryer, and the mismatched, second-hand units I got were still going strong after a decade. I asked the used appliance salesman if he wanted my old ones, for free, to refurbish. He asked what brand they were. I told him. He said no. Those models were THAT bad. But CR said they were the best on the market.   
    
        
     &gt; I have to weigh in here and say that Consumer Reports is a pay-to-play service nowDo you mean to say that they receive money to issue reviews (which would be alarming)? Or do you mean to say they charge fees to access review information (which has always been the case AFAICT)?
    
    
    
        
      
 They also pander to their customer base. You'll never hear them say a bad word about the kinds of high end but not "I own a private jet" luxury products that high middle class consumers (who are their target market) tend to own. Nobody resubscribes to media that tells them they're doing it wrong.   
    
    
    
        
     CR today: "After extensive review, LG Microwave model AX7J3498-2 is best avoided"LG tomorrow: "Announcing LG Microwave model G8A867FL2-B! Also, model AX7J3498-2 will no longer be available" Consumers two days from now: "Well, there are no bad reviews for model G8A867FL2-B when I look it up, I guess it's ok to buy" I like the idea of Consumer Reports or in depth reviewing but manufacturers have learned to game it too.
    
    
        
      
 Haha. It gets even better, which I discovered while researching a TV that was on sale and the store said their price was the lowest on some price matching service. But when I checked the service they were the only one selling the specific model! Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice.   
    
        
     &gt;"Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice." No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either want a slightly different featureset, or just want to avoid people doing price-matching. The manufacturers don't really like it.
    
    
        
     Sometimes there's something to those retailer-specific models. When our child was young enough to need a car seat, we looked at the top-rated model on CR. It was rated pretty well by customers at various websites, except consistently for features X, Y, and Z, which seemed pretty significant to me. Lo and behold, we go to store A, and realize they have the "limited edition A model" which actually specifically addressed all the complaints in customer reviews about the generic model. We loved that car seat.Sometimes those retailer-specific tweaks are kinda questionable, but sometimes, if it's the right retailer, they're actually pretty thoughtful.
    
    
        
     This happens with a local store here called "Video Only", and they will typically stock higher end features. Example: A common Samsung Plasma could be found all over town for say, $800. The Video Only one was $900, and would drop to like $650 when it's time to move the new stuff in.Their people will tell you all about doing that too. The difference? The set I got for $650 (and again, not exact, just representative numbers here) had the faster video processor and ran at 120Hz, which means the 3D capability ran at a full 60Hz for each eye, and game mode was low lag. Both very nice options, and finding them together sometimes meant buying another expensive model that comes with other fat margin, mostly useless features. I have no doubt it's all about the price matching, but sometimes, depending on the retailer and their business model, it can be about differentiation, like actually having something better in some distinct way. The Video Only people cater to the home theatre crowd and tend to stock sets that are high technical performers at great prices. Seeing it in the other direction, WalMart tends to have their special edition of whatever it is, and it's almost always price / performance, and or some extra pack in, or size change.
    
    
        
      
 I used to live across the street from the San Francisco Video Only, and can confirm they are totally legit.   
    
        
     GP:&gt; Turns out each major chain gets their own model number for certain products like TV’s and refrigerators. Just to fuck with consumers trying to make an educated choice. You: &gt; No, the retailer-specific model numbers are requested or required by the retailers, who either... or just want to avoid people doing price-matching. I mean, I don't see the difference. both of you are in agreement it's to fuck people trying to price match. I guess the fact that the retailers insist on it makes it okay in your mind?? Meanwhile, I doubt there are any real featureset differences for most things with model numbers. There are cheap versions of clothing for Walmart, but that's ironically going the other way and trying to confuse the customer by making them think they are the same items.
    
    
        
      
 I worked at a mattress retailer after college. Each retailer would have a slightly different version of the same model. So as an example one would have 2 inches of memory foam and another would have 1.75 inches of memory foam and 0.25 inches of latex foam. But otherwise it’s the same. They did it to make comparison shopping and price matching difficult. In reality I’m not sure how well it worked. Salespeople would match prices anyway to get the sale.   
    
        
     Its annoying, but I find it worse when the same model of device has different electronics/specifications.Model numbers seem to mean little these days to a lot of manufacturers.
    
    
        
     Model numbers mean a lot to manufacturers and engineers.They just mean very little to sales, who typically get their way for major chain account.
    
    
        
      
 Joke's on them. I don't buy things that have only a single review; too easily gamed. I look for products that have a lot of positive reviews. Obscure models probably have worse support too. Unless you really know what you're looking for, something that lots of people enjoy using is generally the safest choice.   
    
        
      
 That's how they can declare "we do price match" without ever doing any price match. Surely you didn't expect the price match for a different model, did you?   
    
        
      
 Haven't consumers learned the game as well? It seems pretty obvious that if LG sells a bad microwave then I probably shouldn't trust that their other microwaves would be any good either. And why would I buy a microwave with no review over a microwave with a positive review? There's got to be at least one good microwave on their site.   
    
        
     Manufacturers have 100% control over their website.They can delete reviews, they can keep the reviews and start shipping a slightly different product instead, they can ask certain customers to write positive reviews for incentives. The list goes on and on. It's asymmetric warfare and manufacturers hold all the cards. That's why there generally are consumer protection laws, and not the other way around, e.g. protecting manufacturers from consumers (lol). The semi-good news is that for most consumer goods like microwaves, it doesn't really matter, because they are all "good enough".
    
    
        
     The manufacturer/seller commonly games the reviews so even new products tend to have a few glowing reviews right off the bat.And if you use the scale that if a manufacturer produces one bad microwave that all their microwaves are bad, I suggest cooking over a fire as no manufacturer is going to meet your judgement scale.
    
    
        
     I know I'm five-gajillion comments in, so this is like spitting in the ocean: call a local repair place (unaffiliated) and ask them what to get. The local fridge/appliance repair (group) -- any of the five of them -- will happily chat for an hour about any major appliance in your house. They'll also gossip like fishmongers about who's good at what services, etc.In general, for very large appliances (large fridges; double-stoves; double ovens) you can just ask them to keep an eye out at the local restaurant auctions. My house came with a 48" prosumer fridge. When my fridge died I got a 10-year-old exact replica from a warehouse for 3500$, rather than 18000$. It's worked flawlessly for 8 years, now.
    
    
        
     I just wrote a couple commments here talking about actually talking to people. It's how I still prefer to buy many things.Reviews? Have pretty much ignored them for many things. It has been hard to see the value, frankly. There are always a lot of them, and the information quality has been high noise and dubious in many cases.
    
    
        
      
 +1 for restaurant auctions. I browse them like a child walking past puppies in a window.   
    
        
      
 Restaurant auctions are great if you have the space. Less good if you have a small kitchen.   
    
        
     When I am able to shop in an actual store, like for appliances, I've always had great luck talking to the service techs.I just ask them which models are coming back to the store, and or for a recommendation. My last washer, dryer, dishwasher and stove were all purchased this way and have ran for a long time now. Needed a new element for my dryer and stove a while back and both were available, easy to install. And that's the last question: Service. What's available and can I get parts, etc...?
    
    
        
     Another failure mode can be testing the wrong things. Companies will make products to do well in tests or otherwise appeal to consumers even if that makes their product actually worse. For example maybe tyres would only be tested in a straight line (rather than when cornering) or when unworn (so allowing shallow grooves to allow for a thinner wall and shorter life).I recently came across a YouTube channel where a guy does various thorough-seeming tests of a medium range of brands for a bunch of product categories (think spanners and scissors and suchlike) and he’ll talk quickly and provide lots of numbers but when you think a little more, it seems that there isn’t much reason for the test results to correlate with a good product (eg maybe if your Phillips head cams out it is because that is what it’s meant to do and not because it’s bad)
    
    
        
      
 Consumer Reports is my first stop whenever I look to purchase some non trivial item. I typically use the top five from their recommended list to quickly narrow down my initial result set. Then I'll cross reference with Wirecutter to see if they are in agreement (usually are). If I'm down to one or two choices at that point I'll try to find some unbiased reviews on YouTube. Not a perfect system, but I find it works pretty well compared to just going right to a Google search result.   
    
        
     I usually just search the topic plus "reddit." The advice from a subreddit on something will usually be reliable.Then other times I take a chance on Amazon, like the ~$700 Viribus mountain e-bike I got a few months ago. E-bike enthusiasts seem to say that price range is universally junk, but it's been treating me great on trails and the road. Oddly can't find anyone else talking about it online but the Amazon reviews were good.
    
    
        
     Mountain biker here. If I may hate on your decision here for a second.The reason nobody is talking about the bike you got, is because it is simply so bad, nobody who rides remotely seriously as a hobby or otherwise would even consider it as part of the category of mountain bikes. I know you probably have fun riding it around on some dirt or gravel or something - but really, it's not a mountain bike. Disclaimer - I'm not even that wild a rider at all. I would have those breaks burned out in less than one decent, and probably tear the drivetrain apart on my first or second climb (tripple front derailleur? really?) The geometry is whack and the tires are trash. That thing that looks like a front fork, is not. I would blow that up first day too, without a doubt. I don't think you appreciate the world of difference between something like this, and even a cheap 2.5k ebike. (Yes that is cheap. You have the dollar store equivalent of an ebike.) You should have saved your money and gotten a nice second hand kona hard tail or something, rather than buying and rewarding chineesium scrapheap contenders. You're probably familiar with laptops and such to some degree. This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :) Harsh I know but... that's life. Sorry. I hope you enjoy riding and upgrade your bike soon. I just wish that such a e-waste disaster wasn't your stepping stone.
    
    
        
     You can understand I didn't want to spend thousands to start out a hobby I wasn't even sure I'd get into. If it lasts me a year that's good enough. My next step would be doing my own build.You're looking at this one, right? https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...  I have no illusion that it's the best bike in the world, but it certainly works for my combination of roads and bike trails. I wouldn't put it on some crazy steep obstacle course or huge jumps but I wasn't looking to do any of that anyway. But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur?
    
    
        
      
 Parent underappreciates that the difference between (nothing) and (anything) is infinite, and the difference between (less good) and (better) is finite.   
    
        
     No. I am appreciating that there are better somethings than this something, and I even explicitly recommended one.Take the time to actually read and understand before criticizing.
    
    
        
     In this instance (as with most of life, sometimes including time), money is the limited resource.Suggesting OP not buy anything or spend 3.5x as much isn't helpful.
    
    
    
        
     Second hand prices for Kona ebikes don't look nearly in the range of $700.Is there a specific model you're thinking of?
    
    
    
        
     Or maybe an emtb at that price point is simply unrealistic[1]. Which sucks because ebikes are such an accessibility boon.[1] requiring a reputable manufacturer, even accounting for second-hand bikes. Conversion might be an option, I don't know what those run.
    
    
        
      
 To me it just sounds like the PC gamers who insist that anyone who wants to 'game' needs an RTX 3070 at a minimum. They have unrealistic ideas of what the person actually wants to do. Someone who's spending a small amount on mountain bikes isn't going hard downhill.   
    
        
     I really don't think any analogies to PCs and games works. This is more like taking an underpowered car on the freeway. Yeah it's going to be able to get up to speed but without the acceleration that's really needed. And I don't know that I would have known better when I'd first gotten my license without being told. We don't know that someone wouldn't take this bike on well-maintained trails a few times and then decide to "graduate" to jumping over roots and rocks or w/e.Not to mention not knowing how well the electric part is done, especially the battery. I'd be ok taking my $200 commuter on some light trail because I'm mechanically inclined and I've got the measure of it. I have no idea about how to assess the electricals but given the cost-cutting, bad workmanship, and bad design I can see in the rest of the bike's build, I'd be really concerned about that. "Whether you are a professional athlete" lmao
    
    
        
     I do understand. That's why I recommend the second hand hardtail kona for the same price (or cheaper).&gt; If it lasts me a year that's good enough I don't like this attitude because it is wasteful. That's another thing I was taking issue with. Worse because it's an ebike. If it was just some aluminum it wouldn't be nearly as bad, but still kinda bad. &gt; But what's the big deal about a triple front deraileur? More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality. Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).
    
    
        
     &gt; Modern mtbs use a 1x11 or 1x12 drivetrain (no front derailleur at all, never mind 3x).... which creates much more chain wear from chain crossing ... &gt; More moving parts, super unreliable, always low quality. I have a 35 year old Shimano Deore XT front derailleur. I raced the bike hard in the 80s during "the prehistory of UK mountain bike racing". I then rode it for another 8 years, doing several multi-thousand mile tours on it (before the name "gravel bike" had come along). Then I used it as a city commuter for another 5 years. The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents. The fad for 1x setups illuminates some of the pros, but because it's largely a fad, fails to shine a similar light on the cons. For crazy downhill racing, 1x is an obvious choice. For ultra-distance events, long distance off-road touring and general gravel duty, the choice is not quite so obvious.
    
    
        
     I set my cyclocross up with a triple front and a touring rear. The cycle shop questioned me on why I did it. I explained that the last mile was also 600 foot climb. The super fit kid working there was like "that hill is easy, I do that on my speed gears". I said "yea but look at me". He said "true". then proceeded to say he couldn't install it because shimano wouldn't recommend it (too many tooth delta). But he'd adjust it if I put it on my self. So I did. Basically it's a road front with a MTB small, and a mtb cassette in the back.It's got 5k miles on it and works fine. Just needs little tweaks every once and a while and you can't do full crosses like Big Big. But it goes as fast and as torquey as you could please (or can buy). These things work pretty well. Just learn to tweak em or get them tuned up.
    
    
        
     &gt; The derailleur has never failed me, has always been reliable and is built better than most contemporary equivalents.Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile? Wild train of thought. Interesting how you assert 1x setups as a fad for mountain bikes, and then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touring? Gravel biking? What are you talking about lol
    
    
        
     &gt; then go on to talk about how it's not a clear choice for... long distance touringI guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring. You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike. Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder.
    
    
        
     Right, that confirms it. I'm sorry but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.&gt; I guess you've not ridden the Great Divide? Long distance mountain bike touring. That is the most easy going barely off road biking on earth. Thousands of miles of fire and access roads, with a few miles of zero difficulty single track. &gt; You could do it on a gravel bike, but it would be much more comfortable on a mountain bike. "A mountain bike". The overwhelming majority of mountain bikes are unsuitable for this. You wouldn't use any of the most popular types: trail, downhill, enduro. Gravel biking and mountain biking are world's apart. The closest thing to gravel biking or other long distance off road biking in mountain biking is cross country - but even then xc is _way_ more demanding than gravel. You can't ride gravel bikes on xc routes. Gravel biking is not a form of mountain biking. There does not need to be any elevation change of any kind to gravel bike. There are no features on a gravel trail. Anyway, sure, a hard tail xc bike is probably the best bike for that trip just due to the comfort of the larger tires. I bet you'd actually be just as happy with a fatty gravel bike though. You know, I just went and searched to see what people ride on that trail to confirm my suspicion about big tire gravel bikes. Would you look at that - I'm right. Hard tail xc / gravel bikes with fat tires. Additionally, the vast majority of them are running 1x front chainrings. Surprise surprise, I know what I'm talking about, and the people that seriously ride the trail you're trying to use to one up me made the same choices I recommend. What a "fad".  https://bikepacking.com/bikes/tour-divide-rigs-2019/  &gt; Gravel biking ... mountain biking ... the difference is mostly in the eye (or saddle) of the beholder. Absolutely clueless. The difference is stark.
    
    
        
     &gt; Why are you comparing your name brand derailleur from a reputable company (from a time when there was basically only x3) that you say is still better than contemporaries, with the absolute worst of those contemporaries, as a way to somehow imply this particularly bad contemporary is worthwhile?Because the GGP -- you? -- didn't specify "the absolute worst of those contemporaries" but just complained about how "front triples" -- which implies all front triples -- "suck". So the GP quite reasonably showed that they don't. It's not him moving the goalposts; it's you.
    
    
        
     I mean, if you want to be that literal about it I guess I can't fault you. I would expect someone to scope the conversation appropriately. The tripple I'm talking about is in the context of tripples on brand new 600 dollar e-mountain bikes. They will all be trash.Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?
    
    
        
     &gt; Is that a fairer statement, or would you like to just say I'm once again moving the goalposts by clarifying?No it isn't and yes I would: Now you're trying to move the conversational goalposts by calling your moving of the goalposts "clarifying". This conversation simply never was about your snobbish True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective, and no amount of your attempts at obfuscation will make it have been so.
    
    
        
     I considered secondhand, but a used battery has a good chance of being bad or on the way out, and a good new battery is expensive.I doubt this bike is going to be ewaste soon though. I know a few people I might give it to who might use it. And I drive old cars into the ground instead of buying new so far, so I think I have a good track record on waste. Even if I wanted to just throw it out, the battery and frame are recyclable.
    
    
    
        
     Front triple is a way to extend the range of gearing without spending much. It's also used to dishonestly claim "21 speeds" since a lot of those are in the overlap; the standard is to be explicit, e.g. 3x7.In other words it's a sign that the bike is built to a price, and maybe to a list of features and not actually to a quality standard. Not necessarily bad (I'd trust any 3x Shimano drivetrain assuming it's installed correctly) but it's a sign to watch out.
    
    
        
     You're being mean. It's clear that this bike wouldn't work for you, but it apparently does work for your parent. Stop trying to convince people they shouldn't enjoy things.To go with your analogy, if someone bought the laptop you're describing and was having fun playing games, can't we see that as a good thing? We don't have to get them hooked on more powerful more expensive options.
    
    
        
     I’m not so sure. The problem of BSOs… bike-shaped objects, a.k.a. low-quality bicycles, has been a problem for a long time. I rode a BSO for a long time before I knew better.Sometimes you don’t understand what those things are until later. Sometimes the shape is weird and you don’t know how poorly you’re treating your body until you switch to a reasonable bike (and oh, random pains go away). Often the parts are substandard or nonstandard… some part wears down and then you can’t easily repair the bicycle. It’s hard to trust comments from random consumers because I see so many bicyclists out there which very obviously lack the knowledge, skill, or will to set up or ride their bicycle reasonably. I see people on the road with horribly maladjusted seats, or people who ride a geared bicycle but have no clue which gear they should be in. With a low-quality bicycle, a bad setup, or poor technique, you end up putting more strain on your body. It’s not necessary to go to more expensive options but you should take some care in choosing &amp; setting up your bicycle.
    
    
        
      
 The other real problem with cheap bad bikes is quality control matters on a device that (here in Europe) you might effectively be trusting your life to. As a poor student I had a BSO a year for three years, until I could afford a better object. The first died in traffic when the derailleur came out of the frame, leaving a burred hole behind, and a bus honking at me as it just managed to avoid squishing me. The second died when the pedals sheered off the crankshaft when I pushed down hard going up a hill. The third one died when I went over a large pot-hole in the cycle lane, bending the forks in the process. Absolutely none of these things should be able to happen. That they did is, of course, testament to the false economy (and great danger) of BSOs. In the States I understand that they're likely to be viewed as toys, but in Western Europe they're overwhelmingly likely to be used as transportation by those with little money, in busy, city centre traffic. There's a reason Dutch bikes have a reputation for quality, weigh a ton, last forever, and we surprisingly expensive.   
    
        
     The difference is that the laptop breaking won't leave the user stranded and potentially eating dirt. I don't know what GGP means by the trails they're riding but I've looked at the homepage[1] and I wouldn't trust the bike on technical terrain. There's a very real safety issue.GP could have been gentler, but they're right to say it's not a mountain bike, and shouldn't be ridden like one. And that sucks. The things we buy should be fit for the advertised purpose. Mountain biking should be more accessible and there should be trails that GGP can ride on a safe budget bike without requiring that much fitness. [1] https://viribusbikes.com/products/emb-a277-rd?variant=406754...
    
    
        
     By trails I mostly mean maintained dirt trails found in state/national parks, but I have hit some good bumps/holes in this thing. I got a suspension seatpost and I hardly feel bumps at all anymore.Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?
    
    
        
     &gt; Can you show me an example of technical terrain where this line would be drawn?I'm not sure where the line is, but here is a video of a local mtb park I used to ride a lot and it might give you a good idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFYcnQTcmrw  It's pretty rocky and you can carry a ton of speed in some parts. It will definitely eat up cheaper bikes if you aren't careful. If you want to find more examples of why cheaper bikes struggle to handle that type of stuff, I'd look up "walmart bikes vs mtb trail" or something along those lines on youtube. Lots of videos and they are usually somewhat entertaining. That said, your bike looks better than those and if you respect its limits, then it should be okay. The trails you describe sound fine for that type of bike, just be careful on hard bumps and stuff.
    
    
        
      
 I explicitly recommended something more capable and long lasting for the same price, so I really don't know why you're claiming I want them to do something unrealistic.   
    
    
        
      
 The whole point for me was that I wasn't fit enough for a normal bicycle and didn't have the motivation to work up to it. With the ebike it feels like I can go anywhere I want and still get some cardio exercise doing it. If they're recommending an expensive non-ebike, that's just silly.   
    
        
     As an avid cyclist too, I think the biggest misunderstanding is you mentionned "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path". That Bike Shaped Object mentionned up there would totally be destroyed in a few hours of riding any challenging trail at a decent speed. The fork would bend and lockup itself, the brake pads would be dead before reaching the bottom of the hill.Another problem with buying such a lowend bike online is they are very often badly assembled. You might find quickly that it becomes noisy because some parts were installed without enough grease, or components may become nearly impossible to remove because of oxydation when it will become time to replace them, and it may just be unsafe because something hasn't been torqued to spec. I once had a thorough look at these kind of bikes and a sticker on the fork clearly stated it was not really rated to be used off road. Thanksfully the CE norms have been done so that bicycles do not explode on potholes filled roads so even a bike not made for off-road is made to survive common abuses on and off the pavement. My biggest issue with these kind of cheap e-bikes with stupid barely functionnal gimmicks such as (badly) suspended fork and chinese low end electric system is they often turn very quickly to the landfill because something end up being non functionnal and the owner do not know how to fix it himself and which component to replace wit. So to the eyes of many what you really bought appears to be waste (or soon to be) which would have been better replaced by something that might last better. Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance. But how many people will do that instead of sending it to the landfill and replacing it with the same shit when it gets to this point? Having said that the good thing with cycling is you don't have to have the newest more expensive bike to enjoy riding and as long as you do it within the capabilities of the bike. And suprisingly a bike can be operated for long while being in a very bad state as long as speed is kept low, squeaking and grinding his way to your destination.
    
    
        
     &gt; "trail", which you are probably confusing with "non paved path"This terminology difference might be meaningful in biking circles, but the places I go are designated as "trails" both colloquially and often by various governments. &gt; Take the same bike, replace the suspended fork with a steel rigid fork and remove the electronics and you have a bike that can be ridden for years with decent maintenance. Wouldn't it be too heavy as a normal bike? From what I understand, ebike frames work out cheaper because they don't have to care about not making them heavy.
    
    
        
     Well terminology is important depending on who you are talking to. Some governments may call that trail but riding down a black track at Whistler or Champery is different than just riding along on a non technically challenging gravel road/path. Besides, trail bike is a term used by the bicycle industry for a category of bikes that are much more capable than a cross-country mountain bike on challenging terrain and downhills while not being as much extreme as a Downhill bike with double crown forks which are pigs uphill.As for your other question it really depends on the kind of e-bike. Well integrated e-bike from bigger companies have the engine in the bottom bracket area so you can't remove that and the battery is usually so integrated inside the frame. Most cheap e-bike like yours, if it is the same as the one I see on the viribus website, are regular cheap alu frame on which they have strapped a battery on the standard 2 bolts usually dedicated for the water bottle holder cage and the engine is on the rear wheel. So the frame is pretty standard in that regard. Remove the battery and swap the rear wheel for a regular rear wheel and you have a conventional very entry level hardtail.
    
    
        
     It is not.Sometimes you can't afford the thigs you want. I made a good and realistic recommendation for the price range, that would leave OP well off in the long run. I understand that you could say the ebike part is a hard requirement but, well, I don't think someone who knows so little about mountain biking or biking at all is in a position to make that kind of hard requirement in an informed way. I also understand that you could read this as really pompous, but please consider what someone saying otherwise amounts to: "I NEED an ebike mtb, but I also know nothing about mtbs or ebikes"
    
    
        
     Suggesting a normal bike to me is not good or realistic at all. Electric is a hard requirement because the whole point is that I don't have the time or motivation to build up to riding steep hills and long distances without power. I can do that right away now, and it's rewarding enough that I keep doing it and getting exercise. I also wanted something suitable for dirt and bumpy terrain, so, a mountain bike style made the most sense.I used to ride a road bike occasionally but the difficulty turned me off. If I'm stuck with an unpowered bike I just won't ride.
    
    
    
        
     Well, that's... something. I'm glad you're out and at least doing some kind of exercise I guess.More (or less?) power to ya.
    
    
        
     The problem is that “mountain bike” means two things. To an MTB rider, it’s a vehicle optimized for mountain riding where the top priority is rider’s safety.To everyone else, it’s a category of vehicles capable of off-pavement riding on trails. They should be referred to off-pavement bikes.
    
    
        
     Mountain bikes are like SUVs. Only a small % of people take either off road or in any way challenge their capabilities.But the same can be said for most bikes. Very few folks actually run the tour de france or any other competitive race. People get all excited by capabilities or let those who do know and use those features influence their buying.
    
    
        
     This is simply untrue. For the standard of bike that someone who knows bikes would call a mountain bike - they are ridden on trails regularly. People are not spending 3k+ on a really inefficient and slow bike to ride around their cities and neighborhoods.You presumably are not actually knowledgeable about mountain bikes and riding them?
    
    
        
     "No true mountain biker would ever call this a mountain bike"... yet go in any sporting goods store, anything with fat tires and or a suspension, upright handlebars, thumb shifters, it's likely labeled a mountain bike and would probably disintegrate on a downhill or cross trail. It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.And yes, I used to cross trail several times a year in MO and mtb park (duthie hill) downhill (stevens) when I moved to Seattle, then watched several people get massive concussions and stayed with snowboarding. If a thing becomes mainstream it gets diluted. The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively.
    
    
        
     &gt; It's still a mountain bike to 95% of people.Pal, come _on_. Read my initial comment, and any other comment thereafter. I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikes. You're still not understanding. Those bikes you were talking about - while they may be marketed as 'mountain bikes' (a term anybody can use for anything) - are not fit for the purpose of mountain biking (a set of well establish sports and related types of riding). You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein. &gt; The top 1% definition of a thing is not the thing exclusively. Everybody who mountain bikes (more than once har har har) does so on an actual mountain bike. It's not the 1%. It's more like the 99%. People don't repeatedly take these wallmart bikes down trails. Nobody survives that setup long enough to make it in to the group you can by any good standard call mountain bikers. Go to your local trail that isn't some fireroad or featureless single track, and tell me how many people you see on shit bikes like this. You know, I'd normally agree with you about this diluted point as it relates to many other things, but I can't here. For example - car racing is not just formula 1 or other top tier engineering categories. The vast majority of car racing is amateur and hobby stuff in comparatively low or very low spec vehicles. The difference is that you can "technically" compete with a formula one car on a racetrack in a 1997 nissan micra with 40hp. The micra can cruise around the track basically indefinitely, stopping only for fuel - and complete the race days after the f1 car. A road is a road. This is not the case with mountain biking. All non mountain bikes basically explode on contact with mountains. It's self selecting such that people who continue to mountain bike past the first outing or two, must do so on a purpose built good quality bike. It is in this distinction, that you are missing the point. It's unacceptable to me that when I have _clearly_ been talking in the context of real mountain biking, you are now deciding, it seems, to take the totally walked back, side stepped, and frankly revisionist approach of only now saying "well technically these bikes are labeled mountain bikes so I'm right". Nuh uh.
    
    
        
     &gt; I was very clear and explicit that I was giving this criticism from the perspective of not "anybody" but rather someone who actively mountain bikesYeah, and everybody else was pretty clear and explicit that that perspective is irrelevant to, like, 95% of people. Edited to add: &gt; You have now moved on to confusing the way marketers lie in their descriptions of bikes in order to sell to the ignorant, with the actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein. That's not the problem. The problem is that you started out by confusing the "actual and established sports that comprise mountain biking and the bikes used therein" with this discussion, which was an ordinary amateur consumer talking about ordinary amateur consumer products and reviews thereof, and every time someone tried to steer the discussion back to the topic at hand, you've gotten more and more snitty-snotty about your irrelevant No True Mountain-Biking Scotsman perspective. HTH!
    
    
        
     Tell me, when you learned to drive an automobile, was it on a $55k BMW?It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else. After all, if the hobby doesn't "take" and you move on to a different hobby, at least you haven't wasted too much money. &gt; This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. But if the buyer of this laptop was happy with the games he was playing on this laptop, why are you getting bent out of shape? Sure, he can't run the latest AAA game in HD, but it's clear that it is working for him. Now I actually get this attitude from gamers often because I have a 1st-gen i7 (from 2011) with no SSDs but a modern video card (GTX 660ti), running Linux of all things. I say I use it for work and gaming, and the response I get from gamers is very similar to yours - that my "gaming" machine is trash; I should throw everything out (maybe keep the video card) and get a new machine. The thing is, it works for me - I play mostly Starcraft 2 and have played Far Cry [2/3/4/5] on it. Those are demanding AAA games. It works for me. Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it). You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.
    
    
        
     All of these analogies are bad.For the "Did you start with a 55k bmw". No, but for mountain biking I started with an entry level hardtail cannondale that if it was given to someone today, 15 years later, would still be a fun and safe bike to take down your average mtb trails. (Roughly the same cost as this person's bike, new.) The analogy is bad though. Learning to operate something in the category of cars is not analogous to starting what you believe to be mountain biking. More apt, would be to ask me about starting a subset of driving as a hobby - like rally driving. "If you were going to start rally driving would you start with a 200k race spec subaru, or a 1.5k ali express golf cart car with the word rally written on it?" I would answer, as I did - neither. I'd get something second hand and more appropriate at the same price point. &gt; It's okay to buy something cheap with the understanding that its a stepping-stone to something else. If you are ok with 1) rewarding the scam artists that make these 2) contributing to a culture of low quality throwaway goods and 3) using unsafe and inappropriate tools for the job - go ahead. &gt; You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower. Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a dollar store lawnmower that would break in x mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe. And I'll be fitter. And it will last a lifetime. &gt; Same with OP - his bike works for him, and you are recommending a different product as an alternative, which frankly is a stupid thing to do (Harsh, I know, but someone had to say it). I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; You'd understand if you ever needed a lawnmower and someone recommended a pair of scissors as a replacement for a lawnmower.&gt; &gt; Again, no. It would be like if someone offered me a lawnmower that would break in 10 mins, or a scythe. You might get farther initially with this piece of shit lawnmower, but I'll get all the way with the scythe. Firstly, OP said it lasted a year, not 10m. We aren't comparing something that lasts for 10m with something that lasts a lifetime, we are comparing something that lasted for a year with something that lasted longer (not a lifetime). Secondly, does it matter if it is possible to get further with the expensive tool if you're not going that far in the first place? If the cheap tool lasts long enough to never require replacement because it isn't used for the entire distance that the expensive tool would be used for, why bother? Thirdly, a scythe is not a replacement for a lawnmower that lasts 10m. If you're mowing a green at the golf course, a lawnmower that lasts 10m beats out a scythe that lasts a lifetime. Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it. &gt; I bet you wouldn't give this advice about your own hobbies. You'd lose that bet, because I give it all the time. Here's the advice I gave out, and how it turned out. (To a nephew, wanting to learn guitar, at start of pandemic) "Why a $500 Yamaha? Buy a $50 guitar if you've never laid hands on one before." He only lost $50 before realising that it was not as easy as he'd thought. He would have lost even less had he simply accepted one of my old guitars. (Acquaintance who wanted to learn to weld): "Don't get a $1000 welder; why not take some classes first to see if it's something you want to do?" After three lessons he decided that woodworking is more practical. Saved $1000 dollars there. (To my brother-in-law thinking about getting into DIY, four years ago): "Don't get a top-of-range set of tools: Buy a cheap set and then replace the tools as they break with expensive tools." He's not yet replaced any tool in the cheap tool set, because he found that he didn't really enjoy fixing his own stuff. Good thing he didn't spend $1000s on tools. If you were to stop and think about it you'd realise that the majority of first-time buyers in any hobby field aren't going to stick with it long enough to make the more expensive option worthwhile. If you were in the hobby for any length of time (i.e. not a newcomer) it'd be obvious as you see people join and then leave. The fact that you haven't seen this tells me that you're still quite new to it. Or maybe you just don't have that many hobbies. In fact I still give this same advice wrt all of my hobbies: pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it. My hobbies include playing music, painting/drawing/sketching, auto repair, metal-working and wood-working, household DIY (plumbing, plastering, etc), gardening, writing (fiction), electronics (including embedded software), basket-weaving, sewing, cooking ... and a few more that I forget. In every single one of those hobbies I meet new people who started with the expensive stuff that would last a lifetime, but they only needed it to the last the 3 weeks it took them to decide that they do not like it. Most hobbies are abandoned before even the cheapest kit breaks.
    
    
        
     &gt; Fourthly, pros in a field generally don't give out the crap advice you're giving out (I have an impressive list of hobbies, which put me in contact at various times with pros from different fields). The only time I've seen the advice you give is when it's given by newbies in a particular field. They don't know any better, because they have not been in the field long enough to notice that its only a minority of first-time purchasers who will go on to want the best. The majority of people entering a new hobby don't stick with it.Gotta heavily disagree with you on this point. Not about the sticking to a hobby, you're spot on about that, but about the advice given being "crap". If you walked into an an actual bike shop and asked them if a $700 hardtail e-bike was a good first choice, they would tell you something like: "oh, that's far too cheap for a hardtail e-bike.. they must've cheaped out heavily somewhere to get it at that price point and trust me, you don't want to be on it when you find out what they cheaped out on. If you want an entry level hardtail e-bike, you'll probably need to spend x dollars more or you can spend about the same for a non-e mountain bike that is a decent entry level one. Just depends on what you are looking to try. If that's too much, second hand is probably your best bet." Granted, the advice would be different if you already bought it. They would simply warn you that it's probably not strong at all and to be careful taking it on any trails. &gt; pay entry-level money to participate before paying pro money in case you don't want to continue with it. Great advise. I fully agree. The thing is, entry level hardtail e-bikes typically go for much higher than $700. Ask anyone into biking about this and they will be concerned about the integrity of the bike at the price point for that style of bike. E-bikes are expensive. You are looking at entry level mountain bikes at that price point, not entry level mountain e-bikes.
    
    
        
     A year for a bike is a dogshit lifespan. You can get decades out of decent bikes. The comparisons is reasonable, given you twisted the conversation to pivot around lawnmowers.I see the rest of your comment is nothing but accusing me of giving bad advice, followed by examples of exactly the same kind of advice I gave or would give, mixed with a dose of bragging about being in touch with pro... welders, cooks, gardeners and other normal jobs that everyone has contacts in. Except basket weavers. I'll give you that one. Way to totally miss the mark. If you drop the basket weaving and gardening, and add mountain biking, machining, and lockpicking - we're about the same on being over-hobbied individuals.
    
    
        
      
 I know someone who dumped 8K on a gaming rig to play Minecraft and 2d games. At the other end, some people will spend too much money just to play “entry level” and have no idea what they actually have or need to be successful (not just video games and computers!).   
    
        
      
 I’m still rocking my aluminum hardtail Trek I bought in college 25 years ago with the (gasp) three front derailleurs and the Rockshox Judy front fork. I had no idea that the tech had changed that much since I don’t ride seriously any more.   
    
        
     &gt;This is the equivalent of someone buying the top reviewed amazon promoted laptop, sorted by cheapest, with some kinda piece of shit 1152×648 screen, 4gb ddr2 ram, 2.xGhz celeron processor, and telling people it's a gaming pc because it says gaming on the box. Then commenting how you find it odd nobody in the gaming space is talking about it :)It seems far more like its someone buying that cheap laptop, primarily using it to surf the web and play solitaire (or FPSes from 2001) and talk about how great it is. And it is great for what they're doing. Who needs 8 cores and 32 gigs of RAM? The answer is some subset of people between "everyone" and "no one".
    
    
        
      
 eh, you can buy a great hardtails for 800-1.2k, even less if buying second hand. the main thing to point out is that at $700 including all the electronic add ons the components will be worse and trail rideability/durability will suffer significantly compared to even a low end mtb at the same price range. I've let friends use my nice bike while I ride my crap "general purpose" bike and it works on easier trails... (probably) safe enough on those trails, but still wouldn't recommend it.   
    
        
      
 So obnoxious. "Hey, I really like this entry level bike!". Typical HN response: "no you don't, it's trash. And if you do it's because you're trash."   
    
        
      
 FWIW I also got an E-bike in that price range and it began to seriously degrade after a year or so of daily use. It was great for that first year, though. If I were to get another E-bike, I'd move up to the mid-tier price range.   
    
        
     What started to degrade specifically? Did you try a new battery?This was my first ebike, so I wanted to test the waters with something cheap. If it starts falling apart, I'll probably build a custom one or two and spend more money since ebike riding's been working great for me to get consistent exercise and go on trails more conveniently.
    
    
        
     I started losing battery life and motor torque (though maybe this is related to the battery -- this is not my area of expertise). Hills that I used to be able to cruise up without much effort started to require real work to assist the motor. Battery life degraded to around 50% of the initial capacity.I think your strategy is totally valid, and I do that with most power tools in my shop. Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade. For me, I actually side-graded to a Onewheel electric skateboard (https://onewheel.com/) at the very beginning of the pandemic. As a commuter vehicle, it's less practical than an e-bike. You can't carry as much (limited to a backpack), and it's almost certainly an order of magnitude more dangerous (but more fun!). The biggest downside for me us the inability to take my dog with me (I used to tow him in one of those bike trailers for kids). But all of these don't really apply in WFH pandemic times. On the other hand, being able to pick up and carry the Onewheel opens up a lot more commute options that aren't as easy on an e-bike. In particular, pairing it with public transit is powerful. It's difficult or impossible to load a bike into crowded light rail car, but trivial to fit in with a Onewheel. Where I live in Seattle, I can Onewheel 1.5 miles to the nearest light rail station in SoDo, take the train 7 miles north to Greenlake, and then Onewheel another 1 mile to my friend's house. The whole trip takes 40 minutes. It's 30 minutes by car. I also go grocery shopping with it. In the store, I just stow it in the bottom shelf of the cart. This makes grocery shopping super frictionless, because I don't have to lock up a bike or anything. I just don't get more than 2 bags of groceries at a time. Grocery shopping is so frictionless for me now, that is not a big deal. It's a 5 minute ride (1 mile) to the store, I'm in and out in 10 minutes, and then back home in 5 more. The only times I drive anymore are when I'm not traveling alone or when it's raining heavily (I am fine to Onewheel in the typical light Seattle rail). It's really revolutionized mobility for me, much more than the e-bike ever did.
    
    
        
     &gt; Buy the cheap one, and when it breaks, make a call on how to upgrade.I believe popularized by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, if I'm remembering where it hit internet-widespread from. But an excellent point, because people don't realize the % of things they're not going to use regularly. Or the fact that it usually takes (time for the cheapest version to break) to figure out if you're going to use it frequently. (Also, side note: absolutely no professional review site has any incentive to remind you that cheaper, used, or previous model gear exists or is viable)
    
    
        
     Adam has definitely advocated that approach. Not that I'm some kind of authority, but I strongly second it.Early in life, my uncle Ray suggested doing that and showed off an impressive collection of tools. And he was that fix it uncle that had a big influence on me as a kid. We tore into basically everything and I never saw him without some book or other close by. One thing he liked to do was stock the car trunk in addition to the shop stuff. Road tools get lost, loaned out, abused, whatever it may take to deal with a scenario on the road. To that end, I've put some of those cheaper high count sets that come in the fold up containers. Perfect for the trunk. And a diverse collection is really the other side benefit. Gives a person a lot of options. Most of the time they all see light use except for a few. Going expensive limits the collection unnecessarily and that limits what one can do, or might attempt to do, again unnecessarily. The value from having a broad set of stuff generally exceeds the replacements that will come along the way. And that's mostly true, even when there are periods of inactivity. Others may benefit. Doesn't hurt to lend a tool, or a hand to help someone else get through a project. And frankly, as people gain experience, learning where tool limits are tends to cut back on the wear and tear on even cheapo tools. It all tends to add right up. The other strategy I would suggest is scoring tools every year at yard / garage sale time. Estates are often great for this too. Sometimes I will see a collection and just bulk buy if I can. Over time I've lost some while moving and that was a great way to stock back up and have a lot of options for not very many dollars. The only variation I would suggest is to avoid very rock bottom stuff, like dollar store, or that crap in the hardware store promo bin. Some of those might not even survive the first use! But, it can be hard to tell too, YMMV.
    
    
        
      
 In my shop, the only thing I regret buying the super-cheap model of is a bandsaw. It's just so crappy as to not even be particularly useful for doing bandsaw-type work. But I have so many other cheap tools going strong, the strategy is definitely paying off in aggregate.   
    
        
     Low torque? Curious what makes a crappy bandsaw crappy.And yup! That was the math: (cost of cheap things) * (total number of things) - (cost to rebuy) * (% of things you end up rebuying) &lt;&lt; (cost of mid-range things) * (total number of things)
    
    
        
     Low rigidity in shop tools leads to sadness. Even cutting thin pieces of sheetmetal can be miserable if the blade doesn't stay straight.Sticking with wood or plastic on cheap saws/drills/mills can be ok, but really limits the kinds of things you can fix.
    
    
        
      
 Low horsepower, poor blade tension control, low clearance, generally made of super low quality steel that is prone to deformation.   
    
    
        
     Aw man. I just signed up for the $59/yr magazine + online access. I believe the bulk of what you're saying, and that CR's methodology has value. That said the following was also part of my experience on consumerreports.com -In the bottom footer, I click on "Ad Choices". I'm presented with a list of advertisers in a TrustArc-branded dialog. To opt out of being retargeted by consumerreports.com, there are checkboxes for three vendors: Microsoft, LiveRamp Inc. and Google Advertising Products. For seven other vendors, there's no checkbox, just instructions to visit the website: Amazon Advertising, Bidtellect Inc, Comscore B.V, Facebook, Google Inc, Kibo Commerce, and Twitter. Also in the footer (maybe only for California residents such as myself?) there is a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link. It opens a OneTrust-branded dialog with the option to disable "Share My Information with Third Parties on Digital". It also declares that "If you are a Print or All-Access Member and receive Consumer Reports magazine or Consumer Reports on Health through the mail, we may share your name and mailing address for direct mail purposes with selected companies offering products or services that we believe will be of interest to you." I followed a link to a separate page, which required me to copy-paste in my just-received membership number, to opt out of this.
    
    
        
      
 The upside is that the "positive" results should be good for a reasonable shelf life (or if you can find out the mfg date of what you're buying)   
    
        
      
 Do you also have to call a phone number and wait on hold for hours to cancel you subscription?   
    
    
        
      
 During sign-up I think I saw a link to a cancellation URL - embedded in the warning that I will be autorenewed in 12 months if I don't cancel first :)   
    
        
      
 I wish CR did -more- reviews in each category. I know it's next to impossible to thoroughly review every single product in the world, but I would pay 10x the subscription fee if I could reliably go there and find all the current models available in the different categories.   
    
        
      
 RTINGs is doing an excellent job in this space. They have a public queue where subcribers can vote on the next product they buy to review.   
    
        
     I've got two problems with Consumer Reports reviews.1. They aren't often comprehensive enough in their product lineup to be valuable. Obviously a hard problem to solve on product categories like consumer electronics where the product choices can count in the hundreds. 2. They aren't often including the latest and greatest in their reviews either, so I'm quite often not confident I'm getting the best bang for my buck going with their reviews.
    
    
        
      
 Yeah I sing the praises of Consumer Reports all the time. I think I pay $10 annually for a subscription and every time I buy or recommend something I check with them and so far have not been let down. Their reviews almost always include objective measurements and durability testing, it’s really surprising how people miss them among more modern options.   
    
        
      
 Many local libraries have deals with Consumer Reports to provide their card holders access to the CR member website without charge.   
    
    
        
      
 What more can Google even do about the onslaught of ever-evolving SEO spam besides hardcode some arbitrary "winners", which would have its own set of problems? It seems like a very hard problem.   
    
        
      
 But that is the point - it is Google's problem, not ours. They don't have the best info anymore, so use someone else. There are other search engines. If Google wants us back, it is their problem to improve.   
    
        
     I’m guessing OP meant it’s a hard problem in general, not just for Google.Also, the statement that Goggle doesn’t have the best information anymore seems objectively false. We can wish there were other players doing it better, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m open to the idea that Google is just riding their wave, but I’ve yet to see proof. I just see the search industry at large shedding quality results. I think Google could step up its ranking game w/ ML eliminating a lot of bad patterns, but I'm not sure they have the will to do it, or are afraid of the consequences (every travel blogger selling an ebook will go apeshit about it for instance).
    
    
        
     The fundamental problem is that the interests of Google do not align with the interests of it's users.Google is not interested in serving us the "best" search results possible, they are interested in serving us their customers ads. In other words, Google search results are crap, because Google wants them to be crap.
    
    
        
     That's far too simplistic. Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers). I also think it's a multifaceted challenge that failing some genuine ingenuity won't really get solved.Like I said though, maybe they are just riding their wave (dominance) at this point, but then I'd expect to see better results from a scrappy competitor already or soon. Here's hoping, but even as a discerning user, I haven't yet. I'm confident that even if Google doesn't solve it, for whatever reason, someone else will eventually. In the meantime, results continue to degrade and the desire / reward to fix it will increase.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google must also compete or they lose their free users followed by their paying users (ad buyers).I have no idea if that's even possible. The number of people who (a) Google pays to be the default engine for and (b) aren't even aware there are other engines is huge. If the various google search domains went offline, the number of people who wouldn't even be able to find facebook is probably a double-digit percent, let alone those who cannot figure out to fail over to bing, ddg, yahoo, whatever.
    
    
        
     There are more than enough users aware of search to support a fledgling competitor that managed to deliver higher quality results.That competitor simply doesn’t exist yet, and I think that’s because no one has figured out how to beat Google at search (which is why I think real ingenuity is required).
    
    
        
      
 I thought DDG beat google when it first got going. It seems to have declined and in some cases is no longer even usable anymore.   
    
        
     Google with its hundreds of billions in revenue should be able to solve the problem, right?Not when compared to the trillions of dollars of e commerce revenue that is the reward for getting to the top of Google results - even if you don't deserve it.
    
    
        
     Total ecommerce in 2021 was around 5 trillion dollars. That's revenue, and split across all players.Somehow I think Google with the ability to devote billions to solving the problem has more resources to throw at it than any ecommerce company. Except for possibly Amazon.
    
    
        
     hardcode some arbitrary "winners"The point of google is to surface good content above bad content. If they can identify what good content is, surface it, by any means necessary.
    
    
        
      
 Seconding this. As recently perhaps as 7 or 8 years ago, I used to shake my head sympathetically at how antiquated their business model seemed, and wondered when they'd finally close up shop. Fast forward to today, with bots, review bribery, astroturfed "buying guides", and paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes Wirecutter, CR is now my most trusted source on purchasing anything over $100, or a product that could be crucial to my health.   
    
        
     &gt; paid content even at quality outlets like NYTimes WirecutterEvidence for this? Is it just for stuff specifically tagged as paid content, or is there any evidence that their standard reviews might be tainted by money?
    
    
        
     Affiliate link revenue model: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecutter_(website) They claim the reviewers go in neutral, but I'm sorry, I just don't trust it. Thr fact that they only test a subset of products in a given competitive space alone makes this too tainted for my liking. (CR also doesn't hit every company in a space, but at least they're not incentivized to pick the ones that pay them.)
    
    
        
      
 For now I've been using the NYT wirecutter folks. They do a good job posting their methodology and you can usually dig much further for what problems they found.   
    
    
        
     I had to scroll through a whole lot to get to the part that mentions wirecutter - the only one they really mentioned was webcams, with anecdotes about how that particular webcam they recommend isn't very good. Not much talk about why the methodology is wrong.However I do find the webcam recommendation article wirecutter did to be of worse quality than the others they had. Its a very room dependent item. Its certainly easy to look at that review having played with other webcams and say hey I think their methodology sucks. But I recently bought a new toaster oven - I had already had a kitchenaid one that got fine reviews on most sites, but I found it to be really inconsistant. The wirecutter site had photos of the uneven toasting of the same model I had, in the exact same way that mine was. They also showed photos of their recommended toasters. I picked up their recommended one. It toasts exactly as they recommended. So its not a total loss.
    
    
        
      
 This thread has now successfully been diverted from a discussion on Google search results to a discussion on CR.   
    
    
        
      
 I don't trust consumer reports any longer. they have amazon affiliate links. I suspect the current CEO is selling them out, bit by bit. Also, their current web format makes it hard to find recommendations on used cars.   
    
        
     You can buy most any product at Amazon, so the affiliate links are not an incentive for CR to rank one product better than the competitor they would otherwise also link to.Plus Amazon affiliate links are standardized and automated to such a degree that’s there’s no chance they would manually penalize or reward CR for editorial content.
    
    
        
      
 I would assume that Amazon affiliate links pay more for more expensive products, so there could easily be incentive to reward expensive over cheap.   
    
        
      
 CR has biases, and they leak out in various ways. When I was doing detailed car-shopping in the 1990s, I noticed that drivetrains in American-badged cars would show significant problems while Japanese-badged cars with the same drivetrains from the same supplier would be ranked consistently higher (e.g. Isuzu vs Chevy light trucks, Mazda vs Ford sedans).   
    
        
      
 My friend in Germany pointed me to a site like CR but with a better track record. I have to ping him for the name again.   
    
    
        
      
 I just learned that you can get the yearbook including all tests from the previous year for like 10€, the other big testing magazine Ökotest (focused on environmental impact) offers this too.   
    
    
        
     I unfortunately share your experiences. However in Germany there is a foundation called “Stiftung Warentest” [1], which does independent testing of products. With reviews full of Amazon affiliate links dominating search results, I tend to purchase their tests for ~3 Euros more often than ever.However this only works for popular product categories, but less so for specialized equipment. My impression is also
that affiliate links hurt consumers in the long run as they reduce the selection of products in reviews or blogs to those the authors can earn money with. This however leaves out potential alternatives. More often than not the winner of product categories (at least those I was researching) of independent tests were not available from
sites running affiliate programs.
For example a consumer-grade lawn mower from an otherwise professional gardening company or a tent from a Scandinavian brand. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest
    
    
        
     Sadly, Stiftung Warentest often doesn't have the expertise to properly test many products.
I often notice the shortcomings in product tests for products that I know and use.I was reminded of this with their last test of 3d printers.
Their test results where far from what everyone with experience in the field would consider accurate.
    
    
        
     For some products, I agree, but realistically its about as good as it gets unless you do thorough research on a given product and are actually able to find a somewhat unbiased review.Take washing machines for example. How do you know which ones are good and which ones are not? Public reviews from any website tend to only be a good indicator if there a lots of bad ones. I have 0 faith in the average consumer to accurately rate a product. Overwhelmingly negative reviews will clearly show a deficiency but positive ones are unfortunately more and more a gamble. Stiftung Warentest isn't perfect, but they do, on most occasions, put in a high amount of effort to test products to the best of their abilities without any personal opinions. I don't know of a single other person/organization/website where that is the case.
    
    
        
     Most washing machines offer quit similar features. The key difference is reliability.Testing for reliability is expensive, so most likely Stiftung Warentest and similar companies don't do that.
    
    
        
      
 No, that's exactly what they do test and test well. Their model mostly breaks down for computer technology and peripherals in that space. When testing a mouse they would test how often it can click before breaking down, and that's only slight hyperbole. Might be a bit better now in that area than back then when I read their tests regularly.   
    
        
     I bought their test of basmati rice and these monsters had an intern court the broken vs. whole rice grains in a 500g package.I assume they only counted a sample of the the 500g, but it's funnier to imagine otherwise.
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 My brand new LG turbowasher model lasted 3 months before one morning sounded like a hammer smashing something. I ran to the machine and a support bracket inside had broken. It took 2 months for them to replace it I was not impressed. It has since lasted 3 more years no issues but I doubt I would go with LG in the future since it was a horrible customer service experience getting my first one repairs under warranty. Had they helped me better after it breaking I may have said it was just a fluke and still recommended them.   
    
        
      
 I base those sorts of purchases on duration of warranty. Recently bought a dryer, and apart from a brand that cost significantly more, they all came with 2 year warranties. One reasonably priced machine had 4, so I picked that one.   
    
        
      
 Counterexample: Korean auto manufacturers Hyundai and Kia offer longer warranties than Japanese manufacturers Honda and Toyota because that’s the only way people will buy Korean cars.   
    
        
      
 Wonder if they are taking advantage of bath tub curve and 8 years is slightly costlier than 5 years to a manufacturer. In India, Toyota is selling rebadged Suzuki cars offering lower cost and more warranty.   
    
        
     Warranty is ridiculous. Of course it's good to have if something breaks early. But normally I want my stuff to last much longer. Our fridge broke last summer: 30 years old. It had one repair 18 years ago. Our washing machine is 22, zero repairs. I hope it still makes it while. Well, none of them were the cheapest ones. From central European factories which might no longer exist...Some would claim these old appliances waste energy. I am not convinced. We need to heat our buildings here from September to May. Whatever a very modern appliance warms the building less the heating has to substitute. It's all energy and losses produce heat.
    
    
        
     There is also all the energy required to churn out newer appliances that break and get recycled.Getting one great one that will last for a few decades isn't a bad call. That's what I do personally. And there are still ways to save, reduce energy impact. Moderation is a big one. Just be frugal and prudent with the appliances. That has a major impact and everyone could do more and capture those gains right away.
    
    
        
      
 They ran 3 machines of each model 1840 times and always exactly recorded the statistics (is the 60C program really using 60C water, etc) and results to test for reliability.   
    
        
      
 As long as their methodology is clear you can at least judge their results for yourself and whether you consider them meaningful, even if it wasn’t perhaps as good as an expert could have done.   
    
    
        
     Used Gsmarena.com to narrow down which Android-based phone would be the best choice.Ended up with the OnePlus 8T due to good battery life, fast charging and reasonable size. Still very happy with that purchase, which wouldn't have been as easy without that site.
    
    
        
      
 Finding review of tech gadgets and hardware is quite easy. Even niche products usually have dedicated communities and sites with in-depth knowledge. It's the boring everyday products and large appliances like washing machines that are really hard to evaluate sicne their reviews basically amount to affiliate spam.   
    
        
      
 Thanks for the links, but especially the printer one is exactly what I was talking about: They are all marked as unavailable on the site.   
    
        
      
 The US has Consumer Reports, which is similar I think... but yeah, only works for major product categories.   
    
        
     For kitchen tools, there's America's Test Kitchen reviews (from Cooking magazine, IIRC). It's a limited segment but high quality.On the other hand, it has the same problem as Consumer Reports: they only test and review a single model which will probably be out of production before you need one. On the third hand, if one manufacturer consistently gets good reviews (OXO Goodgrips, for example)...
    
    
        
     Cooks Illustrated is the name of the magazine, and I recommend it to anyone who ever spends time in a kitchen.Some of the purchases I have made with their guidance have been (trivially) life-changing.
    
    
    
        
      
 There’s also the NYT WireCutter which tried to do a good job isolating it away as an independent review source that you can trust.   
    
        
      
 Some of the WireCutter’s picks were fairly terrible, which makes sense: testing diverse categories of products is too expensive for affiliate links to cover. I’ve gifted dashcams on their recommendation that shot beautiful QHD but had MTBF measured in single digit months. The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.   
    
        
     To be fair, MTBF is not something you can measure in a reasonable time for these kinds of review sites. Far better for this kind of thing is niche-specific youtube channels.But in any case, what you're asking for here is a prediction of your future satisfaction with a product. It's a non-trivial problem even for the most innocuous purchases. Will I like Lysol or Clorox wipes more? Who knows, and the reviews aren't going to beat first-hand experience in any circumstances.
    
    
        
      
 I’ve written extensively about this recently, but these days with $300+ “gaming” routers using crappy sweatshop software on whatever Atheros router SoC, many users would be much better served with legit SMB routing / switching / wifi systems that are available for around the same price.   
    
        
     I've always found anything tagged as "gaming" to be lower quality and more expensive than the business machines.==== This message sent from a Thinkpad business machine that I use for gaming (and ML, theoretically).
    
    
        
     I mean this is a known thing in general; the best kitchen supply stuff you can buy is often stuff intended for commercial use, because it quite literally goes through the wringer with near-constant usage over long periods of time.The problem is finding a place that sells commercial things to individual buyers. That, and sometimes what a commercial kitchen needs is vastly oversized for a regular house; you're probably going to set off your residential fire alarm very often with a massive commercial range designed for woks, for example, unless you also upgrade the ventilation, etc.
    
    
        
     I switched to Unifi access points and a wired router and switch and am much happier with the result.The consolidation of router, switch and access point means you can't upgrade individual parts. It's the modern equivalent of the TV-VCR combo and most consumers don't realize they actually can be separated.
    
    
        
     I didn’t know what good Wifi until I switched to using some TP-Link Omada equipment.If you run your own controller, you can set up a small network (router, PoE switch, and AP) for less than $300. Hardware controller is ~$90. A controller isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t recommend doing a standalone setup. Downside? It’s business class equipment and you need some idea what you’re doing. It’s not plug-n-play. Also, it’s layer 2 only. If you want mDNS across vlans, you’ll need to run a reflector. (Not difficult. It’s built into avahi.)
    
    
        
      
 I'd love to read what you've written. So far, my research into commercial Access points hasn't really been that fruitful. I refuse any cloud based management interface. For the router, I use mikrotik which has been great but I returned the access points from them that I tried. In the end, my access points are Asus home routers because they were the best I found.   
    
    
        
     &gt; The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.Can attest. I finally ditched mine, got tired of it falling over multiple times each week.
    
    
        
     I've got the A7, which I believe is the same thing except it has some sort of ability to enable Alexa control for something or other.Mine has worked great. The only issues I've seen are (1) the traffic stats don't count IPv6 traffic, and (2) there is something odd that sometimes goes on when a connection ends that can result in packets from the LAN side showing up on the WAN side without the LAN-side IP address being replaced with the WAN-side IP address. The first is a bit of annoyance, and the second as far as I saw didn't actually cause any problems.
    
    
        
      
 Maybe you got a lemon I've been using mine for a while now. Not as nice as my old one with customer firmware but still consistent.   
    
    
        
      
 My experience with NYT product reviews is pretty awful. I wish I could be more concrete. Tried to look in my history but I could have sworn at least one article was just effectively, "top 10 most popular on Amazon", with quotes from user reviews. Maybe I'm getting my sites mixed up.   
    
        
      
 I believe you're thinking of The Strategist, which is through New York Magazine. That's basically their thing, to summarize Amazon reviews for you and filter through a product category based on that. I also don't really see much of the value in it, but I suppose I can see how someone might.   
    
    
        
      
 Bought a pair of audio-technica headphones based on their review. Sound quality was as described but it was so uncomfortable I returned it 5 minutes after picking it up. It was described as comfortable for long wear but it had a hard band with little padding and was uncomfortable for any duration.   
    
        
      
 Comfort is a pretty subjective thing. Your experience, while valid, is merely a single data point and it would be quite premature to disregard the review or even the whole outlet based on it.   
    
        
      
 That fell to complete shit a while back. They are not wrong but I would ignore their rankings and focus on the review aspects   
    
        
      
 I find Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are pretty reasonable for product categories where I just want a reasonable choice and don't necessarily have deep knowledge and preferences myself. And, yes, it's worth reading why they picked something. But if I were buying an interchangeable lens camera or a computer I might read their recommendation but I'd look elsewhere also. For a sprayer for a hose? I'm sure their recommendation is fine.   
    
        
      
 No, for hoses they recommend ones with the archaic brass threaded fittings common in the US instead of the far superior Gardena type.   
    
    
        
      
 I’m a subscriber to consumer reports, but as it put Tesla Model 3, the most successful car in the past few years on the back as the least reliable, I feel that I can’t trust its results to be 100% independent reviews. I don’t have a Tesla, but if something grows so fast where people pay a significant amount for it, it can’t be that bad.   
    
        
     Are you thinking of the Model Y? CR gives the Model 3 average reliability, and gives it the highest overall score in the electric car $45-55k category. The only other car with average reliability in the category is the BMW i3. The Ford Mustang Mach-E and Polestar 2 get the next tier down for reliability, and then the Model Y brings up the rear getting the bottom tier reliability score.In the electric cars over $75k category, everything except the Audi E-Tron gets the tier between worse and average, including the Tesla Models S and X. The Audi gets the bottom tier. This article talks about why the Teslas other than the Model 3 get low reliability ratings [1]: &gt; Commonly reported issues from Model Y owners included defective sensors that had to be replaced, problems with heat pumps, air conditioning, body panels that didn’t line up and water leaks in the trunk due to missing seals, according to Fisher. Owners also reported a variety of electrical and hardware issues with the higher-priced, and less-popular, Model S sedan and Model X falcon-wing SUV. &gt; Older models typically fare better in reliability, as companies tend to make tweaks and redesigns to solve known problems, while sticking with the same parts and suppliers. &gt; But Tesla deviates from this approach, Fisher explained. “At almost random times during the year Tesla will switch major components, suppliers or sensors and other units. The more you change, the greater the chances you’re going to have some problems.” [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/consumer-reports-2021-auto-r...
    
    
        
      
 Ford recalled almost all their mach-e cars build until first half of 2021 with unglued roof, so that there was two different risks to roof fly away. 
As of december 2021 they still didn't fix the keys. Software glitch
and a security recall of seatbelt issues. 
And yet, it is more reliable compares to tesla lol :)   
    
        
      
 I don't know anything about how reliable or not Model 3 is, but surely reliability != popularity?   
    
        
      
 It’s the growth that’s staggering. What I read is that older car companies changed the rating to include small software bugs in the entertainment system. As Tesla has much more non-essential features, these while these small bugs are not that important for the end user, can bring the ratings down vs other cars that don’t even offer the feature.   
    
        
     Tesla is well known to whip cars with sometimes dozens of minor issues. It’s a new company and these processes need time and experience.The reliability data also is likely sourced from outside, such as the AAA, insurers, or any other place where car trouble data naturally accumulates.
    
    
    
        
      
 Tesla got it's fair share of issues, but they fix them and detect them fast. They adamant about security. Only Tesla and Volvo got their own testing facilities. 
Last recall of backup camera is actually a positive call. On a very small group of cars they got this issue. They called it a defect and recalled an entire batch ( 500k cars) to fix a potential issue.   
    
    
        
     Yeah, I was also frustrated. Tesla always been in the top. And boom, suddenly it stoped been there. I don't believe in reincarnation. 
All my peers who owns tesla are the most happy customers every, including me. For 2 years owning Model Y I asked for service twice. Once i damaged the car, they came to my backyard, I found it super convenient.Second time I request a retrofit a speaker from a newer models and hardware + work cost me $100 usd. Engineers did all the job at my home while i was working. I only clicked from the App open the car . Oh well, consumer report doesn't count this things that makes consumers happy. Consumer reports also doesn't count that after two years of ownership i received tons of new features and my car still feels fresh. I can put here a huge list. Since I bought the car : - my range improved - winter regenerative brakes improved - automatic blindspot cameras after turn - improved climate control, especially automatic seat heat - more music/video sources - dramatically improved autopilot - view cameras from phone - updated for free hardware for temperature measurements during one of the 
unrelated visits - improved charging time ( faster) - charging network doubled - automatically synced profiles to my second tesla - better charging scheduling, that works well with my local electricity provider incentives, saved me ~600 usd already - far better navigation included way points - better security when backing up ( sound) - improved auto wipers, that become 100% reliable( more a fix) - i don't include tons of fun stuff like games, easter eggs etc... This are only improvements that are useful to me. The actual list is waay bigger. Oh well... someone paid this journalists to portrait it in a bad way. But that basically shows how vulnerable is the system. You pay 10-20 journalists and boom, you got your marketshare of people who trust to some bs like consumer reports.
    
    
        
     I'm in a strange position here. I fundamentally agree that reviews for the most part are absolute steaming pile of crap of a space for many niches. I work in one of the worst - web hosting reviews. It's plagued by fake affiliate reviews dominating basically every search result. I've been trying for 10 years to run a company that did reviews differently in the web hosting space.Full disclosure, I have affiliate links on companies that have them too. But I also list companies without them and it has had zero bearing on any result in 10 years. In fact, when I launched I had to beg the CEO of the top rated company to create a special affiliate program for me. Why? Because he didn't believe in review sites and affiliates in the space. It took months, but I told him if he didn't create one, what I was trying to do would never have a chance because I'd never make a dollar - you're the top rated company. I want to do something different, but it needs to remain somewhat financially viable and if you don't have a program I'm dead before it starts. So what happened in those 10 years? Honestly, not a whole a lot. I have mediocre rankings (often page 2-5) on some of the most competitive terms on Google. I can't afford to buy the links my competitors do because they make 10x or more what I do pushing the highest paying affiliates and designing for conversion. The site has some traction within niche communities - especially the WordPress hosting space - because I also run annual performance benchmarks (https://wphostingbenchmarks.com) where I document and thoroughly test most of the meaningful players in that space. It makes a couple grand a month, I've disclosed the revenue publicly on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/reviewsignal-e1ddcc26...) and it's gone down since then. The data I'm providing is almost surely the most transparent data tracking the industry and maybe the least biased (the reviews work by analyzing Twitter sentiment at scale - everything publicly documented in terms of ranking algorithm and published comments). But outside little bubbles in communities that care, nobody noticed. Google doesn't care. Google happily ranks affiliate sites spending six figures buying links off apache.org and other open source projects (look at those sponsor lists on a lot of open source projects - hosting/gambling is a bad sign). I got excited when my work fighting against .ORG registry price increases and sale at ICANN (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regula...) got a lot of press, even getting cited by the California AG in his letter which effectively killed it. I got backlinks from a lot of large news sites and traffic. I honestly saw no meaningful improvement in rankings or traffic. So I'm stuck, I keep the sites running - part time - mostly between other projects. I've moved back heavily into consulting and other projects because being an honest affiliate - I can't compete. Providing honest, transparent data and presenting it with the goal of informing versus pushing sales is a terrible business model. The majority of people simply don't care. A lot of 'in-the-know' folks read and get informed by my work. They advise their clients using it, and I never see any financial benefit from it. The broader world, especially Google, doesn't know or care. Is the root problem affiliate links? It certainly skews incentives and pushes manipulation. If we removed them, what fills the void? Ads? Sponsored content? Something else? I don't think the problem goes away - there is so much money in some of these industries and the stakes are so high. Companies and people will take advantage of it one way or another. How do we identify honest / good content from the garbage seems to be the bigger question. After 10 years, I'm don't have an answer and I'm certainly not being noticed.
    
    
        
     This is a perfect example of how fundamentally flawed modern SEO is. @ohashi has been producing the best hosting reviews in the WordPress ecosystem since forever. It seems like at some point in the past decade on page quality signals have been completely drowned out by backlink signals that can be easily amplified by bigger content producers and a resurgence in cheap on page SEO tricks.Sorry Kevin I don't know what the answer is, but I'd thought I'd just say a huge thanks for the great work you do year after year. It might be VERY niche but perhaps some sort of annual premium membership for professionals in the WP ecosytem might be something that might work? I'd certainly be happy to support your work on an ongoing basis with access to niche "members only" performance reports on things like WooCommerce benchmarking tests etc.
    
    
        
     Thanks edbloom!It really does help motivate me to hear people get value from my work, because it definitely isn't financially motivated at this point. I appreciate the offer of premium members only payments. I want my data to be public, I like open sourcing my contributions when possible. I think transparency and openness are the key to better reviews. So I've not ever approached that route. I've also avoided taking any sponsored money from web hosting for any sort of advertising because of even the potential conflict of interest (many have offered to sponsor those benchmarks). There might be something in the works to help it financially this year, nothing really concrete, but I'm exploring some new options. Ultimately though, I'd rather it wither and die than just doing what every shitty affiliate ruining the space has done.
    
    
        
     Answer, if you want to make money is play Google's game. Go get some VC funding to buy ads. Google with put the ads on their front page which will boost your search results. Eventually you'll figure out you dont even need a good product, you win with a mediocre product and a lot of SEO/ad spend.Break Google up. Course that will never happen as politicians like the power Google has over the internet in the hands of a US company.
    
    
        
     The whole reason I built what I did was because after a decade in the web hosting world, I still couldn't name a review site that was worth referring anyone to.I wanted to build something different and meaningful. I did. It just hasn't mattered in a broad context. If making money was the goal, I'd put whomever wants to pay me $300/sale first and pimp them out as the best company in the universe. Fuck that. I hoped that I could make a reasonable amount (at least enough to keep it going and maybe scale it a bit) and create a more honest review space. Winning in this case isn't defined by money earned, you're advocating a race to the bottom I wanted to avoid. Google needs a shakeup and so does search as a whole.
    
    
        
      
 Why not go through the direction of having a patreon or other monthly donation? No need to necessarily give rewards, just asking for contributions   
    
        
     I am honestly having a hard time articulating why I don't like the idea of people donating their money to me for what I do. I will try, maybe I am irrational?There is so much money being passed around in web hosting review space, by companies to affiliates. I still make thousands per month off these affiliate deals. If my site were to rank at the top of search engines, I would be plenty compensated. Having individuals sponsor the work and it continuing to languish is a position I'm not really a fan of. A single sale commission can range from a few dollars to high hundreds or occasionally a thousand+. I can't imagine enough people wanting to donate a meaningful amount that would change that equation. I'd personally feel bad for every Patreon sponsor putting in 5,10,20 dollars because I might feel like I'm not doing enough with it. If those people just sent one person who ended up purchasing via a link on my site, it would likely outweigh most donations, it would also spread the reach to places I likely can't get to. That's just what is running through my head, I don't know if that makes any sense.
    
    
        
     Is your business model capable of sustaining a paywall of the most useful value, by eliding the information? Your affiliate links still point to your review effort, but the actual top ranking information is behind the paywall.Make it a variation on the "businesses pay for business-class stuff, amateurs get the free stuff" model. For the top say, 20% ranks, it is behind a paywall. People will know which vendors are members of the set of the top 20%, but not their ordinal collection. The bottom 80% members of the set's ordinal collection is displayed. If I'm looking for a site to store Grandma's cat pictures, the bottom 80% is probably good enough. You could also tilt the paywall so free only reveals who NOT to do business with, and who ranks at the bare minimum acceptability. You can have the paywall only enforce an embargo, instead of all historical results. Say some period beyond which the businesses that can afford to pay you will not care for the results, like a year or whatever. You can have a "free hour(s)" once a review cycle just before when you publish where the in-the-know crowd can get the results for the newest review cycle, tied to a YouTube livestream, where you do a monetized Q&amp;A. There are lots more variations to ponder, but I can't help but think there must be more useful ways to slice and dice the valuation of the information here, and monetize in tranches like finance and entertainment do, instead of all in one go.
    
    
        
     I guess the problem is two fold, could I charge some people a premium for premium information? Absolutely, yes.Does hiding some information behind a paywall fit with my goal of a better review landscape in the web hosting industry? Sadly, no. Sure, I would come out financially ahead, but the industry basically wouldn't be any different. I'm not going to rank any better or have my information spread more effectively behind a paywall. The number of folks impacted would also surely go down as many wouldn't pay. If the goal is simply profit maximization at this point, there are definitely avenues to explore like what you've suggested. That's boring to me honestly, unless it can have impact to along with it. I do appreciate your thoughts on the matter and suggestions. Personally, if it gets to that point I'd rather sell it off and move on to working on something else. Most of us are software developers and entrepreneurs. I'd rather build something more interesting and with more potential. I can make money doing consulting work any day, after 10 years, the allure of simply trying to profit maximize on what I built by introducing barriers doesn't appeal. That might be part of the reason it hasn't been as successful as it maybe could have been. I suppose that's the hill I may die on - open, honest, transparent review data for everyone.
    
    
        
     Aha, that makes it much more clear. You likely can achieve your aim with more marketing, along the lines of setting narrative in the industry.You already have an objective measure to flog, build a "council" or "board" around it, with the "Platinum" members being the providers who were most consistently in the top three ranks in all the past reviews. Get some good writers who can whip up some clickbaity articles that would find placement for some fun. "You're getting cheated out of bandwidth if you don't use these web hosting providers!" "Most Web hosting providers don't want to let you know this secret council!" Make it tongue in cheek, self-parodying maybe to the clickbait industry. Intermix with and reference to some more serious PR to avenues where industry people are likely to read it, where you lay out your concerns of improving the industry and the benefits to them. Make the report red-orange-green-easy to at-a-glance interpret for non-technical management for good-enough outcomes, then analyze the results into a historical trend for the aggregate industry's progress. Honey versus vinegar, basically. Your consulting expertise on designing projects to make it easy to transition between providers, and a calculator to compute when to pull the trigger to perform the transition would probably more than pay the bills.
    
    
        
     Maybe the marketing hasn't been great. But nobody seems to care. The status quo benefits the companies that get the most marketing, why invest in trying to change the rules that benefit them?I tried some more expose type stuff, revealing spam networks operated by hosting companies, publishing pay to play attempts, exposing fake reviews and even getting one CEO on record supporting astroturfing. Despite how outrageous this behavior is, it never gets much attention. That last company I'm talking about tends to be on all those affiliate garbage sites you will see and has popped up in the past few years (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2018/07/22/hostinger-review-0-...). I make sure to let as many people know as possible anytime I see the brand. But their marketing/astroturfing campaign certainly dwarfs anything I can do. And most people don't care. The publishers take the money, the company takes the customers and funnels more money into deceiving poor customers via affiliates and search. The only loser is customers as a whole, who have little voice or power in the equation at any level. In little bubble communities, I do have some traction and recognition. People may know, but they tend to be echo small chambers. Sure, some people flow in and get recommendations. But the majority of people, it's just who ranks at the top of search results. They don't invest in doing deeper research. They want to see 'X is the best product' and move on. That's another problem, nuance. Is there a best web hosting provider? Not even close. Even with a very specific use-case, it's extremely rare to say, yes, this is the best company. I've been tracking 10 years of data and no company comes close to perfect reputation. The extreme top just crack into 80% range in terms of positive sentiment. The generally pretty good are in the 70's. That means 20-30% of people are having bad experiences with the best companies. I've publish the review data with ranks based simply on statistical numbers, but I don't do ranking for performance benchmarks. I also encourage that it's one data point, simply being in the fastest tier or having the highest consumer opinion doesn't mean it's the best. There could be other factors which matter. For example, Pantheon is the perfect company for has a great reputation but I wouldn't recommend it to most people to consider. First, they specialize in WordPress and Drupal. So if you're not on those platforms, it's not relevant. Even if you do, they are very opinionated hosting. If you have a development team and want strict Git workflows where code moves up and data moves down, they are fabulous. If you're a semi technical person who mostly does marketing, it's probably a terrible fit because you don't want to learn Git, have to push every change through testing, staging and then production to make progress. But their hosting in my tests were fast. They have great consumer reviews. For the people who it makes sense for, they love it. And I would recommend it to probably less than 10% of people who meet the basic criteria of using WP/Drupal for the reason stated above. As far as consulting experience goes, I actually end up consulting more for the people who build sites. After running the largest benchmarks for WordPress for ~8 years now, people have brought me on to help test new WordPress products or scale existing sites. That's more interesting and rewarding honestly seeing direct results, being compensated to help them achieve goals. My compensation overall is okay, it's just not coming from reviews these days.
    
    
        
     I was always fascinated by the idea of "field testers" testing products in their daily lives and writing a short review about their experience. A cook would write about a chef knife, a post officer about comfortable all-weather boots, a craftsman about a tool etc.The biggest problem would be how to incentivize such people, but gamification and some monetary rewards from the community could probably solve this.
    
    
        
      
 A big part of the best wire cutter reviews are the “why you should trust me” introduction. Some of their reviewers really know their stuff, others obviously less so. You can calibrate your expectations accordingly.   
    
        
     They are OK, but I remember when they decided a Nokia phone was better than an iPhone.Tests usually have subjective criteria that determine the ranking.
    
    
        
     &gt; which does independent testing of productsCan we have some independent testing of web search engines?
    
    
    
        
      
 Just one data point, but I've had a hard time trusting then since reading a headphones section they had in the physical magazine quite a few years back. The number one rated headphone was the Bose QC3. Great noise cancellation and comfort, sure... But certainly not better audio quality than so many other products in that price range. All rock / metal sounded so muddy I had to return my pair within a few weeks.   
    
        
      
 I have used their tests in the past and I’ve never regretted a purchase influenced by their tests.   
    
        
     Yep; a huge portion of Google results, especially for spicy searches like “best ______ 2021” are just lists of affiliate links to top 10 selling items on Amazon from made-up brand names that are rotated once a product receives a few bad reviews.It’s really hard to find legit review sites; at least Wirecutter seems to actually test things, but sites like SeriousEats, OutdoorGearLab, Carryology, DCRainMaker, SoundOnSound, Adventure Journal, Magnetic Magazine, The Loam Wolf, etc that are quite niche / domain-specific are where I go for actual trustworthy reviews. I agree that Google seems to be dominated by clickbait ad-riddled BS SEO sites now more than ever, and I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the bills. I’ve posted about this before, but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that. The difference to me is that I’m willing to reward actual reviews and effort with rev share if I decide to buy something reviewed, but I’m super unimpressed with all the irrelevant ads we still get in 2021 despite having so much personalization data about users. Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced. They seem to be totally missing this signal, showing me ads for some category of thing I already purchased for a very long time after I don’t need any more suggestions. Lastly, I would literally pay per month for an Amazon search that filters out all the fake brands. If I search for “webcam”, there are half a dozen brands I want to see, yet instead I’m forced to sift through piles of junk that I would never even consider purchasing to find what I’m looking for. I’ve heard that Amazon knows this is a thing but chooses not to fix it due to some psychological allure of sifting through the junk to find the nuggets of gold. In the worst cases, I have to use Google to find stuff on Amazon because their own search is so horrendous, with the categories being an absolute joke.
    
    
        
     &gt; but at the end of the day, Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than that.Looked at Netflix clicked on a movie that I though may be interesting, it was overdubbed in English since it was a Korean movie. I watched maybe 5 minutes of it then exited. Go to YouTube and suddenly Korean videos are being suggested. At a car dealership with my sister she asked me to be there for support when she leased a car. At home same day hours later YouTube again it is plastered with "how to buy a car" videos. I hadn't been looking for a car, never searched for anything like that in the previous days ever.
    
    
        
     You could do a test. Get someone to take your (locked) smartphone into a well-known dealership for something you aren't ordinarily interested in. Blind test, you don't know where they took the phone. Google tracks the physical location of your phone (don't know if it's possible to completely opt out of that)... trivial to match that to "dealership X" given that Google Maps already knows about those. If in the blind test you can tell your friend where they took the phone based on increased ad activity, then there's proof.A day after I started using an Android device: I cycled to work, and my phone gives an alert and asks me to rate X. WTF? Oh right, I cycled by X on the way. I immediately turned off what I could; no more popups like that but do I really think Google doesn't track my location any more?
    
    
        
      
 I've had my professional-subscription Wall Street Journal app run a full page ad for frozen jamaican hot beef patties (so good...) that I bought a box of at costco earlier that morning. Pretty amusing, just given how off-brand that is for ads that run on WSJ.   
    
        
      
 Not sure if guerrilla marketing or not. Nevertheless, it worked, sort of. Sounds like something right up my alley, but alas I'm nowhere near a costco.   
    
        
     &gt; Pretty amusingWent to a doctor over issues with my feet. Got spammed with ads covering various health issues. Patient data tends to be protected in most countries, no one should have access to when I visit what doctor and I find it insane that Google gets away with using that protected information to sell ads.
    
    
        
      
 Fair guess would be that you leaked that information somewhere along the way - putting the address into google maps, pulling up the dr office phone number on google proper etc.   
    
        
      
 I have an Android phone, so I wasn't surprised that Googles spyware managed to get that information, I was surprised that they are allowed to collect and use medical information about me without ending on the wrong end of various related data protection laws.   
    
        
      
 There are no healthcare privacy laws the the USA that apply to Google. Indeed, "medical information" is not generally protected. HIPAA only prevents "healthcare providers and healthcare businesses" from providing that information without your consent. If you disclose or leak medical information to other companies, they are not required to maintain confidentiality and can sell or use that information perfectly legally.   
    
        
     &gt; I can’t help but think that Google is allowing this to happen because it pays the billsGoogle is not that short sighted. They know that if people stop trusting it to give good results then they'll lose their market. I suspect the problem is just harder than it seems.
    
    
        
     The problem is that no one is bothering to give you an alternative because they can't make money out of it.Let's say I want to do a '10 best bikes for under $1,000' article. How am I going to do that well without actually going out and buying 10 bikes and being prepared to make hardly anything in return?
    
    
        
     That kind of article is trash anyway, they should limit it to 3 or 5 bikes not 10. Many best "auto" reviews simply have a category so they dont piss off any one auto manufacture.Even if you look for the top 10 trucks, they will end up showing all the major brands, because they will break it down for: 4x4, extended cab, full size, mid size, ... Lists are mostly garbage because you dont care about the top 25, you really only need to know the best item and the next best at a certain budget
    
    
        
      
 If Google deindexed the spam, that effort might actually be worth it for a bike shop to do an honest comparison. But so long as you’re just going to get buried by SEO spam, why bother?   
    
        
      
 While that would improve things I still think it's rather unlikely that a bike shop would be willing to give anything but a great rating for the bikes the are selling. And if they are their suppliers might not like it. There's still a dependency.   
    
        
      
 True, bike shops tend to hock one manufacturer. I still think reducing the SEO ‘reviews’ would create space for honest reviews though.   
    
        
      
 At the end of the day being shortsighted doesnt matter. They are a publicly traded company that pays their top employees in options. If the problem of spam becomes too difficult they will focus on milking the cow until it dies just like every other massive company that came before it.   
    
        
      
 I think they are trying to cater to people who search using questions and in that process they are ruining a good search engine.   
    
        
      
 And just at this moment, we have hordes of affiliate marketers working 24/7 updating their "articles" to say "best _______ 2022".   
    
        
     Just today, Google discover suggested me an article titled exactly"Proton &amp; Atom LT vs Nano Air: Key Points ([month_year])"
    
    
        
      
 I would be very surprised if there wasn't a Wordpress or similar plugin to automate this.   
    
    
        
     &gt; the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reducedThis is a comment sentiment (I’ve already bought a fridge! Don’t need another!) and it is a bit of a failure mode. But, I think value on advertising around recent purchases to people is super high. A recent purchase, although often wrong, is one of the best signals you can get. So much purchasing happens in clusters (setting up a space, picking up a hobby, etc) that a specific person is in buying mode for a specific topic is crazy valuable. And there’s splash damage on the wrong ads. Maybe you don’t buy a second rice cooker, but the ad reminds you to get a toaster.
    
    
    
        
      
 Good point. I bought a wireless router, didn't like it, got another one a month later. I imagine the odds you'll buy a wireless router in the next month if you bought one in the last month are way higher than almost any other signal you could find.   
    
        
     &gt; Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this falsehood is beyond me. Do you think these advertisers are stupid? -&gt; buy refrigerator. gets lost during transport / is damaged / “oh, I wanted the 550T, not 505T” / “works great, let’s also replace the one in the beach house” / etc. You have to remember that these possibilities are competing with other ads that have extremely low rates of success.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; Another thing that advertisers don’t seem to understand somehow: if I searched for a thing or even clicked through a FB ad and bought it, the chances that I’m also interested in buying a similar thing in the next few days / weeks are drastically reduced.&gt; This is a ten-year old talking point. Why people continue to insist on this [...] is beyond me. Because it continues to happen. &gt; falsehood The only falsehood here is your claim that this is a falsehood. &gt; Do you think these advertisers are stupid? Yes, apparently they are.
    
    
        
      
 Dcrainmaker has been "pay for play" for at least the past 10 years. He's very thorough, but not altruistic. There was a guy on Slowtwich that shared a conversation with him that was enlightening to that fact.   
    
        
      
 Someone has to pay the bills. I don’t think receiving money to do a review is inherently wrong, there are just too many products to afford to review, but having a rigorous process to eliminate or expose bias is important. However, it does suck looking for reviews of a product which is not a main player in the market or category.   
    
        
      
 I agree. He uses statements like "this was a test unit and I'm sending it back at the end. I will purchase one with my own money" to make it seem like he wasn't compensated. Be really needs to start it off saying he was, but not with the unit.   
    
    
        
     &gt; Google and FB are advertising companies trying to be more than thatThis also seems to be what Amazon is also devolving into. Amazon ads is the fastest growing part of amazon!
    
    
        
      
 Yes. Just searched for "cholimex soy sauce". 80% of the search results page was covered by an ad for mayonnaise...   
    
        
     I never had problems with fake products on Amazon until I looked for a usb thumb drive for the Arlo camera base station.There’s a dramatic difference in price for 1T sizes. Some at $30. Others at $150. I couldn’t understand it. One of the 0 star reviews said it was actually a 32Gb drive that somehow fools the OS to think it is bigger. Not sure how that happens but it steered me away from any of the cheaper options as I don’t need a headache.
    
    
        
      
 SoundOnSound is great, especially since they still host their entire review history. They tend to show up in my top Google results, when searching for older audio equipment at least. For things like mixers and audio interfaces, they've tested quite a few things.   
    
        
     If Google really cared, dropping all pages with affiliate links, would get rid of 99.9999% of the junk.And no, I don't care about the tiny, tiny number of legit reviews with links. I doubt I'd see them anyhow.
    
    
        
     I frequently dream of building a search engine that for this very reason penalizes any type of advertisement. This problem goes way beyond product searches. Every time I look up a how-to for pretty much anything, programming, video games, fixing house stuff, all search results that aren't user provided like Stackoverflow or Reddit, it's always stuffed with useless info that anyone having the problem already knows about ant that's clearly just there for SEO or to create more space for ads. Non-verbatim example from yesterday: search: "Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye underground lake stuck bell" result: "Echoes of the Eye is the first DLC for Outer Wilds...blah...find artifact to enter the dream world...blah". The top, ideal answer should be a single sentence and maybe a screenshot.Of course disincentivizing ads would never fly at google and an ad-free search engine would have a hard time being economically viable.
    
    
        
     If you would literally pay for an amazon filter, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and buy from dedicated shops?Initially because I hate monopoly but also because looking for something decent on amazon is a major PITA I avoid amazon for nearly everything. If I need a computer, I buy direct to the vendor or to a computer shop. If I need new bicycle parts I go to an online bikeshop, if I want a new sampler groovebox, I go to a store selling home studio gears. Well this isn't totally true as I now favor second hand stuff but the reality is Amazon is not very effective at offering you the best things, and not even at the best price. Most online shops nowadays offer shipping time on par with what you get on Amazon. In then end I don't see any good incentive to use Amazon. Some people will say centralized market place but if searching a decent product takes much more time than finding a good specialized store and getting decent product quickly you haven't really gained anything. Single account for all your shopping? Many shops offer buying without creating an account. Others will allow you to seamlessly create the account at ordering time and password managers make it easy to manage multiple accounts.
    
    
        
      
 Dedicated shops don't help themselves by having a convoluted check-out process that nearly always involves creating an account, figuring out whether ticking the box or not ticking the box will unleash an avalanche of marketing emails, then entering your payment details via some obscure 3rd party payment system, etc.   
    
        
      
 Nearly all of them allows Paypal/Google/Apple pay among other. This is definitely not what I would call obscure 3rd party. Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read. And as I said many of them allow for guest access without any account creation.   
    
        
      
 Snark aside, making the correct check/uncheck often still results in spam emails anyway, such asking for feedback or once a year sales promo. I’ve noticed the majority of independent online retailers do this. I guess it works or they wouldn’t, just like physical spam mail.   
    
        
     Figuring out wether ticking or not ticking the box usually involve knowing how to read.I see what you did there.
    
    
        
      
 Not surprising. It's incomparably quicker and more profitable to list a few top selling products with affiliate links and a bunch of relevant keywords, than to spend significant time and money actually researching and comparing these products in a meaningful way.   
    
        
     &gt; They seem to be totally missing this signalOk, but how would they know that you already bought the product? As advanced as ads are, they still don't have the Amazon confirmation telling them you already completed the purchase.
    
    
        
     Google partners with at least one major credit card company[1] so their ad network should be aware of purchases if a particular payment system were used. I expect this is far more widespread than we realise (unfortunately) but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45368040
    
    
        
     &gt;but using that data to not show ads to recent purchasers would harm revenue, so they remain visible.that doesn't make any sense. By that logic they wouldn't want to do targeting at all, because targeting by definition reduces the amount of people you can show ads to.
    
    
        
      
 I imagine that Google does in fact use credit card data, but there is no way to tell if you already bought everything you want.   
    
        
     Is there some aggregation of these domain-specific review sites anywhere?Wirecutter has been pretty hit-and-miss for me recently. I have found my best product recommendations through a bunch of random blogs who have some particular expertise.
    
    
    
        
      
 Isn’t the obvious solution to include the age (or the number of sales) of a product into its rating? This way they can’t just rotate the product/brand names.   
    
    
        
      Just researched good/quality crafting printers yesterday. Search results were mostly blogs and crappy websites that offered obviously no insights but were just SEO optimized to direct you to their Amazon affiliate links. Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" site. I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed. If you aren't a coder and you want to earn a living online, blogging is a way to do that and Amazon links are a way to make it pay. People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons. If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this. I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues. I've tried for years to take the high road, to not have ads or Amazon links on my sites, etc. The result is starvation and intractable poverty and everyone telling me to get a real job. (I tried. They didn't hire me and continue to cyber stalk me and steal my ideas.) Anyway, I know all replies to this comment will boil down to "Quit your bitching. No one gives one damn if you die on the streets of starvation and we are so bored with hearing about your whiny problems." Rest assured, I am not leaving this comment with any expectation whatsoever that it will in any way help me. But maybe after I die on the streets someone will pause and think "Maybe she had a point. Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives and we are getting exactly the crap we pay people to give us." Because the "high road" where someone tries to add value and respect the fact that you folks don't want ads or affiliate links etc literally doesn't pay to the point of it will keep you underfed and either homeless or underhoused and then your poverty will be a new excuse to have no respect for your observations that "Hey, people, the system you designed is broken and this is why and how."
    
    
        
     Well, there are at least two separate, though not unrelated, problems:1. Good jobs are hard to find, so some people try to make a living instead by influencing what other people buy, in exchange for kickbacks from the sellers. 2. The sellers offering the largest kickbacks are never the sellers offering the best value for money, because if they are, a reseller can buy the products from them, charge a higher price, and spend some of the markup on kickbacks to product shills. This results in a systematic bias toward overpriced junk in heavily advertised products. 3. While some knowledgeable people do still take the time to share their knowledge and unbiased judgments, which is for example mostly how Wikipedia is written, Google and other search engines are increasingly directing search traffic to the product shills instead. I agree with you that, given problem #1 and problem #3, problem #2 is sort of inevitable, and all three problems tend to mutually reinforce each other. But I think we could reduce either problem #1 or problem #3 by an order of magnitude without significantly reducing the other one. In particular, we might not be able to completely solve the SERP quality problem without solving the jobs problem, but I think we could improve it enormously just by writing a better search engine, which is an easier problem than fixing the entire economy. I'm sorry to hear you're back on the streets, and I hope your situation improves before you die. I'm glad you're not dead yet because I often find your comments insightful. Happy new year!
    
    
        
     I'm not back on the streets yet. I moved a few weeks ago. I have been told this is a temporary solution and I live in fear, as I have for several months now, of ending up back on the streets and dying there.I don't see surviving that a second time, for reasons I don't care to dig around in.
    
    
        
     Crap... I have enjoyed reading you here. We have a borked up system where someone who has a keen mind and something to say ends up struggling. Not sure what to say here other than I hate it.Making sure we have the basics available to people should be a top priority. And yeah, some would take advantage. I've reached the point, due to many people I know struggling, where I basically don't care. Let them. The net good out of all that would be worth it, and maybe, just maybe a little less money is made, or efficiency or whatever crazy metric being looked at isn't peak optimized... Again, just don't care. Given all we have and the smarts, tech, info available, we should not be facing this crap too many of us are. That's all, just venting a little and I sure hope your situation can improve. Happy Holidays and all that. You are one of the good people, and it shows.
    
    
    
        
     We need to solve the housing supply issues in the US. (I don't know where you live, I just don't feel qualified to speak to issues in other countries. I've studied them for mine.)That's off topic for this discussion, but deeply intertwined with why so many people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics in favor of asking themselves "Does it pay enough?"
    
    
        
     &gt; people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethicsDeliberate social policy.
    
    
    
        
      
 It definitely is not completely unbiased, but the reason it works at all is the people who are trying to be honest, not the shills.   
    
        
     That applies to our society at large, as well.As for Wikipedia itself, I stopped contributing a few years ago, since I did not have the energy and the time needed to fight the systemic bias that the editors had (and have) on a variety of topics. Also, 2021 was probably the first year in which I did not donate to Wikipedia.
    
    
        
      
 I would argue corporate shills keep some information confidential by removing specific things on Wikipedia. Arguably, they do this to protect cut-throat predators in powerful positions. Which is why these cut-throat predators have an artificially cleaner reputation at the expense of exploitable people arguably. I don't completely trust Wikipedia when it comes to information about politicians, rich people, famous celebrities, specific "philanthropists", etc. Ricky Gervais, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Graham Elwood, Lee Camp, Whitney Webb, George Carlin, Aaron Russo, and other people made me not trust Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia comes across as another way to put information online through rose-colored glasses to some extent for protecting people in powerful positions, such as the C.I.A. intelligence agents, by making confidential things nonexistent on public websites. People can claim I went down the rabbit hole all they want. But I know that the rise of Orwellian online surveillance, creepy phone verification systems, dehumanizing censorship, brainwashing social credit scores, decreasing human rights, increasing wealth inequality, cut-throat rulers, mental health issues from not being rich during this pandemic, and younger generations being less professionally skilled than older ones are happening internationally now. I find cut-throat rulers who have lots of money are keeping most people trapped during this pandemic via vaccine passports, not letting them renounce their citizenship, online surveillance, censorship, monopolizing the internet at the expense of online anonymity, not letting them be employees without coronavirus vaccinations despite negative side effects that killed some people or worsened their health significantly, forcing people into coronavirus quarantine needlessly that makes them financially threatened when they are getting unpaid while being quarantined, etc. From what I experienced, Wikipedia has favoritism of information that benefits the ruling class only. I would rather go to other online sources for truly investigative journalists that are not shills for oligarch-owned media companies.   
    
    
        
     I genuinely agree with you. People need to eat, and live comfortably and be able to afford things like medical care, a place to live safely etc.I also think the blanket of “all affiliates are bad” is a bit much. I love supporting people who just do a good job. SEO spam is not what I call a good job, it’s a sleazy exploitation of the average consumer. With that said, I have purchased many things based on what I consider honest good reviews who linked to affiliate programs and I do not regret this. I wish companies (Amazon for instance, as they’re rent biggest right now) simply policed their affiliate programs better to incentive good unbiased reviews sites that Specialize in high quality, and dropped the SEO spammers
    
    
        
     Three problems here.1. Skewed incentives. A company that buys "organic" product placement wants to show it in the best possible light, and increase sales. They don't need an impartial review, so the blogger has a hard time to produce one. 2. Fragility and failures. Affiliate links expire and don't get updated. Ads point at things no longer available. Ads spend an inordinate amount of resources on the viewer's machine. Targeting is inaccurate, despite incessant attempts to track and correlate users' profiles. 3. Direct payment is rarely an option! I personally would greatly appreciate an option to pay $1-2 and read an impartial review of something I'm planning to purchase. Maybe even $5-7 for expensive stuff. But there are very few places that offer this. Those that do try hard to peddle a yearly subscription. Also, it appears that I'm the minority, and the number of visitors willing to pay directly is too low to sustain the authors. I still hope that it's Patreon and direct support by consumers what the future looks like, not corporate sponsorship and ads.
    
    
        
     Right. We need direct payments to be an option. If someone is going to pay the reviewer, I'd rather it be me than the product manufacturer.But I also agree that I think we're in the minority, and that most people won't do direct payments. I think this is the reason for the aggressive push for yearly subscriptions, because they know that a) it's hard to get people to pull out their wallet for each transaction, and b) it's hard to get people to come back to spend money in future transactions. As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.
    
    
        
     &gt; As much as I want a general micropayments system, I know that even I will spend more cognitive effort than I should when deciding something like "will this article be worth 10 cents to me?" The difference between $0 and even $0.01 is emotionally very large.That’s my concern as well: I like the idea in theory but al increasingly thinking the reason past attempts have failed is that it’s more of a mirage than a stable alternative. Advertising has worked better for people with no money, people who disagree about what your content is worth, people who want to see before they pay, people who say they want to see before they pay but will cheat, people who don’t want to be constantly asked to make financial decisions, people who don’t want potential surprises of their kid/roommate/etc. uses their computer, etc. That’s definitely not saying that the status quo is great but it avoids a lot of failure modes which immediately become roadblocks if you’re asking people for money. This has real societal consequences, too: we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc. but those sites have paywalls while a lot of less principled journalism to outright propaganda is free. I really wish we had a more convincing story for how to support things like that but it’s still unclear whether we do.
    
    
        
     &gt;we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.Man I don't know about that. In some ways, yes I agree with you. But in other ways I can't. None of the major entities produces news and commentary from the labor point of view, for example. It's hard to get them to talk about media consolidation, news for profit, and a whole pile of other issues too, and it all boils down to a couple things: 1) AD driven models favor those who can buy the products and services pitched in the ADS 2) Conflicts of interest abound! The massive media consolidation we saw after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 really did a number on one of the basic dynamics we depend on, and that is many owners, many models, competition all tended to work as checks and balances. A small, indie house could run a labor story, or talk about Net Neutrality without having a conflict rooted in a big corporation not wanting to publish news and commentary that would impact it's bottom line in a negative way. Just one example. Today, we've got investigative journalism relegated to niche players who are doing good, often quite expensive work that isn't being seen due to suppression and a misinformation problem that is not easy or cheap to solve. Your point isn't invalid. I am saying it's more complicated than that.
    
    
        
     I don’t disagree that there’s a lot to improve. I was just thinking from the very minimal perspective of how often they knowingly run outright propaganda. None have a perfect track record (Iraq &amp; Judith Miller come to mind) but then I look at the outright fabrications people share on Facebook and that stuff is always free.This is an easy way to get depressed wondering whether we can successfully navigate a global news environment.
    
    
        
     It is depressing.Those sites run propaganda :( Access journalism, Iraq as you mention, Russiagate... There are other examples not hard to find. Kind of a mess really. When I was a kid, we had some class segments on news bias, and actually had to find and identify news and commentary, differentiate fact from opinion, and find pieces written from various points of view: labor, big business, left, right, etc... My own kids did not see any education of that kind. I did it. I suppose another angle might be clarity. There is a lot of low clarity "news" being put out there. Fact and opinion are not clearly, nor easily, differentiated. That's a problem, and a major feeder to Uncle Liberty posting on FB... I do feel competing with FB would be effective given some entity somewhere can get funded in a way that allows for a labor and or not pro-war point of view, and that's just as an example. Any meaningful differentiation that can contrast with the majors might work. On the upside, global is actually a benefit! One thing people can, and I suggest they actually do, is get news from abroad. There does remain some of the older dynamic between nations and their various news services. It's possible to get a diverse take on the US that way, and it's what I do personally.
    
    
        
     &gt; I am going to remind people that this happens because that's the internet (and world) we designed. we didn't design that - they did. I used the Internet in the 90s on my 56k modem and it was mostly ad-free. Stuff was still free, but mostly because people created content out of curiosity and because it was their hobby (yes, I had a website and was using frames and image maps heavily) or university sponsored (IRC, NNTP, Mailinglists). I paid 5$/month for a shell account, later shared the cost for a dedicated server with a couple of friends (we had a traffic limit of 50GB/month) to offer content and services to other people - expecting nothing in return. Then companies realized how much money was in, and suddenly all good, federated and free services were overrun by spam (mostly NNTP). To this day, companies like FB, Insta, Google etc. try to lure as many content-creators to users their "free" sites, while they actually pay with their data or the data of your content consumers - while the data is used to steal attention to show you ads for stuff you don't need. The amount of GDPR violations by those Megacorps is immense as they very well know that presenting a "reject all tracking" button as demanded by the GDPR ruins their business model (less than 10% actually agree to being tracked when presenting them the choice). My solution to all this is easy: Ban all advertising on the internet, or, at least advocate to as many people as possible to use adblockers. Only when ads are gone, will people spend money on products such as FB and Youtube, and only then can there be actually competition - because right now, you can't compete with "free" services with any other model than using ads+tracking yourself.
    
    
        
     &gt; People use AdBlock and don't want to leave tips, support Patreon etc for a blog. Good jobs are hard to find. Telling someone "Get a real job" is often not a viable solution for various reasons.&gt; If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this. Even if no one used ad blockers and tips were commonplace, we'd still have these problems with crap SEO and affiliate links. It's like with technology products: they say "if you aren't paying for it, you're the product not the customer," but even if you are paying for it you can still be the product (e.g. your TV manufacturer putting ads in your expensive TV's menus). Ultimately the problem is greed and the ridiculous degree of tolerance of it, unchecked by any cultural expectation of quality or virtue.
    
    
        
     I'm not going to say "quit your whining" but rather, maybe this isn't "the world we built", maybe it's "the way the world is". I know I've been guilty of thinking the later when I should think the former but really don't know what we'd change. Do you really think the internet would have flourished if it was pay per view (or similar solution)?I remember using online services in the 80s where they charged by the minute. CompuServe, GEnie, and even just my ISP when I first got internet in the 90s. Data of 1 but I know that gave me a "use it as little as possible" mindset. Further, if some groups set out to charge and some other groups offered "free with ads" I'm pretty confident "free with ads" would win (see Radio, TV, Podcasts as other examples of "free with ads"). So, short of outlawing free (which would likely never happen), I don't see how we'd have not gotten where we are at the moment. That isn't to say we can't do better now but I'm less confident we could have conscientiously directed ourselves to better. I think natural forces got us her and will take people experiencing better to get them to switch better. To put it another way, without tasting the "free with ads" kinda sucks, few would be willing to fork over $ for better.
    
    
        
     I personally do not like paywalls. I had Google ads. I discontinued them.For a long list of reasons, I want my writing to be freely available. I got my very first Amazon payout of like $16 or something a few months ago. I also got an email reminder that I am legally required to very prominently display information telling people I have Amazon links on my site. I took the links down and thought about updating my sites to comply with the requirement and so far haven't, in part because I suspect the $16 was from some local asshole unqualified for his job (the job I applied for) buying ugly bike racks and plopping them down in bad locations all over my lovely downtown area like little piles of manure as a daily reminder of how corrupt these people are, how much they have shafted me for no real damn reason other than pathos on their part and they are ruining the town I hope to improve. I was unable to readily find (affiliate) links to bike racks I would like to see in this town and I'm angry at what is being done to this town by these immoral, incompetent cretins and it causes me to think that I might actively encourage their shit behavior ruining this town because I'm so desperate for money that $16 on that day meant I could afford a fucking coffee which put an end to my splitting headache. I do not wish to make the world and town I live in a worse place because I'm so desperate for money and I think taking the Amazon solution potentially pushes me in that direction. Anyway, I don't know how to fix this. I try to tell people what it looks like from where I sit because I know HN has a lot of coders, etc and they aren't daily exposed to the reality that "If you choose to not be a sell out, you go hungry." basically. I just want my life to work. I don't actually want to make what sounds like "political" commentary to other people. If my life worked, I would likely be all "Meh. Not my problem. I don't want to fight with these fools and trying to point this out is not worth the drama. Moving on." But it does impact me. It impacts me to the point where I literally fear for my life due to my intractable poverty and sometimes I feel compelled to comment, though I don't really expect it to help me. Maybe after I am beyond help, people will stop wondering what's in it for DoreenMichele and think "She had a point. Let's find a solution that incorporates these observations." This is possibly rambly at this point. I'm posting it anyway and then will try to stay out of this conversation.
    
    
        
      
 Don't mistake "people using adblock" with "I don't have a valid business model". Adblock users are a minority among people browsing the internet.   
    
        
     &gt; If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this. The problem is that the sane alternative, where people can get fed while selling quality a-la-carte content directly to the reader, doesn't really exist. If one or more review sites would work to develop a good reputation, I'd be happy to spend a one-shot $3 or $5 on their (for example) wireless earbud reviews. But this thing basically doesn't exist (or at least I can't find it, because of all the aforementioned shit-quality search engine results). Someone upthread mentioned a German site that does this, but then someone replied saying their expertise is limited and their reviews in many product categories aren't that great. Then we have things like Consumer Reports in the US, but I've found the quality of their reviews to have declined over the past decade or so; I've read some of their free content for product categories where I'm already knowledgeable, and I've disagreed heartily with enough of their findings to be skeptical of them. When it comes to news and opinion pieces, I'd be fine paying on a per-article basis, but we have no established micropayments system, and I'm not paying $10-$20/mo for each of the 50 sites that come up in various news aggregators I read and have paywalls. There are a few sites and YouTube channels that I read/watch nearly daily, so I subscribe to their Patreon or periodically drop money in their donations bin. But the majority of the content I consume comes from various sources, from a list that changes nearly daily. &gt; Maybe we designed a shitty system with bad incentives  Who is the "we" here, though? I would love to change this, but I feel pretty powerless to do so. At least not without making it my life's work, with a very high chance of failing at it regardless.
    
    
        
     Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.Support Patreon or similar. Leave tips. One of my first big successes on HN got 60k pageviews and made me not one thin dime. No one left a tip. No one supported my Patreon. I have been writing for years because I am seriously medically handicapped but educated. Writing is something I can do. People don't want to hire me for resume work or other freelance writing. I'm a woman and former homemaker and most successful business people are men. They rarely want to talk to me about my work or how to succeed. Most often, if men try to talk to me, they are hoping for a romantic connection and from my end the experience boils down "All you horrible people are watching me starve but you think I will sleep with you??? Seriously?!!!!" Leave tips (or support Patreon or similar). Tell people you leave tips on sites with good writing. Promote the various means people can accept cash for their online writing. I don't know what else to tell you. But saying you can't make a difference because you are a nobody is part of the problem. You don't have to save the world. Just buy a writer lunch or a cup of coffee, so to speak. Spread the word.
    
    
    
    
        
     A while back, I put a little in my budget for small projects. Some are software, others are writing, whatever.It's not much, but I know very well it all adds up, and maybe a little positive energy plays out for you too. What I did was quit buying my coffee. :D And that worked out!! I have a little percolator, which I love when camping or something. That thing makes the best damn coffee. For the quickie at home, this is corny, but I got an Aeropress and it also makes a fantastic and kind of fun cup of coffee.
    
    
        
     &gt; Let people know that you are willing to pay for good writing online without a paywall.Or easier, adhere to the GDPR (at least in the EU) and provide a "reject all non-essential" button as demanded right next to "accept all" without any dark patterns, and their ad-business plummet and you have to demand payment for the service to be sustainable. So my point is, the whole thing can be fixed if Megacorps would abide by the law, and law enforcement would also not take &gt;5 years to act on violation lawsuits (see noyb's lawsuits against FB which are going on 8 years and even date prior to the GDPR).
    
    
        
     I've been fooling you--kinda for years, but I'm hellbanned. I'll post this anyway.In all honesty, I haven't found a writer, or journalist, I'm giving any money to besides a few honest non-profits. (And yes it's hard to find a honest 501c3.) I feel you should put the affiliate links on your writing. It's not selling out. It's selling out when you have good income, security, and a home. I don't have any problems with average people putting up affiliate links, or ads. It's the wealthy boys who can never get enough monetary praise I have a problem with.
    
    
        
     &gt;If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.People don't/can't pay for things anymore because trillions of dollars have been siphoned out of the holdings of the middle and working classes over the past 50 years. If not for piracy and subscription services, the music and film industries would have collapsed years ago. If you made people pay for the things they used to, they... wouldn't. Because they can't.
    
    
    
        
     For my entire life I've tried to become a programmer, went as far as studying CS for three years, never managed to get a diploma as I ran into some financial and health issues... you mention&gt; I know no one actually wants to hear that. But I think that's the actual root cause of this stuff and you won't fix it if you don't address those issues. I think the real issue, is, the world is much bigger than the first world countries. I would love to have a diploma, to get a "real" job as a programmer for some random company, to add that "value" to the internet, to design useful software for actual people, etc. etc. But I was born in Eastern Europe.. I tried freelancing a few times through gac, rac, and scriptlance which later got "globalized" (all acquired and killed by freelancer.com, yay capitalism).. and I just can't compete with indians on that site, way too many of them, somehow quoting 5% of the price promising double or triple of what I can do somehow... So I tried looking for that "Real" job, except I was born ugly as hell with broken teeth, so nobody would even take me seriously. Even one of my professors in uni told me once: "See.. if you could do less drugs and study more, I bet you could get an A, it's a B- for now..".. I never even tried drugs, but apparently I'm so ugly half my profs thought I was drugged. As far as I can tell, It's just nepotism right and left, people only hiring other pretty-looking-people-alike for both normal and startup-like jobs where I come from. Zero chance for me. So on the brink of giving up on everything, I took a construction job for 6 months, which allowed me to save enough money for a plane ticked and my first month of rent in UK. Now I'm a Reach Truck driver in a warehouse.. making &gt;triple the salary I could make as a programmer in my home country, but slowly destroying my back and knees every d day. Funnily enough, I've met quite a few programmers, lawyers, accountants, pharmacists and even a surgeon through my warehouse jobs in the last two years. Quite smart people, a few broken teeth here and there, a couple disfigured faces, husbands, kids, sick family, plenty stuff... The internet is just bullshit, just like most of this society. Making money, jobs, starvation, HA! I don't even know what I'm trying anymore or why I still keep reading on this site. Sorry for the rambling, your message just resonated somehow for me so I felt I should say something. Good luck to you!
    
    
        
     I'm sorry the world treated you the way it did. We've set up a quite harshly unforgiving environment that in many ways impoverishes our souls in similar ways the harsh elements of the physical world impoverished our bodies before the rise of civilization.If you have studied that much CS, then you likely have fulfilled many of the ACM recommended curricula [1] for at least an associates degree if not more. If that is true, then you have some options. Do not discount your dual fluency in English and your mother tongue. There is no shame in taking a good small-scale Internet business idea implemented in the Anglosphere and reproducing it in your mother tongue. There are numerous tiny ideas mentioned in comments here on HN that bring in modest sums, but fill a niche unlikely to have already been implemented in your home country. If it is enough to pay for a laptop upgrade once every 3-5 years, and maybe some beer money, then that's as good a start as any. Bonus points if you find a Net-based business opportunity that also leverages your current UK geographic location. Lift weights, eat right, sleep enough, and take good care of your body in the meantime, those warehouse jobs are no joke, and you are ahead of the pack by already recognizing that. If I was single, living alone, young, and working a warehouse job while working on my coding, then I'd abandon all real estate-oriented shelter, stealth vandwell, and digital nomad between free WiFi hotspots for my connection to free-tier cloud resources (CLI and tmux for the win on high-latency, low-bandwidth connections); rent-to-wage ratios are completely insane in developed nations' urban, suburban and exurban areas. Stay out of the rentier trap. Trying to rent a room cost me a few years of unnecessary toil when I started out that contributed nothing towards my advancement, when for all practical purposes, I lived out of my car with the hours I was spending at a part-time job, on campus classrooms, labs, and libraries, napping in my car, and about every other day crashing back in my rented room that really was more a storage shed than used as an apartment. If I had a stealth van and student gym membership back then, then I would have been better off, but I was too stupidly proud to do that ("gasp, I'll be homeless!" was a complete red herring). [1] https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations
    
    
        
      
 You can raise funds for a software project as a pseudonymous founder these days, if you can explain your ideas clearly or can put together an MVP. That might help with the "other people judging by appearance" problem.   
    
        
     After reading your comment, I visited your page and glanced around. Am I right in interpreting your specialty is coming up with how to turn a better phrase (writing)?If so, then that's a very underappreciated domain at this time (much to our detriment, but that's for a different discussion). Not just in tech, but everywhere. The entire field has been aggressively monetized to near extinction; whatever writing doesn't directly impact revenue/profits, gets dumped onto line workers. And the results show. The quality of writing and lucid ideas found in advertisements and landing pages is markedly higher than from say, in a somewhat-technical presentation to managers-of-managers. I've sat through more than a few quite underwhelming presentations that violated some of the most basic principles of presenting ("don't mumble hoping the slide will carry the presentation", "don't read the slide word-for-word", etc.). There is a dearth of assistance for coaches to help improve those kinds of "writing". And a huge number of aspiring, gung-ho FAANG employees who are wondering why management won't listen to them. There's a gap to be filled here, and people with the disposable income to pay for outcomes. Leverage your non-technical sphere as a strength (I liked your pull request journey, it is true that coders don't normally perceive and accommodate skill stratifications in our docs, a byproduct of the monetization of writing that killed too many technical writing/librarian positions in our industry). Perhaps look into positioning the writing assistance you offer to technical staff as a way to communicate to non-technical managers, where you help translate the technical concepts that have to be broken down to you due to your non-technical background, into ideas the managers readily grasp. It would help if you retained a lot of the corporate-speak that Rands in Repose sometimes writes about that you doubtless saw in your Aflac stint, and knew when to judiciously use it. Maybe investigate some offer like helping coders write emails to managers. If that gains traction, offer small-medium-large presentation improvement coaching, based upon the length of the presentation (15, 30, 60 minutes). Where shorter lengths increase in cost. Then if that gains traction, offer coaching linked to an annual performance goal of "improve communicating with managers".
    
    
        
     I agree with you. I think Google works very well. People expect to go on Google, pay nothing, and get good information. So industries have arisen that do just that. I find it amazing that I can type obscure questions into Google and get content custom crafted to answer my question.Often the answers are not the best. What can I expect? I paid nothing for them! When I want good information, I pay for it.
    
    
    
        
      
 Both. It works very well for what it is. Considering that I paid absolutely nothing for it, it's great.   
    
        
     Most SEO spam I've seen lately looks like it's produced by neural networks and maybe curated by people afterwards.Have you tried making some content available only to subscribers?
    
    
        
      
 Even if you use patreon, people get greedy and eventually will sell out and put up reviews of stuff for affiliate links, free products for reviews, etc.   
    
        
      
 You can't even search for GitHub issues anymore. You'll get some mirrored site that has the discussion, and from that webpage, you can't even get a direct link back to GitHub.   
    
        
     Github issue clones and StackOverflow clones pretty much dominate most of my programming related search results these days.Unfortunately DDG isn't much better. It takes a lot of effort to finesse a search query such that I can get a good result, like a link to documentation or a personal website where someone wrote something up (which is often more thoughtful than what Medium and Dev.to offer).
    
    
        
      
 At this point google is a shortcut to documentation. I look for the first link that looks like a readthedocs page. You could even short-circuit this and bookmark the documentation for the tool you want. It's going "backwards" in a sense but learning to read a manual well can be quicker than letting google think for you.   
    
    
        
     This surprises me because it's a major problem for me, particularly for GitHub. I end up doing this for clones that don't even link back to the orginal:1. Search for something
 2. See the cloned issue but no results for the original
 3. Copy some unique-looking text from the clone
 4. Search the repo directly for that text It's awful. Seems to be a very recent problem? Maybe the last few months?
    
    
    
    
        
      
 It might be a function of your programming niche, but is it possible that you just didn't realize you were looking at a clone? These sites are everywhere.   
    
        
      
 It's a portion of the content that's cloned: the question and subsequent answers or discussion. The styling is usually totally different, even the page structure is different, to the point that I don't realize I'm looking at a clone unless I recognize the copy from a specific github or stackoverflow page that I had looked at previously in my search session.   
    
    
        
     I run https://github-wiki-see.page. Please read the about page link at the bottom or visit https://github-wiki-see.page for an explanation. I put it up after realizing my GitHub wiki contributions weren't available via Google.GitHub blocks https://github.com/entropia/tip-toi-reveng/wiki/Languages and many other wikis from being indexed. In the case of the page you linked, GitHub serves the content with "X-Robots-Tag: none". The content of that page currently does not exist in Google at all. You can see the robot blocking header by looking at the Network tab in Chrome while loading the page in incognito mode or equivalent in other browsers. As for having no link to GitHub, my service provides a huge button at the top and a direct URL to the original content. Please use those controls at the top to get to the content on GitHub. I do not selectively redirect to not trip cloaking detection or automatically redirect which risks the indexing helper being classified as a redirect in search engines. If you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know.
    
    
        
     From https://github-wiki-see.page/ GitHub Wiki Search Engine Enablement (GHWSEE) allows non-indexed GitHub Wikis to be indexed by search engines. This site will be decommissioned to redirect old links once the block is lifted or GitHub produces some other solution to index GitHub Wikis in harmony with their SEO concerns. I do not see any wrongdoing from github-wiki-see.page here. They don't even amke money from it. Quite contrary, I do think that this is a useful project.
    
    
        
      
 Hah, yeah I don't make any money from it. I think I'm like currently $300 in the hole from experiments and queries with it until I had settled on the current ramen architecture.   
    
    
        
      
 Just cheap, low cost hosting. I didn't expect the tool to take off so I was just hosting it on Cloud Run. I host it on fly.io now.   
    
        
     That might be fixable, if people want to expend the effort. Wiki pages are almost certainly copyrightable, so the owners could send DMCA takedown notices to github-wiki-see.page. If they're not responsive, send the DMCA notices to Google, which should be required to delist them. Unfortunately you have to do it on a URL-by-URL basis, and you can only send notices for pages you actually own copyright for, so it would mean a big coordinated effort to get them brought down.I just don't understand why Google themselves allows this and doesn't rank these sorts of sites lower. They're clearly garbage sites with low utility.
    
    
        
     Please read my explanation at http://github-wiki-see.page/ and observe why it exists. I believe it to be a site with extremely high utility.It has already recently convinced/defrosted GitHub to gradually change their policy to not let GitHub wiki pages be indexed since 2012. For at least 9 years, people were writing content into GitHub and not realizing it wasn't indexed at all. I'm happy to answer any questions or suggestions you have.
    
    
        
      
 I also do not host the content at all. That said, people have submitted outdated content requests if they move off GitHub Wikis to Google and they are honored.   
    
        
     Google puts substantial effort into identifying copycat content. The main way they do that is to see which site had the content first.Unfortunately with smaller sites, it could be a few days till their search bot finds the content, and often the copycat sites have agressive scrapers so appear to have the content first. From googles point of view, the copycat is the original, and the original is the copycat. There are also some kinds of copycat content which users actually prefer. For example, sites which bypass paywalls, sites which quote other sites, sites that display decrapified content from another site, etc.
    
    
        
     In the case of http://github-wiki-see.page/, the original isn't even on Google! That's why my copycat wins.FWIW, GitHub seems to be letting some Wikis be indexed on a test basis and I am very happy to see they are outranking GHWSEE. That said, with the current guessed criteria, there are still many publicly editable wikis with many stars and publically un-editable wikis on repos with few stars but useful information out there that aren't being indexed.
    
    
    
    
        
     yeah, had this experience myself while purchasing holiday gifts. amusingly, it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.it's funny because internet shopping became popular in the face of salespeople becoming corrupt under commission and performance schemes, now a big part of the commerce related internet is worse for pretty much the same reasons.
    
    
        
     &gt; it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.I still remember being in Best Buy and hearing the salespeople scamming less knowledgeable customers about how much computer they need or how important expensive cables are. I don't think there was ever a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".
    
    
        
      
 There was a time - the smaller the store the better. I agree big box stores were rarely good. But Radio Shack had excellent, helpful employees. Probably because RS vetted their employees carefully and paid pretty well (I know this from trying and failing to get a job there when I was around 16 years old).   
    
        
     I worked at Radio Shack. They had an extensive training program that all employees went through. There were multiple 50-page manuals for each product category. This meant training in A/V equipment and how to hook up TVs (which splitters and switches did what, how to wire many different audio setups, how VCR outputs worked, telephony equipment, pagers and Blackberries... etc.)We had to go through all the certifications within something like six weeks of hire in order to be eligible for pay bumps and promotions. This even meant training on circuit components (at least knowing what they were, and how they were organized). Any Radio Shack clerk that wasn't completely green went through this training, so we all knew our stuff. One of the cool things about the job was getting to talk to "elder geeks" that would come in for components. One guy I helped had set up an old IBM 360 mainframe in his garage. The university he worked at didn't want it any more. He used it for messing around with assembly and as a space heater. It was still a retail job, but it was better than most for a tech-head like me. I would've been flipping burgers or selling shoes (Payless was next door), so Radio Shack was a better stepping stone for me. It did nothing for getting me into a programming career, but it was a stop-gap to get there.
    
    
        
     I worked at radio shack. We didn't have certification program but you are forced to learn quickly.It was less about selling and more about people walking in knowing what they wanted or wanting to browse around and once in awhile someone with a problem that you had to piece together components to help. It was unlike other electronic stores I worked. You had to understand how invertors worked, rc cars and sell computers while trying to maintain an 80% names/address recorded. You did sell. You entire got paid minimum wage or a % of what you earned for a two week period. 4% for name brand stuff 10% for store brand. My first two week period I sold computer after computer got highest sales in the district. For the next month or longer the minimum. Replacing the computer inventory took forever and I wasn't as good selling all of their other products. Great fun learning experience.
    
    
        
     As far back as the 01990s my memories of Radio Shack are:1. The only place around where you could go to buy a breadboard, or a transistor, or a resistor, or a headphone cable connector. Component selection unparalleled in the places where I lived. I don't want to exaggerate --- they had maybe ten kinds of transistors, not a hundred like Fry's, but I didn't live within 1000 km of a Fry's. And certainly not forty thousand like Digi-Key has today. 2. Salespeople who apparently didn't know anything but tried to get my phone number (!?) and, later, sell me cellphones. And cellphone plans. Jesus. 3. Stuff for makers getting gradually crowded out by worthless goods for mere consumers, stuff I could have bought at Best Buy or Sears if I wanted it. Things like TVs, VCRs, pagers, and Blackberries. I still use a store-brand Radio Shack multimeter sometimes, and in the 01980s a lot of my early years of programming were on store-brand Radio Shack computers in my day care and elementary schools, both TRS-80 Model III and the CoCo.
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Thank you for the correction. We currently think heat death is around 10^3247 years, so we're back to Lisp bignum to express years. Might be a corollary to Greenspun's tenth rule: any sufficiently optimistic date package contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of Common Lisp bignum?   
    
    
    
        
     It wasn't really a golden era.Small local camera stores didn't carry much and were expensive. They tended to recommend something that they had in stock. Was still a pretty regular customer though because mail order wasn't as developed and you couldn't easily showroom gear locally. And Radio Shack was certainly convenient for cables etc. and had often knowledgable employees. But most of the actual stereo equipment and other gear they carried just wasn't very good.
    
    
        
      
 While not perfect, it was often good enough. Go in, see 6 cameras in three price ranges, choose the one fitting the best for the price you're willing to pay, then walk home happy. Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase.   
    
        
      &gt; Now there's sooo much choice, and most of us end up trying to find the perfect purchase. The challenge I have now in most product categories is filtering out the sewage-offerings from the genuine values. I don't mind lots of choice if presented with an adequate McMaster-Carr type information-oriented UI (as opposed to the ad-friendly UI's we suffer through these days). I mind when most of the choices are dumpster fire quality, and I have no way to filter them out.
    
    
        
     The (somewhat disputed) thesis of the paradox of choice.But I don't really disagree especially for relatively commodity purchases. Yes, I actually looked up a spray nozzle for a hose on Wirecutter. But would I have been perfectly fine just walking into Home Depot and grabbing one? Probably. That said. I'm probably better off researching thins like dishwashers rather than walking into a store (then or now) and picking one that catches my eye or that the salesperson recommends. But you can certainly get into analysis-paralysis with any number of things from travel to cameras. And you're often better off just shutting the analysis down at some point.
    
    
    
        
      
 Ah best buy sales incentives. It reminds of the time I watched a salesman force the wrong case on an old lady's iPad, cracking the screen, and then blaming her for it.   
    
        
      
 My favorite line was some salesperson saying "you wouldn't want to connect a $2k tv with a cheap cable!". It certainly made me laugh.   
    
        
      
 The folks at Frys (particularly in hardware) were a useful resource (and good source of shop talk) all the way up until Fry's faded into irrelevance. They helped me sort through a good number of hardware-related issues   
    
        
      
 Micro Center staff still are like this, and that's much more than anything else why I buy whatever I can from them before looking anywhere else. I want them to stay in business, because otherwise I have to do my own research every time, and who has the time for that? - well, this, and also because I just delight in being still able to walk into one brick-and-mortar store where I know for sure I won't have wasted the trip.   
    
        
     We kid and joke about expensive cables, but we're at a point where it's become true. It's hit or miss buying USB cables. For fast-charging as an example (double-trouble if you don't have a quality or compatible charger to pair it with). Likewise for USB transfer rates (e.g. for the Oculus Quest that I was not planning on testing with 10 different 5m USB cables to see which worked).Same goes for the connectors. All the IEEE and ISO standards out there in the world and the damn USB plugs stick out half the time (nevermind the Chinese-made ones I had that were 1.5x the normal length). In other instances 3.5mm jacks don't stay in or something or other becomes loose. And trying to find reviews or info about this online, or filtering it out to some level on purchase sites like Amazon is...tiring.
    
    
        
      
 At least that was better than Fry’s or Home Depot, where salespeople actively walk away when they see you approaching, and have zero knowledge of what is even carried by the place they work. After a while I figured out that it’s better to just look myself on the shelves and endcaps vs trying to ask anything of the sales drones. Kinda like a physical Amazon. I’m sad that they’re out of business now, and with no more MicroCenter left in the Bay Area, the choices are now basically Amazon, eBay, or small online shops (if Central Computer and Halted, now closed as they sold to Excess Solutions @ 1555 S, 7th St. San Jose, CA 95112 don’t have what I’m after).   
    
        
      
 Odd, I’ve never had much trouble at Home Depot or Lowe’s getting an employee to help me find something. Usually they at least know where things are even if they couldn’t tell you how to use or install said item.   
    
    
        
      
 As much as I love Microcenter, even there I've had a salesman give me uninformed advice, throw his bar code sticker on the thing he told me to get, and walk away.   
    
        
     So don't talk to that guy again. The others should be fine, unless your local store happens to have a lousy GM.Initially I dealt with this concern by benchmarking the advice I got on a topic I do know a lot about. I haven't worried about that in a while; at least in the Towson store, the quality of advice and discussion has been such that the next time they steer me wrong will be the first.
    
    
        
      
 I was recently in a Best Buy and overheard an employee explain the difference between a Pixel 6 and a 6 Pro as, "EVERYTHING is better". I had personally just compared the two side-by-side and concluded that the pro's only material differences were more RAM, worse build quality due to the curved screen edges, and the addition of a telephoto camera.   
    
        
     &gt; a time when you could trust electronics store salespeople to sell you "the right stuff for you".Remember RadioShack?
    
    
        
     Rose colored glasses. Workers in stores were the original "affiliate marketers", in a lot of stores (especially electronic ones) workers were/are being paid to push the most expensive products.Then when you try to pay, you get upsold warranties.
    
    
        
     Actually it would make more sense for them to push the highest margin products. This could quite often be lower cost or in-house brands since prestige brands can dictate lower margins to the retailer.Agree sales guys pushing warranties is a real pain but I'm almost nostalgic for it compared to dodging Prime sign-up every time and other online anti-patterns.
    
    
        
     Guessing Migrine’s?
Probably easier to search FL-41 glasses.I like my axon brand, very helpful.
    
    
        
     &gt;it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.Uhhh, you can still do that, you know.
    
    
        
      
 With all this lamentation about electronics stores of years past, nothing will compare to the malicious incompetence of car dealerships and service departments. Their business model these days is “if we all keep behaving badly together, consumers will have no choice but to accept our lies, markups, and chicanery”. The dealer groups paying politicians through campaign contributions to allow them to block manufacturer-direct sales (look up how you can’t buy a Tesla in Michigan, home of The Motor City, for example) is just the cherry on top.   
    
        
     Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to do - even worse then doing my taxes. I will avoid it at all costs.Current vehicle is coming up on 10 years old, hoping to get another 10 out of it - not because I can't afford a new one (I can), but because I feel like I have to take a shower every time I walk out of a car dealer.
    
    
        
     LOL, I spent a number of years working with some very adept sales people. I was in a supporting role, but learned a ton.For a while, I was buying cars for people because they hated it. I would save them a ton, and get a nice spiff for each one. What I did was work through their whole process and then work them, usually getting out of there at invoice plus a few percent. Average deal took 4 to 6 hours. And the work would involve a dry run purchase somewhere other than where the target buy would happen. Sometimes a second one just find where the pivot points are and what it takes to swing them in buyers favor. Started the whole thing on a new Expedition purchase in the '00s. It worked well, the MSRP was something like $45K, and I got the rig for $32K and some change. Not all the deals were that dramatic. Depended on the target car and time of year, but there was always mid to high 4 figures that could come out of the deal. I've never purchased a new car for myself since. And I quit doing it for others a few years in. The whole thing is generally terrible. While it was a sort of sport, fine! Game on. But it got soul draining very quickly. Many dealers have responded with a hard line, "no bullshit" kind of approach, being willing to push people away and just take the ones who will pay and appreciate a smooth transaction. And those people will just pay more and just don't generally care. And no judgement. That's worth... about mid to high 4 figures apparently. Right now? No way. Sellers have all the advantages, and even better used car deals are crazy due to the shortages and the impact all that has on car pricing. Could not imagine attempting it again today. Would be a mess, and probably would get told to pound sand. Look at the Ford dealers putting the squeeze on people who pre-ordered the EV F150! Pay an extra $30k right now, or continue to wait for it... Brutal.
    
    
        
     &gt; Buying a new car is one of my absolutely least favorite things to doIt's still annoying, but do it online and have your own financing. Most dealerships are stupid, but a couple have figured out that if they offer a reasonable price online they can move cars with very little touch. Having your own financing prevents idiocy from when you walk into the dealership to sign the paperwork. Unless the dealer has something special, you're never going to do better than your own financing. Do be aware, buying a car right now is simply totally apeshit. Until the supply and demand equilibrate, things are going to be weird.
    
    
        
      
 Yeah right. Two days ago I go into our local electrical goods store. I would like a USB-C to HDMI adaptor, I say. Sales guy looks around, scratches his nut. Sorry don't have one he says. Then he wanders off. I turn around and see one on the shelf. The price is double what you can get online. I tell him this. He shrugs and scratches his other nut and wanders off again. I walk out.   
    
        
      
 Yeah, I went into a Home Depot store that wasn't my regular location a couple weeks back looking for dowel rods. Trying to speed up my trip I asked two different employees on my way to the general area of the store which specific aisle they would be on. Neither of them even knew what a dowel rod was, let alone what aisle it might be on, and obviously neither of them would be qualified to proactively try to help avoid the ones with knots or badly angled grain. It's not just that sales staff are ignorant nowadays, it's that the job itself has practically vanished.   
    
        
      
 On that very topic, I saw a customer ask an employee manning the wood cutting station at a Home Depot if he could cut a dowel rod in half. The employee didn't know if it was possible because it was "round." I think they realized they can get away with just not training their employees.   
    
        
      
 Cutting round things in a saw can be dangerous if they aren't clamped correctly: they can spin. (Don't know of a link, this was taught to me at community college in the context of cutting round metal stock in a band saw.)   
    
        
     I mean, yeah? Train the staff on how to clamp correctly?I would expect all cuts to be fully clamped in a store.
    
    
        
      
 Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience. It's possible that there are just less people with that experience, that also want to work at a store like Home Depot.   
    
        
     &gt;&gt;Did Home Depot ever teach their employees that kind of stuff? I always assumed they hired people with previous knowledge/experience.I think they used to hire people with industry experience - i.e. semi-retired or retired plumbers, electricians, carpenters handymen etc and that worked pretty well coming of the 2008 RE meltdown and economic mess at that time - but now any halfway qualified tradesperson can make close to or more than a six figure salary - so working at HD for $15/hr doesn't seem all that attractive anymore. I don't even try to ask the employees any actual 'technical' questions - I am happy if they can just point me to the correct aisle to find what I need these days.
    
    
        
      
 In that specific situation there’s likely training because operating a saw can be dangerous and incurs liability, not because Home Depot wants to impart knowledge to customers.   
    
        
      
 With Home Depot/Lowes the employee (or you) can look up on the item on the web site and it will show you the row/bay its located in. Dont be surprised when you see staff know even less about where things are located.   
    
        
     The good news is that there isn't enough volume to justify the corruption of the salesperson, so he is often more honest nowadays.The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.
    
    
        
     &gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.Is that a "nowadays" thing though? At least in my location, the reason a lot of us flocked to the online option was the diversity of options available. Physical stores (for understandable reasons) stocked only the few top-selling options, knew about a few other options enough to say "no we haven't got that", and anything else would get a blank stare and a "is that a company's name?" If you had put effort into your search and optimized the selection for your specific needs, you were much more likely to find the product online - the physical stores often forced you into a choice between different suboptimal products.
    
    
        
     &gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadaysThey never did, you just didn't realize they didn't before the internet exposed you to the options.
    
    
        
      
 I think there’s lots of factors going on here too. Products were less often considered disposable two or three generations ago. A manufacturer wouldn’t offer 6 versions of nearly the same thing to capture all price points. Things used to be predominantly manufactured by hand, which also meant they were inspectable and repairable by hand. Manufacturing businesses typically kept less products on the market for longer periods (model numbers have become quarterly iterations or specific to a retailer). There’s now 50 options that appear identical for nearly every product when previously there might have been 5. It all contributes to it being difficult for staff to meaningfully “know” what’s being sold even if they wanted to, and businesses aren’t going to spend that time and money training employees on a product they won’t be selling in a month.   
    
    
    
        
     &gt; The bad news is that physical stores simply do not carry any diversity nowadays, so their knowledge is irrelevant.yes, that is why i was shopping online.
    
    
        
      
 Salespeople nowadays are basically recruited from the same pool as Uber Eats delivery people. They don't care about what they sell, they just want to make it to the end of the month.   
    
        
     For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?Knowledgable retail sales employees have completely vanished outside of niche "passionate enthusiast turned their hobby into a business". Homebrew shops, gun stores, marijuana dispensaries, comic and table top gaming stores, etc, but even many of those are plagued with the same cheap shit you can find on Alibaba or Amazon and a good chunk of the time if it's not the business owner you're dealing with you might as well skip asking questions. Outside of those niche interest stores there's often not even sales staff present, there are just people who stock shelves and operate the point of sale system but they don't even attempt to present themselves as knowledgable and can at best only point you to the right aisle of the store.
    
    
        
     &gt; For the most part, why would I trust random employees at a store?Don't trust. Ask questions. If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.
    
    
        
     At this point in my life I've mostly given up asking employees questions. There's only "fishy" answers to be had in retail and there's not generally a competing store with more knowledgable employees. It seems like most of the time I can choose between bad and another brand of bad. Think Hobby Lobby vs. Michaels or Home Depot vs Lowes, Target vs. WalMart, Sams vs. Costco, Macy's vs. Dillards, Dicks vs. Academy Sports, a Ford dealer vs. a Toyota dealer, or worse they've consolidated operations like Bass Pro vs. Cabelas. There might be reasons to choose one over the other for reasons like employee welfare and return policies, but typically prices are all in line with each other and the retail staff are equally useless.There's only a couple of nationwide exceptions that come to mind like REI and Microcenter but even then people might have to travel prohibitive distances to have those options and they might as well just buy online. Small regional stores and mom n' pop operations trend towards having more passionate employees that might have an interest in the products (like a ski shop is generally only staffed by people who've at skied, bike shops tend to only be staffed by people who enjoy cycling, etc) but it's still pretty infrequent.
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; If the answers seem fishy, take your business somewhere else.If you know enough to know whether or not the answers you might get are fishy, you probably already know more than the guy you are trying to get advice from.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Arguably, small mom &amp; pop shops already started dying in large numbers when big box stores started taking over, and online shopping is continuing the small shop’s march to extinction. Globalization of commerce has only added to the margin pressures. Add a global pandemic for good measure, and it’s been a brutal few decades for small shops in increasingly many parts of the world.   
    
        
      
 Yeah but it is not a good experience, except for a few types of products. I needed a car jump starter so I tried going to AutoZone instead of Amazon. The only one AutoZone had was 3x what I could find on Amazon.   
    
        
     Most auto parts stores are terrible places these days with low quality parts at high prices, and staff that are just competent enough to check out your items.It used to be (20-25 years ago) you could go in tell them what you were doing and they could tell you which brands to avoid, what other parts you might need, and any secrets that might help you get the job done faster or without having to remove quite as much stuff. These days, the people they hire are so incompetent if you asked them for Headlight Fluid they would take you over to the fluids aisle to look for it.
    
    
    
        
     Name one (chain) store you can go in and ask employees about the product and get a competent answer?Retail is just about pushing a product these days. The moment they can fire the staff and still have a brick and mortar store they will.
    
    
        
      
 I've had great success with the Gooloo jump starter. It has saved me from grief many times, most recently when I left the headlights on.   
    
        
      
 The Noco ones are decent, but the Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry is the only thing approaching a BIFL (buy it for life) quality jump starter that I’m aware of. User-replaceable sealed lead acid battery like a quality UPS (which if you’re looking, grab an Eaton 5PX off eBay for a couple hundred bucks shipped…my 3 have outlasted half a dozen consumer APC junk units).   
    
        
      
 Lead acid batteries self-destruct after they've been left to discharge. Not something you want to keep in a trunk or store at home unplugged. The lithium jump starters have much more dependable passive storage life.   
    
        
     &gt; it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you.When you use Google you are walking into their shop. That salesperson is very knowlegeable, but about you.
    
    
    
        
     "it made me pine for the days when you could walk into a shop and a knowledgeable salesperson would ask you a few questions and pick the right stuff for you."THAT is retail. The craptastic experiment we see these days, online and in meatspace are scams masquerading as retail. I miss Sears.
    
    
        
     The challenge has been to monetize that experience. I wonder if either an explicit membership model to access advice or a sales advice Uber service that rates both sales person and customer to assist with improving sales transaction communication, can be one part of a solution to preserve the immediacy of brick and mortar. I doubt it; there is likely more value to identifying those items that consumers will buy without waiting for delivery, more emergency-type purchases, marking them up to the limit, abandoning all other products to online ordering, and optimize brick and mortar floor space to cater exclusively to those need-right-now purchases.And even that might not last long. Warehouse demand is exploding across the world right now. We're in the midst of a massive commerce transformation where there are a lot of giants racing to establish JIT delivery footprints in the most high-margin MSA's containing 80% of every nation's population. It won't be long before we're in a Stephenson'ian Snow Crash-esque world where we're getting an ML-computed 80% of goods everyone orders within 30 minutes, 15% of goods in 4 hours, 4% of goods in a day, and the remaining 1% in five days. Once that happens, I would be surprised to see supermarkets or even small groceries outside of very niche segments like ethnic and farmer's markets, or hyper niche high-end shops like butchers specializing in rare quality cuts, exist in brick and mortar form, unless you go to where 20% of the population lives in low-density areas not served by these logistical nets.
    
    
    
        
     Same experience here. Researching high-quality products on Google is very frustrating:- Results 1-3 are ads - Results 3-5 are blogs that get sponsored - Results 5-10 are full of astroturfed user reviews Finding trustworthy and consistent information is so hard that I mostly rely on Reddit for product research. There is a subreddit for literally every product category, and posting a request with your requirements takes much less time than cutting through all the noise on Google. To make this whole mess a better experience, I'm now working on my own startup that tries to solve these issues.
    
    
        
      
 In the end search is about relevancy. Trustworthiness of a blog or article is hard to discern by machines. The blogs likely rank high because of relevancy as well as clicks. Sponsored doesnt always mean that the reviews are biased. Reviews on reddit aren’t exactly trustworthy too - there are always going to be competing arguments and reviews for a product, you just have to use your own judgment which plays into your personality, risk tolerance etc.   
    
        
      
 Indeed but as to the linked thread's point, it's an opportunity for a startup to come in. A startup which could tackle the quality problem not just relevancy.   
    
    
        
     Here is what we do:- Let the community vote on the most trusted sources - Include results from enthusiasts that have little incentive to write biased reviews (Reddit, HN, expert forums) - Look at the ownership of the site and how transparent they are about it - Regularly reassess these criteria Curious to hear your thoughts on this.
    
    
        
      
 YouTube's latest brilliant "innovation" to hide the dislike count made this problem so much worse too. When e.g. trying to make a purchase decision, you can't quickly skim through a bunch of search results any longer. Instead you are forced to sit through so much bad content that you could've previously avoided. Maybe that was their real motivation too – to boost some watchtime metrics.   
    
        
      
 Even before that, I hate hate HATE how they don't have a way to say "don't ever display this channel in search results". So much spam.   
    
    
        
      
 B-b-b-b-b-but I've been told that some people don't look at likes/dislikes and that makes it ok! Oh well, I'm sure some product manager got their raise for removing such a useless feature   
    
        
     I am in the exact same quagmire trying to research water softeners and drinking water (RO) systems. I am having to pull fragments of information from many different sites / videos and having to discard large amounts of contradictory and misleading information.At this point, I’ve had to resort to reading scientific papers on how some of these technologies work (and how some don’t work) just to avoid the bad information. Unfortunately, the more I research the farther I get from making a purchase. This is not where I want to be, however, since the water in my area is very hard and everything gets scaled up all the time. I’m looking to purchase an espresso machine to get into the hobby but I’m not going to drop the money in expensive equipment until I can get access to water which will not damage it in short order.
    
    
        
     It isn't just me noticing this.I had a project take me into an unfamiliar knowledge space. Up until... 2018? I could have relied on Google to find the meaningful information. The reason people accepted Google was that it dramatically lowered information acquisition costs through the Internet. That benefit doesn't seem as common now. Back to webrings.
    
    
        
     I bought my home water filter based on a Consumer Reports recommendation. I feel that's still a reliable source. I think you can sign up for online access for a month to do all your research.I also really like the Wirecutter but I know not everyone here agrees with me.
    
    
        
      
 Wirecutter advice seems dubiously linked to how much they can get paid by their "winners". It's not all bad advice, it often seems quite good, but it has the same corruption as top SEO blogs.   
    
        
      
 You guys had a bad time trying to search things that are at least a little complicated and obscure. I had the same experience trying to find a basic brownie recipe last week.   
    
        
      
 Recipes have somehow become one of the absolute worst parts of the internet. Google results are consistently dominated by websites that will require scrolling past multiple screens of narrative and increasingly some clicks to see the actual recipe. And when you start looking, you quickly discover that most of the time these websites are just repeating recipes from well known sources like The Joy of Cooking, or worse they have made changes that it's not clear they ever actually tested.   
    
    
        
     Same for my experience buying a furnace. Science journal articles were my best source of information, because I worried the manufacturers and installers would be biased.I'm not sure how this could be otherwise. Who's going to pay for someone to stay current on such things and publish an easy to understand summary?
    
    
    
        
     Most people’s experience with HVAC specialists comes from dealing with the technicians who install and service these systems in our homes. It turns out there’s an entire subfield of mechanical engineering dedicated to inventing, designing, and improving HVAC systems.Wherever there are engineers, there are academics who do engineering research. They have journals of their own to publish this research. As to the question of reviews, I’m not sure any articles actually review specific furnace models. The point of reading the papers is to educate yourself on the principles behind the technology so you can read manufacturer’s technical specifications and avoid the non-technical marketing language.
    
    
        
      
 Yeah, I didn't get specific furnace models out of the articles. I was trying to decide between single-stage, two-stage, and many-stage designs. It turns out that the installers' claims about efficiency are bogus. Once you realize that you need the same number of BTUs regardless about how they're distributed, it's obvious. It's true that it might be more pleasant to have a little heat and a low fan constantly, rather than a blast periodically. In my opinion that's not worth the difference in upfront cost, increased maintenance cost, and reduced reliability.   
    
    
        
     Thanks for this! James Hoffmann is how I got into the hobby. I binge watched all of his videos, including this one. But then I forgot a lot of the useful information he gives here, only remembering his frustration at the complexity of the problem. Upon second viewing I think there is some good stuff for me here.I had been following Jim Shulman’s research which Hoffmann mentions in this video. It’s very dry and technical though and doesn’t provide much in the way of actionable advice on what equipment to purchase, instead recommending bottled water which I absolutely refuse to use (my household is already addicted to bottled water and I’m trying to break that addiction).
    
    
        
      
 Ha! I was searching for the same (water softening systems) for Mexico... the amount of signal to noise ratio is so small in google, that it's mostly unusable.   
    
        
      
 I've been there and it's a hell of a rabbit hole, one that is easy to lose days to. Whatever you do don't fall for the Berkey scam.   
    
    
        
     Google could modify their ranking to include these biases:- affiliate links? Down ranked - affiliate links to Amazon? Down ranked further - page contains advertising? Down ranked - page contains extensive javascript? Down ranked - page contains links to Social Media? Down ranked - post _is_ on Social Media? Down ranked further - page contains duplicate text, found elsewhere? Down ranked - page contains many links? Down ranked - page contains grammatical errors or bad sentence structure? Down ranked But why would they do it, their whole business is built on these things to exist. Let's look at some things for upranking: - page uses a static site generator, e.g. jekyll, mkdocs, hugo? Upranked - page has a balanced ratio of pictures/text and the text actually refers to picture (+ pictures are not stock imagery): Up ranked - ... (you continue)
    
    
    
    
    
        
     It's a policy problem, there's no easy fix.Design a system of rules to rank content. Watch as highly incentivized participants work harder than everyone else to game the system to their advantage. "But I can see these results are obviously bad, surely something can be done?". Leads to System-Amendment#5796 = Gather user feedback to alter results. Leads to highly incentivized users gaming the feedback system.
    
    
        
     This sounds more like a Google curse - the inability to do something extraordinarily simple because it can't be sufficiently automated.Like there is no reason to have a site like "https://gitmemory.cn/" in the index, ever. It is pure and utter spam. Ban the domain.
    
    
        
      
 In the meantime, check out the uBlackList extension to block individual sites from Google's (and a few other sites') results   
    
        
     You need to attach a trigger warning to that URL.I swear there's an opportunity for an enterprising startup to create a search engine that leverages a friends/family/contacts network for consensus domain credibility, and scrubs "non-credible" domains from all results.
    
    
        
      
 Would here possible go PG route and do those thing that do not scale. Meaning building very curated list and doing intedexing and searching against that eg searches for programmers(stackoverflow, github and official documentation).   
    
        
     This assumes the rules are black and white and there's no concept of bad faith.A system could very well have rules/guidelines and then have humans review &amp; monitor the system and user-submitted complaints for any abuse, and harshly penalize such abuse with a temporary or permanent ban. It could end up in a situation where it's technically possible to gain a slight advantage by gaming the system but no participant will risk a complete ban and the system ends up working well for everyone.
    
    
        
      
 I would want that, but that puts Google (and other companies) in the legal position of a publisher, which means that they're liable for "a bad thing".   
    
        
      
 Most websites and platforms moderate for abuse and aren't classified as publishers, I don't see why this would be any different here.   
    
        
      
 I can't remember the precise reason, but if I remember correctly the reason is that because the poster is the originator in most sites including YouTube, while in Google's case it curates links instead without input from the general public. This is also the reason why Wikipedia still only officially operates in the US: the relatively freer publication rules as opposed to UK or Brazil for example shields them from a lot of lawsuits.   
    
        
     There exists no distinction between "publishers" and "platforms" as far as Section 230 protections from online liability goes. It's entirely decided by who produced the content: users are responsible for content that they upload, the sites hosting user-generated content are not. It doesn't matter if the site selectively promotes, or otherwise acts as a "publisher", so long as it's the user's content. https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230
    
    
        
     Ah yes, US laws are the only laws applicable to Google.I should have prefaced that with "outside the United States": notably UK moves the bar to the middle, which will put Google in legal jeopardy (and libel cases!) there.
    
    
        
      
 I wonder if we just would disallow affiliate links in general. I.e. you can still create your own webshop, take orders and forward to someone else (similar to dropshipping) but basically outlaw the process of collecting money/commission just for a single placement of links. Or at least, force those sites to correctly mark themselves as "Advertising".   
    
        
      
 The people doing actual, good reviews/guides also use affiliate links. Getting rid of affiliate links to get rid of the bad actors gets rid of people trying to do it right. The bad actors will have another path in within a month while the person who was run out of their honest business is left hanging.   
    
        
      
 I think affiliate links are positive for Amazon, because they crowdsource aggressive sales and marketing, but are negative for Google (and everyone else). I think if Google could somehow ban affiliate links, they would.   
    
        
     Right.A hypothetical honest reviewer would genuinely be recommending products to buy, and if affiliate links pay, then why not? Just like any other tool, it’s not the affiliate links, it’s the user.
    
    
        
      
 A second order policy problem is to design good policy to make good policy makers. Meaning that it's hard for a public company entity to codify company policy so that their people in charge of search results are not at all susceptible themselves to sliding in an advantage here or there to assist some group that they become financially enmeshed with.   
    
        
      
 I ran into the same problem when building finclout's feedback loop. In my opinion, there is no way around keyword matching for search. As a result SEO is unlikely to be preventable. However, if the feedback can be collected at scale and is actually incentivised (i.e., did this link solve your problem ? ) this might actually work.   
    
        
      
 I've also had the same problem. For a while i could get good recommendations/reviews by adding "reddit" to the query as i could find good information there, however i think that the sites have caught up on that and now i only get 1-2 results from reddit.com and then the rest are other sites that reference reddit so they are in the results.   
    
        
     At the risk of any SEO-blogspam people reading this and adjusting their tactics, you can filter by domain, eg.product name review site:reddit.com
    
    
        
     As long as only a few people use a successful white hat trick, that trick isn’t generally worthwhile for the darker hats to combat.So the problem isn’t so much that blog spam people will read your comment, but that many ordinary readers will start using the trick, and thus make it worthwhile for the dark hats to address. So the unfortunate side effect of kindness in information sharing is that it decreases the value of that information. Therefore, I don’t think there’s a practical way out of endless arms races between $good and $evil
    
    
        
      
 The problem with using Reddit specifically is that you can't filter by date anymore. Reddit has poisoned their results to show old posts with new dates on Google.   
    
        
      
 Huh, I wonder, can I download reddit? Like, all the text posts, ignoring images. I wonder how big of a db that is and how hard would it be to crawl it myself. It can't be more than a few gb of data. I mean, at this point there is a lot of information there that is just begging to be leveraged.   
    
    
        
     Great tip, thanks. Funny how much i used to do google dorks (that got introduce to me in a college course), but overtime i completely forgot about them.About the risk though: it's happened already. Remember the "to find any book free online just do "filetype:pdf book-name"" tips that were popular online a while ago? Now it's all just PDFs on public google drives with tons of book names and a single link leading to some sketchy site.
    
    
        
     I use DDG which is backed by Bing and it’s much the same. Product reviews and some how to questions are just a couple pages of SEO garbage.Google used to measure engagement to try to get feedback on the quality of the links, but perhaps clickbait has broken that as well.
    
    
        
      
 One thing what helps me getting better results is adding the keyword 'forum'. Usually still have okayish results. 
Forums are nowadays the only source information not spoiled by SEO etc   
    
        
      
 That's a good tip. I too do this quite a lot; forums can be quite noisy but also a great source of first-hand experiences.   
    
        
      
 Google used to have a great discussion search mode that only showed forum results. I miss it dearly.   
    
    
        
      
 I always just append the word "Reddit" to any review type searches, it's been tremendously helpful. The peer reviews on Reddit are top notch, give it a go and I bet you'll be pleased.   
    
        
      
 I'm just amazed by how many people do this. I always do this too since it seems hard to find quality content just by searching on Google. I try to search HN too sometimes like this but the crowd and topics here a lot more narrow.   
    
    
        
     This is far worse in a place like india. It’s pretty much impossible to find anything technical or product related that’s localized. The only non blogspam source often is &lt;vomit/&gt; quora.For example. Most construction happening in india now uses something called M-Sand. I actually CANNOT find what the hell it is except from some company websites or random YouTubers blabbering non engineering garbage about it.
    
    
        
     You've probably already google-fu'ed this, but its ~4mm crushed granite used as a concrete-sand substitute where granite/gneiss sand isn't available.Most construction materials businesses sell locally by word of mouth, and if they paid for a website at all it's old and still using http. So Google drops them.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 It was really fascinating watching the Grand Tour Vietnam special on Amazon, you could see all this sand mining happening in the Mekong river, though no one commented on it.   
    
        
      
 Honestly disappointed at the documentary but curious about the topic. They kept repeating the exact same thing over and over and over again, dripping little bits of info.   
    
        
     I don’t blame google for this. The web is dead. Facebook and Twitter and Discord took over individual passion publishing, to the point that interesting people are forced to do hideous shit like post 30 post Twitter threads to make a point.Even in the tech space, while exceptions like Stackoverflow targeted google as an UI, lots of content is buried in unindexed GitHub issues, etc.
    
    
    
        
      
 At least in the past (haven't checked in years), the Amazon affiliate program rewarded the affiliate for the next purchase made (within a pretty long time window) after clicking an affiliate link, even if it's not of the product linked; so there's no downside to sending you to an arbitrary, unavailable, irrelevant product as long as you're clicking on links when you're in a shopping mode and likely to make a purchase soon.   
    
        
      
 24 hours, any purchases made, and it's still a thing. Though rates are much lower nowadays than they were 3+ years ago.   
    
        
     &gt; Repeated my search on Youtube to find reviews or unboxing. Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" again - the most viewed/top-ranked videos did never show a single actual print run or even the printer available. It was mostly marketing websites turned into video (slowly scrolling/moving over product description or pictures clearly taken from the web). And of course, affiliate links in the description.This. The web would be a much better place if Netizens didn't continue to monetize garbage like MKBHD, Unbox Therapy and others that provide absolutely no value in "reviews". They're all just shills for product placement at this point. And yet these paid for commercials rack up millions of views and get pushed to the top of YouTube results whether they're of value or not. YouTube doesn't want new creators - instead they've invested in a few that push the content they want based on the advertising dollars that are rolling in. Google isn't search comparative to the early days of the web. Now it's garbage results driven by SEO hackers. A world without Google would be a much better place IMO.
    
    
        
     In photography I have struggled to choose products, often I have to rely on my experience (e.g. it takes six months to discover that your Epson EcoTank printer makes prints that fade in six months) and specialized forums (DPReviews) You might find lightfastness rankings for some printers at http://wilhelm-research.com/   if somebody paid them to do the research otherwise you might have rely on heuristic 'pigment based inks are relatively lightfast' and that at least one other person who does similar work, has similar skills, and uses similar method gets good results. That still doesn't help with problems like '90% of instances of this Sigma lens seem to be pretty good but 10% have defective autofocus'. I find online reviews are close to worthless because there are so many people who don't know how to use gear or have unrealistic expectations. At Best Buy I saw a review of a printer where somebody showed pictures of prints they made where they printed on the wrong side of photo paper and blamed the printer, for instance.
    
    
        
      
 I find myself appending the word "forum" to a large percentage of my google queries these days, to avoid the dynamic you mentioned. This essentially filters the results for real/original content of other people that were looking for the same information as me.   
    
        
     Sorry but what do you expect apart from blogs and review sites? Like what’s the magical result here?I feel like the fallacy here is assuming that the problem is that Google isn’t finding the good websites. There’s also a simple explanation that the content simply doesn’t exist.
    
    
        
     This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro &lt;power tool&gt;“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.I think the interesting question is this: why is this happening? There’s always been a battle between Google and SEO black hats, but I can’t remember the last time it got this bad. Is Google just temporarily losing, or have they lost the will to fix this at all?
    
    
        
     I've given up using Google or any search engine for that matter when it comes to tools purchasing decisions (other product categories too, for that matter). First use, I buy from Hazard Fright. If it gets janky on first use or wears out with enough use, I search in the forums where the trades hang out in discussing what they use, wince while reaching into my wallet, and pay for a built-for-business grade tool. There are a few YouTube channels I refer to as well (examples are Project Farm and Mike Festiva) for tools and consumables recommendations.I always observe what tools trades carry when they work on my properties, and chat with them over the drinks and snacks I offer them, on what they like and don't like. That figures heavily into my decisions. Google's main purpose these days for me is non-mainstream, far niche searches. I've taken to looking into deploying my own ArchiveBox to just store my own curated search results that I like. When I initially noticed the SEO spam around 20 years ago, I began to prepare for it by manually saving into text files the page links off of search results that I used, and that has helped me a lot. Ironically, I'm building my own personal Yahoo Directory. I don't see any solution on the horizon to SEO pollution getting better, so I want to scale up my solution.
    
    
        
     &gt; This is been my experience with tool reviews as well. Searching for “best intro &lt;power tool&gt;“ yields a bunch of low quality SEO that’s just pulled from Amazon.Cannot reproduce.
    
    
        
     &gt; Most video search results were basically "Youtube SEO" againAnd the removal of the "Dislike" count so that you too can avoid non-informative content i.e. unbox spam, just furthers how shit this situation is getting.
    
    
        
     Giving Google more data about yourself will help. Improve relevance and Google revenues.Online advertising will make Google better and that will make you and the world better, too. Therefore, always support online advertising in every way you can. Look for the helpful crafting printer ads (after you purchase a crafting printer). In case the reader is unsure, this is sarcasm.
    
    
        
     &gt; Especially sad since those affiliate links to Amazon mostly resulted in "This product is currently not available" sites.This should not be considered "especially sad" in my view. It would be worse if these links worked, thus generating additional revenue for these "web players" (pun intended).
    
    
        
      
 The problem is, they do. Once I clicked the link, all my purchases in the next 24h will be credited to the affiliate. They are incentivised not to remove content about products that are no longer manufactured.   
    
        
      
 In the USA, Consumer Reports exists to help deal with this. It's a yearly fee to subscribe, but it's as unbiased of reviews as you can get!   
    
        
     Right, but the majority of folks on here squeal when consumer reports or wirecutter want to be paid for their recommendations. Buying the devices, comparing them, etc all cost money, and refusing to pay inevitably leads to the state we're in...I don't have a solution for this; I just think we're in the exact state we would expect.
    
    
        
      
 I don't mind paying for my subscription, just like I don't mind donating to Firefox and Signal. But I get that I'm probably in the minority for that. I try to put my money where my mouth is, and not the other way around!   
    
        
      
 Consumer reports vehicle recommendations and sales process is just an affiliate scam like wire cutter. Same with Costco's vehicle sales program now. I think they use the same back end. That basically is an affiliate program. They give your contact info to tons of dealers who call you with prices higher than what they have on their lots listed.   
    
        
      
 Pro tip: You can often get free access to Consumer Reports paywalled website with a library membership.   
    
        
     Do a google image search for a strawberry. See how long it takes you to find actual pictures of strawberries that arn't from ecom sites and/or stock photos. I ran into this problem because I wanted to train an AI to recognize a strawberry.Also note, probably none of these are actual strawberries. they are probably fake plastic representations for sales
    
    
        
      
 I did this. Results 1 &amp; 4 were from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica respectively. Doesn't seem that bad to me.   
    
        
     I've found that searching for a subreddit related to whatever hobby is a fine way to go. People are showing off their creations &amp; results and chatting about recommendations for equipment &amp; techniques.The "front door" of the Web has become the gift shop. It's time to find another way in :-)
    
    
        
     &gt; The web has become a crappy place to research productsI'd say most people's interface to the web has become crappy.
    
    
        
      
 I'd say the web has just become a crappy place. It was better when everything didn't have to make money, but was just done for the love of it.   
    
        
      
 Seibel doesn't seem to understand how affiliate ads work either, Google doesn't make money from them. Google would be better off just applying a ranking penalty for any page that has numerous Amazon affiliate links. 99% of dedicated affiliate sites are trash   
    
        
      
 Or at least allow us to block them in the search settings, but Google shows zero interest in doing so. Just as they do not want to have a flag "do not show paywalled content" which is often asked for.   
    
        
      
 I've also noticed something similar when researching mobile phones. Device pages that are clearly automatically created with poor and often nonsensical sentences and repition created by some script. And ranking top of Google. Similarly on YouTube videos that are collection of still images with robot voice reading clearly copy texts with almost zero original content. Again ranking near the top for a topic.   
    
        
      
 The only reviews I respect nowadays are... tear downs. No innards, no fun.
Unfortunately printers would be proper hard to tear down on a review.   
    
        
      
 I'm just imagining this rule meaning the only printer you can buy is the one from Office Space. Beating the crap out of a machine counts as tearing it down, right?   
    
        
      
 You used Google Search and then used Google (Video) Search. The issue is an advertising company being the Internet’s default for information.   
    
        
     This is something I have a problem with as well. Search results typically include the first five results being paid ads.Everything else for the first couple pages are typically review sites that are not really reviews. YouTube isn’t much better. I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.
    
    
        
     &gt; I’m trying to addresss this in my own way by making long term product reviews of stuff I own, but I wish other people and companies did the same thing.Link?
    
    
        
     When I do product research I generally search for whatever the enthusiast community lives and usually there are guides there. Blogs are exactly as you describe, either built in ads or useless.For common items it's kinda difficult, but still possible! (Printers had a pretty active subreddit/community for example.)
    
    
        
      
 yup, I was compiling a wish list and searched for a list of good programming books and ran into the same issue. any website that promises a "list" like "top 10 programming books" is usually affiliate spam, with poor recommendations and grammatical errors   
    
    
        
      
 That's true. At least YT is still better than generic WWW search when you are looking for some specific model or some DIY technique. It's still harder to make a SEO-optimized video than a webpage.   
    
    
    
        
      
 I wouldn't say the web is a crappy place just because of Google search kind of stinks and affiliate marketing ( which has been around forever anyway )   
    
        
     When I am researching something I often use this filter:site:reddit.com + "search phrase" At least if I want to hear from "real" people.
    
    
        
     until reddit starts getting native content too. We already know people game that site as well.Also reddit can unfortunately be unsufferable.
    
    
        
      
 I have been consistently adding -amazon to any product search on google lately. These “blogs” are so annoying…   
    
        
      
 I almost always start my product searches by googling the term and then adding "reddit" nowadays.   
    
        
      
 Also because YouTube removed downvotes, it becomes basically useless for searching product reviews.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Buy a Brother Color Laser printer. $250 and the ink never dries. I haven't thought about printing other than pressing "print" in 6 months.   
    
        
      
 I have Brother printer, full can of paint and sensor saying that is empty, I cannot do anything with it, and that is just one in long list of issues I had with printer...   
    
        
     Consumers laments the effect of consumers consuming too much stuff.Maybe buying more useless stuff isn't the solution???
Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553574
Application submitted for US molten salt research reactor
2022-08-22
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 <a href="vote?id=32554512&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine. This mostly works because moving even very hot, very high pressure water around is kind of a solved problem in industry.<p>In a molten salt reactor, you use nuclear fission to melt various corrosive salts into a fluid, and this is good because molten salts store a lot more energy per unit (volume, presumably?) at low pressures, so you can transfer heat indirectly to nearby turbine-turning water without irradiating the water or relying on high-pressure water to cool your reactor. Cool.</p><p>But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet). I suppose this is less of a problem for a research reactor, but it doesn't sound like there's been a materials breakthrough here that's allowing them to get started. Are they just plowing forward and they'll need to replace the containment infrastructure every few years?
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 <a href="vote?id=32556243&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>You are correct about the corrosion issue. I've done some work developing molten salt resistant claddings. The main culprit is chromium leaching, which de-alloys most of the metals approved for reactor design. The leeching happens at the grain boundaries, so you will hear 'intergranular attack' as a research focus.<p>A close second problem is the radiation itself. Elements in both the containment vessel and salt transmute. One study I read estimated that pure tungsten (a viable salt resistant material) would transmute to rhenium at a rate of 1% a year. The radiation also causes void-swelling in both the metals and pure graphite.</p><p>The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours. A paper from 2015 showed that the material the testing crucible is made of greatly effects the rate of chromium leeching. They found that both graphite and nickel act as chromium sinks. Many designs call for graphite or nickel parts to be used alongside chromium containing steels. This reactor appears to be stainless steel with graphite moderators.</p><p>Another paper strongly suggested that radiation induced void-swelling can squeeze together the grain boundaries, greatly slowing down intergranular attack. Very little corrosion testing has been done under exposure to radiation as it is logistically difficult.</p><p>Basically, the next best step is test reactors. You can only get so far testing things in isolation.
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 <a href="vote?id=32559685&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours.<p>Q: What is a coupon in this context?
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 <a href="vote?id=32560125&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>It's used 2 ways in metallurgy. Mainly it is a term for test pieces cut from a batch of metal and used for proof testing. Tensile, elongation, fatigue, weldability, and many other tests require destructive testing coupons. When you take welding certification tests, you weld two coupons together, and then submit your coupon for testing.<p>It is also a term for strips of metal that you mount in a corrosive environment as a way to monitor corrosion of other susceptible components. So if you were worried about your bronze bushings, you would buy some matching bronze coupons, put them in an area of similar flow, and measure their thickness periodically.</p><p><a href="https://www.alspi.com/coupons.htm">https://www.alspi.com/coupons.htm</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_testing#Coupon_tests">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_testing#Coupon_tests</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561646&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;test pieces cut from a batch of metal<p>&gt;strips of metal</p><p>I mean in essence you just have to look at the word. Coupon is from French couper, which means to cut. So it's a cut-out. It has the same meaning when you look at extreme couponing and metal testing.
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 <p>Yeah, I didn't think of it as an overly obscure usage, but neither Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia list the definition. Dictionary.com does. Maybe its time to edit Wikipedia over lunch =)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32567573&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Coupon is used in metalworking to mean a sample you can submit for destructive testing that is representative of the whole piece under test.<p>A weld coupon, for example, is a piece of test material of the same thickness and weld preparation as the main part being welded but is not integral to the part itself. That coupon is then sawed off and submitted for destructive tests like impact testing (to determine minimum operating temperature), tensile strength testing (specimen is pulled apart to find how strong and stretchy it is), and crystallographic etching (looking at the crystal structure of the metal to see if it has defects).
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 <a href="vote?id=32560099&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>A coupon is an informal term for a small sample of material, most often metal. It’s perhaps most commonly used in welding where practice welds for people first training to weld are done on pieces of metal often referred to as coupons. :)<p>It is usually an artifact of materials like metal which are hard to cut, and can’t efficiently just be cut as needed during a task, but are prepared and pre-cut into small pieces you can grab easily. Each of those pieces is called a coupon.</p><p>I used to store mine in a Chinese takeout container box.
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 <a href="vote?id=32578160&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>In the mid 1970s, in my welding class, the school was located down the street from a small manufacturer that formed various metal alloys.<p>They would provide the school with bins of scrap from their manufacturing free of charge. Those were our practice coupons in class. We had to be careful to return the welded scraps back to the proper bin so the manufacturer could recycle them.</p><p>Our class was just a very small part of their recycling flow. It was a great relationship, we needed practice materials, and they hired welders.
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 <p>Does it even need to be a metal? (Since the pressure is so low strength requirements are lower)... How about ceramic or glass (or quartz), or something else non-metal?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32558508&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>It doesn't, but any material used needs to withstand 4 extremes - high temperatures (650-850 C), corrosion (dissolves uranium), very high neutron flux, and US govt. regulation.<p>Graphite is the current favorite non-metal option. It is already widely used in traditional reactors, so it is approved, and its interaction with radiation is well understood. On the other hand, its interaction with radiation and molten salt is not as well understood, but hopefully this test reactor and others like it will solve that.</p><p>One of my favorite solutions seals the reactor in with a crane and 8 graphite containment vessels. The best estimate of the lifespan of structural graphite in this environment is ~7 years, so the plan would be to monitor the system and move the reactor to a new vessel as needed. The goal is 50 year life-span for these reactors.</p><p>Anyway, there is research into alternate materials, but to really test them you need to expose them to both molten salts and radiation. And if they pass, you need to get government approval. The last material to get govt approval was Hastelloy N, and I heard the process was a slog.
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 <a href="vote?id=32559782&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Well, one thing about liquid fuel vs solid fuel is that you can move the fuel to a new reactor and, uh... ?"recycle"? / ?"overhaul"? the old one. So you could use one for 7 years why the other is retrofitted. You'd need two reactors... or... you'd need 8 and seven are online while 1 is replaced per year.<p>So unless materials is solved, you need scalability and replacement. At least the OTHER problem with solid fuel, lots of waste, is generally not a problem with breeder reactors and liquids. You remove the fission products from the fluid and feed it back in. I'm no chemist so I don't know all the separation nastiness involved, but it's better than carting ten thousand year waste across the country to Yucca.</p><p>So the question is, what about the other reactor designs, don't they need replacement with respect to the vessel? And as I understand it, fusion reactors also have issues with high speed neutrons so their vessels would need periodic replacement, even if they get to sustained ignition and positive energy.</p><p>Your replacement containment layers seems like the "constant replacement" strategy. What if you could simply inject a new layer that hardens and pushes out the older layer?</p><p>Also, why not have solid uranium or some similar material as the inner container? Could simple saturation of the existing uranium in the salt prevent excessive wear?</p><p>I wonder how much of this approval is because the Chinese brought one online.
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 <a href="vote?id=32561242&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>There are a lot of options, I'm no nuclear engineer but looking at all the different companies, they all have different approaches:<p>Terrestrial Energy: The whole reactor, including heat exchanges and so on is defined for 7 years of life. After that a second reactor is running. After a few years the original reactor is put into a storage silo and then a new reactor is placed their ready to be switch to.</p><p>From memory they don't seem to pump the fuel from 1 to the other.</p><p>Flibe Energy: They are doing the famous lifter. Simular concept, 2 reactor cores with graphite moderation, after 7 years the fuel is pumped to the second reactor, the first is getting its graphite core replaced. This will have longer lead time to deployment.</p><p>Moltex Energy: They have totally different approach. Instead of 7 year lift-time they are building a traditional reactor with much longer life. They are basically building a sodium cooled fast reactor, but replace sodium with salt solution. And then in the fuel assemblies are also like those in sodium reactor, but contain liquid salt with uranium in them. They want to produce the fuel salt from spent Canadian CANDU fuel.</p><p>Kairos energy: This is a molten salt cooled reactor that uses pellet fuel but little balls instead of the traditional pellets.
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 <a href="vote?id=32567108&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I've been thinking about the dumb idea of using solid uranium/thorium as the (closest) salt containment layer: you have a solid uranium (melting point 2000C) or thorium layer (3000C) around the salt, which may not degrade it that quickly if the salts (which are a solution basically, if it's a liquid?) are more or less saturated. Or even if it isn't, how long would a layer of uranium or thorium last? I guess that's the big question.<p>You don't care if the thorium or uranium captures neutrons I would think. Thorium neutron capture is a good thing.</p><p>So depending on how long the solid "breeder" inner shell hold up, when you "recondition" the inner shell, I assume you can just dissolve it into salt, feed it into the normal fission products processing that the salt fuel use, and put in a new solid uranium/thorium salt shell.</p><p>Or maybe thorium could be alloyed for more endurance properties as the containment. Of course I have no idea about the various cracking / strength / fatigue properties of thorium as a metal.</p><p>I wonder if pellets/spheres could use thorium as a surrounding material.</p><p>So how nuts is all of that?</p><p>Maybe you could do a weekly monthly re-coat of the inner layer with more thorium or uranium to replace that which gets dissolved/degraded.</p><p>Edit: ORNL on thorium properties in a nuclear environment</p><p><a href="https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4622065">https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4622065</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32570473&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I don't know enough to answer any of that.<p>&gt; weekly monthly re-coat</p><p>Any operation inside the reactor is a bad idea.
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 <p>Nothing requires this research to to be carried out in the US specifically beyond funding being available here. It’s really the inherent difficulties which is holding back progress.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561163&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>My understanding is that you are not allowed to build a research reactor that is bigger then a university reactor but isn't a full scale energy producing reactor. My understanding is that for such a reactor you would need the full operating license just as a grid connected PWR.<p>And since in the US its essentially impossible to get a license for anything but a PWR, that isn't rally possible.</p><p>Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup, even those that started in other countries.</p><p><a href="https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-licensing-vendor-design-review/">https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32563192&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup</i><p>Canada's vast tracts of land wouldn't hurt either. If a meltdown or containment breach happens, and no population centers are within 400km, that's a much better bad scenario.
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 <p>I mean you don't build reactors somewhere out of in the middle of no-where, you need a labor force and infrastructure to build them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>yeah im not exactly mad about it being hard / impossible for people to set up a lab-based experimental nuclear reactor near me due to regulations</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32590725&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>We have prove how unsafe the streets are and yet ...<p>In fact, nuclear reactor to be built have a higher barrier of 'prove of safety' then almost anything else.</p><p>In fact, nobody in the US ever died because of civilian nuclear reactor research or at least not in the last 40+ years.
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 <a href="vote?id=32639193&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>The street is too dangerous, you are right. An experimental nuclear reactor, however, does not make the street safer.<p>Additionally, the public is relatively unaware of how nuclear plants fail. If people at nuclear reactor research labs suddenly stop showing up to work - what happens? People kind of assume it will explode, or become a radiation hot-zone rendering the local area unusable for a hundred+ years.</p><p>And considering the experimental reactors being discussed need parts replacement due to corrosion, what happens if those replacements dont happen?</p><p>The dangers of human inaction seem much higher for nuclear than other things. With standard fuel sources, if people stop showing up to work then power simply stops being made - that's pretty much it. And while they are at work, the process is pretty simple and robust (compared to nuclear) with a lot of room for error.</p><p>I know I've been surprised (in a good way) to learn about some of the safety mechanisms existing within nuclear reactors, but I still only sort of understand what anything means that I read - and the safety mechanisms that gave me some sense of relief is based on a lot of assumptions I had to make about the way nuclear works as a lay person.</p><p>how about nuclear scientist stop saying "trust me bro" and more aggressively educate people on nuclear fail-safes? People have trouble voting for things they do not understand. And educating the public on something they are either uninterested in or incapable of understanding is an unfair burden to put on nuclear scientists, but they are the only ones qualified to do so.</p><p>the ball will move a lot faster once lay people can exchange stories about nuclear safety that go beyond "we barely use nuclear, and no one has died yet, it's actually really safe because ... reasons? scientists said so?"
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 <p>Pure speculation here but what about using salt to contain the salt? Make a big block of salt (possibly foamed) and melt a puddle in the middle?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32557111&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>non-metals have their own problems and glass tends to have some really weird properties.<p>I would think a major one would be their failure mode. Metals flex and expand before they eventually fail. Glass/ceramic is fine until suddenly it isn't and has a total failure.</p><p>Think of a window being hit. If it were metal it would probably deform but if it is glass it shatters.</p><p>Next would be joining them on-site. If needed, metal piping can be bent and welded in-place. what do you do with a glass pipe that needs a join? what do you do if there is a small variation in the plans and the pipe needs an adjustment?</p><p>I think there are a host of reasons why glass is not used for pipes.
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 <a href="vote?id=32558458&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Glass is already basically welded, or maybe it's more like brazing. But an oxyacetylene torch can be used to work with glass just as well as to cut or weld metal.<p>Metals also have weird properties. Like tempering and hardening based on temperature. In an industrial setting you need expert welders with deep knowledge of the materials or a weld is going to fail and ruin your day.</p><p>So it doesn't seem like a huge leap to me actually, assuming ceramics or glass actually have desirable properties.
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 <a href="vote?id=32564895&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I noticed you focused almost exclusively on the welding while ignoring the brittle nature of glass?<p>I would think that putting liquid salt in a a glass pipe is somewhat asking for trouble. One of the many issues with glass is "thermal shock".</p><p>Let's say there is a fire and water based sprinklers are activated.. what will the 1,400F glass do once water touches it?</p><p>Or there is an accident and someone bangs into the glass. Metal can deform and not fail, glass cant.
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 <a href="vote?id=32565505&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>“Glass” is a generic term for a wide variety of materials. So is “metal”. Metal can be brittle, sometimes that’s even desirable. That’s what tempering and hardening are about.<p>A molten salt reactor is a material science problem. Conventional “metal” doesn’t work because of the corrosion. If glass has some desirable property then we can overcome the “bumping in to it” problem. Maybe with a hand rail. Or staying away from the operational nuclear reactor.</p><p>I’m not suggesting glass actually be used. I’m saying if it was I wouldn’t be surprised.
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 <p>We can do this with glass, however, lapping is incredibly expensive for something as simple as joining two pieces of glass together.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Most of those contain plastics which are usually not good for high temperatures but also have long chain molecules which get broken by neutrons and other particles and cannot heal defects the way metals can.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32557932&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Glass-lined vessels and pipes are already used in the chemical industry so it's a somewhat proven technology.<p>Not sure if it's suited to the chemistry and temperatures (and radiation) of a molten salt reactor, but it seems like an interesting technology.
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 <p>The corrosion issue is part of what drove Moltex to their rather interesting design (sterile coolant salt is a fluoride; fuel salt in tubes is chloride; this is a fast reactor.) The absence of uranium in the fluoride allows it to be operated at a redox potential where chromium does not dissolve.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561263&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, one of the reason I like that reactor design. They basically put something in the fluoride that is basically designed to corrode so that the actual reactor vessel doesn't. If I understand correctly.<p>Their design doesn't require the 7 year swap cycle most MSR do.
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 <a href="vote?id=32561631&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Right! They've got the same thing going that ordinary LWRs do: the neutrons lose their energy in a surround liquid rather than in a solid moderator or solid structural materials other than the fuel rods (which are designed to be replaced often anyway). The design even adds some hafnium to the coolant salt (substituting for zirconium, which is the sacrificial metal you refer to there); hafnium serves to shield the reactor walls from thermalized neutrons.<p>One additional advantage of separating the fuel salt from the coolant salt is that the coolant salt volume can be increased as desired, making the thermal inertia of the reactor as large as one likes independent of reactor power or size of the fuel load.
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 <a href="vote?id=32564527&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; One additional advantage<p>The problem with that is that you would likely require a different design and go threw full licensing. So in practice this will likely not be used.
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 <p>Presumably it would happen at design time and a large, high thermal inertia design would be the one licensed.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What about using molten lead or something that can act like a lubricant/insulation at that temperature away from the corrosion in the same way airflow is used over jet turbine blades to stop them melting? It there any high temperature liquid that is molten salt phobic like oil and water?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554869&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>People thought this stuff<p><a href="https://haynesintl.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/new-alloy-brochures/corrosion-resistant-alloys/brochures/n-brochure.pdf?sfvrsn=18">https://haynesintl.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/new-alloy-br...</a></p><p>(which is practically stainless steel without the steel) was good for this use but when it was tried in this system it did not hold up very well</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Results">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment...</a></p><p>but it was believed that some small change in the formula such as adding Niobium could clear the problem up. What's needed to move forward is not a big conceptual breakthrough but rather testing of materials under realistic conditions... A new test reactor.</p><p>What is more problematic with the MSRE design is that it incorporates graphite as a moderator and the graphite swells and goes bad over time. Possibly you can take the graphite core out every few years and replace it with a new one, but people have also found designs that don't require a moderator outside the fuel salt.</p><p>When I went to the first conference on Thorium Energy years ago David Leblanc had done some very simple calculations that showed you didn't need the graphite -- it works just fine with a faster spectrum. He's refined that idea and is running with it. Others are pursuing chloride salts and plutonium fuel with a very fast spectrum.
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 <a href="vote?id=32556357&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Fast spectrum MSRs bring a whole litany of other problems. Chlorine has more oxidation states and the chemistry with fission products is much more complex.<p>Starting with graphite makes sense imho for a university.
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 <p>If it's designed with replacement in mind, a graphite moderator isn't all that bad. It can even be a safety advantage, in that if you drain the fuel out of the vessel it's taken away from its moderator.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I must not be parsing this correctly. Taking fuel away from the moderator sounds like a safety disadvantage. Maybe I don't know what a moderator does.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32559834&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not a nuke physicist, but I recall LFTR presentations on the "safety plug" to stop meltdown: basically a plug melts and the fluid flows into a shallow pool.<p>Since the fluid is "thinned", neutron economy plummets and chain reactions stop.</p><p>In addition, I though the fluid would expand a bit under high heat in the reactor, which would drop neutron economy as well, so a fluid can somewhat self-moderate.</p><p>So unless the fluid is in a ball or tank where the neutron economy is maintained in three dimensions, if you drain it out it no longer has the neutron economy.</p><p>So what they probably are saying is that since the fuel is fluid, and if you need to replace the moderator, you drain the fuel (and as stated above, that stops the reaction as well) and replace the moderator.
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 <p>If the fuel is designed such that it needs a graphite moderator to sustain a reaction, then if the fuel is removed from the reactor it's less likely to go critical than if the fuel was "higher-grade". It's less likely to have a criticality accident.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>A moderator is a material that slows neutrons down. Slow neutrons are more likely to initiate fission in a Uranium (or other fissile) nucleus that they hit, so a moderator increases the reactivity of the reactor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554766&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Annoyingly, "molten salt reactor" is used to describe two different technologies. What you describe is a traditional reactor that uses molten salt to move heat. This typically leads to higher efficiencies, but does have corrosion issues. Other power generation systems can also benefit from molten salt loops - namely solar energy collectors.<p>In the research field, "molten salt reactors" (MSRs) usually means the other tech - a reactor where the fissile material is dissolved in a salt. This not only brings efficiency increases, but many safety improvements. Many designs also use a 2nd molten salt loop as a temperature step-down before steam power generation.
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 <p>One of those safety improvements -- a freeze plug -- passively halts the reaction in the event of a power cut. The reactor sits on top of a vault that has a larger volume separated by a narrow tube containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug by cryocoolers powered by the turbines themselves. If the pumps stop for any reason, then the plug quickly melts and the molten fluid from the reactor drains into the larger vault via gravity at which point it cools and freezes into a solid.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>One of my favorite safety elements is often over-looked: they operate at 1 atmosphere. So much of the cost and bulk of a traditional reactor is the shielding needed to protect from an over-pressure event.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32564597&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>And even better, most of the things that are dangerous in a traditional reactor is chemically bound to the salt. So even if there is some kind of explosion, these materials would not be vaporized and transported in the air with wind.<p>So no crazy misinformed graphics all over the news.</p><p>So even if you drop a hand-grande into that reactor, it just gone be like throwing a rock into a bucket full of toothpaste. Its gone be a mess but its not gone result in a lot of airborne materials.
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 <a href="vote?id=32557561&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>It seems like that might suggest a potential option in the search for appropriate materials to build the containment vessel and piping to hold in the salt: just make the whole thing out of salt. Anything that needs to be solid can have built-in channels with coolant piped through. The rest can maintain a sort of steady state.<p>I'm sure there's all sorts of practical reasons why that wouldn't work, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
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 <a href="vote?id=32557917&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Nice hack! That sounds so easy that I wonder what the catch is.<p>Maybe it would need more energy for cooling than what it generates? So it would have to be scaled up to a size where the surface-to-content ratio becomes favourable. There might not be enough salt for that :-)
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 <a href="vote?id=32559183&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Ok so I recently watched a video that went into some of this, and I had know idea how crazy some of these nuclear fuels are in terms of physical requirements.<p>If I recall the video correctly, solid metal oxide fuel produces offgas at a 50:1 ratio, while being insanely dense. This produces pretty insane internal pressures if the goal of the fuel design is to keep everything contained. Like strong enough to eventually cause mechanical failure of the fuel.</p><p>I think there's a lot of really difficult constraints intersecting in these fuel assembly designs, and something that seems obviously simple probably isn't.
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 <a href="vote?id=32558248&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I suppose one problem might be selecting an appropriate coolant that doesn't dissolve the salt on contact. Presumably water would, but google says that salt doesn't dissolve in oil so maybe that's an option.<p>Ideally you wouldn't need to expend energy to keep the coolant cold enough; rather, you'd use the coolant to boil water to run your steam generator.
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 <p>“Vessel built out of nothing but heat transfer interface and freeze plug". Do some of the materials problems get easier while it's only touching the salt in frozen state?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Easily recoverable. The tube drains into a collection tank filled with control rods, so any reactions are halted. You can just reheat the salt and pump it back into the reactor. Reportedly, one of the first test reactors in the 50's was shut off every Friday and restarted on Monday. A full power loss, what would be catastrophic for any other reactor, was tested weekly for a year without issue.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I love the image of some guy before going home hitting the red button and some guy on Monday just hitting the green button.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32555064&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Freeze plugs sound super cool, but this part breaks my brain:<p>&gt; containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug</p><p>Presumably salt can't be both molten and frozen at once, or is there something about this domain that I don't understand?
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 <a href="vote?id=32555157&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I believe they use active cooling to keep the plug frozen.<p>If the power fails, the cooling fails and the plug melts.
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 <p>It is literally just a tube with a fan blowing over it. Most designs just barely solidify it, so any over-temperature events also cause a passive shutdown.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah, I got that (and it seems like a really elegant solution! very <i>cool</i>, pun intended, etc). My question was about how salt (or any other matter, really) can simultaneously be molten and frozen.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It can't. Well, maybe at its triple-point, but that is another story. It is just a quirk of the language due to it being know as molten salt. For example, my drink is full of molten water that has been frozen into cubes.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556883&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Part of it is molten (above the plug), part of it is frozen (the plug).<p>Think pipes in a house in winter, where one little part of the pipe gets frozen while the rest of the pipes have liquid water in them.
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 <p>And in Spring, when the broken pipe plugged with solid molten ice thaws, your house's molten ice circuit performs an emergency evacuation into the yard, saving you from the convenience of adequate molten ice pressure</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32560648&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Water is actually a very unusual substance in that it expands upon freezing. (Plutonium being another)<p>Most materials instead contract when freezing.
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 <p>Hah! Well, we usually think of salt in the solid state (i.e. frozen) and not in the liquid state, so it's not so strange to be explicit in this case. For H2O, we do have pretty common encounters with three of its phase states, so there's less need to be explicit (or, rather, we have separate words for each state: steam, water, ice).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Think of a lake in the winter. Just the top layer of water is frozen, exposed to the cold air above the lake. Some of the lake water is frozen and some is liquid, depending on its position in the lake.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32558544&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I wrote it that way to aid the reader in understanding what the plug material was composed of. I didn't want the reader to think that the material was water ice.<p>Yes, the material is the frozen state of the once liquid reactor fluid.</p><p>I hope that clears it up, and would welcome a better way of explaining it!
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 <p>Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying to nit-pick your phrasing, I was just curious if I was misunderstanding something as a lay person. :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think it was just a clumsy phrasing, with the point being that it's a solid plug of whatever salt is molten and circulating above.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There have been quite a few solar energy concentrator test beds based on molten salt in order to try to get to 24/7 solar power. It is an interesting technology but afaik it's not at the stage where it can be rolled out reliably and maintenance free.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thanks for posting, this sounds super cool. Now I just really wished I had a reason to order a molten salt loop.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I would love to rip the gas heating out of the house and have little nuclear reactor there.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554700&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.<p>I was under the impression that there was a heat exchanger in the path - that is the reactor turns water into slightly radioacive steam, which is sent through a heat exchanger to turn different water into non (or way less anyway)- radioactive steam for the turbines. So both are indirect.</p><p>(This is just a nit comment, I think your main points about efficiency still hold, and your materials questions are good!)
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 <a href="vote?id=32554834&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>There are two kinds of conventional light water reactor. In the pressurized water reactor (PWR), the most common, there is indeed an additional heat exchanger between the water in the core and the water that turns to steam. In the boiling water reactor (BWR), the second most common, the slightly radioactive steam from the core goes directly to a turbine.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554811&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Also, AFAIK, those high-temperature reactors are normally made with a molten metal intermediate cycle (normally sodium) and a gas-only external cycle (normally CO2).<p>Water enters only to cools the cold side of the external cycle.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554762&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>That makes a lot of sense.<p>I think I was confused by news stories about situations where the reactor has failed in some way, and then there are stories of how radioactive water needs to be stored / disposed of somehow.
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 <a href="vote?id=32563448&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>In those historical cases, the priority was cooling the core, the easiest method (especially if a substantial amount of plumbing is wrecked or questionable) is dumping water into it.<p>Which then becomes irradiated, and pools via gravity in any lower voids, and then eventually needs to be dealt with.
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 <p>Exactly. In other variants of reactors the inner contour could circulate molten slightly radioactive sodium instead.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556837&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>There are a number of obstacles. Neutron damage to the reactor structure is more of a problem, since the fuel is dissolved in salt in direct contact with that structure (unlike a reactor with solid fuel rods, which are separated from the reactor vessel by a thickness of moderator, in the case of LWRs is water.)<p>See here for a (somewhat old) list of some technical issues:</p><p><a href="https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-OverviewofMSRTechnologyandConceptsML17331B114.pdf">https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov...</a></p><p>"Nickel-based alloys embrittle under high neutron fluxes at high temperature"</p><p>"Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]"</p><p>"Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas"</p><p>"MSRE was approaching end of allowable service life when shut down" (after four years at 40% capacity factor)
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 <a href="vote?id=32560667&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]"
"Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas"<p>That could, in theory at least, be an advantage if you have a good process for capturing and storing that offgas (reacting it with something to make it solid and then glassifying it, for instance).</p><p>In a traditional fission reactor, gaseous fission products cause swelling and cracking of fuel pellets, and builds up pressure in the fuel tubes, which is one of the factors limiting fuel burnup.
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 <p>It means the offgas storage system has to be designed for a large heat load, even in accident scenarios. It also means the common MSR talking point that the FPs stay in the salt is not correct.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32562244&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; common MSR talking point<p>Well, a lot of 'common MSR talking points' are overblown, firmly detached from reality. Or at least conveniently ignoring all the significant challenges remaining in industrializing MSR technology. MSR fanboys are the most tedious of the pro-nuclear side of the energy debate, perhaps beaten only by the "this entirely unproven aneutronic fusion concept will imminently solve all our energy woes" crowd. :)
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 <a href="vote?id=32564687&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Moltex Energy talks a lot about that. It is actually pretty nice, some things stay in the salt, some leave it. The most dangerous stuff that shows up in the news a big scary cloud coming over from Japan to the US would still be in the salt.<p>Some other things that you really don't in your fuel, like Xenon and Krypton will bubble out.</p><p>So I think overall it is an advantage.
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 <p>Moltex's design keeps the relevant isotopes of Xe/Kr in the fuel tubes long enough for them to (mostly) decay, so the Cs and Sr produced from the decay (mostly) stays in the fuel salt.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32555423&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt<p>I'm interested to see what Moltex can do to simplify matters:</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJpVClxzVM&amp;t=758s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJpVClxzVM&amp;t=758s</a></p><p>Instead of pumping the salt around, they plan to leave it sitting in stainless steel tubes, and use simple convection to extract the heat. Oak Ridge rejected this idea in the 1950s because they were trying to power an aircraft, but convection makes more sense when the reactor isn't moving.
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 <a href="vote?id=32555596&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; slightly radioactive steam<p>For anyone worried about this, the longest lived unstable isotope of oxygen (that is heavier than stable oxygen) has a half life of 26 seconds. Hydrogen can become deuterium which is stable, and finally tritium which is not.</p><p>Tritium has a long half life of 12 years, but is low energy and very easily shielded (just don't eat it).</p><p>There is very very little tritium - first you'd have to make deuterium (there isn't much), and then a deuterium would have to become a tritium, i.e. a rare event on top of a rare event.
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 <a href="vote?id=32557270&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Your view really depends on the design.<p>CANDU (Canadian reactor design) is moderated via deuterium in which case there is a LOT of it circulating in the reactor core.</p><p>The heavy water is syphoned off to a tritium separation unit for recovery.
With a market value of $30,000 a gram, there is a clear incentive to recover it ;)
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 <p>Some buddies who work on CANDU tell me they have tritium contamination everywhere as a result of this. From what they tell me it's not really a big safety issue, mostly more annoying than anything.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Not compltly accurate. It's true that the half-life of tritium is short compared to long lived actinides. However, like hydrogen, it diffuses very easily and it's not easy to contain. In fact, it's one of the few things emitted in the environment during normal reactor operations. As beta emitter, you are right that it's dangerous only when ingested, but it's very easy to breath of to get it from other ambient sources</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32559115&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; you are right that it's dangerous only when ingested<p>Not really. Tritium is Hydrogen. It cannot bioaccumulate. Each atom of Tritium will spread out to become one among the quadrillions of atoms of Hydrogen in our body. Most will get out of the body in a matter of days, long before they've had a chance to decay. Even when they decay, they undergo beta decay, which is not very damaging. But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.
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 <a href="vote?id=32585579&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Not really.... But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.<p>you could not be more wrong about this. Alpha and Beta are fairly safe OUTSIDE the body. In the case of Alpha it is not able to penetrate the layer of dead skin on your hands.</p><p>Internal, it is VERY damaging because there is no "dead skin" to protect the internal organs.</p><p><a href="https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics">https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics</a></p><p>"Some beta particles are capable of penetrating the skin and causing damage such as skin burns. However, as with alpha-emitters, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inhaled or swallowed."
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 <p>I stand by what I said. Yes, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inside your body, if they are together and stay there for a long time. The main examples are Strontium-90 and Caesium-137. The problem with them is that they bioaccumulate. Strontium accumulates in the bones (it is chemically similar to Calcium) and Caesium in the pancreas (it's not clear why. it is chemically similar to Potasium, but it's not obvious why it should accumulate in the pancreas).<p>Tritium is very different. It is chemically just Hydrogen, which is present everywhere in the body. It just can't bioaccumulate.</p><p>In any case, if you don't believe me, here's a statement from the FDA regarding the tritiated water released by Fukushima:</p><pre><code> Tritium presents an extremely low human and animal health risk if consumed and any health risk would be further minimized with the dilution effects of discharge into the ocean.
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[1] <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-response-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-power-facility-incident">https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-resp...</a></p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561521&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>One tidbit on information damage that has stuck with me is that carcinogenic radiation damage is a second order process: to get a cancerous mutation you need both copies of DNA damaged, which would in most cases require two separate events.<p>To the extend this is true, it implies that it is the square of the radiation dose that determines carcinogenic effects: Half the dose would cause only a fourth of damage.
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 <a href="vote?id=32556818&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Very little tritium will diffuse, because it's bound with oxygen as water.<p>However some water does come out of the reactor you are correct.
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 <a href="vote?id=32555091&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I think one key aspect is that they are less susceptible / immune to loss of coolant incidents. In a PWR if there is a loss of pressure, or coolant in any other way, and emergency cooling doesn't work, the core overheats and might melt down.<p>An uncooled pool of molten salt will keep on generating heat even after the reaction is stopped, so will continue heating up, but it is possible to design the reactor so that the whole thing remains stable. Since the pressure is low, there is no risk of explosion, or release of the radioactive materials.</p><p>So the energy density is i think a secondary benefit, if at all.
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 <a href="vote?id=32557442&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet).<p>Is this also an issue for molten salt / liquid metal batteries[1][2] that have been proposed as a grid scale energy storage solution for renewables?</p><p>The way I understand it, molten salt is used as the membrane separating the electrode and electrolyte layers. But I was under the impression that there are actual molten salt batteries prototypes with industrial scale facilities currently under construction.</p><p>Are the requirements to contain the molten salt in a battery different from a nuclear reactors? Or do they have the same challenges and are simply able to overcome economic feasibility whereas nuclear reactors aren’t?</p><p>1: <a href="https://ambri.com/">https://ambri.com/</a></p><p>2: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PL32ea0MqM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PL32ea0MqM</a>
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 <p>Molten salt / liquid metal batteries normally use alkaline salts, so steel holds it pretty well.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556171&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.<p>Only in the more primitive reactor designs (BWR, Boiling Water Reactor). Most are of the PWR, Pressurized Water Reactor, design. In these, the water in the reactor is still liquid due to being held at pressure. This pressurized water is run through a steam generator [1] that boils non-radioactive water that never comes into contact with the reactor.</p><p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power)">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power...</a>
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 <p>I hope we manage to improve the design over the 1960s version MSRE which cost $130m to clean up due to unforeseen problems including a near-criticality incident. Certainly there is a lot of research to be done.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556289&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>The cause of the criticality accident was that they did not remove the uranium when they were done with it. This is straightforward to do, you pump F2 gas into the salt and this gas is produced<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hexafluoride">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hexafluoride</a></p><p>which can be stored in tanks. Instead of removing it they let the salt sit, and radioactive decay led to F2 gas being produced by the salt, which caused UF6 to be produced slowly and then migrate.</p><p>This mistake won't happen again.
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 <a href="vote?id=32564749&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Even with that issue, it was still a project that was amazing, they did incredible work, and the cost was very small. Almost hilariously so compared to other nuclear reactor projects.<p>Had that same team received the funding for a next large commercial prototype, the world would be different now.</p><p>But sadly Nixon preferred to spend money for nuclear research in California, Tennessee not exactly a priority.</p><p>Alvin M. Weinberg also didn't make himself any friends with government higher ups when he criticized PWR programs for civilian nuclear.
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 <p>Way, way overdue! China has taken all of our research from the 50's and has been charging ahead. Very sad that politics and ignorance has severely kneecapped our nuclear industry :(</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution. For all the credit we give BigCo for creating propaganda, it's curious that they were unable to be successful here, given the stakes.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They are up against big fossil fuel tycoons like the Kochs. If we are strictly talking corporate propaganda, the fossil fuel industry has plenty of that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556332&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>As much as people portrayed an epic battle between renewables and nuclear the real winner from the move away from nuclear was natural gas fired gas turbines.<p>The most obnoxious thing about the energy literature is that it frequently reads like a stopped clock. People still compare the cost of nuclear energy to the cost of coal, but it's no accident that the US stopped building coal plants at the same time it stopped building nuclear plants because it stopped both for the same reason... The capital cost of a gas turbine generator (even in a hybrid cycle including a steam turbine) is dramatically smaller than the steam turbines used in coal and nuclear plants.</p><p>Since molten salt reactors run a lot hotter than LWRs they could drive</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine</a></p><p>but it's a technology that is not very well developed. If nuclear energy is going to compete with natural gas, however, they need to ditch the steam turbine.
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 <a href="vote?id=32559892&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Do the gas turbines use the brayton cycle? As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks. I recall a LFTR presentation talking about how they could use the Brayton cycle because of... ?high temps I think?.<p>Is the closed cycle gas turbine also using a superior cycle like the Brayton? Oh it's in the third sentence, CTRL-F failed me.
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 <a href="vote?id=32560728&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks.<p>These super-high efficiency gas turbines are not 'pure' gas turbines, but so-called combined cycle plants. Basically you first have a 'normal' gas turbine driving a generator (which, by itself, maybe gives you ~45% efficiency), but then you take the host exhaust of that gas turbine and use that to drive a secondary steam cycle driving another generator.</p><p>I'm not sure such a thing is doable in a closed Brayton cycle, at least I haven't read anything about anything like that.</p><p>An interesting thing with closed cycle Brayton is that instead of air you can use another fluid as the working fluid. Supercritical CO2, for instance, has some nice properties leading to extremely compact machinery. Of course there's an uphill battle in commercializing this technology; if you use air (or nitrogen) you can just adapt one of the many existing gas turbine cores with $zillions of R&amp;D and decades of experience behind them.
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 <p>It seems to me that companies like GE and Westinghouse have tons of money. Add that to the billions pro-nuclear folks have in SV and you've got quite the war chest to fund effective pro-nuke campaigns.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm out of date, lol. Well, GE, even post-breakup, has a huge energy business that would benefit from increasing nuclear production. Assuming they really can make safe, cost-effective power, anyway.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>GE is one of the big names in gas turbines, and AFAIK they make wind turbines as well, in addition to nuclear power plants. So whatever the customer wants they can offer. ;)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Those folks might not want to waste that money in a propaganda race against the entire fossil fuel industry and the emerging renewable energy industry. GE and Westinghouse are large and successful companies, but is nuclear a major part of their portfolio such that they would take such a big risk (compared to fossil fuel industry which views clean energy as an existential threat)?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561332&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution.<p>I don't really think the population matters. The problem is that after the NRC was replaced AEC was replaced, regulation became totally technology depended. Doing anything other then PWR was essentially impossible.</p><p>The DoD is only now undertaking efforts to change this, but its turning a large ship.
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 <a href="vote?id=32568502&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>The existing technology isn't actually that safe. The safe technology isn't that existing, actually.<p>The "population" tends to not believe claims about certain accidents being impossible if they keep happening. The safety of nuclear power is a fantasy. No, the track record is not enough. Given the enormous potential for catastrophe and the timespans for nuclear power project, questioning assumptions like "nobody is going to shoot rockets and shells around the plant" is entirely valid.
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 <a href="vote?id=32574516&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>And that's exactly the wrong reasoning in this case. Because you want to predict the future from the past, over a really long time span and with the adverse events being extremely catastrophic. Just read up on how the Fukushima cleanup is going and how the cost estimates have risen...<p>Bayesian reasoning would require you to argue about priors. You want to take priors from the past. Fine and dandy, when trying to predict the weather or even where the stock market is going. But when talking about how likely it is that something blows up and contaminates a huge area, maybe there are higher standards. And philosophizing about the average is all nice and well, until you happen to live near the site of an accident. And in Ukraine the assumption "nobody is going to shoot around a nuclear plant", which most assurance of nuclear safety depend upon, doesn't hold anymore.
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 <p>For sure. In theory, I'm in favor of nuclear power; especially as we try get to zero/negative net carbon emissions, nuclear plants have real advantages. But when I think about American business culture, I have a hard time imagining the company I'd trust with something that requires an extremely long-term focus (plants run for decades) and deep social responsibility.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Safety isn't a technical problem, it's a human problem. Over long periods safety measures end up being cut and introduce risk. There's also design decisions revolved around cost even though better solutions exist. Then there's just plain oversights. For example we all know earthquakes and tsunamis exist and yet the Fukushima still happened.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32568536&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>You don't understand capitalism then. And you fell for propaganda and fantasy of the nuclear industry apparently.<p>Nuclear power isn't that cheap. Certainly not without subsidies and once you price in all the externalities.
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 <a href="vote?id=32584730&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>And you fell for the fossil fuels propaganda claiming nuclear is too expensive to without subsidies. Seriously.. new nuclear is on the drawing board with huge investments in the UK, France and Sweden.<p>Nuclear will be cheap when the industry grows and reactor designs are standardized.</p><p>It's really simply the superior technology any way you look at it and the "nuclear is too expensive" is just a tired and arguably false argument against it. I'm so sick and tired of people saying that it's too expensive to save the planet..
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 <a href="vote?id=32590515&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>In reality there is a lot of research pointing to nuclear power certainly not being anywhere near as cheap as "too cheap to meter". Claiming this is all "fossil fuel propaganda" is stupid and lazy. So far, there has rarely ever been a nuclear power plant built on budget and on time. Most run way over. And often the costs for cleanup and decommissioning are not priced in properly or even at all. Most industries have to pay insurance for their risks, the - actually uncomputable - risk of nuclear power rests on the whole society, while the profits accumulate with the shareholders of the power company. Ask Japan how that is working out for them currently...<p>"Drawing board" is the operational term. Nuclear power is always late and it's always more expensive than promised. Why is the nuclear power industry subsidized so much everywhere when it's actually a good investment? Have government agencies suddenly become good at investing or are they just charities for corporate interests?</p><p>I'm not even saying it's "too expensive", by the way. I'm not totally against nuclear power, I do see the benefits. It has its place, probably. But I know about fat tail distributions and the unpredictability of the future. You really don't want anybody shooting rockets and artillery shells around a nuclear facility a few hundred miles near you. Today that's Ukraine and much of eastern Europe, who says that in the next fourty or fifty years, the lifespan of a typical plant, that's not you either? In Mossul ISIS hunted around for nuclear material to build a dirty bomb, luckily they didn't find the stuff that actually was there. Who says your country will not have a rogue militia like that in the next fifty years?</p><p>And then the nuclear industry is unwieldy. It requires a large and expensive specialized infrastructure. Which can be amortized eventually, yes. But much of that investment is upfront and the recuperation is dependent on a lot of things going exactly right for a very long time. Also it requires a huge labor force that has to be trained for this specific task and then can hardly do anything else. France has the problem of a shortage. In short: It's hard and expensive to get into nuclear technology and it's even harder to get out of it.</p><p>And in order to solve the climate crisis using nuclear power there are two major problems: First, it's already too late, because nuclear power is so slow. Secondly, you'd need to nuclearize much of the world, including countries with questionable regulatory regimes to say the least. This makes all the problems we see now a lot worse...
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 <a href="vote?id=32594440&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I wasn't saying that nuclear IS "too cheap to meter" I'm saying it could be. And my statement about fossil fuels propaganda was merely a jab back at your snarky comment. Your absolutely right that most of the new reactors that have been built in the west has been delayed and exceeded budget and all I'm saying is that this wouldn't have been the case of the industry had kept growing and evolving back in the 80s. Japan is way overreacting with Fukushima and that plant was old as fuck and was literally built on a fault line without taking proper precautions. Tell me how many died as result of the Fukushima incident and how much radioactive water has polluted the surroundings ? I'd urge you to go look it up, but you probably won't.<p>Sorry i meant all those countries are planning to invest billions of euros into building new reactors now that the EU has deemed nuclear power green. You are talking like other power generation like wind, solar etc is not subsidized ? Hope is the unique to nuclear? Nuclear is subsidized and tightly controlled/regulated for obvious reasons and honestly imho all energy infrastructure should be tightly tied to government as is the case in most of Europe.</p><p>Even if Russia was too hot the nuclear power plant in Ukraine with a cruise missile the damage and contamination would be fairly local and I'd imagine hitting a coal or gas power plant with a cruise missile would be just as bad. Besides that hitting a nuclear power plant with cruise missile would be considered firing a nuke and don't think Russia is ready to do that yet. Taking about dirty bombs is just plain stupid, why the hell would you through all that trouble when there's much much cheaper and simpler ways to do damage?</p><p>Yes it requires some new infrastructure but in many cases you can switch coal, gas and oil plants almost 1:1 with nuclear. What's wrong with having lots of highly educated people working with supplying the world with energy ? And how is it different from solar, wind etc? France has problems because they still have a huge anti nuclear movement making it very hard to invest properly in maintenance and new plants, besides that France's shortage is because Germany suddenly requires allot more electricity because of stupid investments.</p><p>It's never too late.. sure we can also build what is the fastest solution but nuclear is the best bet long term.
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 <a href="vote?id=32604043&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Ah yes, "it could be". An unrefutable and unprovable statement without proof. It's purely wishful thinking that nuclear power will become any easier in the future. Japan is not "overreacting", it has to clean up the damn mess not just to one day use that area again, but also to avoid spreading the contamination. Just because nobody dies immediately from the exposure doesn't mean the ground is safe to handle or live on. Case in point: The Russian soldiers in Tschernobyl digging in contaminated ground and spreading it further. Your point about a low immediate death count after Fukushima is just as dishonest, stupid and lazy: People would have had their lifes cut shorter by the radiation exposure, if they hadn't been evacuated at great cost.<p>Most of your arguments are entire bullshit and I really don't have the time to waste. No, if one of the nuclear plants in Ukraine blows up, the effects are not "very local" and I suspect the locals do care. So should you when a nuclear plant near where you live goes online. Also the biggest nuclear plant in Europe is hurting Ukraine's defense just by sitting there and doing its job perfectly: The Russians discovered that they can shoot artillery from there without anyone shooting back. Nuclear plants are defensive weak points under any circumstance.</p><p>A dirty bomb is a viable terror weapon. You can spread radioactive material quite far with an amount of explosives that wouldn't be able to cause near as much death and terror. Good deal, especially when you got the Plutonium and what not for free...</p><p>People like you are lying through your teeth by saying the only alternative to nuclear is fossil fuels. I don't even know anyone who believes this.</p><p>And no, we can't wait for nuclear power. A world full of nuclear power plants is unsafe. Maybe in Norway or Finland with the most honest and least corrupt governments (at presents) and no immediate threats from the outside it seems safe. But really, betting on nuclear power means betting on a perfect world during the next few decades at least.</p><p>You just continue to profess to a profound ignorance on how radiation exposure work, what happened and is happening right now in Tschernobyl and Fukushima, and make hand wavy arguments "Such accidents are never going to happen and aren't actually that bad, for real this time, pinky promise with cherry on top".
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 <p>And you can just continue fear mongering trying to hold the world back further. The world is going nuclear wether you like it or not, America's biggest enemies Russia and China already have it big time and there's a very big limit to what countries America can hold back line they've tried to do with Iran. If anyone is had bullshit arguments it's you; you clearly haven't done any research into Tjernobyl and Fukushima and fear mongering about dirty bombs is just beyond stupid. Så thank you for ending the conversation. Glad the world has started moving on and had started seeing through bullshit like what you have presented in this argument. Write me back in 10 years and let's see what technology won.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32615851&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>There's no evidence or reality to "nuclear is coming back". Some politicians talk a big talk, that's all. Nor did or do I say it's not going to happen, but in most of the developed/semi-developed world except China it's currently definitely not happening. Just another nuclear fanboy fantasy ignoring reality.<p>You know who cares about dirty bombs? Every intelligence agency and counter terrorism unit in the world. So far it hasn't happened, but if nuclear power is scaled up, this stuff will be way more accessible. A lot like the gun violence problem in the US, but I guess the denialism around those topics is similar.</p><p>I personally care most about the closest nuclear facilities, not so much those in China. And in reality, neither Tschernobyl nor Fukushima have been cleaned up yet and continue to be a problem to be felt financially at the very least. I know quite a bit about it, but some people apparently think it's only bad if you die instantly... But it certainly makes some weak arguments easier, doesn't it? Who cares about people losing decades of their life...
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 <p>The problem wasn't the safety, the problem was they couldn't deliver a cheap solution. And recently when they tried to come back they completely fucked it up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32558559&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Why does that matter?<p>Particle physics dominated US research grants for several decades with some results to show for it. Now that the focus has shifted elsewhere (e.g. material science) and another country is leading in nuclear research, we will be able to observe their results and act accordingly (just like China did in the 50s). Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?
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 <a href="vote?id=32560835&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?<p>For better or worse, the world doesn't work such that everyone who reads a research paper is on an equal footing to industrialize/commercialize the technology. The ones who got their hands dirty are far ahead. Thus governments do something called 'industrial policy' (a somewhat dirty word in the West these days, to our detriment I think) where they try to build 'value chains' (or whatever you wanna call it) where they spend money on pure research, applied research, early stage spinoffs, etc. to kickstart an industry around a particular technology.</p><p>For an example, consider how decades-long investment by the US government into electronic warfare and military electronics kickstarted Silicon Valley.</p><p>So China is gearing up to be a dominant player in the global nuclear power market. So does that matter? In a way it's better somebody does it than nobody and we continue burning fossils, but being one of these hopeless romantics who think things like democracy and human rights are incredibly important I'd rather see 'our team' on the field as well. Energy extortion isn't pretty, see Europe and Russia at the moment.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554264&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>A 1MW research reactor.<p>Anyway, why is it always a fluoride salt? Is it because of the melting point or because of some nuclear property?</p><p>I imagine there is some very relevant reason, because a less reactive anion (even chlorine) would be much easier to work with.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554462&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Fluoride salts are good for fissile uranium + fertile thorium. If you want to work with a plutonium/uranium 238 cycle then chloride salts are a better choice. Plutonium doesn't dissolve very well in fluorides.<p>Molten chloride reactors can have performance characteristics right out of science fiction, it seems possible for such a reactor to not only breed more fuel but to destroy the long-lived (500 year) fission products such as cesium and strontium.</p><p>It never gets upvoted on HN when I link it but I've been following MSRs for a while and even spoke at the first thorium energy conference and I've been watching people's thoughts about designs evolve and this one</p><p><a href="https://www.moltexenergy.com/">https://www.moltexenergy.com/</a></p><p>is well ahead of the others.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554839&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>While at it, I never understood the worry about the plutonium surfacing in the MSR cycle. Of course it can be diverted to make nuclear warheads. But countries like the US, or France, or Russia, or China, or India already are able to produce nuclear warheads, even from plutonium extracted from more conventional reactors. I don't understand where is the risk of proliferation.<p>Is this about international treaties and ease of inspection? About currently non-nuclear countries obtaining nuclear weapons more easily?
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 <a href="vote?id=32555356&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>(1) There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology. For instance, if somebody built a perfect system for separating out protactinium from a thorium MSR, that protactinium could be allowed to decay outside the reactor and produce pure U233 that could be used to make weapons. That perfect system is probably not practical, but in general there is fear that any new approach to fuel processing could have unintended consequences. Would it be possible, for instance, to make something like the EBR-II that breeds weapon grade plutonium in a blanket and uses some form of pyroprocessing to produce pure metallic plutonium? Such a system might be able to make enough material to build several weapons a year.<p>(2) The published information about nuclear proliferation is incomplete and the mental models behind it are broken. For instance, the "little boy" bomb was made with uranium produced with a</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron</a></p><p>but for all the fear that countries like Iran would develop centrifuges, there has been little fear expressed about Calutrons... Except that when Iraq tried to develop a bomb it used the exact same approach used by the US! A scientist at CERN had been contacted by an Iraqi scientist who was interested in a magnet which could have been used for a Calutron and the proliferation authorities just blew him off.</p><p>See <a href="https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Iraq/andre/ISRI-95-03.pdf">https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Iraq/andre/ISRI-95-03.pdf</a></p><p>A country like Japan has large amounts of plutonium which is contaminated with Pu240 and Pu241 and not weapons usable but it's plausible that a modified Calutron could be used to purify non-weapons grade plutonium and make it weapons grade.</p><p>Although the conventional model is that a threat would make plutonium by irradiating uranium with neutrons from a fission reactor, it's also possible that a fusion reactor or particle accelerator could be used as a neutron source to do the same. The later would actually have less heat output per unit of Pu and might be an easier device to hide. Current particle accelerators aren't reliable or economical enough for this purpose, but this is just one of many paths to proliferation which are ignored.
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 <a href="vote?id=32558605&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology.<p>It seems like it would be a good idea to get the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (<a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/">https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/</a>) signed by more nations then, so that this technology could be safely developed without a risk of nations weaponizing it.
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 <a href="vote?id=32569281&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Ukraine let go its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in 1991. In 2014 Russia occupied a large part of it, and in 2022 is trying to occupy it entirely. Aster this, I suppose no other nation will ever voluntarily relinquish their existing nuclear weapons, and many nations that don't have nukes will try hard to obtain them.<p>This ship has sailed, to my mind.
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 <p>I can't find a source, but my recollection is that the majority of the U-235 for Little Boy was generated by gaseous diffusion? I know the original process was gaseous-diffusion followed by Calutron and that once gaseous diffusion was improved they shut down all of the Calutrons, and the timing is such that all but the first little boy bomb must have been made by gaseous diffusion, but it's unclear how the fissile material for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was generated.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32560921&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I think one fear is about the proliferation of reprocessing technology. So currently, with a traditional LWR, you buy X fuel rods, then later IAEA inspectors come by and check that those X rods are in the spent fuel pool. Reprocessing, to the very little extent it's done at all, is done by countries that already have nuclear weapons (except maybe Japan?), so the horse has already left the barn.<p>But a MSR, at least for some of the more advanced concepts, would have online reprocessing on site (continually siphoning off fission products and adding small amounts of fresh fuel). Additionally, since the fuel wouldn't be in discrete bundles, I think there's a fear that small amounts of fuel could be diverted to a clandestine weapons program.
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 <a href="vote?id=32561135&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?<p>I'd love to find actual data but, anecdotally, it seems like a large amount (vast majority?) of the nuclear legacy costs for countries like the UK, at least, come from the back-end - ie reprocessing. If you just store used rods (in perpetuity) near the reactor they were used in then the overall legacy footprint is pretty modest. Indeed, I think that's what the UK does now - our reprocessing facilities are now in decommissioning mode and the US did the same a long time ago.</p><p>Yes - part of the decision to stop reprocessing was proliferation risk. But I think it's also because reprocessing is so insanely messy and so easy to get wrong.</p><p>This is because if you 'reprocess' fuel, the waste problem just balloons... the rods have to be chopped up, dissolved in nitric acid, taken through a complex chemical process and you end up with vast amounts of liquid waste, various bits of undissolved gunk, a fiendishly difficult-to-decommission reprocessing facility and all the rest. Reprocessing plants are some of the most complicated chemical plants in the world... and when they go wrong (eg the UK's Thorp leak) they're almost impossible to repair owing to the radioactivity.</p><p>In the past, the <i>purpose</i> of the early reactors was to generate plutonium for weapons and so reprocessing was, in reality, the key activity, with the reactors just the tedious thing you had to build to provide feedstuff for this extraction process.</p><p>But if we don't want any new plutonium then there's no need to reprocess and the waste problem just becomes insanely easier.</p><p>To see what I mean, google the history of the UK's Sellafield (specifically the B.205 and Thorp plants) or Russia's Mayak or France's La Hague. So many leaks and accidents, all totally unnecessary if they hadn't been trying to reprocess the fuel. The idea of taking something small and stable (a rod) and turning it into a dangerous liquid and then trying to run it through a fiendishly complex chemical plant just seems nuts on its face.</p><p>Hence my question about MSRs... can you build one that doesn't require any of this tricky chemical engineering, whether 'online' or otherwise? If so, great. If not, why isn't this whole avenue just shut down as DOA?
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 <a href="vote?id=32561278&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?<p>I think the Terrestrial IMSR (which is probably the one closest to commercializing in the West) is designed for a once-through uranium cycle, similar to current LWR plants. The idea, IIRC, is to replace the entire reactor vessel (including the fuel salt) every 7 years.</p><p>Not sure what the plan is for dealing with the spent fuel. If the fuel salt is water soluble (not sure, but salts tend to be, right?) I'd think some form of processing is necessary before geological disposal. But maybe that can be a cleaner and simpler process than a full PUREX.
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 <p>Perhaps it's just how much more careful you have to be with plutonium products because of proliferation concerns, or possibly diplomacy concerns "legitimizing", or perhaps just paranoia. Or the basic concern of a bunch more plutonium hanging around even if secure.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561363&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>They are not really ahead.<p><a href="https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-licensing-vendor-design-review/">https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...</a></p><p>Terrestrial Energy Inc. is the furthest along in terms of the regulatory process.</p><p>And for Moltex to work they also need to get a CANDU fuel reprocessing facility online.</p><p>But I do think its a great and practical design.</p><p>They say they have a version that can be a thorium breeder but they have released little to no information.
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 <a href="vote?id=32556876&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; We can produce heat for hydrogen, replacing the need for fossil fuels in heating, transport and industry.<p>What does it mean to produce "heat for hydrogen"? Why is heating hydrogen a useful property (how does hot hydrogen replace fossil fuels in heating, transport, and industry?)? That seems oddly specific, so I assume I'm misreading something?
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 <p>It's pretty cool that they designed their plants with a heat reservoir and oversized turbine generators. This allows them to turn the turbines on and off at will, complementing wind and solar. The nuclear plant "charges" the heat reservoir during the day when the turbines are idle.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>From your perspective, given that Thorium salt reactors are part of India's 3rd stage Nuclear plan, where is this technology in general? I assume that they're leading the pack, but I don't really know.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561407&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>The problem with India is that they started with redoing the whole solid fuel thing first and that took a very long time.<p>Its hard to find information, but based on some talks I saw a couple years ago I don't think they are close to liquid fueled reactors.</p><p>They are still working mostly on creating thorium pellets to put into reactors.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554374&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Good question - here's a paper and quote on this:<p>"Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was designed to operate at high temperature in range 700 - 800°C and its fuel is dissolved in a circulating molten fluoride salt mixture. Molten fluoride salts are stable at high temperature, have good heat transfer properties and can dissolve high concentration of actinides and fission product."</p><p><a href="https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4972932">https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4972932</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554381&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Without knowing the specifics as apply to nukes, anion reactivity is inversely proportional to atomic reactivity, fluoride is far <i>less</i> reactive than chloride or bromide or iodide, respectively in order of increasing reactivity. Ergo fluoride and fluoride containing anions are quite common in molten salts/ionic liquids.<p>In English: the flouride, having so voraciously devoured that 8th electron it was missing, <i>really</i> doesn't want to give it up, whereas chlorine et al have lots of spares.)
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 <p>The concern is not so much about the fluoride losing an electron, but about whatever reacted to it stealing electrons from the reactor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32555090&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Which is less likely with fluorine because what fluorine reacts with to form the salt, say Na as in NaF, wants to give up an electron, not receive one. And with fluorine as a partner, Na will have the hardest* time retrieving that electron to give to something else. This can be easily validated by comparing enthalpy of reaction and formation for the various halide salts.<p>The properties of broad chemical stability are not limited to ionically bonded fluorine either, see PTFE, which also derives its stability from the extreme reactivity of fluorine. Compared to say PTIE (polytetra<i>iodo</i>ethylene), which if you could even make would rapidly yellow and degrade in open air/mild sunlight, as iodine compounds are wont to do.</p><p>*for a loose definition of hardest.
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 <a href="vote?id=32556929&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>Because fluorine has a low neutron capture cross section.<p>Chlorine has a rather high capture cross section for thermal neutrons, so it could only be used in fast reactors.
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 <p>Anyone know of any software work being done around Nuclear? I don't care what it is, just looking to play a bit more with the space, Open Source, data sourcing. I really mean I don't care what it is, just wanna learn a bit more about it and be a bit more involved.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32561430&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>This is so fantastic. That a 'Christian' university would do this is kind of insane to me, but I take it.<p>So many problems with nuclear in the last 50 years are that there simply are not enough experiments and research reactors.</p><p>If you don't have them, then how can you ever test new materials.</p><p>The original molten salt experiment reactor was only not that much bigger then this university reactor and didn't cost a huge amount, but it lead to such amazing research results including new materials that were designed when making it.</p><p>New materials can't easily be qualified without having the necessary research infrastructure.
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 <a href="vote?id=32554862&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>This is really exciting. Fission tech is largely stuck in with incremental improvements from the 1950s. The last time the NRC got an application for a research reactor was 30 years ago.<p>The reactor is a graphite-moderated, fluoride salt flowing fluid design. If this works well, fission will have a very bright future as it should be more efficient and much safer to operate than current reactor designs.
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 <a href="vote?id=32558688&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>[Layman, but I've read up quite a bit on thorium and molten salt reactor designs]<p>The 1959 Sodium Reactor experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of a sodium-cooled reactor as the heat source for a commercial power reactor to produce electricity. It used fuel rods similar to rods used in reactors in operation today.</p><p>Conversely the The Molten Salt Reactor experiment[1] used uranium fuel dissolved into a salt as both fuel and coolant for the reactor - this design enables significant advantages over traditional reactors powered by solid fuel.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556355&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>I'm surprised the reactor needs a moderator, I would assume that a liquid fuel reactor could be controlled far better by controlling flow into and out of the critical mass. It's all at normal pressures, just hot (temperature and radiation wise), so just bog standard plumbing practices for handling fluid levels should work.<p>Being able to scramble the reactor by just dumping the contents through a set of diverters into separate flat bottom chambers to cool and eventually freeze is an awesome safety feature.
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 <p>A moderator is not used to control the reaction, but to make it possible. The neutrons produced by fission, have high kinetic energy, and fuel has a small cross section for neutrons at such high energy. A neutron moderator slows down the neutrons, making them more likely to interact with the uranium and split them. typically water is a good moderator, but here they use graphite for obvious reason (high temperature salts doesn't play well with water)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That makes a lot of sense... thanks!<p>As for molten salts and water... oh yeah. That gets into very dangerous territory.[1] A very similar reaction seems to happen even with just molten table salt, where it "shouldn't".</p><pre><code> 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8</code></pre></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>One of the great practical challenges with molten salt is to design a reliable valve. At temperatures this high and with the high corrosive properties of the medium, this is not trivial.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I didn't realize that the viscosity stays high for molten salt[1], that makes everything abrasive, along with dealing with possible phase change if the salt solidifies... yikes!<p>So, what we're dealing with is highly radioactive corrosive molasses with a constant stream of radioactive decay product gasses bubbling out of it, like Xenon and Iodine. Yeah, that seems more challenging that I first thought.</p><pre><code> 1 - https://www.powermotiontech.com/home/article/21144640/armoring-a-valve-against-molten-salt</code></pre></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I thought these were outlawed, per a LFTR video I saw once. To emphasize, I'm asking if that is the case, or was the LFTR video was engaging in misinformation, or if something changed in regulations.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I believe that the video was misinformed or your recollection is a bit fuzzy. The closest true approximation I can muster is "there is no commercial molten salt reactor design yet approved by the NRC, and the NRC approval process may need updates to consider reactor designs that significantly deviate from the common water-moderated types."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I believe it's less outlawed and more not really approved for use due to insufficient research.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554548&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>The process for licensing a LWR is well established. Commercial LMFBR (Fermi 1) and HTGR (Peach Bottom 1) reactors have been approved in the US but those were a very long time ago. Anybody who wants to license a new reactor type is going to work through an extensive process with the NRC to determine how exactly it is done.<p>They built an MSR in Wuwei, China and just got approval to start it.</p><p><a href="https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up">https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=32554901&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>AFAICT materials research is a big part of it. At 800°C even water is pretty reactive; the salt is much more so. Even though an MSR does not need the high pressure of water-based reactors, you can't make all the piping from graphite or platinum.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=32556325&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D32553574"></a> </td><td><p>LFTR is just a trade name from a guy named Kirk who tried to rebrand the Thorium fueled Molten Salt Reactor.<p>So basically yes but like all thorium reactors it has to start with enriched uranium first.
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  Application submitted for US molten salt research reactor ( world-nuclear-news.org )          
 446 points by PaulHoule 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 210 comments            
             
             
             
 dangerlibrary 6 months ago | next [–]            
             
 So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine. This mostly works because moving even very hot, very high pressure water around is kind of a solved problem in industry.         
             
 In a molten salt reactor, you use nuclear fission to melt various corrosive salts into a fluid, and this is good because molten salts store a lot more energy per unit (volume, presumably?) at low pressures, so you can transfer heat indirectly to nearby turbine-turning water without irradiating the water or relying on high-pressure water to cool your reactor. Cool.       
             
 But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet). I suppose this is less of a problem for a research reactor, but it doesn't sound like there's been a materials breakthrough here that's allowing them to get started. Are they just plowing forward and they'll need to replace the containment infrastructure every few years?     
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 You are correct about the corrosion issue. I've done some work developing molten salt resistant claddings. The main culprit is chromium leaching, which de-alloys most of the metals approved for reactor design. The leeching happens at the grain boundaries, so you will hear 'intergranular attack' as a research focus.        
             
 A close second problem is the radiation itself. Elements in both the containment vessel and salt transmute. One study I read estimated that pure tungsten (a viable salt resistant material) would transmute to rhenium at a rate of 1% a year. The radiation also causes void-swelling in both the metals and pure graphite.        
             
 The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours. A paper from 2015 showed that the material the testing crucible is made of greatly effects the rate of chromium leeching. They found that both graphite and nickel act as chromium sinks. Many designs call for graphite or nickel parts to be used alongside chromium containing steels. This reactor appears to be stainless steel with graphite moderators.     
             
 Another paper strongly suggested that radiation induced void-swelling can squeeze together the grain boundaries, greatly slowing down intergranular attack. Very little corrosion testing has been done under exposure to radiation as it is logistically difficult.         
             
 Basically, the next best step is test reactors. You can only get so far testing things in isolation.           
             
             
 jxf 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours.           
             
 Q: What is a coupon in this context?            
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's used 2 ways in metallurgy. Mainly it is a term for test pieces cut from a batch of metal and used for proof testing. Tensile, elongation, fatigue, weldability, and many other tests require destructive testing coupons. When you take welding certification tests, you weld two coupons together, and then submit your coupon for testing.       
             
 It is also a term for strips of metal that you mount in a corrosive environment as a way to monitor corrosion of other susceptible components. So if you were worried about your bronze bushings, you would buy some matching bronze coupons, put them in an area of similar flow, and measure their thickness periodically.        
             
 https://www.alspi.com/coupons.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_testing#Coupon_tests           
             
             
 carlmr 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 >test pieces cut from a batch of metal            
             
 >strips of metal            
             
 I mean in essence you just have to look at the word. Coupon is from French couper, which means to cut. So it's a cut-out. It has the same meaning when you look at extreme couponing and metal testing.          
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yeah, I didn't think of it as an overly obscure usage, but neither Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia list the definition. Dictionary.com does. Maybe its time to edit Wikipedia over lunch =)          
             
             
 albrewer 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Coupon is used in metalworking to mean a sample you can submit for destructive testing that is representative of the whole piece under test.           
             
 A weld coupon, for example, is a piece of test material of the same thickness and weld preparation as the main part being welded but is not integral to the part itself. That coupon is then sawed off and submitted for destructive tests like impact testing (to determine minimum operating temperature), tensile strength testing (specimen is pulled apart to find how strong and stretchy it is), and crystallographic etching (looking at the crystal structure of the metal to see if it has defects).     
             
             
 djcapelis 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 A coupon is an informal term for a small sample of material, most often metal. It’s perhaps most commonly used in welding where practice welds for people first training to weld are done on pieces of metal often referred to as coupons. :)         
             
 It is usually an artifact of materials like metal which are hard to cut, and can’t efficiently just be cut as needed during a task, but are prepared and pre-cut into small pieces you can grab easily. Each of those pieces is called a coupon.         
             
 I used to store mine in a Chinese takeout container box.            
             
             
 greyhair 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In the mid 1970s, in my welding class, the school was located down the street from a small manufacturer that formed various metal alloys.           
             
 They would provide the school with bins of scrap from their manufacturing free of charge. Those were our practice coupons in class. We had to be careful to return the welded scraps back to the proper bin so the manufacturer could recycle them.         
             
 Our class was just a very small part of their recycling flow. It was a great relationship, we needed practice materials, and they hired welders.          
             
             
 iAm25626 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Great Q: maybe? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-MAR-M247Nb-coupon-b-Al...           
             
             
 HPsquared 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Does it even need to be a metal? (Since the pressure is so low strength requirements are lower)... How about ceramic or glass (or quartz), or something else non-metal?          
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It doesn't, but any material used needs to withstand 4 extremes - high temperatures (650-850 C), corrosion (dissolves uranium), very high neutron flux, and US govt. regulation.          
             
 Graphite is the current favorite non-metal option. It is already widely used in traditional reactors, so it is approved, and its interaction with radiation is well understood. On the other hand, its interaction with radiation and molten salt is not as well understood, but hopefully this test reactor and others like it will solve that.       
             
 One of my favorite solutions seals the reactor in with a crane and 8 graphite containment vessels. The best estimate of the lifespan of structural graphite in this environment is ~7 years, so the plan would be to monitor the system and move the reactor to a new vessel as needed. The goal is 50 year life-span for these reactors.        
             
 Anyway, there is research into alternate materials, but to really test them you need to expose them to both molten salts and radiation. And if they pass, you need to get government approval. The last material to get govt approval was Hastelloy N, and I heard the process was a slog.        
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Well, one thing about liquid fuel vs solid fuel is that you can move the fuel to a new reactor and, uh... ?"recycle"? / ?"overhaul"? the old one. So you could use one for 7 years why the other is retrofitted. You'd need two reactors... or... you'd need 8 and seven are online while 1 is replaced per year.        
             
 So unless materials is solved, you need scalability and replacement. At least the OTHER problem with solid fuel, lots of waste, is generally not a problem with breeder reactors and liquids. You remove the fission products from the fluid and feed it back in. I'm no chemist so I don't know all the separation nastiness involved, but it's better than carting ten thousand year waste across the country to Yucca.      
             
 So the question is, what about the other reactor designs, don't they need replacement with respect to the vessel? And as I understand it, fusion reactors also have issues with high speed neutrons so their vessels would need periodic replacement, even if they get to sustained ignition and positive energy.        
             
 Your replacement containment layers seems like the "constant replacement" strategy. What if you could simply inject a new layer that hardens and pushes out the older layer?          
             
 Also, why not have solid uranium or some similar material as the inner container? Could simple saturation of the existing uranium in the salt prevent excessive wear?          
             
 I wonder how much of this approval is because the Chinese brought one online.           
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 There are a lot of options, I'm no nuclear engineer but looking at all the different companies, they all have different approaches:           
             
 Terrestrial Energy: The whole reactor, including heat exchanges and so on is defined for 7 years of life. After that a second reactor is running. After a few years the original reactor is put into a storage silo and then a new reactor is placed their ready to be switch to.        
             
 From memory they don't seem to pump the fuel from 1 to the other.            
             
 Flibe Energy: They are doing the famous lifter. Simular concept, 2 reactor cores with graphite moderation, after 7 years the fuel is pumped to the second reactor, the first is getting its graphite core replaced. This will have longer lead time to deployment.         
             
 Moltex Energy: They have totally different approach. Instead of 7 year lift-time they are building a traditional reactor with much longer life. They are basically building a sodium cooled fast reactor, but replace sodium with salt solution. And then in the fuel assemblies are also like those in sodium reactor, but contain liquid salt with uranium in them. They want to produce the fuel salt from spent Canadian CANDU fuel.      
             
 Kairos energy: This is a molten salt cooled reactor that uses pellet fuel but little balls instead of the traditional pellets.           
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I've been thinking about the dumb idea of using solid uranium/thorium as the (closest) salt containment layer: you have a solid uranium (melting point 2000C) or thorium layer (3000C) around the salt, which may not degrade it that quickly if the salts (which are a solution basically, if it's a liquid?) are more or less saturated. Or even if it isn't, how long would a layer of uranium or thorium last? I guess that's the big question.      
             
 You don't care if the thorium or uranium captures neutrons I would think. Thorium neutron capture is a good thing.           
             
 So depending on how long the solid "breeder" inner shell hold up, when you "recondition" the inner shell, I assume you can just dissolve it into salt, feed it into the normal fission products processing that the salt fuel use, and put in a new solid uranium/thorium salt shell.        
             
 Or maybe thorium could be alloyed for more endurance properties as the containment. Of course I have no idea about the various cracking / strength / fatigue properties of thorium as a metal.          
             
 I wonder if pellets/spheres could use thorium as a surrounding material.            
             
 So how nuts is all of that?            
             
 Maybe you could do a weekly monthly re-coat of the inner layer with more thorium or uranium to replace that which gets dissolved/degraded.           
             
 Edit: ORNL on thorium properties in a nuclear environment            
             
 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4622065            
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I don't know enough to answer any of that.            
             
 > weekly monthly re-coat            
             
 Any operation inside the reactor is a bad idea.            
             
             
 chris_wot 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Ah yes, the most extreme thing one withstands is U.S. regulation.            
             
             
 Retric 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Nothing requires this research to to be carried out in the US specifically beyond funding being available here. It’s really the inherent difficulties which is holding back progress.          
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 My understanding is that you are not allowed to build a research reactor that is bigger then a university reactor but isn't a full scale energy producing reactor. My understanding is that for such a reactor you would need the full operating license just as a grid connected PWR.        
             
 And since in the US its essentially impossible to get a license for anything but a PWR, that isn't rally possible.           
             
 Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup, even those that started in other countries.          
             
 https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...            
             
             
 ethbr0 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup           
             
 Canada's vast tracts of land wouldn't hurt either. If a meltdown or containment breach happens, and no population centers are within 400km, that's a much better bad scenario.          
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I mean you don't build reactors somewhere out of in the middle of no-where, you need a labor force and infrastructure to build them.           
             
             
 cupofpython 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 yeah im not exactly mad about it being hard / impossible for people to set up a lab-based experimental nuclear reactor near me due to regulations          
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Those reactors will be much safer then the street in front of your house.            
             
             
 Retric 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Prove it.             
             
 And thus the reason for all this regulation.            
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 We have prove how unsafe the streets are and yet ...            
             
 In fact, nuclear reactor to be built have a higher barrier of 'prove of safety' then almost anything else.           
             
 In fact, nobody in the US ever died because of civilian nuclear reactor research or at least not in the last 40+ years.           
             
             
 cupofpython 5 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The street is too dangerous, you are right. An experimental nuclear reactor, however, does not make the street safer.           
             
 Additionally, the public is relatively unaware of how nuclear plants fail. If people at nuclear reactor research labs suddenly stop showing up to work - what happens? People kind of assume it will explode, or become a radiation hot-zone rendering the local area unusable for a hundred+ years.        
             
 And considering the experimental reactors being discussed need parts replacement due to corrosion, what happens if those replacements dont happen?          
             
 The dangers of human inaction seem much higher for nuclear than other things. With standard fuel sources, if people stop showing up to work then power simply stops being made - that's pretty much it. And while they are at work, the process is pretty simple and robust (compared to nuclear) with a lot of room for error.        
             
 I know I've been surprised (in a good way) to learn about some of the safety mechanisms existing within nuclear reactors, but I still only sort of understand what anything means that I read - and the safety mechanisms that gave me some sense of relief is based on a lot of assumptions I had to make about the way nuclear works as a lay person.       
             
 how about nuclear scientist stop saying "trust me bro" and more aggressively educate people on nuclear fail-safes? People have trouble voting for things they do not understand. And educating the public on something they are either uninterested in or incapable of understanding is an unfair burden to put on nuclear scientists, but they are the only ones qualified to do so.       
             
 the ball will move a lot faster once lay people can exchange stories about nuclear safety that go beyond "we barely use nuclear, and no one has died yet, it's actually really safe because ... reasons? scientists said so?"         
             
             
 carapace 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Pure speculation here but what about using salt to contain the salt? Make a big block of salt (possibly foamed) and melt a puddle in the middle?          
             
             
 throwoutway 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Which of these do you think ACU's NEXT project is pursuing?            
             
             
 kenned3 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 non-metals have their own problems and glass tends to have some really weird properties.           
             
 I would think a major one would be their failure mode. Metals flex and expand before they eventually fail. Glass/ceramic is fine until suddenly it isn't and has a total failure.          
             
 Think of a window being hit. If it were metal it would probably deform but if it is glass it shatters.           
             
 Next would be joining them on-site. If needed, metal piping can be bent and welded in-place. what do you do with a glass pipe that needs a join? what do you do if there is a small variation in the plans and the pipe needs an adjustment?         
             
 I think there are a host of reasons why glass is not used for pipes.            
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Glass is already basically welded, or maybe it's more like brazing. But an oxyacetylene torch can be used to work with glass just as well as to cut or weld metal.          
             
 Metals also have weird properties. Like tempering and hardening based on temperature. In an industrial setting you need expert welders with deep knowledge of the materials or a weld is going to fail and ruin your day.         
             
 So it doesn't seem like a huge leap to me actually, assuming ceramics or glass actually have desirable properties.           
             
             
 kennend3 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I noticed you focused almost exclusively on the welding while ignoring the brittle nature of glass?           
             
 I would think that putting liquid salt in a a glass pipe is somewhat asking for trouble. One of the many issues with glass is "thermal shock".          
             
 Let's say there is a fire and water based sprinklers are activated.. what will the 1,400F glass do once water touches it?           
             
 Or there is an accident and someone bangs into the glass. Metal can deform and not fail, glass cant.           
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 “Glass” is a generic term for a wide variety of materials. So is “metal”. Metal can be brittle, sometimes that’s even desirable. That’s what tempering and hardening are about.          
             
 A molten salt reactor is a material science problem. Conventional “metal” doesn’t work because of the corrosion. If glass has some desirable property then we can overcome the “bumping in to it” problem. Maybe with a hand rail. Or staying away from the operational nuclear reactor.        
             
 I’m not suggesting glass actually be used. I’m saying if it was I wouldn’t be surprised.           
             
             
 werdnapk 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Doesn't glass.... melt?            
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 So does metal. Welding is just melting two parts together.            
             
             
 baq 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_welding            
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welding            
             
 What point are you trying to make here?            
             
             
 baq 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 no heat, no melting. just welding            
             
             
 HPsquared 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Perhaps it would have been better to say "melting two parts together is just welding".           
             
             
 imtringued 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 We can do this with glass, however, lapping is incredibly expensive for something as simple as joining two pieces of glass together.           
             
             
 onlyrealcuzzo 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 At 3100 F.             
             
 Salt melts at 1474 F.            
             
             
 eitland 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 1704C             
             
 801C             
             
 (or             
             
 1978K             
             
 1074K)             
             
             
 systemvoltage 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Composites? Such as the stuff used in Aviation?            
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Most of those contain plastics which are usually not good for high temperatures but also have long chain molecules which get broken by neutrons and other particles and cannot heal defects the way metals can.         
             
             
 Turbots 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 what about glass pipes encased in said metals :-)            
             
             
 HPsquared 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Glass-lined vessels and pipes are already used in the chemical industry so it's a somewhat proven technology.           
             
 Not sure if it's suited to the chemistry and temperatures (and radiation) of a molten salt reactor, but it seems like an interesting technology.          
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The corrosion issue is part of what drove Moltex to their rather interesting design (sterile coolant salt is a fluoride; fuel salt in tubes is chloride; this is a fast reactor.) The absence of uranium in the fluoride allows it to be operated at a redox potential where chromium does not dissolve.        
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yes, one of the reason I like that reactor design. They basically put something in the fluoride that is basically designed to corrode so that the actual reactor vessel doesn't. If I understand correctly.          
             
 Their design doesn't require the 7 year swap cycle most MSR do.            
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Right! They've got the same thing going that ordinary LWRs do: the neutrons lose their energy in a surround liquid rather than in a solid moderator or solid structural materials other than the fuel rods (which are designed to be replaced often anyway). The design even adds some hafnium to the coolant salt (substituting for zirconium, which is the sacrificial metal you refer to there); hafnium serves to shield the reactor walls from thermalized neutrons.      
             
 One additional advantage of separating the fuel salt from the coolant salt is that the coolant salt volume can be increased as desired, making the thermal inertia of the reactor as large as one likes independent of reactor power or size of the fuel load.         
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > One additional advantage            
             
 The problem with that is that you would likely require a different design and go threw full licensing. So in practice this will likely not be used.          
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Presumably it would happen at design time and a large, high thermal inertia design would be the one licensed.           
             
             
 andy_ppp 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 What about using molten lead or something that can act like a lubricant/insulation at that temperature away from the corrosion in the same way airflow is used over jet turbine blades to stop them melting? It there any high temperature liquid that is molten salt phobic like oil and water?        
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 People thought this stuff            
             
 https://haynesintl.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/new-alloy-br...            
             
 (which is practically stainless steel without the steel) was good for this use but when it was tried in this system it did not hold up very well          
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment...            
             
 but it was believed that some small change in the formula such as adding Niobium could clear the problem up. What's needed to move forward is not a big conceptual breakthrough but rather testing of materials under realistic conditions... A new test reactor.         
             
 What is more problematic with the MSRE design is that it incorporates graphite as a moderator and the graphite swells and goes bad over time. Possibly you can take the graphite core out every few years and replace it with a new one, but people have also found designs that don't require a moderator outside the fuel salt.        
             
 When I went to the first conference on Thorium Energy years ago David Leblanc had done some very simple calculations that showed you didn't need the graphite -- it works just fine with a faster spectrum. He's refined that idea and is running with it. Others are pursuing chloride salts and plutonium fuel with a very fast spectrum.        
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Fast spectrum MSRs bring a whole litany of other problems. Chlorine has more oxidation states and the chemistry with fission products is much more complex.          
             
 Starting with graphite makes sense imho for a university.            
             
             
 HPsquared 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If it's designed with replacement in mind, a graphite moderator isn't all that bad. It can even be a safety advantage, in that if you drain the fuel out of the vessel it's taken away from its moderator.          
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I must not be parsing this correctly. Taking fuel away from the moderator sounds like a safety disadvantage. Maybe I don't know what a moderator does.          
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I'm not a nuke physicist, but I recall LFTR presentations on the "safety plug" to stop meltdown: basically a plug melts and the fluid flows into a shallow pool.          
             
 Since the fluid is "thinned", neutron economy plummets and chain reactions stop.           
             
 In addition, I though the fluid would expand a bit under high heat in the reactor, which would drop neutron economy as well, so a fluid can somewhat self-moderate.          
             
 So unless the fluid is in a ball or tank where the neutron economy is maintained in three dimensions, if you drain it out it no longer has the neutron economy.          
             
 So what they probably are saying is that since the fuel is fluid, and if you need to replace the moderator, you drain the fuel (and as stated above, that stops the reaction as well) and replace the moderator.         
             
             
 HPsquared 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If the fuel is designed such that it needs a graphite moderator to sustain a reaction, then if the fuel is removed from the reactor it's less likely to go critical than if the fuel was "higher-grade". It's less likely to have a criticality accident.         
             
             
 mnw21cam 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 A moderator is a material that slows neutrons down. Slow neutrons are more likely to initiate fission in a Uranium (or other fissile) nucleus that they hit, so a moderator increases the reactivity of the reactor.         
             
             
 mulmen 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Thanks, that’s exactly the detail I was misunderstanding.            
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Annoyingly, "molten salt reactor" is used to describe two different technologies. What you describe is a traditional reactor that uses molten salt to move heat. This typically leads to higher efficiencies, but does have corrosion issues. Other power generation systems can also benefit from molten salt loops - namely solar energy collectors.       
             
 In the research field, "molten salt reactors" (MSRs) usually means the other tech - a reactor where the fissile material is dissolved in a salt. This not only brings efficiency increases, but many safety improvements. Many designs also use a 2nd molten salt loop as a temperature step-down before steam power generation.        
             
             
 politician 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 One of those safety improvements -- a freeze plug -- passively halts the reaction in the event of a power cut. The reactor sits on top of a vault that has a larger volume separated by a narrow tube containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug by cryocoolers powered by the turbines themselves. If the pumps stop for any reason, then the plug quickly melts and the molten fluid from the reactor drains into the larger vault via gravity at which point it cools and freezes into a solid.     
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 One of my favorite safety elements is often over-looked: they operate at 1 atmosphere. So much of the cost and bulk of a traditional reactor is the shielding needed to protect from an over-pressure event.          
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And even better, most of the things that are dangerous in a traditional reactor is chemically bound to the salt. So even if there is some kind of explosion, these materials would not be vaporized and transported in the air with wind.         
             
 So no crazy misinformed graphics all over the news.            
             
 So even if you drop a hand-grande into that reactor, it just gone be like throwing a rock into a bucket full of toothpaste. Its gone be a mess but its not gone result in a lot of airborne materials.          
             
             
 elihu 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It seems like that might suggest a potential option in the search for appropriate materials to build the containment vessel and piping to hold in the salt: just make the whole thing out of salt. Anything that needs to be solid can have built-in channels with coolant piped through. The rest can maintain a sort of steady state.        
             
 I'm sure there's all sorts of practical reasons why that wouldn't work, but it's an interesting thing to think about.           
             
             
 lolc 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Nice hack! That sounds so easy that I wonder what the catch is.            
             
 Maybe it would need more energy for cooling than what it generates? So it would have to be scaled up to a size where the surface-to-content ratio becomes favourable. There might not be enough salt for that :-)         
             
             
 jasonwatkinspdx 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Ok so I recently watched a video that went into some of this, and I had know idea how crazy some of these nuclear fuels are in terms of physical requirements.          
             
 If I recall the video correctly, solid metal oxide fuel produces offgas at a 50:1 ratio, while being insanely dense. This produces pretty insane internal pressures if the goal of the fuel design is to keep everything contained. Like strong enough to eventually cause mechanical failure of the fuel.        
             
 I think there's a lot of really difficult constraints intersecting in these fuel assembly designs, and something that seems obviously simple probably isn't.          
             
             
 elihu 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I suppose one problem might be selecting an appropriate coolant that doesn't dissolve the salt on contact. Presumably water would, but google says that salt doesn't dissolve in oil so maybe that's an option.         
             
 Ideally you wouldn't need to expend energy to keep the coolant cold enough; rather, you'd use the coolant to boil water to run your steam generator.          
             
             
 usrusr 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 “Vessel built out of nothing but heat transfer interface and freeze plug". Do some of the materials problems get easier while it's only touching the salt in frozen state?          
             
             
 JumpCrisscross 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Are freeze plug failures recoverable? Or is is this a final failsafe that toasts the reactor?           
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Easily recoverable. The tube drains into a collection tank filled with control rods, so any reactions are halted. You can just reheat the salt and pump it back into the reactor. Reportedly, one of the first test reactors in the 50's was shut off every Friday and restarted on Monday. A full power loss, what would be catastrophic for any other reactor, was tested weekly for a year without issue.       
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I love the image of some guy before going home hitting the red button and some guy on Monday just hitting the green button.           
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Freeze plugs sound super cool, but this part breaks my brain:            
             
 > containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug            
             
 Presumably salt can't be both molten and frozen at once, or is there something about this domain that I don't understand?           
             
             
 phire 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I believe they use active cooling to keep the plug frozen.            
             
 If the power fails, the cooling fails and the plug melts.            
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It is literally just a tube with a fan blowing over it. Most designs just barely solidify it, so any over-temperature events also cause a passive shutdown.          
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Yeah, I got that (and it seems like a really elegant solution! very cool , pun intended, etc). My question was about how salt (or any other matter, really) can simultaneously be molten and frozen.          
             
             
 ortusdux 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It can't. Well, maybe at its triple-point, but that is another story. It is just a quirk of the language due to it being know as molten salt. For example, my drink is full of molten water that has been frozen into cubes.         
             
             
 el_nahual 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Part of it is molten (above the plug), part of it is frozen (the plug).            
             
 Think pipes in a house in winter, where one little part of the pipe gets frozen while the rest of the pipes have liquid water in them.           
             
             
 xorbax 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And in Spring, when the broken pipe plugged with solid molten ice thaws, your house's molten ice circuit performs an emergency evacuation into the yard, saving you from the convenience of adequate molten ice pressure         
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Water is actually a very unusual substance in that it expands upon freezing. (Plutonium being another)           
             
 Most materials instead contract when freezing.            
             
             
 politician 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Hah! Well, we usually think of salt in the solid state (i.e. frozen) and not in the liquid state, so it's not so strange to be explicit in this case. For H2O, we do have pretty common encounters with three of its phase states, so there's less need to be explicit (or, rather, we have separate words for each state: steam, water, ice).       
             
             
 robotresearcher 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Think of a lake in the winter. Just the top layer of water is frozen, exposed to the cold air above the lake. Some of the lake water is frozen and some is liquid, depending on its position in the lake.          
             
             
 politician 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I wrote it that way to aid the reader in understanding what the plug material was composed of. I didn't want the reader to think that the material was water ice.          
             
 Yes, the material is the frozen state of the once liquid reactor fluid.            
             
 I hope that clears it up, and would welcome a better way of explaining it!            
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying to nit-pick your phrasing, I was just curious if I was misunderstanding something as a lay person. :)          
             
             
 andrewflnr 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I think it was just a clumsy phrasing, with the point being that it's a solid plug of whatever salt is molten and circulating above.           
             
             
 jacquesm 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 There have been quite a few solar energy concentrator test beds based on molten salt in order to try to get to 24/7 solar power. It is an interesting technology but afaik it's not at the stage where it can be rolled out reliably and maintenance free.         
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It also simply couldn't compete with plummeting cost in silicon panels.            
             
             
 mjul 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Molten salt loops are not as difficult with current technology as they were when they were first introduced.           
             
 There are some very interesting startups in this field working on delivering these reactors on an industrial scale rather than the "artisanal" reactors that dominate today:          
             
 Copenhagen Atomics [1] is one. They offer a molten salt loop for rapid prototyping [2] if you want to try it yourself.           
             
 Seaborg Technologies is also building a compact molten salt reactor. [3] They have a subsidiary, Hyme, to use the same molten-salt technology to provide grid-scale energy storage to balance electricity grids with variable generation from e.g. wind and solar power. [4]         
             
 [1] https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/ [2] https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/products/molten-salt-loop/ [3] https://www.seaborg.com/ [4] https://www.seaborg.com/press-release-hyme          
             
             
 japanuspus 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Thanks for posting, this sounds super cool. Now I just really wished I had a reason to order a molten salt loop.           
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I would love to rip the gas heating out of the house and have little nuclear reactor there.           
             
             
 sophacles 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.          
             
 I was under the impression that there was a heat exchanger in the path - that is the reactor turns water into slightly radioacive steam, which is sent through a heat exchanger to turn different water into non (or way less anyway)- radioactive steam for the turbines. So both are indirect.        
             
 (This is just a nit comment, I think your main points about efficiency still hold, and your materials questions are good!)           
             
             
 philipkglass 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 There are two kinds of conventional light water reactor. In the pressurized water reactor (PWR), the most common, there is indeed an additional heat exchanger between the water in the core and the water that turns to steam. In the boiling water reactor (BWR), the second most common, the slightly radioactive steam from the core goes directly to a turbine.       
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor            
             
             
 tadfisher 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Correct, in a PWR or BWR the hot side is in a closed loop. There's a great PDF here: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/for-educat...          
             
             
 marcosdumay 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Also, AFAIK, those high-temperature reactors are normally made with a molten metal intermediate cycle (normally sodium) and a gas-only external cycle (normally CO2).          
             
 Water enters only to cools the cold side of the external cycle.            
             
             
 dangerlibrary 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 That makes a lot of sense.            
             
 I think I was confused by news stories about situations where the reactor has failed in some way, and then there are stories of how radioactive water needs to be stored / disposed of somehow.          
             
             
 ethbr0 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In those historical cases, the priority was cooling the core, the easiest method (especially if a substantial amount of plumbing is wrecked or questionable) is dumping water into it.          
             
 Which then becomes irradiated, and pools via gravity in any lower voids, and then eventually needs to be dealt with.           
             
             
 nine_k 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Exactly. In other variants of reactors the inner contour could circulate molten slightly radioactive sodium instead.           
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 There are a number of obstacles. Neutron damage to the reactor structure is more of a problem, since the fuel is dissolved in salt in direct contact with that structure (unlike a reactor with solid fuel rods, which are separated from the reactor vessel by a thickness of moderator, in the case of LWRs is water.)        
             
 See here for a (somewhat old) list of some technical issues:            
             
 https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov...            
             
 "Nickel-based alloys embrittle under high neutron fluxes at high temperature"           
             
 "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]"            
             
 "Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas"            
             
 "MSRE was approaching end of allowable service life when shut down" (after four years at 40% capacity factor)           
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]" "Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas"           
             
 That could, in theory at least, be an advantage if you have a good process for capturing and storing that offgas (reacting it with something to make it solid and then glassifying it, for instance).          
             
 In a traditional fission reactor, gaseous fission products cause swelling and cracking of fuel pellets, and builds up pressure in the fuel tubes, which is one of the factors limiting fuel burnup.          
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It means the offgas storage system has to be designed for a large heat load, even in accident scenarios. It also means the common MSR talking point that the FPs stay in the salt is not correct.          
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > common MSR talking point            
             
 Well, a lot of 'common MSR talking points' are overblown, firmly detached from reality. Or at least conveniently ignoring all the significant challenges remaining in industrializing MSR technology. MSR fanboys are the most tedious of the pro-nuclear side of the energy debate, perhaps beaten only by the "this entirely unproven aneutronic fusion concept will imminently solve all our energy woes" crowd. :)      
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 This is why I refer to Helion as the "least dubious" fusion concept. :)            
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Moltex Energy talks a lot about that. It is actually pretty nice, some things stay in the salt, some leave it. The most dangerous stuff that shows up in the news a big scary cloud coming over from Japan to the US would still be in the salt.         
             
 Some other things that you really don't in your fuel, like Xenon and Krypton will bubble out.           
             
 So I think overall it is an advantage.            
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Moltex's design keeps the relevant isotopes of Xe/Kr in the fuel tubes long enough for them to (mostly) decay, so the Cs and Sr produced from the decay (mostly) stays in the fuel salt.          
             
             
 p1mrx 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt            
             
 I'm interested to see what Moltex can do to simplify matters:            
             
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJpVClxzVM&t=758s            
             
 Instead of pumping the salt around, they plan to leave it sitting in stainless steel tubes, and use simple convection to extract the heat. Oak Ridge rejected this idea in the 1950s because they were trying to power an aircraft, but convection makes more sense when the reactor isn't moving.        
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 LANL built a reactor like that, with liquid fuel in tungsten capsules. It was called LAMPRE.           
             
 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4368180-operation-plutonium-fuel...            
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Tantalum capsules. Molten plutonium is darn corrosive.            
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Even better.             
             
             
 ars 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > slightly radioactive steam            
             
 For anyone worried about this, the longest lived unstable isotope of oxygen (that is heavier than stable oxygen) has a half life of 26 seconds. Hydrogen can become deuterium which is stable, and finally tritium which is not.         
             
 Tritium has a long half life of 12 years, but is low energy and very easily shielded (just don't eat it).           
             
 There is very very little tritium - first you'd have to make deuterium (there isn't much), and then a deuterium would have to become a tritium, i.e. a rare event on top of a rare event.          
             
             
 kenned3 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Your view really depends on the design.            
             
 CANDU (Canadian reactor design) is moderated via deuterium in which case there is a LOT of it circulating in the reactor core.           
             
 The heavy water is syphoned off to a tritium separation unit for recovery. With a market value of $30,000 a gram, there is a clear incentive to recover it ;)          
             
             
 theluketaylor 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Some buddies who work on CANDU tell me they have tritium contamination everywhere as a result of this. From what they tell me it's not really a big safety issue, mostly more annoying than anything.          
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It is annoying because it is detectable!            
             
             
 YakBizzarro 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Not compltly accurate. It's true that the half-life of tritium is short compared to long lived actinides. However, like hydrogen, it diffuses very easily and it's not easy to contain. In fact, it's one of the few things emitted in the environment during normal reactor operations. As beta emitter, you are right that it's dangerous only when ingested, but it's very easy to breath of to get it from other ambient sources      
             
             
 credit_guy 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > you are right that it's dangerous only when ingested            
             
 Not really. Tritium is Hydrogen. It cannot bioaccumulate. Each atom of Tritium will spread out to become one among the quadrillions of atoms of Hydrogen in our body. Most will get out of the body in a matter of days, long before they've had a chance to decay. Even when they decay, they undergo beta decay, which is not very damaging. But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.     
             
             
 kenned3 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Not really.... But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.          
             
 you could not be more wrong about this. Alpha and Beta are fairly safe OUTSIDE the body. In the case of Alpha it is not able to penetrate the layer of dead skin on your hands.          
             
 Internal, it is VERY damaging because there is no "dead skin" to protect the internal organs.           
             
 https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics            
             
 "Some beta particles are capable of penetrating the skin and causing damage such as skin burns. However, as with alpha-emitters, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inhaled or swallowed."          
             
             
 credit_guy 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I stand by what I said. Yes, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inside your body, if they are together and stay there for a long time. The main examples are Strontium-90 and Caesium-137. The problem with them is that they bioaccumulate. Strontium accumulates in the bones (it is chemically similar to Calcium) and Caesium in the pancreas (it's not clear why. it is chemically similar to Potasium, but it's not obvious why it should accumulate in the pancreas).     
             
 Tritium is very different. It is chemically just Hydrogen, which is present everywhere in the body. It just can't bioaccumulate.           
             
 In any case, if you don't believe me, here's a statement from the FDA regarding the tritiated water released by Fukushima:           
             
 Tritium presents an extremely low human and animal health risk if consumed and any health risk would be further minimized with the dilution effects of discharge into the ocean.          
             
 [1] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-resp...            
             
             
 japanuspus 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 One tidbit on information damage that has stuck with me is that carcinogenic radiation damage is a second order process: to get a cancerous mutation you need both copies of DNA damaged, which would in most cases require two separate events.         
             
 To the extend this is true, it implies that it is the square of the radiation dose that determines carcinogenic effects: Half the dose would cause only a fourth of damage.          
             
             
 ars 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Very little tritium will diffuse, because it's bound with oxygen as water.            
             
 However some water does come out of the reactor you are correct.            
             
             
 rich_sasha 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I think one key aspect is that they are less susceptible / immune to loss of coolant incidents. In a PWR if there is a loss of pressure, or coolant in any other way, and emergency cooling doesn't work, the core overheats and might melt down.         
             
 An uncooled pool of molten salt will keep on generating heat even after the reaction is stopped, so will continue heating up, but it is possible to design the reactor so that the whole thing remains stable. Since the pressure is low, there is no risk of explosion, or release of the radioactive materials.        
             
 So the energy density is i think a secondary benefit, if at all.            
             
             
 runarberg 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet).          
             
 Is this also an issue for molten salt / liquid metal batteries[1][2] that have been proposed as a grid scale energy storage solution for renewables?          
             
 The way I understand it, molten salt is used as the membrane separating the electrode and electrolyte layers. But I was under the impression that there are actual molten salt batteries prototypes with industrial scale facilities currently under construction.         
             
 Are the requirements to contain the molten salt in a battery different from a nuclear reactors? Or do they have the same challenges and are simply able to overcome economic feasibility whereas nuclear reactors aren’t?         
             
 1: https://ambri.com/            
             
 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PL32ea0MqM            
             
             
 marcosdumay 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Molten salt / liquid metal batteries normally use alkaline salts, so steel holds it pretty well.           
             
             
 runarberg 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I see. So there is a pretty simple explanation. Thanks.            
             
             
 Manuel_D 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.          
             
 Only in the more primitive reactor designs (BWR, Boiling Water Reactor). Most are of the PWR, Pressurized Water Reactor, design. In these, the water in the reactor is still liquid due to being held at pressure. This pressurized water is run through a steam generator [1] that boils non-radioactive water that never comes into contact with the reactor.       
             
 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power...            
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Only in the more primitive reactor designs (BWR, Boiling Water Reactor).            
             
 TRIGGERED :).            
             
 The BWR was developed after the PWR specifically to be more economical for terrestrial large-scale power generation. The PWR was designed to be compact and to work on a submarine. So the BWR is the more advanced design for power plants, arguably.         
             
 https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-developme...            
             
             
 samstave 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 https://i.imgur.com/qX2d2qg.jpg            
             
 https://i.imgur.com/InQHoSI.png            
             
 https://i.imgur.com/go5v5QL.jpg            
             
             
 pnw 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I hope we manage to improve the design over the 1960s version MSRE which cost $130m to clean up due to unforeseen problems including a near-criticality incident. Certainly there is a lot of research to be done.         
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The cause of the criticality accident was that they did not remove the uranium when they were done with it. This is straightforward to do, you pump F2 gas into the salt and this gas is produced          
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hexafluoride            
             
 which can be stored in tanks. Instead of removing it they let the salt sit, and radioactive decay led to F2 gas being produced by the salt, which caused UF6 to be produced slowly and then migrate.          
             
 This mistake won't happen again.            
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Even with that issue, it was still a project that was amazing, they did incredible work, and the cost was very small. Almost hilariously so compared to other nuclear reactor projects.          
             
 Had that same team received the funding for a next large commercial prototype, the world would be different now.           
             
 But sadly Nixon preferred to spend money for nuclear research in California, Tennessee not exactly a priority.           
             
 Alvin M. Weinberg also didn't make himself any friends with government higher ups when he criticized PWR programs for civilian nuclear.           
             
             
 EricE 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Way, way overdue! China has taken all of our research from the 50's and has been charging ahead. Very sad that politics and ignorance has severely kneecapped our nuclear industry :(          
             
             
 powerhour 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution. For all the credit we give BigCo for creating propaganda, it's curious that they were unable to be successful here, given the stakes.         
             
             
 2OEH8eoCRo0 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 They are up against big fossil fuel tycoons like the Kochs. If we are strictly talking corporate propaganda, the fossil fuel industry has plenty of that.          
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 As much as people portrayed an epic battle between renewables and nuclear the real winner from the move away from nuclear was natural gas fired gas turbines.          
             
 The most obnoxious thing about the energy literature is that it frequently reads like a stopped clock. People still compare the cost of nuclear energy to the cost of coal, but it's no accident that the US stopped building coal plants at the same time it stopped building nuclear plants because it stopped both for the same reason... The capital cost of a gas turbine generator (even in a hybrid cycle including a steam turbine) is dramatically smaller than the steam turbines used in coal and nuclear plants.     
             
 Since molten salt reactors run a lot hotter than LWRs they could drive            
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine            
             
 but it's a technology that is not very well developed. If nuclear energy is going to compete with natural gas, however, they need to ditch the steam turbine.          
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Do the gas turbines use the brayton cycle? As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks. I recall a LFTR presentation talking about how they could use the Brayton cycle because of... ?high temps I think?.         
             
 Is the closed cycle gas turbine also using a superior cycle like the Brayton? Oh it's in the third sentence, CTRL-F failed me.           
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks.            
             
 These super-high efficiency gas turbines are not 'pure' gas turbines, but so-called combined cycle plants. Basically you first have a 'normal' gas turbine driving a generator (which, by itself, maybe gives you ~45% efficiency), but then you take the host exhaust of that gas turbine and use that to drive a secondary steam cycle driving another generator.       
             
 I'm not sure such a thing is doable in a closed Brayton cycle, at least I haven't read anything about anything like that.           
             
 An interesting thing with closed cycle Brayton is that instead of air you can use another fluid as the working fluid. Supercritical CO2, for instance, has some nice properties leading to extremely compact machinery. Of course there's an uphill battle in commercializing this technology; if you use air (or nitrogen) you can just adapt one of the many existing gas turbine cores with $zillions of R&D and decades of experience behind them.      
             
             
 powerhour 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It seems to me that companies like GE and Westinghouse have tons of money. Add that to the billions pro-nuclear folks have in SV and you've got quite the war chest to fund effective pro-nuke campaigns.          
             
             
 phonon 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Westinghouse went bankrupt a few years ago[0]...and GE hasn't been doing well and is splitting up[1]...           
             
 [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-tos...            
             
 [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-07-18/ge-...            
             
             
 powerhour 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I'm out of date, lol. Well, GE, even post-breakup, has a huge energy business that would benefit from increasing nuclear production. Assuming they really can make safe, cost-effective power, anyway.          
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 GE is one of the big names in gas turbines, and AFAIK they make wind turbines as well, in addition to nuclear power plants. So whatever the customer wants they can offer. ;)          
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Those folks might not want to waste that money in a propaganda race against the entire fossil fuel industry and the emerging renewable energy industry. GE and Westinghouse are large and successful companies, but is nuclear a major part of their portfolio such that they would take such a big risk (compared to fossil fuel industry which views clean energy as an existential threat)?       
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution.           
             
 I don't really think the population matters. The problem is that after the NRC was replaced AEC was replaced, regulation became totally technology depended. Doing anything other then PWR was essentially impossible.         
             
 The DoD is only now undertaking efforts to change this, but its turning a large ship.           
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The existing technology isn't actually that safe. The safe technology isn't that existing, actually.           
             
 The "population" tends to not believe claims about certain accidents being impossible if they keep happening. The safety of nuclear power is a fantasy. No, the track record is not enough. Given the enormous potential for catastrophe and the timespans for nuclear power project, questioning assumptions like "nobody is going to shoot rockets and shells around the plant" is entirely valid.       
             
             
 asdff 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 OTOH if you used bayesian reasoning like your username suggests, you'd understand that nuclear energy is the safest form of energy there is.           
             
 https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy            
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And that's exactly the wrong reasoning in this case. Because you want to predict the future from the past, over a really long time span and with the adverse events being extremely catastrophic. Just read up on how the Fukushima cleanup is going and how the cost estimates have risen...        
             
 Bayesian reasoning would require you to argue about priors. You want to take priors from the past. Fine and dandy, when trying to predict the weather or even where the stock market is going. But when talking about how likely it is that something blows up and contaminates a huge area, maybe there are higher standards. And philosophizing about the average is all nice and well, until you happen to live near the site of an accident. And in Ukraine the assumption "nobody is going to shoot around a nuclear plant", which most assurance of nuclear safety depend upon, doesn't hold anymore.    
             
             
 wpietri 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 For sure. In theory, I'm in favor of nuclear power; especially as we try get to zero/negative net carbon emissions, nuclear plants have real advantages. But when I think about American business culture, I have a hard time imagining the company I'd trust with something that requires an extremely long-term focus (plants run for decades) and deep social responsibility.       
             
             
 hanniabu 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Safety isn't a technical problem, it's a human problem. Over long periods safety measures end up being cut and introduce risk. There's also design decisions revolved around cost even though better solutions exist. Then there's just plain oversights. For example we all know earthquakes and tsunamis exist and yet the Fukushima still happened.       
             
             
 Galaxeblaffer 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Energy too cheap to meter doesn't sound like a good investment from a capitalistic viewpoint.           
             
             
 preisschild 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Not for the companies that build and design reactors            
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You don't understand capitalism then. And you fell for propaganda and fantasy of the nuclear industry apparently.           
             
 Nuclear power isn't that cheap. Certainly not without subsidies and once you price in all the externalities.           
             
             
 Galaxeblaffer 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And you fell for the fossil fuels propaganda claiming nuclear is too expensive to without subsidies. Seriously.. new nuclear is on the drawing board with huge investments in the UK, France and Sweden.          
             
 Nuclear will be cheap when the industry grows and reactor designs are standardized.           
             
 It's really simply the superior technology any way you look at it and the "nuclear is too expensive" is just a tired and arguably false argument against it. I'm so sick and tired of people saying that it's too expensive to save the planet..         
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In reality there is a lot of research pointing to nuclear power certainly not being anywhere near as cheap as "too cheap to meter". Claiming this is all "fossil fuel propaganda" is stupid and lazy. So far, there has rarely ever been a nuclear power plant built on budget and on time. Most run way over. And often the costs for cleanup and decommissioning are not priced in properly or even at all. Most industries have to pay insurance for their risks, the - actually uncomputable - risk of nuclear power rests on the whole society, while the profits accumulate with the shareholders of the power company. Ask Japan how that is working out for them currently...  
             
 "Drawing board" is the operational term. Nuclear power is always late and it's always more expensive than promised. Why is the nuclear power industry subsidized so much everywhere when it's actually a good investment? Have government agencies suddenly become good at investing or are they just charities for corporate interests?        
             
 I'm not even saying it's "too expensive", by the way. I'm not totally against nuclear power, I do see the benefits. It has its place, probably. But I know about fat tail distributions and the unpredictability of the future. You really don't want anybody shooting rockets and artillery shells around a nuclear facility a few hundred miles near you. Today that's Ukraine and much of eastern Europe, who says that in the next fourty or fifty years, the lifespan of a typical plant, that's not you either? In Mossul ISIS hunted around for nuclear material to build a dirty bomb, luckily they didn't find the stuff that actually was there. Who says your country will not have a rogue militia like that in the next fifty years? 
             
 And then the nuclear industry is unwieldy. It requires a large and expensive specialized infrastructure. Which can be amortized eventually, yes. But much of that investment is upfront and the recuperation is dependent on a lot of things going exactly right for a very long time. Also it requires a huge labor force that has to be trained for this specific task and then can hardly do anything else. France has the problem of a shortage. In short: It's hard and expensive to get into nuclear technology and it's even harder to get out of it.    
             
 And in order to solve the climate crisis using nuclear power there are two major problems: First, it's already too late, because nuclear power is so slow. Secondly, you'd need to nuclearize much of the world, including countries with questionable regulatory regimes to say the least. This makes all the problems we see now a lot worse...       
             
             
 Galaxeblaffer 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I wasn't saying that nuclear IS "too cheap to meter" I'm saying it could be. And my statement about fossil fuels propaganda was merely a jab back at your snarky comment. Your absolutely right that most of the new reactors that have been built in the west has been delayed and exceeded budget and all I'm saying is that this wouldn't have been the case of the industry had kept growing and evolving back in the 80s. Japan is way overreacting with Fukushima and that plant was old as fuck and was literally built on a fault line without taking proper precautions. Tell me how many died as result of the Fukushima incident and how much radioactive water has polluted the surroundings ? I'd urge you to go look it up, but you probably won't. 
             
 Sorry i meant all those countries are planning to invest billions of euros into building new reactors now that the EU has deemed nuclear power green. You are talking like other power generation like wind, solar etc is not subsidized ? Hope is the unique to nuclear? Nuclear is subsidized and tightly controlled/regulated for obvious reasons and honestly imho all energy infrastructure should be tightly tied to government as is the case in most of Europe.      
             
 Even if Russia was too hot the nuclear power plant in Ukraine with a cruise missile the damage and contamination would be fairly local and I'd imagine hitting a coal or gas power plant with a cruise missile would be just as bad. Besides that hitting a nuclear power plant with cruise missile would be considered firing a nuke and don't think Russia is ready to do that yet. Taking about dirty bombs is just plain stupid, why the hell would you through all that trouble when there's much much cheaper and simpler ways to do damage?    
             
 Yes it requires some new infrastructure but in many cases you can switch coal, gas and oil plants almost 1:1 with nuclear. What's wrong with having lots of highly educated people working with supplying the world with energy ? And how is it different from solar, wind etc? France has problems because they still have a huge anti nuclear movement making it very hard to invest properly in maintenance and new plants, besides that France's shortage is because Germany suddenly requires allot more electricity because of stupid investments.    
             
 It's never too late.. sure we can also build what is the fastest solution but nuclear is the best bet long term.           
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Ah yes, "it could be". An unrefutable and unprovable statement without proof. It's purely wishful thinking that nuclear power will become any easier in the future. Japan is not "overreacting", it has to clean up the damn mess not just to one day use that area again, but also to avoid spreading the contamination. Just because nobody dies immediately from the exposure doesn't mean the ground is safe to handle or live on. Case in point: The Russian soldiers in Tschernobyl digging in contaminated ground and spreading it further. Your point about a low immediate death count after Fukushima is just as dishonest, stupid and lazy: People would have had their lifes cut shorter by the radiation exposure, if they hadn't been evacuated at great cost. 
             
 Most of your arguments are entire bullshit and I really don't have the time to waste. No, if one of the nuclear plants in Ukraine blows up, the effects are not "very local" and I suspect the locals do care. So should you when a nuclear plant near where you live goes online. Also the biggest nuclear plant in Europe is hurting Ukraine's defense just by sitting there and doing its job perfectly: The Russians discovered that they can shoot artillery from there without anyone shooting back. Nuclear plants are defensive weak points under any circumstance.    
             
 A dirty bomb is a viable terror weapon. You can spread radioactive material quite far with an amount of explosives that wouldn't be able to cause near as much death and terror. Good deal, especially when you got the Plutonium and what not for free...         
             
 People like you are lying through your teeth by saying the only alternative to nuclear is fossil fuels. I don't even know anyone who believes this.          
             
 And no, we can't wait for nuclear power. A world full of nuclear power plants is unsafe. Maybe in Norway or Finland with the most honest and least corrupt governments (at presents) and no immediate threats from the outside it seems safe. But really, betting on nuclear power means betting on a perfect world during the next few decades at least.       
             
 You just continue to profess to a profound ignorance on how radiation exposure work, what happened and is happening right now in Tschernobyl and Fukushima, and make hand wavy arguments "Such accidents are never going to happen and aren't actually that bad, for real this time, pinky promise with cherry on top".        
             
             
 Galaxeblaffer 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And you can just continue fear mongering trying to hold the world back further. The world is going nuclear wether you like it or not, America's biggest enemies Russia and China already have it big time and there's a very big limit to what countries America can hold back line they've tried to do with Iran. If anyone is had bullshit arguments it's you; you clearly haven't done any research into Tjernobyl and Fukushima and fear mongering about dirty bombs is just beyond stupid. Så thank you for ending the conversation. Glad the world has started moving on and had started seeing through bullshit like what you have presented in this argument. Write me back in 10 years and let's see what technology won.  
             
             
 bayesian_horse 5 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 There's no evidence or reality to "nuclear is coming back". Some politicians talk a big talk, that's all. Nor did or do I say it's not going to happen, but in most of the developed/semi-developed world except China it's currently definitely not happening. Just another nuclear fanboy fantasy ignoring reality.        
             
 You know who cares about dirty bombs? Every intelligence agency and counter terrorism unit in the world. So far it hasn't happened, but if nuclear power is scaled up, this stuff will be way more accessible. A lot like the gun violence problem in the US, but I guess the denialism around those topics is similar.        
             
 I personally care most about the closest nuclear facilities, not so much those in China. And in reality, neither Tschernobyl nor Fukushima have been cleaned up yet and continue to be a problem to be felt financially at the very least. I know quite a bit about it, but some people apparently think it's only bad if you die instantly... But it certainly makes some weak arguments easier, doesn't it? Who cares about people losing decades of their life...      
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The problem wasn't the safety, the problem was they couldn't deliver a cheap solution. And recently when they tried to come back they completely fucked it up.          
             
             
 runarberg 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Why does that matter?            
             
 Particle physics dominated US research grants for several decades with some results to show for it. Now that the focus has shifted elsewhere (e.g. material science) and another country is leading in nuclear research, we will be able to observe their results and act accordingly (just like China did in the 50s). Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?       
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?            
             
 For better or worse, the world doesn't work such that everyone who reads a research paper is on an equal footing to industrialize/commercialize the technology. The ones who got their hands dirty are far ahead. Thus governments do something called 'industrial policy' (a somewhat dirty word in the West these days, to our detriment I think) where they try to build 'value chains' (or whatever you wanna call it) where they spend money on pure research, applied research, early stage spinoffs, etc. to kickstart an industry around a particular technology.    
             
 For an example, consider how decades-long investment by the US government into electronic warfare and military electronics kickstarted Silicon Valley.          
             
 So China is gearing up to be a dominant player in the global nuclear power market. So does that matter? In a way it's better somebody does it than nobody and we continue burning fossils, but being one of these hopeless romantics who think things like democracy and human rights are incredibly important I'd rather see 'our team' on the field as well. Energy extortion isn't pretty, see Europe and Russia at the moment.      
             
             
 marcosdumay 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 A 1MW research reactor.            
             
 Anyway, why is it always a fluoride salt? Is it because of the melting point or because of some nuclear property?           
             
 I imagine there is some very relevant reason, because a less reactive anion (even chlorine) would be much easier to work with.           
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 Fluoride salts are good for fissile uranium + fertile thorium. If you want to work with a plutonium/uranium 238 cycle then chloride salts are a better choice. Plutonium doesn't dissolve very well in fluorides.         
             
 Molten chloride reactors can have performance characteristics right out of science fiction, it seems possible for such a reactor to not only breed more fuel but to destroy the long-lived (500 year) fission products such as cesium and strontium.         
             
 It never gets upvoted on HN when I link it but I've been following MSRs for a while and even spoke at the first thorium energy conference and I've been watching people's thoughts about designs evolve and this one         
             
 https://www.moltexenergy.com/            
             
 is well ahead of the others.            
             
             
 nine_k 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 While at it, I never understood the worry about the plutonium surfacing in the MSR cycle. Of course it can be diverted to make nuclear warheads. But countries like the US, or France, or Russia, or China, or India already are able to produce nuclear warheads, even from plutonium extracted from more conventional reactors. I don't understand where is the risk of proliferation.       
             
 Is this about international treaties and ease of inspection? About currently non-nuclear countries obtaining nuclear weapons more easily?           
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 (1) There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology. For instance, if somebody built a perfect system for separating out protactinium from a thorium MSR, that protactinium could be allowed to decay outside the reactor and produce pure U233 that could be used to make weapons. That perfect system is probably not practical, but in general there is fear that any new approach to fuel processing could have unintended consequences. Would it be possible, for instance, to make something like the EBR-II that breeds weapon grade plutonium in a blanket and uses some form of pyroprocessing to produce pure metallic plutonium? Such a system might be able to make enough material to build several weapons a year.
             
 (2) The published information about nuclear proliferation is incomplete and the mental models behind it are broken. For instance, the "little boy" bomb was made with uranium produced with a          
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron            
             
 but for all the fear that countries like Iran would develop centrifuges, there has been little fear expressed about Calutrons... Except that when Iraq tried to develop a bomb it used the exact same approach used by the US! A scientist at CERN had been contacted by an Iraqi scientist who was interested in a magnet which could have been used for a Calutron and the proliferation authorities just blew him off.      
             
 See https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Iraq/andre/ISRI-95-03.pdf            
             
 A country like Japan has large amounts of plutonium which is contaminated with Pu240 and Pu241 and not weapons usable but it's plausible that a modified Calutron could be used to purify non-weapons grade plutonium and make it weapons grade.         
             
 Although the conventional model is that a threat would make plutonium by irradiating uranium with neutrons from a fission reactor, it's also possible that a fusion reactor or particle accelerator could be used as a neutron source to do the same. The later would actually have less heat output per unit of Pu and might be an easier device to hide. Current particle accelerators aren't reliable or economical enough for this purpose, but this is just one of many paths to proliferation which are ignored.     
             
             
 runarberg 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology.           
             
 It seems like it would be a good idea to get the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/) signed by more nations then, so that this technology could be safely developed without a risk of nations weaponizing it.        
             
             
 nine_k 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Ukraine let go its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in 1991. In 2014 Russia occupied a large part of it, and in 2022 is trying to occupy it entirely. Aster this, I suppose no other nation will ever voluntarily relinquish their existing nuclear weapons, and many nations that don't have nukes will try hard to obtain them.        
             
 This ship has sailed, to my mind.            
             
             
 aidenn0 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I can't find a source, but my recollection is that the majority of the U-235 for Little Boy was generated by gaseous diffusion? I know the original process was gaseous-diffusion followed by Calutron and that once gaseous diffusion was improved they shut down all of the Calutrons, and the timing is such that all but the first little boy bomb must have been made by gaseous diffusion, but it's unclear how the fissile material for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was generated.     
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I think one fear is about the proliferation of reprocessing technology. So currently, with a traditional LWR, you buy X fuel rods, then later IAEA inspectors come by and check that those X rods are in the spent fuel pool. Reprocessing, to the very little extent it's done at all, is done by countries that already have nuclear weapons (except maybe Japan?), so the horse has already left the barn.      
             
 But a MSR, at least for some of the more advanced concepts, would have online reprocessing on site (continually siphoning off fission products and adding small amounts of fresh fuel). Additionally, since the fuel wouldn't be in discrete bundles, I think there's a fear that small amounts of fuel could be diverted to a clandestine weapons program.       
             
             
 gendal 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?           
             
 I'd love to find actual data but, anecdotally, it seems like a large amount (vast majority?) of the nuclear legacy costs for countries like the UK, at least, come from the back-end - ie reprocessing. If you just store used rods (in perpetuity) near the reactor they were used in then the overall legacy footprint is pretty modest. Indeed, I think that's what the UK does now - our reprocessing facilities are now in decommissioning mode and the US did the same a long time ago.     
             
 Yes - part of the decision to stop reprocessing was proliferation risk. But I think it's also because reprocessing is so insanely messy and so easy to get wrong.          
             
 This is because if you 'reprocess' fuel, the waste problem just balloons... the rods have to be chopped up, dissolved in nitric acid, taken through a complex chemical process and you end up with vast amounts of liquid waste, various bits of undissolved gunk, a fiendishly difficult-to-decommission reprocessing facility and all the rest. Reprocessing plants are some of the most complicated chemical plants in the world... and when they go wrong (eg the UK's Thorp leak) they're almost impossible to repair owing to the radioactivity.    
             
 In the past, the purpose of the early reactors was to generate plutonium for weapons and so reprocessing was, in reality, the key activity, with the reactors just the tedious thing you had to build to provide feedstuff for this extraction process.         
             
 But if we don't want any new plutonium then there's no need to reprocess and the waste problem just becomes insanely easier.           
             
 To see what I mean, google the history of the UK's Sellafield (specifically the B.205 and Thorp plants) or Russia's Mayak or France's La Hague. So many leaks and accidents, all totally unnecessary if they hadn't been trying to reprocess the fuel. The idea of taking something small and stable (a rod) and turning it into a dangerous liquid and then trying to run it through a fiendishly complex chemical plant just seems nuts on its face.      
             
 Hence my question about MSRs... can you build one that doesn't require any of this tricky chemical engineering, whether 'online' or otherwise? If so, great. If not, why isn't this whole avenue just shut down as DOA?         
             
             
 jabl 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?           
             
 I think the Terrestrial IMSR (which is probably the one closest to commercializing in the West) is designed for a once-through uranium cycle, similar to current LWR plants. The idea, IIRC, is to replace the entire reactor vessel (including the fuel salt) every 7 years.        
             
 Not sure what the plan is for dealing with the spent fuel. If the fuel salt is water soluble (not sure, but salts tend to be, right?) I'd think some form of processing is necessary before geological disposal. But maybe that can be a cleaner and simpler process than a full PUREX.        
             
             
 colechristensen 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Perhaps it's just how much more careful you have to be with plutonium products because of proliferation concerns, or possibly diplomacy concerns "legitimizing", or perhaps just paranoia. Or the basic concern of a bunch more plutonium hanging around even if secure.         
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 They are not really ahead.            
             
 https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...            
             
 Terrestrial Energy Inc. is the furthest along in terms of the regulatory process.           
             
 And for Moltex to work they also need to get a CANDU fuel reprocessing facility online.           
             
 But I do think its a great and practical design.            
             
 They say they have a version that can be a thorium breeder but they have released little to no information.           
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > We can produce heat for hydrogen, replacing the need for fossil fuels in heating, transport and industry.           
             
 What does it mean to produce "heat for hydrogen"? Why is heating hydrogen a useful property (how does hot hydrogen replace fossil fuels in heating, transport, and industry?)? That seems oddly specific, so I assume I'm misreading something?         
             
             
 robertlagrant 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I think it means we can produce heat that can power the generation of hydrogen, e.g. from water.           
             
             
 throwaway894345 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yeah, I didn't realize thermalchemical water splitting was a thing.            
             
             
 nullc 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Thermochemical water cracking.            
             
             
 hedora 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It's pretty cool that they designed their plants with a heat reservoir and oversized turbine generators. This allows them to turn the turbines on and off at will, complementing wind and solar. The nuclear plant "charges" the heat reservoir during the day when the turbines are idle.        
             
             
 notacop31337 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 From your perspective, given that Thorium salt reactors are part of India's 3rd stage Nuclear plan, where is this technology in general? I assume that they're leading the pack, but I don't really know.          
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The problem with India is that they started with redoing the whole solid fuel thing first and that took a very long time.           
             
 Its hard to find information, but based on some talks I saw a couple years ago I don't think they are close to liquid fueled reactors.           
             
 They are still working mostly on creating thorium pellets to put into reactors.           
             
             
 nickpinkston 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Good question - here's a paper and quote on this:            
             
 "Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was designed to operate at high temperature in range 700 - 800°C and its fuel is dissolved in a circulating molten fluoride salt mixture. Molten fluoride salts are stable at high temperature, have good heat transfer properties and can dissolve high concentration of actinides and fission product."        
             
 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4972932            
             
             
 thereisnospork 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Without knowing the specifics as apply to nukes, anion reactivity is inversely proportional to atomic reactivity, fluoride is far less reactive than chloride or bromide or iodide, respectively in order of increasing reactivity. Ergo fluoride and fluoride containing anions are quite common in molten salts/ionic liquids.        
             
 In English: the flouride, having so voraciously devoured that 8th electron it was missing, really doesn't want to give it up, whereas chlorine et al have lots of spares.)          
             
             
 marcosdumay 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The concern is not so much about the fluoride losing an electron, but about whatever reacted to it stealing electrons from the reactor.           
             
             
 thereisnospork 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Which is less likely with fluorine because what fluorine reacts with to form the salt, say Na as in NaF, wants to give up an electron, not receive one. And with fluorine as a partner, Na will have the hardest* time retrieving that electron to give to something else. This can be easily validated by comparing enthalpy of reaction and formation for the various halide salts.       
             
 The properties of broad chemical stability are not limited to ionically bonded fluorine either, see PTFE, which also derives its stability from the extreme reactivity of fluorine. Compared to say PTIE (polytetraiodoethylene), which if you could even make would rapidly yellow and degrade in open air/mild sunlight, as iodine compounds are wont to do.       
             
 *for a loose definition of hardest.            
             
             
 detaro 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Fused_salt...            
             
             
 pfdietz 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Because fluorine has a low neutron capture cross section.            
             
 Chlorine has a rather high capture cross section for thermal neutrons, so it could only be used in fast reactors.           
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 This video has a fair amount of information on exactly that question:            
             
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkZ0ZBAVDu4            
             
             
 LatteLazy 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It is very stable both chemically and atomically.            
             
             
 notacop31337 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Anyone know of any software work being done around Nuclear? I don't care what it is, just looking to play a bit more with the space, Open Source, data sourcing. I really mean I don't care what it is, just wanna learn a bit more about it and be a bit more involved.         
             
             
 abi 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 Same question here!            
             
             
 panick21_ 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 This is so fantastic. That a 'Christian' university would do this is kind of insane to me, but I take it.           
             
 So many problems with nuclear in the last 50 years are that there simply are not enough experiments and research reactors.           
             
 If you don't have them, then how can you ever test new materials.            
             
 The original molten salt experiment reactor was only not that much bigger then this university reactor and didn't cost a huge amount, but it lead to such amazing research results including new materials that were designed when making it.         
             
 New materials can't easily be qualified without having the necessary research infrastructure.           
             
             
 indymike 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 This is really exciting. Fission tech is largely stuck in with incremental improvements from the 1950s. The last time the NRC got an application for a research reactor was 30 years ago.          
             
 The reactor is a graphite-moderated, fluoride salt flowing fluid design. If this works well, fission will have a very bright future as it should be more efficient and much safer to operate than current reactor designs.         
             
             
 thoughtpeddler 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Forgive me if this is a naive question, but how are molten salt reactors different from the reactor in the 1959 Sodium Reactor Experiment [1]?          
             
 [1] https://www.etec.energy.gov/Operations/Major_Operations/SRE....            
             
             
 dragonshed 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 [Layman, but I've read up quite a bit on thorium and molten salt reactor designs]           
             
 The 1959 Sodium Reactor experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of a sodium-cooled reactor as the heat source for a commercial power reactor to produce electricity. It used fuel rods similar to rods used in reactors in operation today.         
             
 Conversely the The Molten Salt Reactor experiment[1] used uranium fuel dissolved into a salt as both fuel and coolant for the reactor - this design enables significant advantages over traditional reactors powered by solid fuel.         
             
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment            
             
             
 mikewarot 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 I'm surprised the reactor needs a moderator, I would assume that a liquid fuel reactor could be controlled far better by controlling flow into and out of the critical mass. It's all at normal pressures, just hot (temperature and radiation wise), so just bog standard plumbing practices for handling fluid levels should work.        
             
 Being able to scramble the reactor by just dumping the contents through a set of diverters into separate flat bottom chambers to cool and eventually freeze is an awesome safety feature.          
             
             
 YakBizzarro 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 A moderator is not used to control the reaction, but to make it possible. The neutrons produced by fission, have high kinetic energy, and fuel has a small cross section for neutrons at such high energy. A neutron moderator slows down the neutrons, making them more likely to interact with the uranium and split them. typically water is a good moderator, but here they use graphite for obvious reason (high temperature salts doesn't play well with water)      
             
             
 mikewarot 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 That makes a lot of sense... thanks!            
             
 As for molten salts and water... oh yeah. That gets into very dangerous territory.[1] A very similar reaction seems to happen even with just molten table salt, where it "shouldn't".          
             
 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8            
             
             
 Rokid 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 One of the great practical challenges with molten salt is to design a reliable valve. At temperatures this high and with the high corrosive properties of the medium, this is not trivial.          
             
             
 mikewarot 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I didn't realize that the viscosity stays high for molten salt[1], that makes everything abrasive, along with dealing with possible phase change if the salt solidifies... yikes!          
             
 So, what we're dealing with is highly radioactive corrosive molasses with a constant stream of radioactive decay product gasses bubbling out of it, like Xenon and Iodine. Yeah, that seems more challenging that I first thought.         
             
 1 - https://www.powermotiontech.com/home/article/21144640/armoring-a-valve-against-molten-salt           
             
             
 anshumankmr 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Here's an excellent documentary on molten salt reactors if someone is interested in learning more about it.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l08Qzz4j-I0&ab_channel=gordo... .          
             
             
 rob_c 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Yey! About time :) hopefully this gains serious traction            
             
             
 dang 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Related. Others?            
             
 DOE digs up molten salt nuclear reactor tech, Los Alamos to lead the way back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32423177 - Aug 2022 (1 comment)          
             
 Chinese molten-salt reactor cleared for start up - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406435 - Aug 2022 (9 comments)           
             
 Stable Salt Reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233485 - July 2022 (2 comments)           
             
 What is a molten salt reactor? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31187423 - April 2022 (101 comments)           
             
 1MW Molten-Salt Test Reactor by Copenhagen Atomic for €88k [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25388343 - Dec 2020 (198 comments)           
             
 New Design Molten Salt Reactor Is Cheaper to Run, Consumes Nuclear Waste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771306 - Oct 2020 (2 comments)          
             
 ThorCon 2019 500MW molten salt modular tow-able nuclear reactor [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21307378 - Oct 2019 (2 comments)          
             
 Molten Salt Reactors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424841 - July 2019 (120 comments)           
             
 What Is Called Nuclear Waste Is Mostly Fuel for Molten Salt and Fast Reactors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20191064 - June 2019 (49 comments)          
             
 Open source Molten salt nuclear reactor design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18892919 - Jan 2019 (88 comments)           
             
 Remote Maintenance of Molten Salt Reactors [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543428 - Oct 2017 (6 comments)           
             
 A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15084215 - Aug 2017 (161 comments)          
             
 Molten Salt Reactor Claims Melt Down Under Scrutiny - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13863626 - March 2017 (137 comments)           
             
 The 500MW molten salt nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371659 - March 2013 (22 comments)           
             
             
 bayesian_horse 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 Nuclear power is great. If you have a few billions to invest and a few decades time to wait.           
             
             
 martin1975 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 So did the Chinese beat us to this one? :)            
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yes they're turning on their graphite moderated MSR reactor that's fully constructed in the next few days? weeks? not entirely sure, but soon.          
             
 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s...            
             
             
 formerkrogemp 6 months ago | prev | next [–]            
             
 It's cool to see what the hottest research is in NA these days, even if they're being so salty about it.           
             
             
 AtlasBarfed 6 months ago | prev [–]            
             
 I thought these were outlawed, per a LFTR video I saw once. To emphasize, I'm asking if that is the case, or was the LFTR video was engaging in misinformation, or if something changed in regulations.          
             
             
 philipkglass 6 months ago | parent | next [–]            
             
 I believe that the video was misinformed or your recollection is a bit fuzzy. The closest true approximation I can muster is "there is no commercial molten salt reactor design yet approved by the NRC, and the NRC approval process may need updates to consider reactor designs that significantly deviate from the common water-moderated types."       
             
             
 Kalium 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I believe it's less outlawed and more not really approved for use due to insufficient research.           
             
             
 PaulHoule 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The process for licensing a LWR is well established. Commercial LMFBR (Fermi 1) and HTGR (Peach Bottom 1) reactors have been approved in the US but those were a very long time ago. Anybody who wants to license a new reactor type is going to work through an extensive process with the NRC to determine how exactly it is done.        
             
 They built an MSR in Wuwei, China and just got approval to start it.            
             
 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s...            
             
             
 nine_k 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 AFAICT materials research is a big part of it. At 800°C even water is pretty reactive; the salt is much more so. Even though an MSR does not need the high pressure of water-based reactors, you can't make all the piping from graphite or platinum.         
             
             
 mrunkel 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 LFTR?             
             
             
 jussion_zoonist 6 months ago | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor but I believe this reactor is using uranium[1].           
             
 [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2024/ML20241A071.pdf            
             
             
 acidburnNSA 6 months ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 LFTR is just a trade name from a guy named Kirk who tried to rebrand the Thorium fueled Molten Salt Reactor.           
             
 So basically yes but like all thorium reactors it has to start with enriched uranium first.           
             
             
 peteradio 6 months ago | parent | prev [–]            
             
 Yes, they are illegal to build.            
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
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So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine. This mostly works because moving even very hot, very high pressure water around is kind of a solved problem in industry.In a molten salt reactor, you use nuclear fission to melt various corrosive salts into a fluid, and this is good because molten salts store a lot more energy per unit (volume, presumably?) at low pressures, so you can transfer heat indirectly to nearby turbine-turning water without irradiating the water or relying on high-pressure water to cool your reactor. Cool. But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet). I suppose this is less of a problem for a research reactor, but it doesn't sound like there's been a materials breakthrough here that's allowing them to get started. Are they just plowing forward and they'll need to replace the containment infrastructure every few years?
    
    
        
     You are correct about the corrosion issue. I've done some work developing molten salt resistant claddings. The main culprit is chromium leaching, which de-alloys most of the metals approved for reactor design. The leeching happens at the grain boundaries, so you will hear 'intergranular attack' as a research focus.A close second problem is the radiation itself. Elements in both the containment vessel and salt transmute. One study I read estimated that pure tungsten (a viable salt resistant material) would transmute to rhenium at a rate of 1% a year. The radiation also causes void-swelling in both the metals and pure graphite. The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours. A paper from 2015 showed that the material the testing crucible is made of greatly effects the rate of chromium leeching. They found that both graphite and nickel act as chromium sinks. Many designs call for graphite or nickel parts to be used alongside chromium containing steels. This reactor appears to be stainless steel with graphite moderators. Another paper strongly suggested that radiation induced void-swelling can squeeze together the grain boundaries, greatly slowing down intergranular attack. Very little corrosion testing has been done under exposure to radiation as it is logistically difficult. Basically, the next best step is test reactors. You can only get so far testing things in isolation.
    
    
        
     &gt; The standard way to test material's resistance to molten salt is to put a coupon in a crucible full of salt for a few hundred hours.Q: What is a coupon in this context?
    
    
        
     It's used 2 ways in metallurgy. Mainly it is a term for test pieces cut from a batch of metal and used for proof testing. Tensile, elongation, fatigue, weldability, and many other tests require destructive testing coupons. When you take welding certification tests, you weld two coupons together, and then submit your coupon for testing.It is also a term for strips of metal that you mount in a corrosive environment as a way to monitor corrosion of other susceptible components. So if you were worried about your bronze bushings, you would buy some matching bronze coupons, put them in an area of similar flow, and measure their thickness periodically.  https://www.alspi.com/coupons.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_testing#Coupon_tests
    
    
        
     &gt;test pieces cut from a batch of metal&gt;strips of metal I mean in essence you just have to look at the word. Coupon is from French couper, which means to cut. So it's a cut-out. It has the same meaning when you look at extreme couponing and metal testing.
    
    
        
      
 Yeah, I didn't think of it as an overly obscure usage, but neither Merriam-Webster or Wikipedia list the definition. Dictionary.com does. Maybe its time to edit Wikipedia over lunch =)   
    
        
     Coupon is used in metalworking to mean a sample you can submit for destructive testing that is representative of the whole piece under test.A weld coupon, for example, is a piece of test material of the same thickness and weld preparation as the main part being welded but is not integral to the part itself. That coupon is then sawed off and submitted for destructive tests like impact testing (to determine minimum operating temperature), tensile strength testing (specimen is pulled apart to find how strong and stretchy it is), and crystallographic etching (looking at the crystal structure of the metal to see if it has defects).
    
    
        
     A coupon is an informal term for a small sample of material, most often metal. It’s perhaps most commonly used in welding where practice welds for people first training to weld are done on pieces of metal often referred to as coupons. :)It is usually an artifact of materials like metal which are hard to cut, and can’t efficiently just be cut as needed during a task, but are prepared and pre-cut into small pieces you can grab easily. Each of those pieces is called a coupon. I used to store mine in a Chinese takeout container box.
    
    
        
     In the mid 1970s, in my welding class, the school was located down the street from a small manufacturer that formed various metal alloys.They would provide the school with bins of scrap from their manufacturing free of charge. Those were our practice coupons in class. We had to be careful to return the welded scraps back to the proper bin so the manufacturer could recycle them. Our class was just a very small part of their recycling flow. It was a great relationship, we needed practice materials, and they hired welders.
    
    
    
        
      
 Does it even need to be a metal? (Since the pressure is so low strength requirements are lower)... How about ceramic or glass (or quartz), or something else non-metal?   
    
        
     It doesn't, but any material used needs to withstand 4 extremes - high temperatures (650-850 C), corrosion (dissolves uranium), very high neutron flux, and US govt. regulation.Graphite is the current favorite non-metal option. It is already widely used in traditional reactors, so it is approved, and its interaction with radiation is well understood. On the other hand, its interaction with radiation and molten salt is not as well understood, but hopefully this test reactor and others like it will solve that. One of my favorite solutions seals the reactor in with a crane and 8 graphite containment vessels. The best estimate of the lifespan of structural graphite in this environment is ~7 years, so the plan would be to monitor the system and move the reactor to a new vessel as needed. The goal is 50 year life-span for these reactors. Anyway, there is research into alternate materials, but to really test them you need to expose them to both molten salts and radiation. And if they pass, you need to get government approval. The last material to get govt approval was Hastelloy N, and I heard the process was a slog.
    
    
        
     Well, one thing about liquid fuel vs solid fuel is that you can move the fuel to a new reactor and, uh... ?"recycle"? / ?"overhaul"? the old one. So you could use one for 7 years why the other is retrofitted. You'd need two reactors... or... you'd need 8 and seven are online while 1 is replaced per year.So unless materials is solved, you need scalability and replacement. At least the OTHER problem with solid fuel, lots of waste, is generally not a problem with breeder reactors and liquids. You remove the fission products from the fluid and feed it back in. I'm no chemist so I don't know all the separation nastiness involved, but it's better than carting ten thousand year waste across the country to Yucca. So the question is, what about the other reactor designs, don't they need replacement with respect to the vessel? And as I understand it, fusion reactors also have issues with high speed neutrons so their vessels would need periodic replacement, even if they get to sustained ignition and positive energy. Your replacement containment layers seems like the "constant replacement" strategy. What if you could simply inject a new layer that hardens and pushes out the older layer? Also, why not have solid uranium or some similar material as the inner container? Could simple saturation of the existing uranium in the salt prevent excessive wear? I wonder how much of this approval is because the Chinese brought one online.
    
    
        
     There are a lot of options, I'm no nuclear engineer but looking at all the different companies, they all have different approaches:Terrestrial Energy: The whole reactor, including heat exchanges and so on is defined for 7 years of life. After that a second reactor is running. After a few years the original reactor is put into a storage silo and then a new reactor is placed their ready to be switch to. From memory they don't seem to pump the fuel from 1 to the other. Flibe Energy: They are doing the famous lifter. Simular concept, 2 reactor cores with graphite moderation, after 7 years the fuel is pumped to the second reactor, the first is getting its graphite core replaced. This will have longer lead time to deployment. Moltex Energy: They have totally different approach. Instead of 7 year lift-time they are building a traditional reactor with much longer life. They are basically building a sodium cooled fast reactor, but replace sodium with salt solution. And then in the fuel assemblies are also like those in sodium reactor, but contain liquid salt with uranium in them. They want to produce the fuel salt from spent Canadian CANDU fuel. Kairos energy: This is a molten salt cooled reactor that uses pellet fuel but little balls instead of the traditional pellets.
    
    
        
     I've been thinking about the dumb idea of using solid uranium/thorium as the (closest) salt containment layer: you have a solid uranium (melting point 2000C) or thorium layer (3000C) around the salt, which may not degrade it that quickly if the salts (which are a solution basically, if it's a liquid?) are more or less saturated. Or even if it isn't, how long would a layer of uranium or thorium last? I guess that's the big question.You don't care if the thorium or uranium captures neutrons I would think. Thorium neutron capture is a good thing. So depending on how long the solid "breeder" inner shell hold up, when you "recondition" the inner shell, I assume you can just dissolve it into salt, feed it into the normal fission products processing that the salt fuel use, and put in a new solid uranium/thorium salt shell. Or maybe thorium could be alloyed for more endurance properties as the containment. Of course I have no idea about the various cracking / strength / fatigue properties of thorium as a metal. I wonder if pellets/spheres could use thorium as a surrounding material. So how nuts is all of that? Maybe you could do a weekly monthly re-coat of the inner layer with more thorium or uranium to replace that which gets dissolved/degraded. Edit: ORNL on thorium properties in a nuclear environment  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4622065
    
    
        
     I don't know enough to answer any of that.&gt; weekly monthly re-coat Any operation inside the reactor is a bad idea.
    
    
    
        
      
 Nothing requires this research to to be carried out in the US specifically beyond funding being available here. It’s really the inherent difficulties which is holding back progress.   
    
        
     My understanding is that you are not allowed to build a research reactor that is bigger then a university reactor but isn't a full scale energy producing reactor. My understanding is that for such a reactor you would need the full operating license just as a grid connected PWR.And since in the US its essentially impossible to get a license for anything but a PWR, that isn't rally possible. Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup, even those that started in other countries.  https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...
    
    
        
     &gt; Technology independent regulatory framework is one of the main reasons Canada has so many reactor startup Canada's vast tracts of land wouldn't hurt either. If a meltdown or containment breach happens, and no population centers are within 400km, that's a much better bad scenario.
    
    
        
      
 I mean you don't build reactors somewhere out of in the middle of no-where, you need a labor force and infrastructure to build them.   
    
        
      
 yeah im not exactly mad about it being hard / impossible for people to set up a lab-based experimental nuclear reactor near me due to regulations   
    
    
    
        
     We have prove how unsafe the streets are and yet ...In fact, nuclear reactor to be built have a higher barrier of 'prove of safety' then almost anything else. In fact, nobody in the US ever died because of civilian nuclear reactor research or at least not in the last 40+ years.
    
    
        
     The street is too dangerous, you are right. An experimental nuclear reactor, however, does not make the street safer.Additionally, the public is relatively unaware of how nuclear plants fail. If people at nuclear reactor research labs suddenly stop showing up to work - what happens? People kind of assume it will explode, or become a radiation hot-zone rendering the local area unusable for a hundred+ years. And considering the experimental reactors being discussed need parts replacement due to corrosion, what happens if those replacements dont happen? The dangers of human inaction seem much higher for nuclear than other things. With standard fuel sources, if people stop showing up to work then power simply stops being made - that's pretty much it. And while they are at work, the process is pretty simple and robust (compared to nuclear) with a lot of room for error. I know I've been surprised (in a good way) to learn about some of the safety mechanisms existing within nuclear reactors, but I still only sort of understand what anything means that I read - and the safety mechanisms that gave me some sense of relief is based on a lot of assumptions I had to make about the way nuclear works as a lay person. how about nuclear scientist stop saying "trust me bro" and more aggressively educate people on nuclear fail-safes? People have trouble voting for things they do not understand. And educating the public on something they are either uninterested in or incapable of understanding is an unfair burden to put on nuclear scientists, but they are the only ones qualified to do so. the ball will move a lot faster once lay people can exchange stories about nuclear safety that go beyond "we barely use nuclear, and no one has died yet, it's actually really safe because ... reasons? scientists said so?"
    
    
        
      
 Pure speculation here but what about using salt to contain the salt? Make a big block of salt (possibly foamed) and melt a puddle in the middle?   
    
    
        
     non-metals have their own problems and glass tends to have some really weird properties.I would think a major one would be their failure mode. Metals flex and expand before they eventually fail. Glass/ceramic is fine until suddenly it isn't and has a total failure. Think of a window being hit. If it were metal it would probably deform but if it is glass it shatters. Next would be joining them on-site. If needed, metal piping can be bent and welded in-place. what do you do with a glass pipe that needs a join? what do you do if there is a small variation in the plans and the pipe needs an adjustment? I think there are a host of reasons why glass is not used for pipes.
    
    
        
     Glass is already basically welded, or maybe it's more like brazing. But an oxyacetylene torch can be used to work with glass just as well as to cut or weld metal.Metals also have weird properties. Like tempering and hardening based on temperature. In an industrial setting you need expert welders with deep knowledge of the materials or a weld is going to fail and ruin your day. So it doesn't seem like a huge leap to me actually, assuming ceramics or glass actually have desirable properties.
    
    
        
     I noticed you focused almost exclusively on the welding while ignoring the brittle nature of glass?I would think that putting liquid salt in a a glass pipe is somewhat asking for trouble. One of the many issues with glass is "thermal shock". Let's say there is a fire and water based sprinklers are activated.. what will the 1,400F glass do once water touches it? Or there is an accident and someone bangs into the glass. Metal can deform and not fail, glass cant.
    
    
        
     “Glass” is a generic term for a wide variety of materials. So is “metal”. Metal can be brittle, sometimes that’s even desirable. That’s what tempering and hardening are about.A molten salt reactor is a material science problem. Conventional “metal” doesn’t work because of the corrosion. If glass has some desirable property then we can overcome the “bumping in to it” problem. Maybe with a hand rail. Or staying away from the operational nuclear reactor. I’m not suggesting glass actually be used. I’m saying if it was I wouldn’t be surprised.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 We can do this with glass, however, lapping is incredibly expensive for something as simple as joining two pieces of glass together.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Most of those contain plastics which are usually not good for high temperatures but also have long chain molecules which get broken by neutrons and other particles and cannot heal defects the way metals can.   
    
    
        
     Glass-lined vessels and pipes are already used in the chemical industry so it's a somewhat proven technology.Not sure if it's suited to the chemistry and temperatures (and radiation) of a molten salt reactor, but it seems like an interesting technology.
    
    
        
      
 The corrosion issue is part of what drove Moltex to their rather interesting design (sterile coolant salt is a fluoride; fuel salt in tubes is chloride; this is a fast reactor.) The absence of uranium in the fluoride allows it to be operated at a redox potential where chromium does not dissolve.   
    
        
     Yes, one of the reason I like that reactor design. They basically put something in the fluoride that is basically designed to corrode so that the actual reactor vessel doesn't. If I understand correctly.Their design doesn't require the 7 year swap cycle most MSR do.
    
    
        
     Right! They've got the same thing going that ordinary LWRs do: the neutrons lose their energy in a surround liquid rather than in a solid moderator or solid structural materials other than the fuel rods (which are designed to be replaced often anyway). The design even adds some hafnium to the coolant salt (substituting for zirconium, which is the sacrificial metal you refer to there); hafnium serves to shield the reactor walls from thermalized neutrons.One additional advantage of separating the fuel salt from the coolant salt is that the coolant salt volume can be increased as desired, making the thermal inertia of the reactor as large as one likes independent of reactor power or size of the fuel load.
    
    
        
     &gt; One additional advantageThe problem with that is that you would likely require a different design and go threw full licensing. So in practice this will likely not be used.
    
    
        
      
 Presumably it would happen at design time and a large, high thermal inertia design would be the one licensed.   
    
        
      
 What about using molten lead or something that can act like a lubricant/insulation at that temperature away from the corrosion in the same way airflow is used over jet turbine blades to stop them melting? It there any high temperature liquid that is molten salt phobic like oil and water?   
    
        
     People thought this stuff https://haynesintl.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/new-alloy-br...  (which is practically stainless steel without the steel) was good for this use but when it was tried in this system it did not hold up very well  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment...  but it was believed that some small change in the formula such as adding Niobium could clear the problem up. What's needed to move forward is not a big conceptual breakthrough but rather testing of materials under realistic conditions... A new test reactor. What is more problematic with the MSRE design is that it incorporates graphite as a moderator and the graphite swells and goes bad over time. Possibly you can take the graphite core out every few years and replace it with a new one, but people have also found designs that don't require a moderator outside the fuel salt. When I went to the first conference on Thorium Energy years ago David Leblanc had done some very simple calculations that showed you didn't need the graphite -- it works just fine with a faster spectrum. He's refined that idea and is running with it. Others are pursuing chloride salts and plutonium fuel with a very fast spectrum.
    
    
        
     Fast spectrum MSRs bring a whole litany of other problems. Chlorine has more oxidation states and the chemistry with fission products is much more complex.Starting with graphite makes sense imho for a university.
    
    
        
      
 If it's designed with replacement in mind, a graphite moderator isn't all that bad. It can even be a safety advantage, in that if you drain the fuel out of the vessel it's taken away from its moderator.   
    
        
      
 I must not be parsing this correctly. Taking fuel away from the moderator sounds like a safety disadvantage. Maybe I don't know what a moderator does.   
    
        
     I'm not a nuke physicist, but I recall LFTR presentations on the "safety plug" to stop meltdown: basically a plug melts and the fluid flows into a shallow pool.Since the fluid is "thinned", neutron economy plummets and chain reactions stop. In addition, I though the fluid would expand a bit under high heat in the reactor, which would drop neutron economy as well, so a fluid can somewhat self-moderate. So unless the fluid is in a ball or tank where the neutron economy is maintained in three dimensions, if you drain it out it no longer has the neutron economy. So what they probably are saying is that since the fuel is fluid, and if you need to replace the moderator, you drain the fuel (and as stated above, that stops the reaction as well) and replace the moderator.
    
    
        
      
 If the fuel is designed such that it needs a graphite moderator to sustain a reaction, then if the fuel is removed from the reactor it's less likely to go critical than if the fuel was "higher-grade". It's less likely to have a criticality accident.   
    
        
      
 A moderator is a material that slows neutrons down. Slow neutrons are more likely to initiate fission in a Uranium (or other fissile) nucleus that they hit, so a moderator increases the reactivity of the reactor.   
    
    
        
     Annoyingly, "molten salt reactor" is used to describe two different technologies. What you describe is a traditional reactor that uses molten salt to move heat. This typically leads to higher efficiencies, but does have corrosion issues. Other power generation systems can also benefit from molten salt loops - namely solar energy collectors.In the research field, "molten salt reactors" (MSRs) usually means the other tech - a reactor where the fissile material is dissolved in a salt. This not only brings efficiency increases, but many safety improvements. Many designs also use a 2nd molten salt loop as a temperature step-down before steam power generation.
    
    
        
      
 One of those safety improvements -- a freeze plug -- passively halts the reaction in the event of a power cut. The reactor sits on top of a vault that has a larger volume separated by a narrow tube containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug by cryocoolers powered by the turbines themselves. If the pumps stop for any reason, then the plug quickly melts and the molten fluid from the reactor drains into the larger vault via gravity at which point it cools and freezes into a solid.   
    
        
      
 One of my favorite safety elements is often over-looked: they operate at 1 atmosphere. So much of the cost and bulk of a traditional reactor is the shielding needed to protect from an over-pressure event.   
    
        
     And even better, most of the things that are dangerous in a traditional reactor is chemically bound to the salt. So even if there is some kind of explosion, these materials would not be vaporized and transported in the air with wind.So no crazy misinformed graphics all over the news. So even if you drop a hand-grande into that reactor, it just gone be like throwing a rock into a bucket full of toothpaste. Its gone be a mess but its not gone result in a lot of airborne materials.
    
    
        
     It seems like that might suggest a potential option in the search for appropriate materials to build the containment vessel and piping to hold in the salt: just make the whole thing out of salt. Anything that needs to be solid can have built-in channels with coolant piped through. The rest can maintain a sort of steady state.I'm sure there's all sorts of practical reasons why that wouldn't work, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
    
    
        
     Nice hack! That sounds so easy that I wonder what the catch is.Maybe it would need more energy for cooling than what it generates? So it would have to be scaled up to a size where the surface-to-content ratio becomes favourable. There might not be enough salt for that :-)
    
    
        
     Ok so I recently watched a video that went into some of this, and I had know idea how crazy some of these nuclear fuels are in terms of physical requirements.If I recall the video correctly, solid metal oxide fuel produces offgas at a 50:1 ratio, while being insanely dense. This produces pretty insane internal pressures if the goal of the fuel design is to keep everything contained. Like strong enough to eventually cause mechanical failure of the fuel. I think there's a lot of really difficult constraints intersecting in these fuel assembly designs, and something that seems obviously simple probably isn't.
    
    
        
     I suppose one problem might be selecting an appropriate coolant that doesn't dissolve the salt on contact. Presumably water would, but google says that salt doesn't dissolve in oil so maybe that's an option.Ideally you wouldn't need to expend energy to keep the coolant cold enough; rather, you'd use the coolant to boil water to run your steam generator.
    
    
        
      
 “Vessel built out of nothing but heat transfer interface and freeze plug". Do some of the materials problems get easier while it's only touching the salt in frozen state?   
    
    
        
      
 Easily recoverable. The tube drains into a collection tank filled with control rods, so any reactions are halted. You can just reheat the salt and pump it back into the reactor. Reportedly, one of the first test reactors in the 50's was shut off every Friday and restarted on Monday. A full power loss, what would be catastrophic for any other reactor, was tested weekly for a year without issue.   
    
        
      
 I love the image of some guy before going home hitting the red button and some guy on Monday just hitting the green button.   
    
        
     Freeze plugs sound super cool, but this part breaks my brain:&gt; containing molten salt that has been frozen into a plug Presumably salt can't be both molten and frozen at once, or is there something about this domain that I don't understand?
    
    
        
     I believe they use active cooling to keep the plug frozen.If the power fails, the cooling fails and the plug melts.
    
    
        
      
 It is literally just a tube with a fan blowing over it. Most designs just barely solidify it, so any over-temperature events also cause a passive shutdown.   
    
        
      
 Yeah, I got that (and it seems like a really elegant solution! very cool, pun intended, etc). My question was about how salt (or any other matter, really) can simultaneously be molten and frozen.   
    
        
      
 It can't. Well, maybe at its triple-point, but that is another story. It is just a quirk of the language due to it being know as molten salt. For example, my drink is full of molten water that has been frozen into cubes.   
    
        
     Part of it is molten (above the plug), part of it is frozen (the plug).Think pipes in a house in winter, where one little part of the pipe gets frozen while the rest of the pipes have liquid water in them.
    
    
        
      
 And in Spring, when the broken pipe plugged with solid molten ice thaws, your house's molten ice circuit performs an emergency evacuation into the yard, saving you from the convenience of adequate molten ice pressure   
    
        
     Water is actually a very unusual substance in that it expands upon freezing. (Plutonium being another)Most materials instead contract when freezing.
    
    
        
      
 Hah! Well, we usually think of salt in the solid state (i.e. frozen) and not in the liquid state, so it's not so strange to be explicit in this case. For H2O, we do have pretty common encounters with three of its phase states, so there's less need to be explicit (or, rather, we have separate words for each state: steam, water, ice).   
    
        
      
 Think of a lake in the winter. Just the top layer of water is frozen, exposed to the cold air above the lake. Some of the lake water is frozen and some is liquid, depending on its position in the lake.   
    
        
     I wrote it that way to aid the reader in understanding what the plug material was composed of. I didn't want the reader to think that the material was water ice.Yes, the material is the frozen state of the once liquid reactor fluid. I hope that clears it up, and would welcome a better way of explaining it!
    
    
        
      
 Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying to nit-pick your phrasing, I was just curious if I was misunderstanding something as a lay person. :)   
    
        
      
 I think it was just a clumsy phrasing, with the point being that it's a solid plug of whatever salt is molten and circulating above.   
    
        
      
 There have been quite a few solar energy concentrator test beds based on molten salt in order to try to get to 24/7 solar power. It is an interesting technology but afaik it's not at the stage where it can be rolled out reliably and maintenance free.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Thanks for posting, this sounds super cool. Now I just really wished I had a reason to order a molten salt loop.   
    
        
      
 I would love to rip the gas heating out of the house and have little nuclear reactor there.   
    
        
     &gt; So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.I was under the impression that there was a heat exchanger in the path - that is the reactor turns water into slightly radioacive steam, which is sent through a heat exchanger to turn different water into non (or way less anyway)- radioactive steam for the turbines. So both are indirect. (This is just a nit comment, I think your main points about efficiency still hold, and your materials questions are good!)
    
    
        
     There are two kinds of conventional light water reactor. In the pressurized water reactor (PWR), the most common, there is indeed an additional heat exchanger between the water in the core and the water that turns to steam. In the boiling water reactor (BWR), the second most common, the slightly radioactive steam from the core goes directly to a turbine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor
    
    
    
        
     Also, AFAIK, those high-temperature reactors are normally made with a molten metal intermediate cycle (normally sodium) and a gas-only external cycle (normally CO2).Water enters only to cools the cold side of the external cycle.
    
    
        
     That makes a lot of sense.I think I was confused by news stories about situations where the reactor has failed in some way, and then there are stories of how radioactive water needs to be stored / disposed of somehow.
    
    
        
     In those historical cases, the priority was cooling the core, the easiest method (especially if a substantial amount of plumbing is wrecked or questionable) is dumping water into it.Which then becomes irradiated, and pools via gravity in any lower voids, and then eventually needs to be dealt with.
    
    
        
      
 Exactly. In other variants of reactors the inner contour could circulate molten slightly radioactive sodium instead.   
    
        
     There are a number of obstacles. Neutron damage to the reactor structure is more of a problem, since the fuel is dissolved in salt in direct contact with that structure (unlike a reactor with solid fuel rods, which are separated from the reactor vessel by a thickness of moderator, in the case of LWRs is water.)See here for a (somewhat old) list of some technical issues:  https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov...  "Nickel-based alloys embrittle under high neutron fluxes at high temperature" "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]" "Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas" "MSRE was approaching end of allowable service life when shut down" (after four years at 40% capacity factor)
    
    
        
     &gt; "Over 40% of [fission products] leave core [in offgas]"
"Large fraction of cesium, strontium, and iodine end up in offgas"That could, in theory at least, be an advantage if you have a good process for capturing and storing that offgas (reacting it with something to make it solid and then glassifying it, for instance). In a traditional fission reactor, gaseous fission products cause swelling and cracking of fuel pellets, and builds up pressure in the fuel tubes, which is one of the factors limiting fuel burnup.
    
    
        
      
 It means the offgas storage system has to be designed for a large heat load, even in accident scenarios. It also means the common MSR talking point that the FPs stay in the salt is not correct.   
    
        
     &gt; common MSR talking pointWell, a lot of 'common MSR talking points' are overblown, firmly detached from reality. Or at least conveniently ignoring all the significant challenges remaining in industrializing MSR technology. MSR fanboys are the most tedious of the pro-nuclear side of the energy debate, perhaps beaten only by the "this entirely unproven aneutronic fusion concept will imminently solve all our energy woes" crowd. :)
    
    
    
        
     Moltex Energy talks a lot about that. It is actually pretty nice, some things stay in the salt, some leave it. The most dangerous stuff that shows up in the news a big scary cloud coming over from Japan to the US would still be in the salt.Some other things that you really don't in your fuel, like Xenon and Krypton will bubble out. So I think overall it is an advantage.
    
    
        
      
 Moltex's design keeps the relevant isotopes of Xe/Kr in the fuel tubes long enough for them to (mostly) decay, so the Cs and Sr produced from the decay (mostly) stays in the fuel salt.   
    
        
     &gt; corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten saltI'm interested to see what Moltex can do to simplify matters:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJpVClxzVM&amp;t=758s  Instead of pumping the salt around, they plan to leave it sitting in stainless steel tubes, and use simple convection to extract the heat. Oak Ridge rejected this idea in the 1950s because they were trying to power an aircraft, but convection makes more sense when the reactor isn't moving.
    
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; slightly radioactive steamFor anyone worried about this, the longest lived unstable isotope of oxygen (that is heavier than stable oxygen) has a half life of 26 seconds. Hydrogen can become deuterium which is stable, and finally tritium which is not. Tritium has a long half life of 12 years, but is low energy and very easily shielded (just don't eat it). There is very very little tritium - first you'd have to make deuterium (there isn't much), and then a deuterium would have to become a tritium, i.e. a rare event on top of a rare event.
    
    
        
     Your view really depends on the design.CANDU (Canadian reactor design) is moderated via deuterium in which case there is a LOT of it circulating in the reactor core. The heavy water is syphoned off to a tritium separation unit for recovery.
With a market value of $30,000 a gram, there is a clear incentive to recover it ;)
    
    
        
      
 Some buddies who work on CANDU tell me they have tritium contamination everywhere as a result of this. From what they tell me it's not really a big safety issue, mostly more annoying than anything.   
    
    
        
      
 Not compltly accurate. It's true that the half-life of tritium is short compared to long lived actinides. However, like hydrogen, it diffuses very easily and it's not easy to contain. In fact, it's one of the few things emitted in the environment during normal reactor operations. As beta emitter, you are right that it's dangerous only when ingested, but it's very easy to breath of to get it from other ambient sources   
    
        
     &gt; you are right that it's dangerous only when ingestedNot really. Tritium is Hydrogen. It cannot bioaccumulate. Each atom of Tritium will spread out to become one among the quadrillions of atoms of Hydrogen in our body. Most will get out of the body in a matter of days, long before they've had a chance to decay. Even when they decay, they undergo beta decay, which is not very damaging. But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.
    
    
        
     &gt; Not really.... But even if it were damaging, the damage would be very localized, it would affect at most one cell, and the immune system is easily able to handle that.you could not be more wrong about this. Alpha and Beta are fairly safe OUTSIDE the body. In the case of Alpha it is not able to penetrate the layer of dead skin on your hands. Internal, it is VERY damaging because there is no "dead skin" to protect the internal organs.  https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics  "Some beta particles are capable of penetrating the skin and causing damage such as skin burns. However, as with alpha-emitters, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inhaled or swallowed."
    
    
        
      
 I stand by what I said. Yes, beta-emitters are most hazardous when they are inside your body, if they are together and stay there for a long time. The main examples are Strontium-90 and Caesium-137. The problem with them is that they bioaccumulate. Strontium accumulates in the bones (it is chemically similar to Calcium) and Caesium in the pancreas (it's not clear why. it is chemically similar to Potasium, but it's not obvious why it should accumulate in the pancreas).Tritium is very different. It is chemically just Hydrogen, which is present everywhere in the body. It just can't bioaccumulate. In any case, if you don't believe me, here's a statement from the FDA regarding the tritiated water released by Fukushima:   Tritium presents an extremely low human and animal health risk if consumed and any health risk would be further minimized with the dilution effects of discharge into the ocean.
 
[1] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/fda-resp...    
    
        
     One tidbit on information damage that has stuck with me is that carcinogenic radiation damage is a second order process: to get a cancerous mutation you need both copies of DNA damaged, which would in most cases require two separate events.To the extend this is true, it implies that it is the square of the radiation dose that determines carcinogenic effects: Half the dose would cause only a fourth of damage.
    
    
        
     Very little tritium will diffuse, because it's bound with oxygen as water.However some water does come out of the reactor you are correct.
    
    
        
     I think one key aspect is that they are less susceptible / immune to loss of coolant incidents. In a PWR if there is a loss of pressure, or coolant in any other way, and emergency cooling doesn't work, the core overheats and might melt down.An uncooled pool of molten salt will keep on generating heat even after the reaction is stopped, so will continue heating up, but it is possible to design the reactor so that the whole thing remains stable. Since the pressure is low, there is no risk of explosion, or release of the radioactive materials. So the energy density is i think a secondary benefit, if at all.
    
    
        
     &gt; But I was under the impression that the main stumbling block for molten salt reactors was that high-energy corrosion resistant materials for containing / moving molten salt simply don't exist (yet).Is this also an issue for molten salt / liquid metal batteries[1][2] that have been proposed as a grid scale energy storage solution for renewables? The way I understand it, molten salt is used as the membrane separating the electrode and electrolyte layers. But I was under the impression that there are actual molten salt batteries prototypes with industrial scale facilities currently under construction. Are the requirements to contain the molten salt in a battery different from a nuclear reactors? Or do they have the same challenges and are simply able to overcome economic feasibility whereas nuclear reactors aren’t? 1: https://ambri.com/  2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PL32ea0MqM
    
    
        
      
 Molten salt / liquid metal batteries normally use alkaline salts, so steel holds it pretty well.   
    
    
        
     &gt; So, in a conventional reactor, you use nuclear fission to heat/pressurize water and then use your hot, slightly radioactive steam turn a turbine.Only in the more primitive reactor designs (BWR, Boiling Water Reactor). Most are of the PWR, Pressurized Water Reactor, design. In these, the water in the reactor is still liquid due to being held at pressure. This pressurized water is run through a steam generator [1] that boils non-radioactive water that never comes into contact with the reactor. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power...
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I hope we manage to improve the design over the 1960s version MSRE which cost $130m to clean up due to unforeseen problems including a near-criticality incident. Certainly there is a lot of research to be done.   
    
        
     The cause of the criticality accident was that they did not remove the uranium when they were done with it. This is straightforward to do, you pump F2 gas into the salt and this gas is produced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hexafluoride  which can be stored in tanks. Instead of removing it they let the salt sit, and radioactive decay led to F2 gas being produced by the salt, which caused UF6 to be produced slowly and then migrate. This mistake won't happen again.
    
    
        
     Even with that issue, it was still a project that was amazing, they did incredible work, and the cost was very small. Almost hilariously so compared to other nuclear reactor projects.Had that same team received the funding for a next large commercial prototype, the world would be different now. But sadly Nixon preferred to spend money for nuclear research in California, Tennessee not exactly a priority. Alvin M. Weinberg also didn't make himself any friends with government higher ups when he criticized PWR programs for civilian nuclear.
    
    
        
      
 Way, way overdue! China has taken all of our research from the 50's and has been charging ahead. Very sad that politics and ignorance has severely kneecapped our nuclear industry :(   
    
        
      
 It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution. For all the credit we give BigCo for creating propaganda, it's curious that they were unable to be successful here, given the stakes.   
    
        
      
 They are up against big fossil fuel tycoons like the Kochs. If we are strictly talking corporate propaganda, the fossil fuel industry has plenty of that.   
    
        
     As much as people portrayed an epic battle between renewables and nuclear the real winner from the move away from nuclear was natural gas fired gas turbines.The most obnoxious thing about the energy literature is that it frequently reads like a stopped clock. People still compare the cost of nuclear energy to the cost of coal, but it's no accident that the US stopped building coal plants at the same time it stopped building nuclear plants because it stopped both for the same reason... The capital cost of a gas turbine generator (even in a hybrid cycle including a steam turbine) is dramatically smaller than the steam turbines used in coal and nuclear plants. Since molten salt reactors run a lot hotter than LWRs they could drive  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-cycle_gas_turbine  but it's a technology that is not very well developed. If nuclear energy is going to compete with natural gas, however, they need to ditch the steam turbine.
    
    
        
     Do the gas turbines use the brayton cycle? As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks. I recall a LFTR presentation talking about how they could use the Brayton cycle because of... ?high temps I think?.Is the closed cycle gas turbine also using a superior cycle like the Brayton? Oh it's in the third sentence, CTRL-F failed me.
    
    
        
     &gt; As I understand gas turbines are around 64% efficient with various tricks.These super-high efficiency gas turbines are not 'pure' gas turbines, but so-called combined cycle plants. Basically you first have a 'normal' gas turbine driving a generator (which, by itself, maybe gives you ~45% efficiency), but then you take the host exhaust of that gas turbine and use that to drive a secondary steam cycle driving another generator. I'm not sure such a thing is doable in a closed Brayton cycle, at least I haven't read anything about anything like that. An interesting thing with closed cycle Brayton is that instead of air you can use another fluid as the working fluid. Supercritical CO2, for instance, has some nice properties leading to extremely compact machinery. Of course there's an uphill battle in commercializing this technology; if you use air (or nitrogen) you can just adapt one of the many existing gas turbine cores with $zillions of R&amp;D and decades of experience behind them.
    
    
        
      
 It seems to me that companies like GE and Westinghouse have tons of money. Add that to the billions pro-nuclear folks have in SV and you've got quite the war chest to fund effective pro-nuke campaigns.   
    
    
        
      
 I'm out of date, lol. Well, GE, even post-breakup, has a huge energy business that would benefit from increasing nuclear production. Assuming they really can make safe, cost-effective power, anyway.   
    
        
      
 GE is one of the big names in gas turbines, and AFAIK they make wind turbines as well, in addition to nuclear power plants. So whatever the customer wants they can offer. ;)   
    
        
      
 Those folks might not want to waste that money in a propaganda race against the entire fossil fuel industry and the emerging renewable energy industry. GE and Westinghouse are large and successful companies, but is nuclear a major part of their portfolio such that they would take such a big risk (compared to fossil fuel industry which views clean energy as an existential threat)?   
    
        
     &gt; It's also sad that industry completely failed to convince the population that they can provide a safe solution.I don't really think the population matters. The problem is that after the NRC was replaced AEC was replaced, regulation became totally technology depended. Doing anything other then PWR was essentially impossible. The DoD is only now undertaking efforts to change this, but its turning a large ship.
    
    
        
     The existing technology isn't actually that safe. The safe technology isn't that existing, actually.The "population" tends to not believe claims about certain accidents being impossible if they keep happening. The safety of nuclear power is a fantasy. No, the track record is not enough. Given the enormous potential for catastrophe and the timespans for nuclear power project, questioning assumptions like "nobody is going to shoot rockets and shells around the plant" is entirely valid.
    
    
    
        
     And that's exactly the wrong reasoning in this case. Because you want to predict the future from the past, over a really long time span and with the adverse events being extremely catastrophic. Just read up on how the Fukushima cleanup is going and how the cost estimates have risen...Bayesian reasoning would require you to argue about priors. You want to take priors from the past. Fine and dandy, when trying to predict the weather or even where the stock market is going. But when talking about how likely it is that something blows up and contaminates a huge area, maybe there are higher standards. And philosophizing about the average is all nice and well, until you happen to live near the site of an accident. And in Ukraine the assumption "nobody is going to shoot around a nuclear plant", which most assurance of nuclear safety depend upon, doesn't hold anymore.
    
    
        
      
 For sure. In theory, I'm in favor of nuclear power; especially as we try get to zero/negative net carbon emissions, nuclear plants have real advantages. But when I think about American business culture, I have a hard time imagining the company I'd trust with something that requires an extremely long-term focus (plants run for decades) and deep social responsibility.   
    
        
      
 Safety isn't a technical problem, it's a human problem. Over long periods safety measures end up being cut and introduce risk. There's also design decisions revolved around cost even though better solutions exist. Then there's just plain oversights. For example we all know earthquakes and tsunamis exist and yet the Fukushima still happened.   
    
    
    
        
     You don't understand capitalism then. And you fell for propaganda and fantasy of the nuclear industry apparently.Nuclear power isn't that cheap. Certainly not without subsidies and once you price in all the externalities.
    
    
        
     And you fell for the fossil fuels propaganda claiming nuclear is too expensive to without subsidies. Seriously.. new nuclear is on the drawing board with huge investments in the UK, France and Sweden.Nuclear will be cheap when the industry grows and reactor designs are standardized. It's really simply the superior technology any way you look at it and the "nuclear is too expensive" is just a tired and arguably false argument against it. I'm so sick and tired of people saying that it's too expensive to save the planet..
    
    
        
     In reality there is a lot of research pointing to nuclear power certainly not being anywhere near as cheap as "too cheap to meter". Claiming this is all "fossil fuel propaganda" is stupid and lazy. So far, there has rarely ever been a nuclear power plant built on budget and on time. Most run way over. And often the costs for cleanup and decommissioning are not priced in properly or even at all. Most industries have to pay insurance for their risks, the - actually uncomputable - risk of nuclear power rests on the whole society, while the profits accumulate with the shareholders of the power company. Ask Japan how that is working out for them currently..."Drawing board" is the operational term. Nuclear power is always late and it's always more expensive than promised. Why is the nuclear power industry subsidized so much everywhere when it's actually a good investment? Have government agencies suddenly become good at investing or are they just charities for corporate interests? I'm not even saying it's "too expensive", by the way. I'm not totally against nuclear power, I do see the benefits. It has its place, probably. But I know about fat tail distributions and the unpredictability of the future. You really don't want anybody shooting rockets and artillery shells around a nuclear facility a few hundred miles near you. Today that's Ukraine and much of eastern Europe, who says that in the next fourty or fifty years, the lifespan of a typical plant, that's not you either? In Mossul ISIS hunted around for nuclear material to build a dirty bomb, luckily they didn't find the stuff that actually was there. Who says your country will not have a rogue militia like that in the next fifty years? And then the nuclear industry is unwieldy. It requires a large and expensive specialized infrastructure. Which can be amortized eventually, yes. But much of that investment is upfront and the recuperation is dependent on a lot of things going exactly right for a very long time. Also it requires a huge labor force that has to be trained for this specific task and then can hardly do anything else. France has the problem of a shortage. In short: It's hard and expensive to get into nuclear technology and it's even harder to get out of it. And in order to solve the climate crisis using nuclear power there are two major problems: First, it's already too late, because nuclear power is so slow. Secondly, you'd need to nuclearize much of the world, including countries with questionable regulatory regimes to say the least. This makes all the problems we see now a lot worse...
    
    
        
     I wasn't saying that nuclear IS "too cheap to meter" I'm saying it could be. And my statement about fossil fuels propaganda was merely a jab back at your snarky comment. Your absolutely right that most of the new reactors that have been built in the west has been delayed and exceeded budget and all I'm saying is that this wouldn't have been the case of the industry had kept growing and evolving back in the 80s. Japan is way overreacting with Fukushima and that plant was old as fuck and was literally built on a fault line without taking proper precautions. Tell me how many died as result of the Fukushima incident and how much radioactive water has polluted the surroundings ? I'd urge you to go look it up, but you probably won't.Sorry i meant all those countries are planning to invest billions of euros into building new reactors now that the EU has deemed nuclear power green. You are talking like other power generation like wind, solar etc is not subsidized ? Hope is the unique to nuclear? Nuclear is subsidized and tightly controlled/regulated for obvious reasons and honestly imho all energy infrastructure should be tightly tied to government as is the case in most of Europe. Even if Russia was too hot the nuclear power plant in Ukraine with a cruise missile the damage and contamination would be fairly local and I'd imagine hitting a coal or gas power plant with a cruise missile would be just as bad. Besides that hitting a nuclear power plant with cruise missile would be considered firing a nuke and don't think Russia is ready to do that yet. Taking about dirty bombs is just plain stupid, why the hell would you through all that trouble when there's much much cheaper and simpler ways to do damage? Yes it requires some new infrastructure but in many cases you can switch coal, gas and oil plants almost 1:1 with nuclear. What's wrong with having lots of highly educated people working with supplying the world with energy ? And how is it different from solar, wind etc? France has problems because they still have a huge anti nuclear movement making it very hard to invest properly in maintenance and new plants, besides that France's shortage is because Germany suddenly requires allot more electricity because of stupid investments. It's never too late.. sure we can also build what is the fastest solution but nuclear is the best bet long term.
    
    
        
     Ah yes, "it could be". An unrefutable and unprovable statement without proof. It's purely wishful thinking that nuclear power will become any easier in the future. Japan is not "overreacting", it has to clean up the damn mess not just to one day use that area again, but also to avoid spreading the contamination. Just because nobody dies immediately from the exposure doesn't mean the ground is safe to handle or live on. Case in point: The Russian soldiers in Tschernobyl digging in contaminated ground and spreading it further. Your point about a low immediate death count after Fukushima is just as dishonest, stupid and lazy: People would have had their lifes cut shorter by the radiation exposure, if they hadn't been evacuated at great cost.Most of your arguments are entire bullshit and I really don't have the time to waste. No, if one of the nuclear plants in Ukraine blows up, the effects are not "very local" and I suspect the locals do care. So should you when a nuclear plant near where you live goes online. Also the biggest nuclear plant in Europe is hurting Ukraine's defense just by sitting there and doing its job perfectly: The Russians discovered that they can shoot artillery from there without anyone shooting back. Nuclear plants are defensive weak points under any circumstance. A dirty bomb is a viable terror weapon. You can spread radioactive material quite far with an amount of explosives that wouldn't be able to cause near as much death and terror. Good deal, especially when you got the Plutonium and what not for free... People like you are lying through your teeth by saying the only alternative to nuclear is fossil fuels. I don't even know anyone who believes this. And no, we can't wait for nuclear power. A world full of nuclear power plants is unsafe. Maybe in Norway or Finland with the most honest and least corrupt governments (at presents) and no immediate threats from the outside it seems safe. But really, betting on nuclear power means betting on a perfect world during the next few decades at least. You just continue to profess to a profound ignorance on how radiation exposure work, what happened and is happening right now in Tschernobyl and Fukushima, and make hand wavy arguments "Such accidents are never going to happen and aren't actually that bad, for real this time, pinky promise with cherry on top".
    
    
        
      
 And you can just continue fear mongering trying to hold the world back further. The world is going nuclear wether you like it or not, America's biggest enemies Russia and China already have it big time and there's a very big limit to what countries America can hold back line they've tried to do with Iran. If anyone is had bullshit arguments it's you; you clearly haven't done any research into Tjernobyl and Fukushima and fear mongering about dirty bombs is just beyond stupid. Så thank you for ending the conversation. Glad the world has started moving on and had started seeing through bullshit like what you have presented in this argument. Write me back in 10 years and let's see what technology won.   
    
        
     There's no evidence or reality to "nuclear is coming back". Some politicians talk a big talk, that's all. Nor did or do I say it's not going to happen, but in most of the developed/semi-developed world except China it's currently definitely not happening. Just another nuclear fanboy fantasy ignoring reality.You know who cares about dirty bombs? Every intelligence agency and counter terrorism unit in the world. So far it hasn't happened, but if nuclear power is scaled up, this stuff will be way more accessible. A lot like the gun violence problem in the US, but I guess the denialism around those topics is similar. I personally care most about the closest nuclear facilities, not so much those in China. And in reality, neither Tschernobyl nor Fukushima have been cleaned up yet and continue to be a problem to be felt financially at the very least. I know quite a bit about it, but some people apparently think it's only bad if you die instantly... But it certainly makes some weak arguments easier, doesn't it? Who cares about people losing decades of their life...
    
    
        
      
 The problem wasn't the safety, the problem was they couldn't deliver a cheap solution. And recently when they tried to come back they completely fucked it up.   
    
        
     Why does that matter?Particle physics dominated US research grants for several decades with some results to show for it. Now that the focus has shifted elsewhere (e.g. material science) and another country is leading in nuclear research, we will be able to observe their results and act accordingly (just like China did in the 50s). Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?
    
    
        
     &gt; Why is it so important which government is facilitating which research?For better or worse, the world doesn't work such that everyone who reads a research paper is on an equal footing to industrialize/commercialize the technology. The ones who got their hands dirty are far ahead. Thus governments do something called 'industrial policy' (a somewhat dirty word in the West these days, to our detriment I think) where they try to build 'value chains' (or whatever you wanna call it) where they spend money on pure research, applied research, early stage spinoffs, etc. to kickstart an industry around a particular technology. For an example, consider how decades-long investment by the US government into electronic warfare and military electronics kickstarted Silicon Valley. So China is gearing up to be a dominant player in the global nuclear power market. So does that matter? In a way it's better somebody does it than nobody and we continue burning fossils, but being one of these hopeless romantics who think things like democracy and human rights are incredibly important I'd rather see 'our team' on the field as well. Energy extortion isn't pretty, see Europe and Russia at the moment.
    
    
        
     A 1MW research reactor.Anyway, why is it always a fluoride salt? Is it because of the melting point or because of some nuclear property? I imagine there is some very relevant reason, because a less reactive anion (even chlorine) would be much easier to work with.
    
    
        
     Fluoride salts are good for fissile uranium + fertile thorium. If you want to work with a plutonium/uranium 238 cycle then chloride salts are a better choice. Plutonium doesn't dissolve very well in fluorides.Molten chloride reactors can have performance characteristics right out of science fiction, it seems possible for such a reactor to not only breed more fuel but to destroy the long-lived (500 year) fission products such as cesium and strontium. It never gets upvoted on HN when I link it but I've been following MSRs for a while and even spoke at the first thorium energy conference and I've been watching people's thoughts about designs evolve and this one  https://www.moltexenergy.com/  is well ahead of the others.
    
    
        
     While at it, I never understood the worry about the plutonium surfacing in the MSR cycle. Of course it can be diverted to make nuclear warheads. But countries like the US, or France, or Russia, or China, or India already are able to produce nuclear warheads, even from plutonium extracted from more conventional reactors. I don't understand where is the risk of proliferation.Is this about international treaties and ease of inspection? About currently non-nuclear countries obtaining nuclear weapons more easily?
    
    
        
     (1) There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology. For instance, if somebody built a perfect system for separating out protactinium from a thorium MSR, that protactinium could be allowed to decay outside the reactor and produce pure U233 that could be used to make weapons. That perfect system is probably not practical, but in general there is fear that any new approach to fuel processing could have unintended consequences. Would it be possible, for instance, to make something like the EBR-II that breeds weapon grade plutonium in a blanket and uses some form of pyroprocessing to produce pure metallic plutonium? Such a system might be able to make enough material to build several weapons a year.(2) The published information about nuclear proliferation is incomplete and the mental models behind it are broken. For instance, the "little boy" bomb was made with uranium produced with a  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron  but for all the fear that countries like Iran would develop centrifuges, there has been little fear expressed about Calutrons... Except that when Iraq tried to develop a bomb it used the exact same approach used by the US! A scientist at CERN had been contacted by an Iraqi scientist who was interested in a magnet which could have been used for a Calutron and the proliferation authorities just blew him off. See https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Iraq/andre/ISRI-95-03.pdf  A country like Japan has large amounts of plutonium which is contaminated with Pu240 and Pu241 and not weapons usable but it's plausible that a modified Calutron could be used to purify non-weapons grade plutonium and make it weapons grade. Although the conventional model is that a threat would make plutonium by irradiating uranium with neutrons from a fission reactor, it's also possible that a fusion reactor or particle accelerator could be used as a neutron source to do the same. The later would actually have less heat output per unit of Pu and might be an easier device to hide. Current particle accelerators aren't reliable or economical enough for this purpose, but this is just one of many paths to proliferation which are ignored.
    
    
        
     &gt; There is fear that any advance in nuclear power technology will lead to corresponding advances in nuclear weapons technology.It seems like it would be a good idea to get the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/) signed by more nations then, so that this technology could be safely developed without a risk of nations weaponizing it.
    
    
        
     Ukraine let go its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in 1991. In 2014 Russia occupied a large part of it, and in 2022 is trying to occupy it entirely. Aster this, I suppose no other nation will ever voluntarily relinquish their existing nuclear weapons, and many nations that don't have nukes will try hard to obtain them.This ship has sailed, to my mind.
    
    
        
      
 I can't find a source, but my recollection is that the majority of the U-235 for Little Boy was generated by gaseous diffusion? I know the original process was gaseous-diffusion followed by Calutron and that once gaseous diffusion was improved they shut down all of the Calutrons, and the timing is such that all but the first little boy bomb must have been made by gaseous diffusion, but it's unclear how the fissile material for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was generated.   
    
        
     I think one fear is about the proliferation of reprocessing technology. So currently, with a traditional LWR, you buy X fuel rods, then later IAEA inspectors come by and check that those X rods are in the spent fuel pool. Reprocessing, to the very little extent it's done at all, is done by countries that already have nuclear weapons (except maybe Japan?), so the horse has already left the barn.But a MSR, at least for some of the more advanced concepts, would have online reprocessing on site (continually siphoning off fission products and adding small amounts of fresh fuel). Additionally, since the fuel wouldn't be in discrete bundles, I think there's a fear that small amounts of fuel could be diverted to a clandestine weapons program.
    
    
        
     Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?I'd love to find actual data but, anecdotally, it seems like a large amount (vast majority?) of the nuclear legacy costs for countries like the UK, at least, come from the back-end - ie reprocessing. If you just store used rods (in perpetuity) near the reactor they were used in then the overall legacy footprint is pretty modest. Indeed, I think that's what the UK does now - our reprocessing facilities are now in decommissioning mode and the US did the same a long time ago. Yes - part of the decision to stop reprocessing was proliferation risk. But I think it's also because reprocessing is so insanely messy and so easy to get wrong. This is because if you 'reprocess' fuel, the waste problem just balloons... the rods have to be chopped up, dissolved in nitric acid, taken through a complex chemical process and you end up with vast amounts of liquid waste, various bits of undissolved gunk, a fiendishly difficult-to-decommission reprocessing facility and all the rest. Reprocessing plants are some of the most complicated chemical plants in the world... and when they go wrong (eg the UK's Thorp leak) they're almost impossible to repair owing to the radioactivity. In the past, the purpose of the early reactors was to generate plutonium for weapons and so reprocessing was, in reality, the key activity, with the reactors just the tedious thing you had to build to provide feedstuff for this extraction process. But if we don't want any new plutonium then there's no need to reprocess and the waste problem just becomes insanely easier. To see what I mean, google the history of the UK's Sellafield (specifically the B.205 and Thorp plants) or Russia's Mayak or France's La Hague. So many leaks and accidents, all totally unnecessary if they hadn't been trying to reprocess the fuel. The idea of taking something small and stable (a rod) and turning it into a dangerous liquid and then trying to run it through a fiendishly complex chemical plant just seems nuts on its face. Hence my question about MSRs... can you build one that doesn't require any of this tricky chemical engineering, whether 'online' or otherwise? If so, great. If not, why isn't this whole avenue just shut down as DOA?
    
    
        
     &gt; Are there any MSR designs that require NO reprocessing (whether online, batch or other)?I think the Terrestrial IMSR (which is probably the one closest to commercializing in the West) is designed for a once-through uranium cycle, similar to current LWR plants. The idea, IIRC, is to replace the entire reactor vessel (including the fuel salt) every 7 years. Not sure what the plan is for dealing with the spent fuel. If the fuel salt is water soluble (not sure, but salts tend to be, right?) I'd think some form of processing is necessary before geological disposal. But maybe that can be a cleaner and simpler process than a full PUREX.
    
    
        
      
 Perhaps it's just how much more careful you have to be with plutonium products because of proliferation concerns, or possibly diplomacy concerns "legitimizing", or perhaps just paranoia. Or the basic concern of a bunch more plutonium hanging around even if secure.   
    
        
     They are not really ahead. https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-li...  Terrestrial Energy Inc. is the furthest along in terms of the regulatory process. And for Moltex to work they also need to get a CANDU fuel reprocessing facility online. But I do think its a great and practical design. They say they have a version that can be a thorium breeder but they have released little to no information.
    
    
        
     &gt; We can produce heat for hydrogen, replacing the need for fossil fuels in heating, transport and industry.What does it mean to produce "heat for hydrogen"? Why is heating hydrogen a useful property (how does hot hydrogen replace fossil fuels in heating, transport, and industry?)? That seems oddly specific, so I assume I'm misreading something?
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 It's pretty cool that they designed their plants with a heat reservoir and oversized turbine generators. This allows them to turn the turbines on and off at will, complementing wind and solar. The nuclear plant "charges" the heat reservoir during the day when the turbines are idle.   
    
        
      
 From your perspective, given that Thorium salt reactors are part of India's 3rd stage Nuclear plan, where is this technology in general? I assume that they're leading the pack, but I don't really know.   
    
        
     The problem with India is that they started with redoing the whole solid fuel thing first and that took a very long time.Its hard to find information, but based on some talks I saw a couple years ago I don't think they are close to liquid fueled reactors. They are still working mostly on creating thorium pellets to put into reactors.
    
    
        
     Good question - here's a paper and quote on this:"Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was designed to operate at high temperature in range 700 - 800°C and its fuel is dissolved in a circulating molten fluoride salt mixture. Molten fluoride salts are stable at high temperature, have good heat transfer properties and can dissolve high concentration of actinides and fission product."  https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4972932
    
    
        
     Without knowing the specifics as apply to nukes, anion reactivity is inversely proportional to atomic reactivity, fluoride is far less reactive than chloride or bromide or iodide, respectively in order of increasing reactivity. Ergo fluoride and fluoride containing anions are quite common in molten salts/ionic liquids.In English: the flouride, having so voraciously devoured that 8th electron it was missing, really doesn't want to give it up, whereas chlorine et al have lots of spares.)
    
    
        
      
 The concern is not so much about the fluoride losing an electron, but about whatever reacted to it stealing electrons from the reactor.   
    
        
     Which is less likely with fluorine because what fluorine reacts with to form the salt, say Na as in NaF, wants to give up an electron, not receive one. And with fluorine as a partner, Na will have the hardest* time retrieving that electron to give to something else. This can be easily validated by comparing enthalpy of reaction and formation for the various halide salts.The properties of broad chemical stability are not limited to ionically bonded fluorine either, see PTFE, which also derives its stability from the extreme reactivity of fluorine. Compared to say PTIE (polytetraiodoethylene), which if you could even make would rapidly yellow and degrade in open air/mild sunlight, as iodine compounds are wont to do. *for a loose definition of hardest.
    
    
    
        
     Because fluorine has a low neutron capture cross section.Chlorine has a rather high capture cross section for thermal neutrons, so it could only be used in fast reactors.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Anyone know of any software work being done around Nuclear? I don't care what it is, just looking to play a bit more with the space, Open Source, data sourcing. I really mean I don't care what it is, just wanna learn a bit more about it and be a bit more involved.   
    
    
        
     This is so fantastic. That a 'Christian' university would do this is kind of insane to me, but I take it.So many problems with nuclear in the last 50 years are that there simply are not enough experiments and research reactors. If you don't have them, then how can you ever test new materials. The original molten salt experiment reactor was only not that much bigger then this university reactor and didn't cost a huge amount, but it lead to such amazing research results including new materials that were designed when making it. New materials can't easily be qualified without having the necessary research infrastructure.
    
    
        
     This is really exciting. Fission tech is largely stuck in with incremental improvements from the 1950s. The last time the NRC got an application for a research reactor was 30 years ago.The reactor is a graphite-moderated, fluoride salt flowing fluid design. If this works well, fission will have a very bright future as it should be more efficient and much safer to operate than current reactor designs.
    
    
    
        
     [Layman, but I've read up quite a bit on thorium and molten salt reactor designs]The 1959 Sodium Reactor experiment was to demonstrate the feasibility of a sodium-cooled reactor as the heat source for a commercial power reactor to produce electricity. It used fuel rods similar to rods used in reactors in operation today. Conversely the The Molten Salt Reactor experiment[1] used uranium fuel dissolved into a salt as both fuel and coolant for the reactor - this design enables significant advantages over traditional reactors powered by solid fuel. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
    
    
        
     I'm surprised the reactor needs a moderator, I would assume that a liquid fuel reactor could be controlled far better by controlling flow into and out of the critical mass. It's all at normal pressures, just hot (temperature and radiation wise), so just bog standard plumbing practices for handling fluid levels should work.Being able to scramble the reactor by just dumping the contents through a set of diverters into separate flat bottom chambers to cool and eventually freeze is an awesome safety feature.
    
    
        
      
 A moderator is not used to control the reaction, but to make it possible. The neutrons produced by fission, have high kinetic energy, and fuel has a small cross section for neutrons at such high energy. A neutron moderator slows down the neutrons, making them more likely to interact with the uranium and split them. typically water is a good moderator, but here they use graphite for obvious reason (high temperature salts doesn't play well with water)   
    
        
      
 That makes a lot of sense... thanks!As for molten salts and water... oh yeah. That gets into very dangerous territory.[1] A very similar reaction seems to happen even with just molten table salt, where it "shouldn't".   1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8     
    
        
      
 One of the great practical challenges with molten salt is to design a reliable valve. At temperatures this high and with the high corrosive properties of the medium, this is not trivial.   
    
        
      
 I didn't realize that the viscosity stays high for molten salt[1], that makes everything abrasive, along with dealing with possible phase change if the salt solidifies... yikes!So, what we're dealing with is highly radioactive corrosive molasses with a constant stream of radioactive decay product gasses bubbling out of it, like Xenon and Iodine. Yeah, that seems more challenging that I first thought.   1 - https://www.powermotiontech.com/home/article/21144640/armoring-a-valve-against-molten-salt     
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I thought these were outlawed, per a LFTR video I saw once. To emphasize, I'm asking if that is the case, or was the LFTR video was engaging in misinformation, or if something changed in regulations.   
    
        
      
 I believe that the video was misinformed or your recollection is a bit fuzzy. The closest true approximation I can muster is "there is no commercial molten salt reactor design yet approved by the NRC, and the NRC approval process may need updates to consider reactor designs that significantly deviate from the common water-moderated types."   
    
        
      
 I believe it's less outlawed and more not really approved for use due to insufficient research.   
    
        
     The process for licensing a LWR is well established. Commercial LMFBR (Fermi 1) and HTGR (Peach Bottom 1) reactors have been approved in the US but those were a very long time ago. Anybody who wants to license a new reactor type is going to work through an extensive process with the NRC to determine how exactly it is done.They built an MSR in Wuwei, China and just got approval to start it.  https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-s...
    
    
        
      
 AFAICT materials research is a big part of it. At 800°C even water is pretty reactive; the salt is much more so. Even though an MSR does not need the high pressure of water-based reactors, you can't make all the piping from graphite or platinum.   
    
    
    
        
     LFTR is just a trade name from a guy named Kirk who tried to rebrand the Thorium fueled Molten Salt Reactor.So basically yes but like all thorium reactors it has to start with enriched uranium first.
Application submitted for US molten salt research reactor
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32553574
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415989
Google outage – resolved
2020-12-14
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 <td></td> <td><a href="vote?id=25415989&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a></td><td><a href="item?id=25415989">Google outage – resolved</a></td></tr><tr><td></td><td>
 2316 points by <a href="user?id=abluecloud">abluecloud</a> <a href="item?id=25415989">on Dec 14, 2020</a> | <a href="hide?id=25415989&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989">hide</a> | <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Google%20outage%20%E2%80%93%20resolved&amp;type=story&amp;dateRange=all&amp;sort=byDate&amp;storyText=false&amp;prefix&amp;page=0">past</a> | <a href="fave?id=25415989&amp;auth=ce0cd4613ff1414a739fac8fafa794f1f9696e35">favorite</a> | <a href="item?id=25415989">827 comments</a> 
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 <tr></tr><tr><td></td><td><div><p>various services are broken</p><p>- youtube returning error</p><p>- gmail returning 502</p><p>- docs returning 500</p><p>- drive not working</p><p>status page now reflecting outage: <a href="https://www.google.com/appsstatus">https://www.google.com/appsstatus</a></p><p>--------------</p><p>services look to be restored.</p></div></td></tr> </tbody></table><table>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418629&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>If all 6 million G Suite customers, with an average number of users at 25 per G Suite account, paying the $20/user fee, requested the three day credit for this breach in the SLA contract for the outage, it'd cost Google about 300 million dollars.<p>Which is .22% of there COH this quarter...
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 <a href="vote?id=25420703&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Your nines or their nines?<p>I bet if you personally can't use it, but their overall reliability meets the bar, then they're within SLA.</p><p>Don't ask why I know this.
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 <p>You know there are companies who build crawlers or health check agents exactly for this purpose, so that they know precisely from when to when the service they pay or they need for their business doesn't work and went out of SLA. I think it's brilliant and the only way to make any company pay. 
I believe you can sometimes get away with a couple of pingdom checks/jobs.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25428557&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I don't know how it works in such cases, I mean, this is publicly known that there was an outage.<p>What I believe is that customers will probably get free GCP credits and that's it, everything is good as before.
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 <p>not an announcement, seems like just a statement. I assume an official statement will come with the post mortem blog post in the next few days.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417911&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>This topic just came up recently on a podcast I was on where someone said a large service was down for X amount of time and the service being down tanked his entire business while it was down for days. But he was compensated in hosting credits for the exact amount of down time for the 1 service that caused the issue. It took so long to resolve because it took support a while to figure out it was their service, not his site.<p>So then I jokingly responded with that being like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!".</p><p>If your SLA agreement is only for precisely calculated credits, that's not really going to help in the grand scheme of things.
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 <a href="vote?id=25418254&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I like your anecdote, I might steal that one.<p>IANAL, but I negotiate a lot of enterprise SaaS agreements. When considering the SLA, it is important to remember it is a legal document, not an engineering one. It has engineering impact and is up to engineering to satisfy, but the actual contents of it are better considered when wearing your lawyer hat, not your engineering one.</p><p>e.g., What you're referring to is related to the limitation of liability clauses and especially "special" or "consequential" damages -- a category of damages that are not 'direct' damages but secondary. [1]</p><p>Accepting _any_ liability for special or consequential damages is always a point of negotiation. As a service provider, you always try to avoid it because it is so hard to estimate the magnitude, and thus judge how much insurance coverage you need.</p><p>Related, those paragraphs also contain a limitation of liability clause, often at capped at X times annual cost. Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them.</p><p>This is just scratching the surface -- tons of color and depth here that is nuanced for every company and situation. It's why you employe attorneys!</p><p>1 - <a href="https://www.lexisnexis.com/lexis-practical-guidance/the-journal/b/pa/posts/drafting-exclusion-of-consequential-damages-clauses">https://www.lexisnexis.com/lexis-practical-guidance/the-jour...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=25427460&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them.<p>Businesses do this all the time, this is how they make money. And they use a combination of insurance and not %@$#@*! up.
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 <p>I've never seen an SLA that compensates for anything more than credit off your bill. I can't imagine a service that pays for loss of productivity, one outage and the whole company could be bankrupt. If your business depends on a cloud service for productivity you should have a backup plan if that service goes down.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418130&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue etc, but something like Slack's SLA[0] seems like it's moving in the right direction. They guarantee a 99.99% uptime (max downtime of 4 min/22 seconds per month) and give 10x credits for any downtime.<p>Granted, there's probably not many businesses that are losing major revenue because slack's down for half an hour, but it's nice to at least see them acknowledge that 1 minute down deserves more than 1 minute of refunds!</p><p>[0] <a href="https://slack.com/terms/service-level-agreement">https://slack.com/terms/service-level-agreement</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=25419010&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p><i>&gt; I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue</i><p>They won't show up on automated systems aimed at SMEs, but anybody taking out an "enterprise plan" with tailored pricing from a SaaS, will likely ask for tailored SLA conditions too (or rather <i>should</i> ask for them).
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 <p>It's hard to give a compensation for profit loss, as then you would have to know the profit of the customer beforehand and put an adequate pricing including that risk. It's almost like insurance!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In financial markets I have seen SLA's where you will make people whole on the losses they incur due to downtime you inflict on them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418096&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Seems like you want insurance. As with the hospital bill you'd generally be paying a bunch of extra money for your health insurance plan to not get stuck with the bill.<p>Not sure that exists for businesses, but I'd expect you'd need to go shopping separately if you want that.</p><p>Seems like a good business idea if it doesn't exist.
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 <a href="vote?id=25418190&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I think the idea here is that if the payment for SLA breach is just "don't pay for the time we were down" or (as I've seen in other SLAs) "half off during the time we were down" that doesn't feel like much of an incentive on the service provider.<p>They have other incentives, obviously, like if everyone talks about how Google is down then that's bad for future business. But when thinking of SLAs I'm always surprised when they're not more drastic. Like "over 0.1% downtime: free service for a month".
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 <p>Independent 'a service was down' insurance isn't the same though. It is important for the cost to come out of the provider's pocket, thus giving them a huge financial incentive to not be down. Having that incentive in place is the most important part of an SLA.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Even with insurance, some of the cost <i>will</i> come out of the provider's pockets - as increased premiums at renewal (or even immediately, in some cases). Insurers might also force other onerous conditions on the provider as a prerequisite for continued coverage.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25422456&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I hear you, but there's going to be a cost for that. For the sake of argument, say Google changes the SLA as you wish and ups the cost of their offering accordingly.<p>Would they gain or lose market share?</p><p>I don't think it's obvious one way or the other.
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 <a href="vote?id=25420608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; . . . like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!".<p>It's even slightly worse than that. SLAs generally refund you for the prorated portion of your monthly fee the service was out, so it's more like "here's a gift card for the exact value of the single dish we've determined caused your food poisoning." Hehe.
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 <p>Completely agree with your analogy but have you ever seen any SLA that provides any additional liability? I haven't seen them - you are stuck either relying on hosting services SLA or DIY.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418114&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I cannot share details for the obvious reason, but yes - there are SLAs signed into contract directly behind the scenes which result in automatic payouts of a condition isn't met and it's not a simple credit.<p>Enterprise level SLAs are crafted by lawyers in negotiations behind the scenes and are not the same as what you see on random public services. Our customers have them with us, and we have them with our vendors. Contract negotiations take months at the $$$$ level.
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 <p>That is a fair point. Is this a situation where you asymmetrically powerful? I have to imagine you would have considerable clout to represent a fair bit of their revenue in order to dictate terms. When I wrote my comment it was in the vein of a smaller organization.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I am but a technical cog in the machine my friend, while I know about what goes on in business and contract negoatiations I cannot comment on power dynamics. I would <i>assume</i> it's like any other negotiation - whomever has the greatest leverage has the power, I doubt it's ever fairly balanced.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417586&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Not OP, but how do you measure them? Let's say, for example, you can send and receive email, but attaching files does not work. Is the service up or down?<p>What if the majority of your users can access the service, but one of your BGP peers is not routing properly and some of your users are unable to access?
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 <a href="vote?id=25417980&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Google do a very good job of defining their SLAs.<p>In answer to your question, they'll accept evidence from your own monitoring system when you claim on the SLA. They pair that up to their own knowledge about how the system was performing, then make the grant.</p><p>Google are exceptionally good at this, from my experience. Far better than most other companies, who aim to provide as little detail as possible while getting away with 'providing an SLA'.
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 <p>Down because email attachments are base64 encoded files written in plaintext into the body. So if those are not working, email itself is not working.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417868&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>that was a bad example. i guess the comment was trying to say "how do you account for partial service degradations".<p>(i dont think SLAs are BS btw)
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 <p>In this example: you get free days. Which depending on your business might be worthless if you have suffered more monetary loss due to the downtime than the free days are worth.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>But still better than nothing. And for some (most?) people/businesses, probably worth more than any resulting monetary loss</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Exactly; downtime doesn't cost a cloud service much. At worst it causes reputation damage, with possibly large companies deciding to go for a competitor, losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of millions.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Given the blast radius of this (all regions appear to be impacted) along with the fact that services that don't rely on auth are working as normal, it must be a global authN/Z issue. I do not envy Google engineers right now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416799&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I do not envy Google engineers right now.<p>A few years ago I released a bug in production that prevented users from logging into our desktop app. It affected about ~1k users before we found out and rolled back the release.</p><p>I still remember a very cold feeling in my belly, barely could sleep that night. It is difficult to imagine what the people responsible for this are feeling right now.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417144&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>When I was interviewing at Morgan Stanley, I asked "how do you do this job if a mistake can cost people money?".<p>The answer was "well, if you don't do anything, you make NO money".
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 <a href="vote?id=25417798&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I'm reminded of the quote from Thomas J. Watson:<p>&gt; Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
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 <a href="vote?id=25417884&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Agreed, and also it's worth noting that we're talking about companies here. Yes, for any individual the amount of money lost is insane, but that's the risk for the company. If one individual can accidentally nearly bankrupt the company, then the company did not have proper risk management in place.<p>That isn't too say that it wouldn't also affect my sleep quality.
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 <p>Depending on the company's culture, that calculus can vary. If management start firing subordinates for making mistakes, then what should be done to management if they fail to account for human error, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That is because they are managers, most got where they are by assigning rewards to themselves.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Welp, as a new grad there, I had brought down one very important database server on a Sunday night (a series of really unfortunate events). Multiple senior DBAs had to be involved to resuscitate it. It started functioning normally just a few hours before market open in HK. If it was any later, it would have been some serious monetary loss. Needless to say, I was sweating bullets. Couldn't eat anything the entire day lol. Took me like 2 days to calm down. And this was after I was fully shielded cuz I was a junior. God knows what would've happened if someone more experienced had done that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I brought down the order management system at a large bank during the middle of the trading day. The backup kicked in after about a minute but it was not fun on the trading floor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm so glad I'm not the only one feeling deployment anxiety. The project I'm involved in doesn't really have serious money involved, but when there's a regression found only after production deployment my stress levels go up a notch.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417989&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>When I was working at a pretty big IT provider in the electronic banking sector, we (management and senior devs) made it an unspoken rule, that:
- Juniors shall also handle production deployments regularly.
- A senior person is always on call (even if only unofficially / off the clock).
- Junior devs are never blamed for fuckups, irrespective of the damage they caused.<p>That was the only way to help people develop routine regarding big production deployments.
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 <a href="vote?id=25420887&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Same thing -- used to work at a very large hosting provider. One of our big internal infra management teams wouldn't consider newhires fully "part of the team" until they had caused a significant outage. It was genuinely a right of passage, as one person put it, "to cause a measurable part of the internet to disappear".<p>I got to see a lot of people pass through this right of passage, and it was always fun to watch. Everyone would take it incredibly seriously, some VP would invariably yell at them, but at the end of the day their managers and all their peers were smiling and clapping them on the back.
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 <a href="vote?id=25419233&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Yep. It was supposed to be a very small change. I blundered. My team understood that and was super supportive about it all too. But this was after it was all fixed.<p>During the outage though, no one (obviously) had time for me. This was a very important server. The tension and anxiety on the remediation call was through the roof. Every passing hour someone even more important in the chain of command was joining the call. At that time I thought I was done for...
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 <p>I work for an extremely famous hospital in the American midwest. We're divided into three sections, one for clinical work, one for research, and one for education. I always tell people that I'm pretty content being in research (which is less sexy than clinical), because if I screw something up, some PI's project takes ten months and one week instead of ten months. In clinical, if you screw something up, somebody dies! I just don't think I could handle that level of stress.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416956&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Same.<p>At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).
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 <p>Jesus. One would think you'd have some safeguards for that. Even Dropbox will give you an alert if you try to nuke over 1,000 files. More reasons to COLOR CODE your work environments, if possible.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417302&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Yes but that was eons ago. The safeguards are well and truly in-place now. Not just one, several in fact.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The trick is to be paranoid. You literally sit down and think exclusively about what COULD go wrong.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417840&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>colorblind (red/green) person here - 5% of the male population just don't see color enough for it to be an important visual clue.<p>So sure, color-code your environments, but if you find someone about to do something to a red environment that they clearly should only be doing to a green environment, just check if they're seeing what you're seeing before you sack them ;)
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 <p>My primary customer right now color codes both with "actual color", and with <i>words</i> - ie the RED environment is tagged with red color bars, and also big [black] letters in the [red] bars reading "RED"</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418234&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).<p>It seems like a design flaw for actions like that to be so easy. E.g.</p><p>&gt; Hey, we detected you want to delete an AWS region. Please have an authorized coworker enter their credentials to second your command.
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 <a href="vote?id=25431235&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>If it was indeed in-production, I'd never in a million years have had access rights to delete the stack. Those are gated just the way one would imagine they should be.<p>The service stack for the region (and not an entire region itself) <i>looked</i> like prod, but wasn't. It made me feel like shit anyway.
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 <p>Irrelevant to the discussion, but I just wanted to say thank you for the categorized list of users I can follow on your profile!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418813&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Several years back when I was working at Google I made a mistake that caused some of the special results in the knowledge cards to become unclickable for a small subset of queries for about an hour. As part of the postmortem I had to calculate how many people likely tried to interact with it while it was broken. It was a lot and really made me realize the magnitude of an otherwise seemingly small production failure. My boss didn't give me a hard time, just pointed me toward documentation about how to write the report. And crunching the numbers is what really made me feel the weight of it. It was a good process.<p>I feel for the engineer who has to calculate the cost of this bug.
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 <p>This sounds like a good practice and hopefully something they still do. Calculating the exact numbers would definitely help cement the experience and its consequences into your mind.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418999&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Presumably there were more failures than a single engineer could've been responsible for here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25420083&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Its absolutely possible, the worst AWS outage was caused by one engineer running the wrong command [0].<p>"This past Tuesday morning Pacific Time an Amazon Web Services engineer was debugging an issue with the billing system for the company’s popular cloud storage service S3 and accidentally mistyped a command. What followed was a several hours’ long cloud outage that wreaked havoc across the internet and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for AWS customers and others who rely on third-party services hosted by AWS."</p><p>[0] - <a href="https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/03/02/aws-outage-that-broke-the-internet-caused-by-mistyped-command">https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/03/02/aws-...</a>
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 <p>If you alone were able to do it, then the system was designed badly. The bigger the impact, the more robust it has to be to prevent accidents.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The big mistake in the system is that everyone in the world is relying on Google services... These problems would have less impact with a more diverse ecosystem.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417439&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Would they have less impact? Or would it have the same impact, just distributed across many more outages?<p>You can rely on Google outages being very few and far between, and recovering pretty fast. For the benefits you get from such a connected ecosystem, I'm not sure anyone is net positive from using a variety of different tools rather than Google supplying many of them.
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 <a href="vote?id=25419144&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not sure I see that as a fair comparison. I think it's best to use the same durations for this, as an entire day changes the level of impact. &lt;1hr outages have a fraction of the impact that an entire days outage might have.<p>It's obviously subjective, but even with our entire work leaning on Google– from GMail, GDrive and Google Docs, through to all our infrastructure being in GCP– todays outage just meant everyone took an hour break. History suggests we won't see another of these for another year, so everyone taking a collective 60m break has been minimally impactful vs many smaller, isolated outages spread over the year.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417112&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I remember how one of our engineers had his docker daemon connected to production instead of his local one and casually did a docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq) .<p>Same thing happened to me but with CI, which felt bad enough already.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417839&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>"Hey let's make developers do two very different jobs, development, and operations. We'll call it DevOps. We'll save money. Everything will be fine."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417602&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Engineers shouldn’t deploy to prod directly, but sometimes it’s necessary to SSH into an instance for logs, stack dumps, etc. Source: worked for 2 big to very big tech cos.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417827&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>For a large or v large tech co you should probably be aggregating logs to a centralised location that doesn't require access to production systems in this way. Stack dumps should also be collected safely off-system if necessary.<p>Perhaps my industry is a little more security conscious (I don't know which industry you're talking about), but this doesn't seem like good practice.
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 <p>Let me be clear, I agree it should not be <i>normal</i> to SSH into a prod box. Our logs are centrally aggregated. But it’s one thing to say it’s not normal, but quite another to say engineers <i>shouldn't have access</i>, because I totally disagree with that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25419016&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>What normally (should) happens in that unusual case is that the engineer is issued a special short-lifetime credential to do what needs to be done. An audit trail is kept of when and to whom the credential was issued, for what purpose, when it was revoked, etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25418200&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Who fixes the centralised log system when that needs debugging?<p>Unless prohibited in something like banking, following best practice to the letter is sometimes unacceptably slow for most industries.
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 <p>There should be tools that allow the team to gather such logs. Direct prod access is a recipe for disaster.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Not having those things centralized is also a huge operational failure regardless of company size.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Why not? (I think I can find <i>some</i> cases where production access from an engineer's workstation is a good idea)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417784&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>It can be efficient, particularly in smaller companies, but that's where exactly this rule should be applied.<p>In some industries, security and customer requirements will at times mandate that developer workstations have no access to production. Deployments must even be carried out using different accounts than those used to access internal services, for security and auditing purposes.</p><p>There are of course good reasons for this; accidents, malicious engineers, overzealous engineers, lost/stolen equipment, risk avoidance, etc.</p><p>When you apply this rule, it makes for more process and perhaps slower response times to problems, but accidents or other internal-related issues mentioned above drop to zero.</p><p>Given how easy it is to destroy things these days with a single misplaced Kubernetes or Docker command, safeguards need to be put in place.</p><p>Let me tell you a little story from my experience;</p><p>I built myself a custom keyboard from a Numpad kit. I had gotten tired of typing so many docker commands in every day and I had the desire to build something. I built this little numpad into a full blown Docker control centre using QMK. A single key-press could deploy or destroy entire systems.</p><p>One day, something slid off of something else on my desk, onto said keyboard, pressing several of the keys while I happened to have an SSH session to a remote server in focus.</p><p>Suffice it to say, that little keyboard has never been seen since. On an unrelated topic, I don't have SSH access to production systems.
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 <p>This exactly. I have deleted database records from a production DB thinking I am executing on my development DB. I've kept separate credentials and revoked dev machine access to prod environment ever since.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well, it's something that can happen to anyone, take it easy. When I made the transition from developer to manager and become responsible for this situations, at first every problem made me feel as you describe. Eventually what helped me to be free is the understanding that how we feel about a fact does not change anything about that fact.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Don't be too hard on yourself, no dev works in a silo, there is usually user acceptance testing and product owner sign offs involved so they also have to wear some of this too.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Nope, especially considering the implications of this, with the amount of people working remotely. Google Meet, Classroom, etc. are down. This is probably literally costing billions every minute just in loss of productivity.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Total world economic output is ~$150M / minute, so billions every minute is off by few orders of magnitude.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417557&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>You are assuming that a minute of disruption can not cause more than a minute's loss of productivity. I don't think that assumption is justified.<p>Consider an exactly one minute outage that affects multiple things I use for work.</p><p>First, I may not immediately recognize that the outage is actually with some single service provider. If several things are out I'm probably going to suspect it is something on my end, or maybe with my ISP. I might spend several minutes thoroughly checking that possibility out, before noticing that whatever it was seems to have been resolved.</p><p>Second, even if I immediately recognize it for what it is and immediately notice when it ends it might take me several minutes to get back to where I was. Not everything is designed to automatically and transparently recover from disruptions, and so I might have had things in progress when the outage stuck that will need manual cleanup and restarting.
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 <p>I'm also assuming most of the world doesn't grind to a halt when gmail is down. Crops keep growing and factories keep running.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416905&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Simple math says:<p>World GDP (via Google) $80,934,771,028,340</p><p>Minutes per year 365 * 24 * 60 = 525,600</p><p>Divide and you get 153,985,485
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 <a href="vote?id=25417073&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion</a><p><i>A billion is a number with two distinct definitions:</i></p><p><i>- 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10^9, as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both British and American English.</i></p><p><i>- 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10^12, as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion. This is the historical meaning in English and the current use in many non-English-speaking countries where billion and trillion 10^18 maintain their long scale definitions.</i></p><p>Nevertheless almost everyone uses 1B = 10^9 for technical discussions
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 <a href="vote?id=25419241&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Indeed. Also, Google’s revenue is about $300K per minute. The value they provide is likely higher than that, but as you said, being able to send an email an hour later than you hoped it’s fine in most cases. Also, Google Search was fine, and that’s their highest impact product.<p>I’d guess actual losses to the world economy were more on the order of about $100K per minute, or about 1/3 of Google’s revenue. MAYBE a few hundred thousand per minute, though that seems unlikely with Search being unaffected, and everything else coming back. Certainly a far cry from billions per minute :)
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 <a href="vote?id=25419451&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I never understood this type of calculation as it implies that time is directly converted into money. However, I struggle to come up with an example for this. Even the most trivial labor cases like producing paperclips don't seem to be directly converting time into profit: even you will make 10k units instead of 100k this hour, you don't sell them immediately. They bring revenue to the firm via a long chain of convoluted contracts (both legal and "transactional") which are very loosely coupled to the immediate output.<p>Nothing is operating at minute margins unless it's explicitly priced on a minutely basis, like a cloud service. Even if a worked on a conveyor belt can't produce paperclips without looking at Google Docs sheet all the time, this will be absorbed by the buffers down the line. And only if the worker will fail to meet her monthly target due to this, loss of revenue might occur. But in this case the service has to be down for weeks.</p><p>In case of more complex conversions of time into money, like in the most of intellectual work, this is even less obvious that short downtimes will cause any measurable harm.
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 <p>Besides the exaggerated figure, I always find these claims bizarre. Sure, there was some momentary loss, but aggregated over a month this will not even register.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25419146&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>In a previous lifetime I removed an "unused" TLS certificate. It turns out that it was a production cert that was being used to secure a whole state's worth of computers.<p>In my defence, the cert was not labeled properly, nor was it used properly, and there was no documentation. It took us 2 days to create a new cert and apply it to our software and deliver it to the customer. Those were 2 days I'll never get back. However, when I was finished the process was documented and the cert was labeled, so I guess its a win.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417828&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I am not sure why are they allowing it. Meaning why aren’t services completely isolated? Isn’t it obvious that in an intertwined environment those things are bound to happen (as in “question of when, not if”)? I understand, in smaller companies that are limited in resources (access to good developers and pressure to get product to market as soon as possible) we have single points of failure all over the place. But “the smartest developers on the planet”? What is it if not short-sighted disregard for risk management theories and practices? I mean, Calendar and Youtube, say, should be completely separate services hosted in different places, their teams should not even talk to each other. Yes, they can use same software components, frameworks and technologies. Standardization is very welcome. But decentralization should be an imperative.<p>Edit: again downvotes started! Thanks to everyone “supporting freedom of expression” :)
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 <p>I've been in that situation before at one of my previous jobs, where some important IT infrastructure when down for the whole company. Nowhere as big of a scale as this, but it was easily one of the most stressful moments of my life</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>If this does not improve soon, we're looking at one of the most significant outages in recent internet history, at least from the number of people impacted.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25419263&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Several others have shared their 'I broke things' experiences, and so I feel compelled to weigh in.<p>Many years ago, I was directly responsible for causing a substantial percentage of all credit/debit/EBT authorizations from every WalMart store world-wide to time out, and this went on for several days straight.</p><p>On the ground, this kind of timeout was basically a long delay at the register. Back then, most authorizations would take four or five seconds. The timeout would add more than 15 seconds to that.</p><p>In other words, I gave many tens of millions of people a pretty bad checkout experience.</p><p>This stat (authorization time) was and remains something WalMart focuses quite heavily on, in real time and historically, so it was known right away that something was wrong. Yet it took us (Network Engineering) days to figure it out. The root cause summary: I had written a program to scan (parallelized) all of the store networks for network devices. Some of the addresses scanned were broadcast and network addresses, which caused a massive amplification of return traffic which flooded the satellite networks. Info about why it took so long to discover is below.</p><p>Back in the 1990s, when this happened, all of the stores were connected to the home office via two way Hughes satellite links. This was a relatively bandwidth limited resource that was managed very carefully for obvious reasons.</p><p>I had just started and co-created the Network Management team with one other engineer. Basically prior to my arrival, there had been little systematic management of the network and network devices.</p><p>I realized that there was nothing like a robust inventory of either the networks or the routers and hubs (not switches!) that made up those networks.</p><p>We did have some notion of store numbers and what network ranges were assigned to them, but that was inaccurate in many cases.</p><p>Given that there were tens of thousands of networks ranges in question, I wrote a program creatively called 'psychoping' that would ICMP scan all of those network ranges with adjustable parallelism.</p><p>I ran it against the test store networks, talked it over with the senior engineers, and was cleared for takeoff.</p><p>Thing is, I didn't start it right away; some other things came up that I had to deal with. I ended up started it over a week after review.</p><p>Why didn't this get caught right away? Well, when timeouts started to skyrocket across the network, many engineers started working on the problem. None of the normal, typical problems were applicable. More troubling, none of the existing monitoring programs looked for ICMP at all, which is what I was using exclusively.</p><p>So of course they immediately plugged a sniffer into the network and did data captures to see what was actually going on. And nothing unusual showed up, except a lot of drops.</p><p>We're talking &gt; 20 years ago, so know that "sniffing" wasn't the trivial thing it is now. Network Engineering had a few extremely expensive Data General hardware sniffers.</p><p>And to these expensive sniffers, the traffic I was generating was invisible.</p><p>Two things: the program I wrote to generate the traffic had a small bug and was generating very slightly invalid packets. I don't remember the details, but it had something to do with the IP header.</p><p>These packets were correct enough to route through all of the relevant networks, but incorrect enough for the Data General sniffer to not see them.</p><p>So...there was a lot of 'intense' discussions between Network Engineering and all of the relevant vendors. (Hughes, ACC for the routers, Synoptics and ODS for the hubs)</p><p>In the end, a <i>different</i> kind of sniffer was brought in, which was able to see the packets I was generating. I had helpfully put my userid and desk phone number in the packet data, just in case someone needed to track raw packets back to me.</p><p>Though the impact was great, and it scared me to death, there were absolutely no negative consequences. WalMart Information Systems was, in the late 1990s, a very healthy organization.
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 <p>Makes sense, at work we have an application running on Google Cloud and everything seems to be working. So the outage is probably not at network or infrastructure level.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416812&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>4:41AM PT, Google services have been restored to my accounts (free &amp; gsuite).<p>And I have never seen them load so fast before - gmail progress bar barely seen for a fraction of a second whereas I am more used to seeing it for multiple seconds (2-3 sec) until it loads.</p><p>I observe the same anecdotal speedup for other sites... drive, youtube, calendar. I wonder if they are throwing all the hardware they have at their services or I am encountering underutilized servers since it is not fixed for everyone.</p><p>It is nice to experience (even if it is short lived) the snappiness of Google services if they weren't so multi-tenented.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417202&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>If this phenomenon is actually real instead of just perception then I'd guess it is down to reduced demand of some short. Some possibilities:<p>a) users haven't all come back yet
b) Google is throttling how fast users can access services again to prevent further outages
c) to reduce load, apps have features turned off (which might make things directly faster on the user's end or just reduce load on the server side)
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 <a href="vote?id=25417410&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>At Google's scale, I'd expect it to be all of the above.<p>I hope they make their learnings, post-mortem, etc. public so that we can all learn from it.</p><p>My engineer hat is saying - "damn, I wish I was part of fixing this outage at their scale."</p><p>My product owner hat is saying - "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...."</p><p>:D
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 <p>I would guess autoscaling kicked in (RPC error rate caused higher CPU usage?) and now things will scale back down again.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Oh man, you're right. Bloated gmail loaded instantly. What's going on? It's loading almost 2x to 3x faster.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Isn't this a good indication that the performance problem if gmail may not be related to the "bloat" of the frontend itself?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It might suggest that the frontend isn't the only issue, at least - and maybe this explains <i>why</i> it's usually so slow, if the frontend <i>can</i> be fast on a fast enough backend. On the other hand, the speed of the "basic HTML" version implies that the frontend <i>can</i> be the issue.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Entirely possible as well that the "basic HTML" uses different API service in the background that are snappier for comparative lack of users.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I always thought gmail being slow is because of me using firefox but now it's surprisingly snappy. What the hell is going on?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Wow, it's faster in firefox than it used to be in chrome... while in chrome it's almost isntanteneous</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wish it was always like this. I hate how slow YouTube, Gmail, etc. often are normally.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416317&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again?<p>Of course it will, - at least, it better - but what if it doesn't? And if it does, are you going to take countermeasures in case it happens again or is it just going to be 'back to normal' again?
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 <a href="vote?id=25416632&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I guess a lot of people are fine with the risk.<p>Everybody uses it, so if, like, Gmail loses all the emails, we are then in such a state that the consequences will be more bearable and socially normal.</p><p>Most people are fine with accepting that whatever future thing will happen to most people will also happen to them. Because then the consequences will also be normal.</p><p>If the apocalypse comes, it comes for almost all of us and that's consolation enough.
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 <p>This sounds like the good old 1970-80s "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" argument.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416531&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>The way I see it, backups are a strategy to reduce risk of ruin.<p>For me, backing up to the Cloud is fine, because I find the risk of my home being broken into and everything stolen AND the cloud goes down AND the cloud services are completely unrecoverable is a small enough risk to tolerate.</p><p>I don't think it's possible to have permanently indestructible files in existence over a given time period.
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 <p>Different failure mode. If the cloud goes down, many more people are affected. If your self-hosted thing goes down, only you are affected. If everybody self-hosted, would the overall downtime be lower? Even if it were, would it be worth the effort of self-hosting?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416819&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Most of the things I backed up for myself are either gone forever or irretrievably lost.<p>Most of the things I backed up with google remain largely accessible, except for an occasion like this.</p><p>It's rare that any services I operate solo come back this quickly after there is a downing issue.
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 <a href="vote?id=25420975&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I have the opposite experience, at least with regard to your first two paragraphs. Most of the things that I have backed up on other people's computers over the past 3-4 decades are irretrievably lost. But most of the things that I have taken care to make backups of on personal equipment over the years, are still with me.<p>Cloud storage is still useful of course, but I prefer to view it as a cache rather than as a dependable backup.
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 <p>Of course it's viable as a backup. Availability != realibility. My data is still reliably saved in the cloud even if there is an outage for a few hours. The key point is backup, e.g. Dropbox. When you use Google Docs, it becomes a single source of truth and a SPOF.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This depends on the circumstances. If your personal photos are unaccessible then maybe it doesn't matter, but if it's your documentation for a mission critical bit of infrastructure then a few hours could be very significant. Somebody in that situation probably wouldn't agree with your assertion that "availability != reliability". If I can't access it when I need it then I wouldn't consider it reliable.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Whatever data I have backed up in the cloud is synced across multiple devices that I use. Even if the cloud disappeared altogether, I still have it. The cloud allows me to keep an up to date copy across various devices.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416675&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Both Google Drive/Photos and OneDrive have an option to only keep recently used files on your local device, and even periodically suggest they automatically remove local copies of unused files to "free up space".<p>I highly suggest everyone disable this setting on their own, but also on their (perhaps less technical) friends' and relatives' devices. Otherwise, if anything happens to your account or - less likely - the storage provider or their hardware, your data could very well be gone forever. I can't believe anyone would want that.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416678&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>You don't need 'the cloud' to do that. Look into Syncthing. It does depend on an outside "discovery server" by default to enable syncing outside of your LAN, but you can run your own.<p><a href="https://syncthing.net/">https://syncthing.net/</a>
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 <p>What's annoying is that synchronisation does't work for google slides or google docs. They are just synchronized as links to the webpage on my computer.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>If you use Insync you have the option of converting to DOCX or ODT.
Insync has other issues though, my "sourcetreeconfig" is being downloaded as "sourcetreeconfig.xml".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Not 100% on that, but I think you can save these documents on Google Drive, and then they're treated (and synced) just like any other files.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416577&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;<i>So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again?</i><p>Much less chance of that happening than my local backups getting borked...
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 <a href="vote?id=25417257&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Of course cloud is a viable back up, similarly to physical drives.<p>Both have vastly different failure modes and typical backup should use both of them.</p><p>This way if all my backups are gone I likely have way more important issues that loss of files.</p><p>(and yes, my backups are encrypted)
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 <p>Just a few moments ago, I wrote in my company's group chat this is the time when we buy NAS. 
We have a lot of documents not accessible right now in Google Drive.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416638&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>What worries me the most is email. I basically don't use any other Google services other than Gmail and YouTube, but for email I really don't know of an alternative.<p>Sure you can argue "move to Fastmail/Protonmail/Hey/whatever", but those can also go down on you just like Google is down now. And self hosting email is apparently not a thing due to complexity and having to forever fight with being marked as spam (ndr.: not my personal experience, I never tried self hosting, just relying what I read here on HN when the topic comes up).</p><p>So, yeah, what do we do about email? I feel like we should have a solution to this by now, but somehow we don't.
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 <p>I've been happy with using Hosted Exchange on Microsoft. I own the domain so ultimately I can point the DNS to some other provider. Outlook stores the mails locally so I have a backup. I think the most important thing about E-Mail is to receive future E-Mails and not look at historical ones. In the end you can always ask the receipent to send you a copy of the email conversation - if you dont own the domain it get much harder to convince you actually own the email.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416994&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, I know what's the point. But how do you avoid putting all your eggs in one basket? You can't host your email on more than one "provider" (including self host), and the vast majority of important services that you link your email to (bank, digital identity, taxes and other government services) does not allow you to have more than one linked to it; which means, that one goes down, you don't have one. Sure, I can give my accountant and my lawyer a second email address, hosted on a different provider, but that poses two problems: 1. how are they gonna know when one is working and one isn't? It's not like you get a notification if your email didn't reach most of the time, it just drops; 2. if you always send all emails to both addresses, now two providers have my data instead of one (of course excluding if one is self hosted). And you also need to always keep in mind that for all things important: one is none, two is one; so you should really have 3 addresses on 3 different providers according to that, which brings us back to the problems above. (and I'm not even mentioning the confusion that it would generate if you don't manage to get the same name with every provider "Wait, was it beshrkayali@gmail.com, or was it alibeshrkay@gmail.com? Or was that fastmail?")<p>As I said (literally in the second sentence), I don't rely on Google for everything, as you mention. I don't actually rely on Google for anything other than gmail, and of that I am also unhappy. The point I was trying to make is that there aren't really alternatives, and I was hoping someone might come out with a suggestion about how to overcome that problem.
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 <p>You shouldn't use you@company.com as your main email, you should have your own domain. So `something@yourdomain.com` will always be yours no matter if you self host or use 3rd party. I currently use Fastmail and i've been very happy with them. If they fail or turn evil, I'll switch to something else maintaining the same address. Emails themselves should be downloaded/backed-up regularly, kind of like important documents you'd have on your disk.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417289&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; You can't host your email on more than one "provider"<p>You can do split delivery and have your email be delivered to two different destinations. It's less common than it used to be but it's trivial.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417672&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I'm running my own mail server, and I think anyone who has some experience with Linux should be able to do the same in a day or two. Once it's set up it just works.<p>You can still use Gmail and fall back to connecting directly to your server if Gmail is down.</p><p>Some mails might be flagged as spam if the IP/domain has no reputation, but that quickly passes, at least that's my experience.
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 <p>I specifically use Gsuite so that I don't have to deal with managing a spam filter or dealing with IP reputation issues. I'd be willing to self-host almost anything else.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25419846&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I guess something highly resilient would be - say - a mailserver on a rented VM replicating to two cloud providers via a service mesh.<p>Nice and simple! :D
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 <p>A lot of domain registrars will host/relay mail for you if you don't want to think about it. Otherwise it's not <i>too</i> hard to host yourself. The sucky part is when it breaks because you can't really just put off fixing it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416805&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I've been using mailu.io to host my own email server. Makes it real easy to manage yourself.<p>I haven't had any issues with new domains being marked as spam, but I always make sure the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are set up.
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 <p>I’ve heard multiple founders argue that it’s safe to have downtime because of a cloud outage, because you’re not likely to be the highest importance service that your customers use that also had downtime.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well yeah; I don't trust myself enough to own &amp; operate my own servers, and I cannot give myself any uptime guarantees - let alone at the scale that a cloud provider can offer me.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416982&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>"The Cloud" is vague, and if you don't specify what it means then the answer to your question can only be "it depends".<p>If the question is "anybody still feel like arguing that 'a single provider' is a viable back-up" then it's yes for most cases. A better strategy is of course to use multiple providers. The chances that it never comes back again is much lower.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416929&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>People would probably argue a “multi cloud” solution. Have your infrastructure be “cloud agnostic” and this sort of problem would be avoided.<p>There was actually a project called “spinnaker” that was supposed to solve this problem.</p><p>Whether the cost of paying 2 or more cloud providers is worth it for most companies is up in the air.
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 <p>"Multi-cloud" only works if you stick with the basics. Like disk storage, compute, and a well-supported database. Once you tie in into a cloud's specific offerings.....</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I find the Anthos docs and talks so confusing. Half of them say Anthos is for hybrid between on-prem and GCP. The other half say it's for multicloud and hybrid.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well, since a viable backup strategy requires at least 3 storage locations (eg the in-use primary, an on-site or off-site backup, and a secondary off-site backup) "the cloud" is fine as an off-site backup or secondary off-site backup.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417781&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Let's hope tailscale swoops in and creates a no-gimmicks, highly usable, private internet for everyone.<p>They seemed to have figured out the hard parts already.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416562&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Help! My Waymo taxi won't open the doors without me logging into the app. Its driving around in circles on route 500 and won't stop.<p>/s - for now ;)
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 <p>I know you’re joking, but I am curious if Waymo’s fleet was affected. Shouldn’t be right? But I’m also surprised every time I fresh login to Gmail and YouTube shows up in the intermediary redirect chain.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Gmail said my account was "temporarily" unavailable... had a moment considering if it wasn't temporary. Good reminder to remove my reliance on gmail especially.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>For a second I legit thought Google banned my account for some reason. And I don't like it that I feel relieved..</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Underrated comment. If the government freezes your bank account, at least you can take them to court. If Google mistakenly disables your account, there does not seem to be any legal recourse. Considering the extent to which people depend on their services, perhaps there should be a more elaborate appeal process.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417512&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>They can freeze the account but I own the domain so I can point it anywhere I want and I have copies locally via imap.<p>At this point the only reason I use it is because I grandfathered in on an old plan it's still free, if that changes I'll go elsewhere.
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 <p>Google doesn't disable ordinary rulefollowing accounts by mistake. They are aware of the false positive rate and don't care.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I agree, but the problem is that "ordinary rulefollowing" is not clearly defined by Google. Perhaps it was that innocent park frisbee party video with a Metallica sound played in the background by some other party there... and not only your video, but also your YouTube account, and worse, email account gets blocked. Maybe this scenario is dystopian - the point is that it is a black-box no-appeal/limited appeal system when such an event happens.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google account terminations typically only affect the one service. If your YouTube account gets terminated for ToS violations, your email account will still work perfectly fine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Same for me - and then I tried logging in to gmail in an incognito window and got "Couldn't find your Google account" which really scared me.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thunderbird prompting me to login, and getting "Google does not recognize this email address" as a reply was a nice adrenaline spike, until I checked the status on HN!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This happened to me with a work email. For a moment I thought, "Well, I had a good run at this company.." My next thought was, "Ha, Google must be down - better check HackerNews."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I am still experiencing this problem on all my synced-to-Thunderbird Gmail accounts, so it either hasn't been completely fixed yet, or there's another ongoing issue.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yes! It takes some work to switch, but it's worth it. Buy your own domain name, and link it to an existing service if you don't want to host yourself. You'll always be able to switch your mail alias when having issues with your email host.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Our entire library of video tutorials disappeared for a while. I was not happy, and the thought of losing our email.. Currently working with the team to make backups of absolutely everything off-site and off-Google. A good wake up call for us.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I really should try to get my stuff moved to my new address. Not self-hosted, but a non-profit that has been around for a while... Finally paid the membership fee.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The status page has proven itself useless again. According to that page, everything is working perfectly fine.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417047&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>When I tried to login it said: 'this account does not exist'. So my first thought was some algorithm made a mistake and my account got deleted for no reason.<p>I already imagined the only solution now was to write a medium post and hope it gets some traction on hackernews and google support steps in.
Thinking to myself I was an idiot for knowing all this and still thinking it wouldn't happen to me.</p><p>And even though it turns out to be an outage, it gave me a bad enough feeling to start using a domain name I own for my email.
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 <p>Those hosting with their own domains on Google mail had an identical experience, if it makes you feel differently.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417315&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>The advantage of a custom domain name is: As long as you can update DNS records, you can have your mail easily hosted elsewhere.<p>Obviously not relevant for this kind of outage, but in the scenario outlined by GP - Google randomly kills you off, and there is nothing you can do - this is at least an emergency strategy.
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 <p>Yep, but losing access to my emails isn't that big of a deal, losing access to my email address is much worse. Especially since it's also my login on a lot of other services.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This topic is so hot it's crashing HN!
Super long server response time and I get this error quite oftenly: "We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!"</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416393&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Interesting cascade effect of sites going down! I wonder where people will go next to check if HN is down?<p>Also wondering if this is perhaps the fastest upvoted HN post ever? 8 mins -&gt; ~350 votes, 15 mins -&gt; ~750 votes. I wonder if @dang could chime in with some stats?</p><p>Update: looks like it hit 1000 upvotes in ~25 mins!</p><p>Update: 1500 in ~40 mins</p><p>Update: 2000 in ~1 hour 20 mins (used the HN API for the timestamp)
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 <p>The recent youtube-dl takedown had a similar number of votes but still slightly slower, I think. I think it was &gt;500 in 30min and &gt;1000 in 60min if I remember correctly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Some politics topics have shot up pretty quickly in the past but user and/or mod flags send them back to page 2 about as quickly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417021&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Funny this post is already #7. Are we seeing many reports again?<p>Stats right now: 1985 points | 1 hour ago | 597 comments
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 <a href="vote?id=25416776&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>HN was having problem showing anything for the past 10 min or so. I was going to ask if HN was down, then I saw this.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416943&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Does <i>this</i> site also use Firebase, or do they only feed Firebase's Database so that other developers can build upon it?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416988&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Any source for that? Last information I have is that it's written in Arc Lisp and uses files rather than a database for storage.<p>There is a public API on Firebase, but AFAIR it's just a mirror rather than the main storage.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416525&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I, and probably many others here are like a status page for friends and family too... I had my wife thinking that the internet was broken, and tried tethering to phone and things and still didn't work, then showed me and I saw the status code errors and was like "it's actually parts of Google that are down".<p>I love (and am deeply scared by) the dependence of Google and the confusion of it with the entire internet.
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 <p>I still like my physical switch on the wall to turn the light on and off very much.. for me it's hard to beat. I can even turn it on/off semi-remotely with e.g. a tennis ball.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25423956&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>If my Alexa fails, then I can also just turn the light off with the switch and when flipped back "on" <i>again</i>, then it will be on.<p>Fallback to 'classical mode' works for me.
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 <p>If your home automation system requires a network connection to work then something is very wrong.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Right? Home automation is perfectly fine and mught even expose a secure authenticated API to the internet so you can say check and adjust the temperature remotely, but it shoukd never ever go down for lical use if the Internet connectivity or the remote service backend goes down.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Home Assistant rulez with non-cloud sensors. I never by sensors, cameras, switches which require connection to an external host. But I'm sure that most people will do it even with such outages too.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google should write an AI application that checks on HN if their systems are working and display the result live on their status page. That would be more reliable than the current system they have in place (which is obviously not working at all).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It would probably just end up banning Googles own account and leave them with no human escalation option.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Even search seems to have issues. It can't seem to find rare pages at all, and ranking seems subpar for the past 15 minutes or so.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25417086&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Found this relatively recently, seems to do a good job.<p>Do love how more consumer services (ISPs &amp;c) always have some report of being down somewhere but its means nothing unless there's a big spike.
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 <p>What's the point of having a status page when it can't reliably tell you the factual status?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Then their status page is not unlike like target reporting in the USSR: completely fictional.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>From personal experience and other Ops peoples stories, I'd assume that could be the case for many status pages ;)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>No -- it needs to be red when it's having the outage for people to have confidence in it as an indicator. The reality is Google have no real incentive to provide an actual external status page that is accurate -- to do so is an admission of not upholding SLAs. These status pages are updated retrospectively. Use a third party one like DownDetector.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416122&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>It is all green <i>if you do not need to be logged in</i>.<p>If you are logged in, the page crashes with an error.</p><p>You can still browse all services from Incognito (which for some is not an option).
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 <a href="vote?id=25416154&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Are you saying the Google status page is correct then? Being logged in is part of being green I’d think.<p>Also, you can’t use many parts of Gmail, Drive, Photos, etc, without being logged in.
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 <p>I think it just means the status page itself is not logged in. Apparently it should be...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google made everyone get an account trying to force Google+ on to everyone. They don't get to pretend like that didn't happen by not factoring it into their status.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416225&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>the parent comment to mine at time of writing was just:<p>&gt; It is all green if you do not need to be log in.</p><p>Giving the impression if you were logged in/didn't need to log in, that everything would be ok.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416592&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I apologize for my ambiguous phrasing, and I feel bad that you were downvoted (I reupvoted you, but that’s only one vote).<p>I wrote too fast because I thought it could help people work around the problem.
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 <a href="vote?id=25417065&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>It reflects the reality for them.<p>The small print says: <i>The problem with Gmail should be resolved for the vast majority of affected users. We will continue to work towards restoring service for the remaining affected users...</i></p><p>At Google scale, "remaining affected users" probably number in tens of millions. Sucks to be one of them, tho.</p><p>But hey, it happens. As a SaaS maintainer, I can sympathise with any SREs involved in handling this, and know that no service can be up 100% of the time.
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 <a href="vote?id=25416299&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Someone here in hn said at Amazon AWS they are required direct CTO approvals to reflect negative realities. Maybe that’s the case for anyone these days.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416427&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>Not true. Only for written things like postmortems. Automated systems need to be vetted but can update things like status pages on their own.<p>The issue isn't "negative" realities, it is saying something while investigating that might break contracts only to find later that it wasn't true.
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 <p>Definitely i agree with you. Although the statuses are updated later, it may cause many problems if it is not instantaneous.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Pretty funny. I would normally assume they are connected to some testing unit that real users interface with. Vs internal APIs or however Google is doing this with them still being green</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416857&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think it's difficult, I think they just lie.<p>Monitoring is very simple, I even learned this from a document released by the Google devops team many years ago.</p><p>Always alert from the end user perspective. So in other words have an external server test login to Gmail. Simple as that.</p><p>They manually update that status page to not scare away stockholders.
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 <p>Out of curiosity, what response time do you expect on a page like that? And what level of detail? I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416319&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; what response time do you expect on a page like that?<p>Faster than a free third-party website’s response time. Google should know they are down and tell people about it before Hacker News, Twitter, etc. Google should be the source of truth for Google service status, not social media.</p><p>&gt; And what level of detail?</p><p>Enough to not tell people that there are “No issues” with services.</p><p>&gt; I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.</p><p>Google employs enough people to do both.
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 <p>I'd expect that status page to be automated based on a number of metrics / health checks. Our equivalent is.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'd expect within seconds that Google is alerted of a very large number of issues with their servers and that the status page would be updated (the green light going to red) within seconds. It's now quite some time after the start of the outage and everything is still green on that status page.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well, probably a lot of them are sitting around doing nothing because Google's down right now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416173&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>It's a big group of teams... one team is responsible for monitoring (And status reporting) alone</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=25416486&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D25415989"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.<p>It's not like they would be working on the status page right now, that work should have been done a long time ago...
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 <p>If they know its broken, one of the _many_ engineers/support across Youtube+Gmail+etc that are all known to be down related to this bug should be able to update it in first few minutes. Especially if this isn't a 5 min fix.</p></div></td></tr>
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</td></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login                    
                     

  Google outage – resolved                   
 2316 points by abluecloud on Dec 14, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 827 comments                   
                     
 various services are broken                    
                     
 - youtube returning error                    
                     
 - gmail returning 502                    
                     
 - docs returning 500                    
                     
 - drive not working                    
                     
 status page now reflecting outage: https://www.google.com/appsstatus                   
                     
 --------------                    
                     
 services look to be restored.                    
                     
                     
                     
                     
 eric_khun on Dec 14, 2020 | next [–]                    
                     
 If you pay for Google Services, they have an SLA (service level agreement) of 99.9% [1]. If their services are down more than 43 minutes this month[2], you can request “free days” of usage.                  
                     
 Edit: Services were down from ~12:55pm to ~1:52pm, it's 57minutes. Thanks hiby007                   
                     
 [1] https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/sla.html                    
                     
 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...                   
                     
                     
 sit_i_piz on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 If all 6 million G Suite customers, with an average number of users at 25 per G Suite account, paying the $20/user fee, requested the three day credit for this breach in the SLA contract for the outage, it'd cost Google about 300 million dollars.                 
                     
 Which is .22% of there COH this quarter...                    
                     
                     
 docuru on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Or on the regular basis, they'd get $300M every other month (exclude any fee)                   
                     
                     
 rachelbythebay on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Your nines or their nines?                    
                     
 I bet if you personally can't use it, but their overall reliability meets the bar, then they're within SLA.                   
                     
 Don't ask why I know this.                    
                     
                     
 mk89 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 You know there are companies who build crawlers or health check agents exactly for this purpose, so that they know precisely from when to when the service they pay or they need for their business doesn't work and went out of SLA. I think it's brilliant and the only way to make any company pay. I believe you can sometimes get away with a couple of pingdom checks/jobs.               
                     
                     
 danuker on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Like they have any bargaining power against Google.                    
                     
                     
 mk89 on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I don't know how it works in such cases, I mean, this is publicly known that there was an outage.                   
                     
 What I believe is that customers will probably get free GCP credits and that's it, everything is good as before.                   
                     
                     
 blaser-waffle on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 This person service-provides                    
                     
                     
 fgblanch on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 In [1] it says: "Customer Must Request Service Credit." Do you know how to request it?                   
                     
                     
 judge2020 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Admins can go to admin.google.com and click the help button to start a support request.                   
                     
                     
 ehsankia on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It seems like they claim around 45m                    
                     
 https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/14/gmail-youtube-google-docs-...                    
                     
                     
 LdSGSgvupDV on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Is this official announcement? I don't find any link to google in your posted url.                   
                     
                     
 ehsankia on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 not an announcement, seems like just a statement. I assume an official statement will come with the post mortem blog post in the next few days.                  
                     
                     
 hiby007 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 If you click on the red status dots, it has report with timing.                    
                     
                     
 api on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 SLAs are largely bullshit.                    
                     
                     
 kaushikt on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 why?                    
                     
                     
 nickjj on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This topic just came up recently on a podcast I was on where someone said a large service was down for X amount of time and the service being down tanked his entire business while it was down for days. But he was compensated in hosting credits for the exact amount of down time for the 1 service that caused the issue. It took so long to resolve because it took support a while to figure out it was their service, not his site.              
                     
 So then I jokingly responded with that being like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!".               
                     
 If your SLA agreement is only for precisely calculated credits, that's not really going to help in the grand scheme of things.                   
                     
                     
 jjguy on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I like your anecdote, I might steal that one.                    
                     
 IANAL, but I negotiate a lot of enterprise SaaS agreements. When considering the SLA, it is important to remember it is a legal document, not an engineering one. It has engineering impact and is up to engineering to satisfy, but the actual contents of it are better considered when wearing your lawyer hat, not your engineering one.               
                     
 e.g., What you're referring to is related to the limitation of liability clauses and especially "special" or "consequential" damages -- a category of damages that are not 'direct' damages but secondary. [1]                 
                     
 Accepting _any_ liability for special or consequential damages is always a point of negotiation. As a service provider, you always try to avoid it because it is so hard to estimate the magnitude, and thus judge how much insurance coverage you need.                 
                     
 Related, those paragraphs also contain a limitation of liability clause, often at capped at X times annual cost. Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them.                 
                     
 This is just scratching the surface -- tons of color and depth here that is nuanced for every company and situation. It's why you employe attorneys!                  
                     
 1 - https://www.lexisnexis.com/lexis-practical-guidance/the-jour...                   
                     
                     
 sitkack on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 > Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them.                   
                     
 Businesses do this all the time, this is how they make money. And they use a combination of insurance and not %@$#@*! up.                   
                     
                     
 jellykid on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I've never seen an SLA that compensates for anything more than credit off your bill. I can't imagine a service that pays for loss of productivity, one outage and the whole company could be bankrupt. If your business depends on a cloud service for productivity you should have a backup plan if that service goes down.                
                     
                     
 Sodman on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue etc, but something like Slack's SLA[0] seems like it's moving in the right direction. They guarantee a 99.99% uptime (max downtime of 4 min/22 seconds per month) and give 10x credits for any downtime.                
                     
 Granted, there's probably not many businesses that are losing major revenue because slack's down for half an hour, but it's nice to at least see them acknowledge that 1 minute down deserves more than 1 minute of refunds!                 
                     
 [0] https://slack.com/terms/service-level-agreement                    
                     
                     
 toyg on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 > I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue                   
                     
 They won't show up on automated systems aimed at SMEs, but anybody taking out an "enterprise plan" with tailored pricing from a SaaS, will likely ask for tailored SLA conditions too (or rather should ask for them).                 
                     
                     
 pantulis on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It's hard to give a compensation for profit loss, as then you would have to know the profit of the customer beforehand and put an adequate pricing including that risk. It's almost like insurance!                 
                     
                     
 dman on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 In financial markets I have seen SLA's where you will make people whole on the losses they incur due to downtime you inflict on them.                  
                     
                     
 patrickthebold on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Seems like you want insurance. As with the hospital bill you'd generally be paying a bunch of extra money for your health insurance plan to not get stuck with the bill.                  
                     
 Not sure that exists for businesses, but I'd expect you'd need to go shopping separately if you want that.                   
                     
 Seems like a good business idea if it doesn't exist.                    
                     
                     
 waisbrot on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I think the idea here is that if the payment for SLA breach is just "don't pay for the time we were down" or (as I've seen in other SLAs) "half off during the time we were down" that doesn't feel like much of an incentive on the service provider.                 
                     
 They have other incentives, obviously, like if everyone talks about how Google is down then that's bad for future business. But when thinking of SLAs I'm always surprised when they're not more drastic. Like "over 0.1% downtime: free service for a month".                 
                     
                     
 zeroping on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Independent 'a service was down' insurance isn't the same though. It is important for the cost to come out of the provider's pocket, thus giving them a huge financial incentive to not be down. Having that incentive in place is the most important part of an SLA.                
                     
                     
 toyg on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Even with insurance, some of the cost will come out of the provider's pockets - as increased premiums at renewal (or even immediately, in some cases). Insurers might also force other onerous conditions on the provider as a prerequisite for continued coverage.                
                     
                     
 patrickthebold on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I hear you, but there's going to be a cost for that. For the sake of argument, say Google changes the SLA as you wish and ups the cost of their offering accordingly.                  
                     
 Would they gain or lose market share?                    
                     
 I don't think it's obvious one way or the other.                    
                     
                     
 s3cur3 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > . . . like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!".                
                     
 It's even slightly worse than that. SLAs generally refund you for the prorated portion of your monthly fee the service was out, so it's more like "here's a gift card for the exact value of the single dish we've determined caused your food poisoning." Hehe.                 
                     
                     
 nickjj on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 You're right and the funny thing is that's exactly what he said after I chimed in.                   
                     
                     
 boringg on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Completely agree with your analogy but have you ever seen any SLA that provides any additional liability? I haven't seen them - you are stuck either relying on hosting services SLA or DIY.                  
                     
                     
 gravitas on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I cannot share details for the obvious reason, but yes - there are SLAs signed into contract directly behind the scenes which result in automatic payouts of a condition isn't met and it's not a simple credit.                 
                     
 Enterprise level SLAs are crafted by lawyers in negotiations behind the scenes and are not the same as what you see on random public services. Our customers have them with us, and we have them with our vendors. Contract negotiations take months at the $$$$ level.                
                     
                     
 boringg on Dec 16, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 That is a fair point. Is this a situation where you asymmetrically powerful? I have to imagine you would have considerable clout to represent a fair bit of their revenue in order to dictate terms. When I wrote my comment it was in the vein of a smaller organization.                
                     
                     
 gravitas on Dec 16, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I am but a technical cog in the machine my friend, while I know about what goes on in business and contract negoatiations I cannot comment on power dynamics. I would assume it's like any other negotiation - whomever has the greatest leverage has the power, I doubt it's ever fairly balanced.                
                     
                     
 gwright on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Or purchasing business continuity insurance.                    
                     
                     
 fullstop on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Not OP, but how do you measure them? Let's say, for example, you can send and receive email, but attaching files does not work. Is the service up or down?                  
                     
 What if the majority of your users can access the service, but one of your BGP peers is not routing properly and some of your users are unable to access?                  
                     
                     
 lawrjone on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Google do a very good job of defining their SLAs.                    
                     
 In answer to your question, they'll accept evidence from your own monitoring system when you claim on the SLA. They pair that up to their own knowledge about how the system was performing, then make the grant.                 
                     
 Google are exceptionally good at this, from my experience. Far better than most other companies, who aim to provide as little detail as possible while getting away with 'providing an SLA'.                  
                     
                     
 pas on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 The SLA itself should specify the way availability is measured.                    
                     
                     
 gsich on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Down because email attachments are base64 encoded files written in plaintext into the body. So if those are not working, email itself is not working.                  
                     
                     
 abluecloud on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 that was a bad example. i guess the comment was trying to say "how do you account for partial service degradations".                   
                     
 (i dont think SLAs are BS btw)                    
                     
                     
 gsich on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 In this example: you get free days. Which depending on your business might be worthless if you have suffered more monetary loss due to the downtime than the free days are worth.                  
                     
                     
 SifJar on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 But still better than nothing. And for some (most?) people/businesses, probably worth more than any resulting monetary loss                   
                     
                     
 Cthulhu_ on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Exactly; downtime doesn't cost a cloud service much. At worst it causes reputation damage, with possibly large companies deciding to go for a competitor, losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of millions.                 
                     
                     
 mmillin on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Given the blast radius of this (all regions appear to be impacted) along with the fact that services that don't rely on auth are working as normal, it must be a global authN/Z issue. I do not envy Google engineers right now.                 
                     
                     
 tarruda on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 > I do not envy Google engineers right now.                    
                     
 A few years ago I released a bug in production that prevented users from logging into our desktop app. It affected about ~1k users before we found out and rolled back the release.                  
                     
 I still remember a very cold feeling in my belly, barely could sleep that night. It is difficult to imagine what the people responsible for this are feeling right now.                  
                     
                     
 papito on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 When I was interviewing at Morgan Stanley, I asked "how do you do this job if a mistake can cost people money?".                   
                     
 The answer was "well, if you don't do anything, you make NO money".                   
                     
                     
 xenocratus on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I'm reminded of the quote from Thomas J. Watson:                    
                     
 > Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?                 
                     
                     
 huijzer on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Agreed, and also it's worth noting that we're talking about companies here. Yes, for any individual the amount of money lost is insane, but that's the risk for the company. If one individual can accidentally nearly bankrupt the company, then the company did not have proper risk management in place.                
                     
 That isn't too say that it wouldn't also affect my sleep quality.                    
                     
                     
 Maxion on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Sadly a lot of managers don't see it this way, they'd rather assign blame.                   
                     
                     
 rebuilder on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Depending on the company's culture, that calculus can vary. If management start firing subordinates for making mistakes, then what should be done to management if they fail to account for human error, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses?                 
                     
                     
 papito on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Well, why, good Sir - don't they usually get bonuses?                    
                     
                     
 mavhc on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 They'd rather avoid the blame hitting them                    
                     
                     
 sitkack on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 That is because they are managers, most got where they are by assigning rewards to themselves.                   
                     
                     
 cvrjk on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Welp, as a new grad there, I had brought down one very important database server on a Sunday night (a series of really unfortunate events). Multiple senior DBAs had to be involved to resuscitate it. It started functioning normally just a few hours before market open in HK. If it was any later, it would have been some serious monetary loss. Needless to say, I was sweating bullets. Couldn't eat anything the entire day lol. Took me like 2 days to calm down. And this was after I was fully shielded cuz I was a junior. God knows what would've happened if someone more experienced had done that.           
                     
                     
 h1srf on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I brought down the order management system at a large bank during the middle of the trading day. The backup kicked in after about a minute but it was not fun on the trading floor.                  
                     
                     
 b0afc375b5 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I'm so glad I'm not the only one feeling deployment anxiety. The project I'm involved in doesn't really have serious money involved, but when there's a regression found only after production deployment my stress levels go up a notch.                 
                     
                     
 FloatingUp on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 When I was working at a pretty big IT provider in the electronic banking sector, we (management and senior devs) made it an unspoken rule, that: - Juniors shall also handle production deployments regularly. - A senior person is always on call (even if only unofficially / off the clock). - Junior devs are never blamed for fuckups, irrespective of the damage they caused.               
                     
 That was the only way to help people develop routine regarding big production deployments.                   
                     
                     
 awesomemonster on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Same thing -- used to work at a very large hosting provider. One of our big internal infra management teams wouldn't consider newhires fully "part of the team" until they had caused a significant outage. It was genuinely a right of passage, as one person put it, "to cause a measurable part of the internet to disappear".                
                     
 I got to see a lot of people pass through this right of passage, and it was always fun to watch. Everyone would take it incredibly seriously, some VP would invariably yell at them, but at the end of the day their managers and all their peers were smiling and clapping them on the back.                
                     
                     
 camjohnson26 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Sounds like hazing.                    
                     
                     
 pdelgallego on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 as a new grad there, it wasn't your fault. There should be guardrails to protect you.                   
                     
                     
 cvrjk on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Yep. It was supposed to be a very small change. I blundered. My team understood that and was super supportive about it all too. But this was after it was all fixed.                  
                     
 During the outage though, no one (obviously) had time for me. This was a very important server. The tension and anxiety on the remediation call was through the roof. Every passing hour someone even more important in the chain of command was joining the call. At that time I thought I was done for...                
                     
                     
 onychomys on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I work for an extremely famous hospital in the American midwest. We're divided into three sections, one for clinical work, one for research, and one for education. I always tell people that I'm pretty content being in research (which is less sexy than clinical), because if I screw something up, some PI's project takes ten months and one week instead of ten months. In clinical, if you screw something up, somebody dies! I just don't think I could handle that level of stress.             
                     
                     
 ignoramous on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Same.                    
                     
 At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).               
                     
                     
 papito on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Jesus. One would think you'd have some safeguards for that. Even Dropbox will give you an alert if you try to nuke over 1,000 files. More reasons to COLOR CODE your work environments, if possible.                 
                     
                     
 ignoramous on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Yes but that was eons ago. The safeguards are well and truly in-place now. Not just one, several in fact.                   
                     
                     
 qz2 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Apart from the ones that they haven't worked out yet :)                    
                     
                     
 zentiggr on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 When I meet the engineer who can design for the unknown unknowns, I will bow to them.                   
                     
                     
 papito on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 The trick is to be paranoid. You literally sit down and think exclusively about what COULD go wrong.                   
                     
                     
 GreenWatermelon on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Anxiety is a bitch.                    
                     
                     
 sitkack on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Formal methods for your formal methods. And never shipping on Friday.                   
                     
                     
 marcus_holmes on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 colorblind (red/green) person here - 5% of the male population just don't see color enough for it to be an important visual clue.                   
                     
 So sure, color-code your environments, but if you find someone about to do something to a red environment that they clearly should only be doing to a green environment, just check if they're seeing what you're seeing before you sack them ;)                 
                     
                     
 warrenm on Dec 21, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 My primary customer right now color codes both with "actual color", and with words - ie the RED environment is tagged with red color bars, and also big [black] letters in the [red] bars reading "RED"                 
                     
                     
 ardy42 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).               
                     
 It seems like a design flaw for actions like that to be so easy. E.g.                   
                     
 > Hey, we detected you want to delete an AWS region. Please have an authorized coworker enter their credentials to second your command.                  
                     
                     
 ignoramous on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 If it was indeed in-production, I'd never in a million years have had access rights to delete the stack. Those are gated just the way one would imagine they should be.                  
                     
 The service stack for the region (and not an entire region itself) looked like prod, but wasn't. It made me feel like shit anyway.                  
                     
                     
 znpy on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30jNsCVLpAE -- "GOTO 2017 • Debugging Under Fire: Keep your Head when Systems have Lost their Mind • Bryan Cantrill"                  
                     
                     
 ayoubElk on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Irrelevant to the discussion, but I just wanted to say thank you for the categorized list of users I can follow on your profile!                   
                     
                     
 laddng on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Which tool do you use to follow users on HN?                    
                     
                     
 ignoramous on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 There used to be hystry.com [0] but it isn't functional anymore.                    
                     
 Another workflow, though cumbersome, is: Search for a username on hn.algolia, select "comments" and "past months" as filters, then press enter.                  
                     
 Ex: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&query=nostrademo...                   
                     
 [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=71827                    
                     
                     
 laddng on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Thanks for sharing those tips!                    
                     
                     
 rptr on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 wow, that list is crazy. thanks OP.                    
                     
                     
 robertlagrant on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Who automates the automators? :)                    
                     
                     
 ahachete on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Doesn't AWS (and every big cloud/enterprise) follow best-practices for production operation like FIT-ACER? https://pythian.com/uncategorized/fit-acer-dba-checklist/                  
                     
 That's even more surprising to me.                    
                     
                     
 zeven7 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Several years back when I was working at Google I made a mistake that caused some of the special results in the knowledge cards to become unclickable for a small subset of queries for about an hour. As part of the postmortem I had to calculate how many people likely tried to interact with it while it was broken. It was a lot and really made me realize the magnitude of an otherwise seemingly small production failure. My boss didn't give me a hard time, just pointed me toward documentation about how to write the report. And crunching the numbers is what really made me feel the weight of it. It was a good process.           
                     
 I feel for the engineer who has to calculate the cost of this bug.                   
                     
                     
 robotnikman on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This sounds like a good practice and hopefully something they still do. Calculating the exact numbers would definitely help cement the experience and its consequences into your mind.                  
                     
                     
 zymhan on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Presumably there were more failures than a single engineer could've been responsible for here.                   
                     
                     
 fjcp on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Its absolutely possible, the worst AWS outage was caused by one engineer running the wrong command [0].                   
                     
 "This past Tuesday morning Pacific Time an Amazon Web Services engineer was debugging an issue with the billing system for the company’s popular cloud storage service S3 and accidentally mistyped a command. What followed was a several hours’ long cloud outage that wreaked havoc across the internet and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for AWS customers and others who rely on third-party services hosted by AWS."              
                     
 [0] - https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/03/02/aws-...                   
                     
                     
 rplnt on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 If you alone were able to do it, then the system was designed badly. The bigger the impact, the more robust it has to be to prevent accidents.                  
                     
                     
 a3_nm on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 The big mistake in the system is that everyone in the world is relying on Google services... These problems would have less impact with a more diverse ecosystem.                  
                     
                     
 lawrjone on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Would they have less impact? Or would it have the same impact, just distributed across many more outages?                   
                     
 You can rely on Google outages being very few and far between, and recovering pretty fast. For the benefits you get from such a connected ecosystem, I'm not sure anyone is net positive from using a variety of different tools rather than Google supplying many of them.                
                     
                     
 rightbyte on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Compare closing down one road for repair a day per year to closing down all roads one day a year.                   
                     
                     
 lawrjone on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I'm not sure I see that as a fair comparison. I think it's best to use the same durations for this, as an entire day changes the level of impact. <1hr outages have a fraction of the impact that an entire days outage might have.                 
                     
 It's obviously subjective, but even with our entire work leaning on Google– from GMail, GDrive and Google Docs, through to all our infrastructure being in GCP– todays outage just meant everyone took an hour break. History suggests we won't see another of these for another year, so everyone taking a collective 60m break has been minimally impactful vs many smaller, isolated outages spread over the year.              
                     
                     
 warrenm on Dec 21, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Just think if Google actually decided to "take the day off"                    
                     
 ...like I did a dozen+ years ago: https://antipaucity.com/2008/01/09/what-if-google-took-the-d...                   
                     
                     
 domano on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I remember how one of our engineers had his docker daemon connected to production instead of his local one and casually did a docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq) .                  
                     
 Same thing happened to me but with CI, which felt bad enough already.                   
                     
                     
 selimnairb on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 "Hey let's make developers do two very different jobs, development, and operations. We'll call it DevOps. We'll save money. Everything will be fine."                  
                     
                     
 alias_neo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 No Engineer should have production access from their workstation. Period.                   
                     
 source: am Engineer =).                    
                     
                     
 shawkinaw on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Engineers shouldn’t deploy to prod directly, but sometimes it’s necessary to SSH into an instance for logs, stack dumps, etc. Source: worked for 2 big to very big tech cos.                  
                     
                     
 alias_neo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 For a large or v large tech co you should probably be aggregating logs to a centralised location that doesn't require access to production systems in this way. Stack dumps should also be collected safely off-system if necessary.                 
                     
 Perhaps my industry is a little more security conscious (I don't know which industry you're talking about), but this doesn't seem like good practice.                  
                     
                     
 shawkinaw on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Let me be clear, I agree it should not be normal to SSH into a prod box. Our logs are centrally aggregated. But it’s one thing to say it’s not normal, but quite another to say engineers shouldn't have access , because I totally disagree with that.                 
                     
                     
 throwaway201103 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 What normally (should) happens in that unusual case is that the engineer is issued a special short-lifetime credential to do what needs to be done. An audit trail is kept of when and to whom the credential was issued, for what purpose, when it was revoked, etc.                
                     
                     
 adwww on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Who fixes the centralised log system when that needs debugging?                    
                     
 Unless prohibited in something like banking, following best practice to the letter is sometimes unacceptably slow for most industries.                  
                     
                     
 mlnj on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 There should be tools that allow the team to gather such logs. Direct prod access is a recipe for disaster.                   
                     
                     
 SteveNuts on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Not having those things centralized is also a huge operational failure regardless of company size.                   
                     
                     
 tasuki on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Why not? (I think I can find some cases where production access from an engineer's workstation is a good idea)                   
                     
                     
 alias_neo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It can be efficient, particularly in smaller companies, but that's where exactly this rule should be applied.                   
                     
 In some industries, security and customer requirements will at times mandate that developer workstations have no access to production. Deployments must even be carried out using different accounts than those used to access internal services, for security and auditing purposes.                
                     
 There are of course good reasons for this; accidents, malicious engineers, overzealous engineers, lost/stolen equipment, risk avoidance, etc.                  
                     
 When you apply this rule, it makes for more process and perhaps slower response times to problems, but accidents or other internal-related issues mentioned above drop to zero.                  
                     
 Given how easy it is to destroy things these days with a single misplaced Kubernetes or Docker command, safeguards need to be put in place.                  
                     
 Let me tell you a little story from my experience;                    
                     
 I built myself a custom keyboard from a Numpad kit. I had gotten tired of typing so many docker commands in every day and I had the desire to build something. I built this little numpad into a full blown Docker control centre using QMK. A single key-press could deploy or destroy entire systems.                
                     
 One day, something slid off of something else on my desk, onto said keyboard, pressing several of the keys while I happened to have an SSH session to a remote server in focus.                  
                     
 Suffice it to say, that little keyboard has never been seen since. On an unrelated topic, I don't have SSH access to production systems.                  
                     
                     
 mlnj on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This exactly. I have deleted database records from a production DB thinking I am executing on my development DB. I've kept separate credentials and revoked dev machine access to prod environment ever since.                 
                     
                     
 tasuki on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Congratulations - you found a counterexample yourself: engineers in small companies.                   
                     
                     
 solids on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Well, it's something that can happen to anyone, take it easy. When I made the transition from developer to manager and become responsible for this situations, at first every problem made me feel as you describe. Eventually what helped me to be free is the understanding that how we feel about a fact does not change anything about that fact.               
                     
                     
 cube00 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Don't be too hard on yourself, no dev works in a silo, there is usually user acceptance testing and product owner sign offs involved so they also have to wear some of this too.                  
                     
                     
 mrcus on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Nope, especially considering the implications of this, with the amount of people working remotely. Google Meet, Classroom, etc. are down. This is probably literally costing billions every minute just in loss of productivity.                 
                     
                     
 ants_a on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Total world economic output is ~$150M / minute, so billions every minute is off by few orders of magnitude.                   
                     
                     
 tzs on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 You are assuming that a minute of disruption can not cause more than a minute's loss of productivity. I don't think that assumption is justified.                  
                     
 Consider an exactly one minute outage that affects multiple things I use for work.                   
                     
 First, I may not immediately recognize that the outage is actually with some single service provider. If several things are out I'm probably going to suspect it is something on my end, or maybe with my ISP. I might spend several minutes thoroughly checking that possibility out, before noticing that whatever it was seems to have been resolved.               
                     
 Second, even if I immediately recognize it for what it is and immediately notice when it ends it might take me several minutes to get back to where I was. Not everything is designed to automatically and transparently recover from disruptions, and so I might have had things in progress when the outage stuck that will need manual cleanup and restarting.               
                     
                     
 ants_a on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I'm also assuming most of the world doesn't grind to a halt when gmail is down. Crops keep growing and factories keep running.                   
                     
                     
 itsrajju on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Even software engineers who are in a state of flow keep working :)                   
                     
                     
 rocho on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 That figure seems way too low, what are your sources on it?                    
                     
                     
 ascar on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Simple math says:                    
                     
 World GDP (via Google) $80,934,771,028,340                    
                     
 Minutes per year 365 * 24 * 60 = 525,600                    
                     
 Divide and you get 153,985,485                    
                     
                     
 HPsquared on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 World GDP is $80 trillion per year.                    
                     
                     
 rakoo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 World GDP was ~$90B last year ( https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf ), which averages to ~$150M/minute                   
                     
                     
 vultour on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 That's trillion not billion                    
                     
                     
 jrh206 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion                    
                     
 A billion is a number with two distinct definitions:                    
                     
 - 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10^9, as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both British and American English.                  
                     
 - 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10^12, as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion. This is the historical meaning in English and the current use in many non-English-speaking countries where billion and trillion 10^18 maintain their long scale definitions.               
                     
 Nevertheless almost everyone uses 1B = 10^9 for technical discussions                   
                     
                     
 ikt on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This is a financial discussion though so:                    
                     
 https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/                    
                     
 World's GDP is $80,934,771,028,340 (nominal, 2017).                    
                     
 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2480%2C934%2C771%2C02...                    
                     
 $80.93477102834 trillion                    
                     
 Nobody would argue world GDP is anything billion, that's crazy.                    
                     
                     
 selectodude on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_pays_par_PIB_nominal                    
                     
 In France, they use milliard and billion.                    
                     
                     
 rakoo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Sorry, language mistake. The result is the same: GDP is ~$150M/minute                   
                     
                     
 kerng on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 That depends where in the world you are!                    
                     
                     
 yashap on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Indeed. Also, Google’s revenue is about $300K per minute. The value they provide is likely higher than that, but as you said, being able to send an email an hour later than you hoped it’s fine in most cases. Also, Google Search was fine, and that’s their highest impact product.                
                     
 I’d guess actual losses to the world economy were more on the order of about $100K per minute, or about 1/3 of Google’s revenue. MAYBE a few hundred thousand per minute, though that seems unlikely with Search being unaffected, and everything else coming back. Certainly a far cry from billions per minute :)                
                     
                     
 demosito666 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I never understood this type of calculation as it implies that time is directly converted into money. However, I struggle to come up with an example for this. Even the most trivial labor cases like producing paperclips don't seem to be directly converting time into profit: even you will make 10k units instead of 100k this hour, you don't sell them immediately. They bring revenue to the firm via a long chain of convoluted contracts (both legal and "transactional") which are very loosely coupled to the immediate output.            
                     
 Nothing is operating at minute margins unless it's explicitly priced on a minutely basis, like a cloud service. Even if a worked on a conveyor belt can't produce paperclips without looking at Google Docs sheet all the time, this will be absorbed by the buffers down the line. And only if the worker will fail to meet her monthly target due to this, loss of revenue might occur. But in this case the service has to be down for weeks.              
                     
 In case of more complex conversions of time into money, like in the most of intellectual work, this is even less obvious that short downtimes will cause any measurable harm.                  
                     
                     
 PeterStuer on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Besides the exaggerated figure, I always find these claims bizarre. Sure, there was some momentary loss, but aggregated over a month this will not even register.                  
                     
                     
 optimalsolver on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I was unable to watch the Mogwai - Autorock music video. :-(                    
                     
                     
 Corrado on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 In a previous lifetime I removed an "unused" TLS certificate. It turns out that it was a production cert that was being used to secure a whole state's worth of computers.                  
                     
 In my defence, the cert was not labeled properly, nor was it used properly, and there was no documentation. It took us 2 days to create a new cert and apply it to our software and deliver it to the customer. Those were 2 days I'll never get back. However, when I was finished the process was documented and the cert was labeled, so I guess its a win.               
                     
                     
 ilikehurdles on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Coincidentally, Google Authenticator was finally just updated on iOS after many years without update.                   
                     
                     
 beyondcompute on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I am not sure why are they allowing it. Meaning why aren’t services completely isolated? Isn’t it obvious that in an intertwined environment those things are bound to happen (as in “question of when, not if”)? I understand, in smaller companies that are limited in resources (access to good developers and pressure to get product to market as soon as possible) we have single points of failure all over the place. But “the smartest developers on the planet”? What is it if not short-sighted disregard for risk management theories and practices? I mean, Calendar and Youtube, say, should be completely separate services hosted in different places, their teams should not even talk to each other. Yes, they can use same software components, frameworks and technologies. Standardization is very welcome. But decentralization should be an imperative.       
                     
 Edit: again downvotes started! Thanks to everyone “supporting freedom of expression” :)                   
                     
                     
 robotnikman on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I've been in that situation before at one of my previous jobs, where some important IT infrastructure when down for the whole company. Nowhere as big of a scale as this, but it was easily one of the most stressful moments of my life                 
                     
                     
 ojosilva on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 If this does not improve soon, we're looking at one of the most significant outages in recent internet history, at least from the number of people impacted.                  
                     
                     
 Diederich on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Several others have shared their 'I broke things' experiences, and so I feel compelled to weigh in.                   
                     
 Many years ago, I was directly responsible for causing a substantial percentage of all credit/debit/EBT authorizations from every WalMart store world-wide to time out, and this went on for several days straight.                 
                     
 On the ground, this kind of timeout was basically a long delay at the register. Back then, most authorizations would take four or five seconds. The timeout would add more than 15 seconds to that.                 
                     
 In other words, I gave many tens of millions of people a pretty bad checkout experience.                   
                     
 This stat (authorization time) was and remains something WalMart focuses quite heavily on, in real time and historically, so it was known right away that something was wrong. Yet it took us (Network Engineering) days to figure it out. The root cause summary: I had written a program to scan (parallelized) all of the store networks for network devices. Some of the addresses scanned were broadcast and network addresses, which caused a massive amplification of return traffic which flooded the satellite networks. Info about why it took so long to discover is below.            
                     
 Back in the 1990s, when this happened, all of the stores were connected to the home office via two way Hughes satellite links. This was a relatively bandwidth limited resource that was managed very carefully for obvious reasons.                 
                     
 I had just started and co-created the Network Management team with one other engineer. Basically prior to my arrival, there had been little systematic management of the network and network devices.                 
                     
 I realized that there was nothing like a robust inventory of either the networks or the routers and hubs (not switches!) that made up those networks.                  
                     
 We did have some notion of store numbers and what network ranges were assigned to them, but that was inaccurate in many cases.                   
                     
 Given that there were tens of thousands of networks ranges in question, I wrote a program creatively called 'psychoping' that would ICMP scan all of those network ranges with adjustable parallelism.                 
                     
 I ran it against the test store networks, talked it over with the senior engineers, and was cleared for takeoff.                   
                     
 Thing is, I didn't start it right away; some other things came up that I had to deal with. I ended up started it over a week after review.                  
                     
 Why didn't this get caught right away? Well, when timeouts started to skyrocket across the network, many engineers started working on the problem. None of the normal, typical problems were applicable. More troubling, none of the existing monitoring programs looked for ICMP at all, which is what I was using exclusively.                
                     
 So of course they immediately plugged a sniffer into the network and did data captures to see what was actually going on. And nothing unusual showed up, except a lot of drops.                  
                     
 We're talking > 20 years ago, so know that "sniffing" wasn't the trivial thing it is now. Network Engineering had a few extremely expensive Data General hardware sniffers.                  
                     
 And to these expensive sniffers, the traffic I was generating was invisible.                   
                     
 Two things: the program I wrote to generate the traffic had a small bug and was generating very slightly invalid packets. I don't remember the details, but it had something to do with the IP header.                 
                     
 These packets were correct enough to route through all of the relevant networks, but incorrect enough for the Data General sniffer to not see them.                  
                     
 So...there was a lot of 'intense' discussions between Network Engineering and all of the relevant vendors. (Hughes, ACC for the routers, Synoptics and ODS for the hubs)                  
                     
 In the end, a different kind of sniffer was brought in, which was able to see the packets I was generating. I had helpfully put my userid and desk phone number in the packet data, just in case someone needed to track raw packets back to me.                 
                     
 Though the impact was great, and it scared me to death, there were absolutely no negative consequences. WalMart Information Systems was, in the late 1990s, a very healthy organization.                  
                     
                     
 leonidasv on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Makes sense, at work we have an application running on Google Cloud and everything seems to be working. So the outage is probably not at network or infrastructure level.                  
                     
                     
 ikiris on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Went to reply, then saw the username. My guess was lb layer                    
                     
                     
 reddotX on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 yeah, not working in Europe                    
                     
                     
 hackernews1134 on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 4:41AM PT, Google services have been restored to my accounts (free & gsuite).                   
                     
 And I have never seen them load so fast before - gmail progress bar barely seen for a fraction of a second whereas I am more used to seeing it for multiple seconds (2-3 sec) until it loads.                  
                     
 I observe the same anecdotal speedup for other sites... drive, youtube, calendar. I wonder if they are throwing all the hardware they have at their services or I am encountering underutilized servers since it is not fixed for everyone.                 
                     
 It is nice to experience (even if it is short lived) the snappiness of Google services if they weren't so multi-tenented.                   
                     
                     
 cranekam on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 If this phenomenon is actually real instead of just perception then I'd guess it is down to reduced demand of some short. Some possibilities:                  
                     
 a) users haven't all come back yet b) Google is throttling how fast users can access services again to prevent further outages c) to reduce load, apps have features turned off (which might make things directly faster on the user's end or just reduce load on the server side)                
                     
                     
 hackernews1134 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 At Google's scale, I'd expect it to be all of the above.                    
                     
 I hope they make their learnings, post-mortem, etc. public so that we can all learn from it.                   
                     
 My engineer hat is saying - "damn, I wish I was part of fixing this outage at their scale."                   
                     
 My product owner hat is saying - "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...."                   
                     
 :D                    
                     
                     
 orzig on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Everything is snappier for a while if you turn it off and then on again                   
                     
                     
 faeyanpiraat on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Except when there is no cache warming when you turn it on                    
                     
                     
 nhlx2 on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Except when there is cache warming when you turn it on?                    
                     
                     
 q3k on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I would guess autoscaling kicked in (RPC error rate caused higher CPU usage?) and now things will scale back down again.                   
                     
                     
 tibbydudeza on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Perhaps they rebooted their clusters and it flushed the memory ???.                   
                     
                     
 rubatuga on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Oh man, you're right. Bloated gmail loaded instantly. What's going on? It's loading almost 2x to 3x faster.                   
                     
                     
 ithkuil on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Isn't this a good indication that the performance problem if gmail may not be related to the "bloat" of the frontend itself?                   
                     
                     
 yjftsjthsd-h on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It might suggest that the frontend isn't the only issue, at least - and maybe this explains why it's usually so slow, if the frontend can be fast on a fast enough backend. On the other hand, the speed of the "basic HTML" version implies that the frontend can be the issue.                
                     
                     
 savanaly on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Entirely possible as well that the "basic HTML" uses different API service in the background that are snappier for comparative lack of users.                  
                     
                     
 fleaaa on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I always thought gmail being slow is because of me using firefox but now it's surprisingly snappy. What the hell is going on?                   
                     
                     
 proto-n on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Wow, it's faster in firefox than it used to be in chrome... while in chrome it's almost isntanteneous                   
                     
                     
 Tenoke on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I wish it was always like this. I hate how slow YouTube, Gmail, etc. often are normally.                   
                     
                     
 roadnottaken on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I wonder if they just killed the affected service so it's loading faster-than-usual now                   
                     
                     
 jacquesm on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again?                  
                     
 Of course it will, - at least, it better - but what if it doesn't? And if it does, are you going to take countermeasures in case it happens again or is it just going to be 'back to normal' again?                 
                     
                     
 bonoboTP on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I guess a lot of people are fine with the risk.                    
                     
 Everybody uses it, so if, like, Gmail loses all the emails, we are then in such a state that the consequences will be more bearable and socially normal.                  
                     
 Most people are fine with accepting that whatever future thing will happen to most people will also happen to them. Because then the consequences will also be normal.                  
                     
 If the apocalypse comes, it comes for almost all of us and that's consolation enough.                   
                     
                     
 mizzao on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This sounds like the good old 1970-80s "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" argument.                   
                     
                     
 draugadrotten on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Still haven't heard of anyone being fired for buying IBM. Have you?                   
                     
                     
 thu2111 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Yeah but for the people making that argument, it was a good one!                    
                     
                     
 TomGullen on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 The way I see it, backups are a strategy to reduce risk of ruin.                    
                     
 For me, backing up to the Cloud is fine, because I find the risk of my home being broken into and everything stolen AND the cloud goes down AND the cloud services are completely unrecoverable is a small enough risk to tolerate.                 
                     
 I don't think it's possible to have permanently indestructible files in existence over a given time period.                   
                     
                     
 mbar84 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Different failure mode. If the cloud goes down, many more people are affected. If your self-hosted thing goes down, only you are affected. If everybody self-hosted, would the overall downtime be lower? Even if it were, would it be worth the effort of self-hosting?                
                     
                     
 bgilroy26 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 For baby pictures yes, for everything else, no                    
                     
                     
 forgotmypw17 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Most of the things I backed up for myself are either gone forever or irretrievably lost.                   
                     
 Most of the things I backed up with google remain largely accessible, except for an occasion like this.                   
                     
 It's rare that any services I operate solo come back this quickly after there is a downing issue.                   
                     
                     
 cuspycode on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I have the opposite experience, at least with regard to your first two paragraphs. Most of the things that I have backed up on other people's computers over the past 3-4 decades are irretrievably lost. But most of the things that I have taken care to make backups of on personal equipment over the years, are still with me.               
                     
 Cloud storage is still useful of course, but I prefer to view it as a cache rather than as a dependable backup.                   
                     
                     
 smarx007 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Of course it's viable as a backup. Availability != realibility. My data is still reliably saved in the cloud even if there is an outage for a few hours. The key point is backup, e.g. Dropbox. When you use Google Docs, it becomes a single source of truth and a SPOF.                
                     
                     
 techphys_91 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This depends on the circumstances. If your personal photos are unaccessible then maybe it doesn't matter, but if it's your documentation for a mission critical bit of infrastructure then a few hours could be very significant. Somebody in that situation probably wouldn't agree with your assertion that "availability != reliability". If I can't access it when I need it then I wouldn't consider it reliable.              
                     
                     
 V-2 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Whatever data I have backed up in the cloud is synced across multiple devices that I use. Even if the cloud disappeared altogether, I still have it. The cloud allows me to keep an up to date copy across various devices.                 
                     
                     
 krono on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Both Google Drive/Photos and OneDrive have an option to only keep recently used files on your local device, and even periodically suggest they automatically remove local copies of unused files to "free up space".                 
                     
 I highly suggest everyone disable this setting on their own, but also on their (perhaps less technical) friends' and relatives' devices. Otherwise, if anything happens to your account or - less likely - the storage provider or their hardware, your data could very well be gone forever. I can't believe anyone would want that.               
                     
                     
 kaszanka on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 You don't need 'the cloud' to do that. Look into Syncthing. It does depend on an outside "discovery server" by default to enable syncing outside of your LAN, but you can run your own.                  
                     
 https://syncthing.net/                    
                     
                     
 elcomet on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 What's annoying is that synchronisation does't work for google slides or google docs. They are just synchronized as links to the webpage on my computer.                  
                     
                     
 pedro2 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 If you use Insync you have the option of converting to DOCX or ODT. Insync has other issues though, my "sourcetreeconfig" is being downloaded as "sourcetreeconfig.xml".                  
                     
                     
 V-2 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Not 100% on that, but I think you can save these documents on Google Drive, and then they're treated (and synced) just like any other files.                  
                     
                     
 coldtea on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again?                  
                     
 Much less chance of that happening than my local backups getting borked...                   
                     
                     
 jacquesm on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 But much higher than the chances of both of them getting borked.                    
                     
                     
 matkoniecz on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Of course cloud is a viable back up, similarly to physical drives.                   
                     
 Both have vastly different failure modes and typical backup should use both of them.                   
                     
 This way if all my backups are gone I likely have way more important issues that loss of files.                   
                     
 (and yes, my backups are encrypted)                    
                     
                     
 griffiths on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Just a few moments ago, I wrote in my company's group chat this is the time when we buy NAS. We have a lot of documents not accessible right now in Google Drive.                  
                     
                     
 jacquesm on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Clever.                    
                     
                     
 oAlbe on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 What worries me the most is email. I basically don't use any other Google services other than Gmail and YouTube, but for email I really don't know of an alternative.                  
                     
 Sure you can argue "move to Fastmail/Protonmail/Hey/whatever", but those can also go down on you just like Google is down now. And self hosting email is apparently not a thing due to complexity and having to forever fight with being marked as spam (ndr.: not my personal experience, I never tried self hosting, just relying what I read here on HN when the topic comes up).               
                     
 So, yeah, what do we do about email? I feel like we should have a solution to this by now, but somehow we don't.                   
                     
                     
 tomschwiha on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I've been happy with using Hosted Exchange on Microsoft. I own the domain so ultimately I can point the DNS to some other provider. Outlook stores the mails locally so I have a backup. I think the most important thing about E-Mail is to receive future E-Mails and not look at historical ones. In the end you can always ask the receipent to send you a copy of the email conversation - if you dont own the domain it get much harder to convince you actually own the email.             
                     
                     
 fortran77 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 For < $100/year, Microsoft will sell you hosted Exchange (and you can use it with up to 900 domains [0]), 1 TB of storage, 2 installable copies of Office, and Office 365 on-line.                  
                     
 That's _much_ better than trying to host my own email server.                    
                     
 [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptio...                   
                     
                     
 beshrkayali on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 The point is that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. All services go down. If you're worried about someone else handling it when it goes down then host your own [1], otherwise you can use something different for each thing you need. Don't rely on Google for everything.                
                     
 1- https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#ema...                   
                     
                     
 oAlbe on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Yes, I know what's the point. But how do you avoid putting all your eggs in one basket? You can't host your email on more than one "provider" (including self host), and the vast majority of important services that you link your email to (bank, digital identity, taxes and other government services) does not allow you to have more than one linked to it; which means, that one goes down, you don't have one. Sure, I can give my accountant and my lawyer a second email address, hosted on a different provider, but that poses two problems: 1. how are they gonna know when one is working and one isn't? It's not like you get a notification if your email didn't reach most of the time, it just drops; 2. if you always send all emails to both addresses, now two providers have my data instead of one (of course excluding if one is self hosted). And you also need to always keep in mind that for all things important: one is none, two is one; so you should really have 3 addresses on 3 different providers according to that, which brings us back to the problems above. (and I'm not even mentioning the confusion that it would generate if you don't manage to get the same name with every provider "Wait, was it beshrkayali@gmail.com, or was it alibeshrkay@gmail.com? Or was that fastmail?")
                     
 As I said (literally in the second sentence), I don't rely on Google for everything, as you mention. I don't actually rely on Google for anything other than gmail, and of that I am also unhappy. The point I was trying to make is that there aren't really alternatives, and I was hoping someone might come out with a suggestion about how to overcome that problem.               
                     
                     
 beshrkayali on Dec 16, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 You shouldn't use you@company.com as your main email, you should have your own domain. So `something@yourdomain.com` will always be yours no matter if you self host or use 3rd party. I currently use Fastmail and i've been very happy with them. If they fail or turn evil, I'll switch to something else maintaining the same address. Emails themselves should be downloaded/backed-up regularly, kind of like important documents you'd have on your disk.              
                     
                     
 igetspam on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > You can't host your email on more than one "provider"                    
                     
 You can do split delivery and have your email be delivered to two different destinations. It's less common than it used to be but it's trivial.                  
                     
                     
 NorwegianDude on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I'm running my own mail server, and I think anyone who has some experience with Linux should be able to do the same in a day or two. Once it's set up it just works.                  
                     
 You can still use Gmail and fall back to connecting directly to your server if Gmail is down.                   
                     
 Some mails might be flagged as spam if the IP/domain has no reputation, but that quickly passes, at least that's my experience.                   
                     
                     
 treesknees on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I specifically use Gsuite so that I don't have to deal with managing a spam filter or dealing with IP reputation issues. I'd be willing to self-host almost anything else.                  
                     
                     
 robertlagrant on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I guess something highly resilient would be - say - a mailserver on a rented VM replicating to two cloud providers via a service mesh.                  
                     
 Nice and simple! :D                    
                     
                     
 swiley on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 A lot of domain registrars will host/relay mail for you if you don't want to think about it. Otherwise it's not too hard to host yourself. The sucky part is when it breaks because you can't really just put off fixing it.                 
                     
                     
 dankerr on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I've been using mailu.io to host my own email server. Makes it real easy to manage yourself.                   
                     
 I haven't had any issues with new domains being marked as spam, but I always make sure the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are set up.                  
                     
                     
 krallja on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I’ve heard multiple founders argue that it’s safe to have downtime because of a cloud outage, because you’re not likely to be the highest importance service that your customers use that also had downtime.                 
                     
                     
 Cthulhu_ on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Well yeah; I don't trust myself enough to own & operate my own servers, and I cannot give myself any uptime guarantees - let alone at the scale that a cloud provider can offer me.                  
                     
                     
 rakoo on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 "The Cloud" is vague, and if you don't specify what it means then the answer to your question can only be "it depends".                   
                     
 If the question is "anybody still feel like arguing that 'a single provider' is a viable back-up" then it's yes for most cases. A better strategy is of course to use multiple providers. The chances that it never comes back again is much lower.                 
                     
                     
 xyst on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 People would probably argue a “multi cloud” solution. Have your infrastructure be “cloud agnostic” and this sort of problem would be avoided.                  
                     
 There was actually a project called “spinnaker” that was supposed to solve this problem.                   
                     
 Whether the cost of paying 2 or more cloud providers is worth it for most companies is up in the air.                   
                     
                     
 papito on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 "Multi-cloud" only works if you stick with the basics. Like disk storage, compute, and a well-supported database. Once you tie in into a cloud's specific offerings.....                  
                     
                     
 __s on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It's getting convoluted now that cloud providers seem to realize there's demand for this                   
                     
 https://aws.amazon.com/hybrid https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-arc https://cloud.google.com/anthos                   
                     
 Full disclosure: I work for Azure. Don't work on Arc tho. Don't have experience being a customer for these products                   
                     
                     
 robertlagrant on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I find the Anthos docs and talks so confusing. Half of them say Anthos is for hybrid between on-prem and GCP. The other half say it's for multicloud and hybrid.                  
                     
                     
 SAI_Peregrinus on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Well, since a viable backup strategy requires at least 3 storage locations (eg the in-use primary, an on-site or off-site backup, and a secondary off-site backup) "the cloud" is fine as an off-site backup or secondary off-site backup.                 
                     
                     
 ignoramous on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Let's hope tailscale swoops in and creates a no-gimmicks, highly usable, private internet for everyone.                   
                     
 They seemed to have figured out the hard parts already.                    
                     
                     
 kerneis on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 You mean like using Google GSuite for SSO? In the context of this authentication-related outage, it's a funny suggestion.                   
                     
 https://tailscale.com/kb/1013/sso-providers                    
                     
                     
 robertlagrant on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > Of course it will, - at least, it better - but what if it doesn't?                   
                     
 Same question for non-cloud.                    
                     
                     
 dageshi on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Back to normal. I can live without email for an hour...                    
                     
                     
 vineyardmike on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Help! My Waymo taxi won't open the doors without me logging into the app. Its driving around in circles on route 500 and won't stop.                  
                     
 /s - for now ;)                    
                     
                     
 derwiki on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I know you’re joking, but I am curious if Waymo’s fleet was affected. Shouldn’t be right? But I’m also surprised every time I fresh login to Gmail and YouTube shows up in the intermediary redirect chain.                 
                     
                     
 xdavidliu on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 how's the converted offshore oil platform treating you?                    
                     
                     
 have_faith on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Gmail said my account was "temporarily" unavailable... had a moment considering if it wasn't temporary. Good reminder to remove my reliance on gmail especially.                  
                     
                     
 cvrjk on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 For a second I legit thought Google banned my account for some reason. And I don't like it that I feel relieved..                   
                     
                     
 sn41 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Underrated comment. If the government freezes your bank account, at least you can take them to court. If Google mistakenly disables your account, there does not seem to be any legal recourse. Considering the extent to which people depend on their services, perhaps there should be a more elaborate appeal process.                
                     
                     
 noir_lord on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 They can freeze the account but I own the domain so I can point it anywhere I want and I have copies locally via imap.                   
                     
 At this point the only reason I use it is because I grandfathered in on an old plan it's still free, if that changes I'll go elsewhere.                  
                     
                     
 rightbyte on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Google doesn't disable ordinary rulefollowing accounts by mistake. They are aware of the false positive rate and don't care.                   
                     
                     
 sn41 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I agree, but the problem is that "ordinary rulefollowing" is not clearly defined by Google. Perhaps it was that innocent park frisbee party video with a Metallica sound played in the background by some other party there... and not only your video, but also your YouTube account, and worse, email account gets blocked. Maybe this scenario is dystopian - the point is that it is a black-box no-appeal/limited appeal system when such an event happens.              
                     
                     
 sellyme on Dec 15, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Google account terminations typically only affect the one service. If your YouTube account gets terminated for ToS violations, your email account will still work perfectly fine.                  
                     
                     
 tomglynch on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Same for me - and then I tried logging in to gmail in an incognito window and got "Couldn't find your Google account" which really scared me.                  
                     
                     
 JorgeGT on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Time to stop postponing that large Google Takeout for me!                    
                     
                     
 alpineidyll3 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Clicking the stupid download links is so tedious...                    
                     
                     
 tux3 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Thunderbird prompting me to login, and getting "Google does not recognize this email address" as a reply was a nice adrenaline spike, until I checked the status on HN!                  
                     
                     
 lioeters on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 This happened to me with a work email. For a moment I thought, "Well, I had a good run at this company.." My next thought was, "Ha, Google must be down - better check HackerNews."                  
                     
                     
 BugWatch on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I am still experiencing this problem on all my synced-to-Thunderbird Gmail accounts, so it either hasn't been completely fixed yet, or there's another ongoing issue.                  
                     
                     
 emilburzo on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I started this[1] the last time something similarly scary happened.                   
                     
 It's very comforting to have a local copy of everything important in situations like this one.                   
                     
 [1] https://wiki.emilburzo.com/backing-up-your-google-digital-li...                   
                     
                     
 timvisee on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Yes! It takes some work to switch, but it's worth it. Buy your own domain name, and link it to an existing service if you don't want to host yourself. You'll always be able to switch your mail alias when having issues with your email host.                 
                     
                     
 telesilla on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Our entire library of video tutorials disappeared for a while. I was not happy, and the thought of losing our email.. Currently working with the team to make backups of absolutely everything off-site and off-Google. A good wake up call for us.                 
                     
                     
 imperfectcats on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 https://console.cloud.google.com/ is down as well. Seems very much an identity issue.                   
                     
                     
 Ekaros on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I really should try to get my stuff moved to my new address. Not self-hosted, but a non-profit that has been around for a while... Finally paid the membership fee.                  
                     
                     
 Avalaxy on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 The status page has proven itself useless again. According to that page, everything is working perfectly fine.                   
                     
                     
 kiechu on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 What if it is a static website of corporate propaganda?                    
                     
                     
 username90 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It works 99.9% of the time, good enough eh?                    
                     
                     
 RupertEisenhart on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 better than a stopped clock                    
                     
                     
 daliusd on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It works fine. You can't login only.                    
                     
                     
 kabes on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 When I tried to login it said: 'this account does not exist'. So my first thought was some algorithm made a mistake and my account got deleted for no reason.                  
                     
 I already imagined the only solution now was to write a medium post and hope it gets some traction on hackernews and google support steps in. Thinking to myself I was an idiot for knowing all this and still thinking it wouldn't happen to me.                 
                     
 And even though it turns out to be an outage, it gave me a bad enough feeling to start using a domain name I own for my email.                   
                     
                     
 burnthrow on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Those hosting with their own domains on Google mail had an identical experience, if it makes you feel differently.                   
                     
                     
 archi42 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 The advantage of a custom domain name is: As long as you can update DNS records, you can have your mail easily hosted elsewhere.                   
                     
 Obviously not relevant for this kind of outage, but in the scenario outlined by GP - Google randomly kills you off, and there is nothing you can do - this is at least an emergency strategy.                  
                     
                     
 kabes on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Yep, but losing access to my emails isn't that big of a deal, losing access to my email address is much worse. Especially since it's also my login on a lot of other services.                  
                     
                     
 js4ever on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 This topic is so hot it's crashing HN! Super long server response time and I get this error quite oftenly: "We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!"                  
                     
                     
 tosh on Dec 14, 2020 | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Just checked https://www.google.com/appsstatus                    
                     
 all green, which does not reflect reality for me (e.g. Gmail is down)                   
                     
 edit: shows how incredibly difficult introspection is                    
                     
                     
 faeyanpiraat on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 HN is my goto status page when these things happen, never failed to provide up-to-date reliable information.                   
                     
                     
 polote on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Seems like everyone going on HN now. The site is so slow                    
                     
                     
 davnicwil on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Interesting cascade effect of sites going down! I wonder where people will go next to check if HN is down?                   
                     
 Also wondering if this is perhaps the fastest upvoted HN post ever? 8 mins -> ~350 votes, 15 mins -> ~750 votes. I wonder if @dang could chime in with some stats?                  
                     
 Update: looks like it hit 1000 upvotes in ~25 mins!                    
                     
 Update: 1500 in ~40 mins                    
                     
 Update: 2000 in ~1 hour 20 mins (used the HN API for the timestamp)                   
                     
                     
 TonyTrapp on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 The recent youtube-dl takedown had a similar number of votes but still slightly slower, I think. I think it was >500 in 30min and >1000 in 60min if I remember correctly.                  
                     
                     
 Macha on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Some politics topics have shot up pretty quickly in the past but user and/or mod flags send them back to page 2 about as quickly.                   
                     
                     
 throwawaylolx on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Funny this post is already #7. Are we seeing many reports again?                    
                     
 Stats right now: 1985 points | 1 hour ago | 597 comments                    
                     
                     
 Macha on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Maybe, could have just seen a dropoff in upvotes once the issue was resolved also                   
                     
                     
 SSLy on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 reddit, nanog, 4chan, twitter — pick your poison                    
                     
                     
 _lffv on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 "poison" is a particularly apt description for all of the above                    
                     
                     
 mrtksn on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > I wonder where people will go next to check if HN is down?                    
                     
 Probably: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/                    
                     
                     
 ksec on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 HN was having problem showing anything for the past 10 min or so. I was going to ask if HN was down, then I saw this.                   
                     
                     
 marcbarbosa on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 HN uses Firebase, maybe that is the reason.                    
                     
                     
 qwertox on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Does this site also use Firebase, or do they only feed Firebase's Database so that other developers can build upon it?                   
                     
                     
 ratww on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Any source for that? Last information I have is that it's written in Arc Lisp and uses files rather than a database for storage.                   
                     
 There is a public API on Firebase, but AFAIR it's just a mirror rather than the main storage.                   
                     
                     
 rmujica on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 TIL. What for?                    
                     
                     
 porkbrain on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 The very least public APIs are exposed via firebase.                    
                     
 https://github.com/HackerNews/API                    
                     
                     
 tuxone on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Accessing the site anonymously fixes it (logged sessions are not chaced)                   
                     
                     
 sammorrowdrums on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I, and probably many others here are like a status page for friends and family too... I had my wife thinking that the internet was broken, and tried tethering to phone and things and still didn't work, then showed me and I saw the status code errors and was like "it's actually parts of Google that are down".                
                     
 I love (and am deeply scared by) the dependence of Google and the confusion of it with the entire internet.                   
                     
                     
 throwawaylolx on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It gets even worse: https://twitter.com/joemfbrown/status/1338452107419148290                   
                     
 >I’m sitting here in the dark in my toddler’s room because the light is controlled by @Google Home. Rethinking... a lot right now.                  
                     
 Some people are compiling more relevant events: https://twitter.com/internetofshit                   
                     
                     
 fileeditview on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I still like my physical switch on the wall to turn the light on and off very much.. for me it's hard to beat. I can even turn it on/off semi-remotely with e.g. a tennis ball.                  
                     
                     
 i_am_new_here on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 If my Alexa fails, then I can also just turn the light off with the switch and when flipped back "on" again , then it will be on.                   
                     
 Fallback to 'classical mode' works for me.                    
                     
                     
 mlindner on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 If your home automation system requires a network connection to work then something is very wrong.                   
                     
                     
 m4rtink on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Right? Home automation is perfectly fine and mught even expose a secure authenticated API to the internet so you can say check and adjust the temperature remotely, but it shoukd never ever go down for lical use if the Internet connectivity or the remote service backend goes down.                
                     
                     
 tibu on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Home Assistant rulez with non-cloud sensors. I never by sensors, cameras, switches which require connection to an external host. But I'm sure that most people will do it even with such outages too.                 
                     
                     
 throwawaylolx on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 For many others it seems: https://i.ibb.co/ns8DgGq/Screenshot-2020-12-14-at-12-10-17.p...                   
                     
                     
 jansan on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Google should write an AI application that checks on HN if their systems are working and display the result live on their status page. That would be more reliable than the current system they have in place (which is obviously not working at all).                 
                     
                     
 jaimex2 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 It would probably just end up banning Googles own account and leave them with no human escalation option.                   
                     
                     
 gostsamo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 won't help when the ai service itself is down.                    
                     
                     
 ketamine__ on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 There are other sites that can check for you                    
                     
                     
 fny on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 https://downdetector.com/ is remarkably good at catching this too.                   
                     
 But funnily enough, a lot of the votes come from traffic that searches for "is ____ down?" on Google. XD                   
                     
                     
 alarmingfox on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 https://downdetector.com/search/?q=google shows all the Google services and seems like everything other than search is reporting errors                  
                     
                     
 londons_explore on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Even search seems to have issues. It can't seem to find rare pages at all, and ranking seems subpar for the past 15 minutes or so.                  
                     
                     
 konschubert on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I think that's normal. ;)                    
                     
                     
 Intermernet on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Amusingly, downdetector.com is now down. Gotta love that cascade effect :-)                   
                     
                     
 wjdp on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Found this relatively recently, seems to do a good job.                    
                     
 Do love how more consumer services (ISPs &c) always have some report of being down somewhere but its means nothing unless there's a big spike.                  
                     
                     
 pupdogg on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 What's the point of having a status page when it can't reliably tell you the factual status?                   
                     
                     
 woofie11 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Helps Google meet a 99.999% SLA!                    
                     
                     
 koheripbal on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Not really since now it's up, and the status page still says it's down.                   
                     
                     
 keithnoizu on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 right after I shamed them on twitter. I take responsibility despite it unlikely having any impact.                   
                     
                     
 oneeyedpigeon on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Especially one that breaks the back button.                    
                     
                     
 jaimex2 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Customer confidence. Same as how everyone reports they have 99.99% uptime.                   
                     
                     
 petre on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Then their status page is not unlike like target reporting in the USSR: completely fictional.                   
                     
                     
 phaer on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 From personal experience and other Ops peoples stories, I'd assume that could be the case for many status pages ;)                   
                     
                     
 szatkus on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It's red already.                    
                     
                     
 s_dev on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 No -- it needs to be red when it's having the outage for people to have confidence in it as an indicator. The reality is Google have no real incentive to provide an actual external status page that is accurate -- to do so is an admission of not upholding SLAs. These status pages are updated retrospectively. Use a third party one like DownDetector.               
                     
                     
 espadrine on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It is all green if you do not need to be logged in .                    
                     
 If you are logged in, the page crashes with an error.                    
                     
 You can still browse all services from Incognito (which for some is not an option).                   
                     
                     
 skinnymuch on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Are you saying the Google status page is correct then? Being logged in is part of being green I’d think.                   
                     
 Also, you can’t use many parts of Gmail, Drive, Photos, etc, without being logged in.                   
                     
                     
 wffurr on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I think it just means the status page itself is not logged in. Apparently it should be...                   
                     
                     
 fireattack on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Try YouTube, which is totally broken.                    
                     
 But I guess it's technically not part of /appsstatus                    
                     
                     
 thunderrabbit on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Youtube is down for me if I am logged in. I can watch videos through duckduckgo search or an icognito window.                   
                     
                     
 Intermernet on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 YT seems to be working in Incognito / Private mode.                    
                     
                     
 fireattack on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Ah, thanks!                    
                     
 Kinda weird it would totally break if the auth failed, unlike other services like Search.                   
                     
                     
 nkozyra on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Youtube Tv too                    
                     
                     
 shawabawa3 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 youtube is working in incognito mode                    
                     
                     
 eddytrex_ on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Yeah for me too: youtube and gmail works in incognito mode                    
                     
                     
 oneeyedpigeon on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 > gmail works in incognito mode                    
                     
 I mean, that must be a generous definition of "works"! :)                    
                     
                     
 eddytrex_ on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Yeah xD                    
                     
                     
 eddytrex_ on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Is HN having issues too?                    
                     
                     
 deepujames on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 drive too.                    
                     
                     
 Kye on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Google made everyone get an account trying to force Google+ on to everyone. They don't get to pretend like that didn't happen by not factoring it into their status.                  
                     
                     
 randompwd on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 This is not true. i am logged in to gmail and getting 500 err                    
                     
 edit:parent updated comment                    
                     
                     
 stavros on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 That's what the GP is saying.                    
                     
                     
 randompwd on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 the parent comment to mine at time of writing was just:                    
                     
 > It is all green if you do not need to be log in.                    
                     
 Giving the impression if you were logged in/didn't need to log in, that everything would be ok.                   
                     
                     
 espadrine on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 I apologize for my ambiguous phrasing, and I feel bad that you were downvoted (I reupvoted you, but that’s only one vote).                   
                     
 I wrote too fast because I thought it could help people work around the problem.                   
                     
                     
 stavros on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Oh, I see. Looks like their auth (state) servers are down.                    
                     
                     
 senko on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It reflects the reality for them.                    
                     
 The small print says: The problem with Gmail should be resolved for the vast majority of affected users. We will continue to work towards restoring service for the remaining affected users...                  
                     
 At Google scale, "remaining affected users" probably number in tens of millions. Sucks to be one of them, tho.                   
                     
 But hey, it happens. As a SaaS maintainer, I can sympathise with any SREs involved in handling this, and know that no service can be up 100% of the time.                  
                     
                     
 entropie on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Everything went red just now.                    
                     
                     
 numpad0 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Someone here in hn said at Amazon AWS they are required direct CTO approvals to reflect negative realities. Maybe that’s the case for anyone these days.                  
                     
                     
 ThrawsAway on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Not true. Only for written things like postmortems. Automated systems need to be vetted but can update things like status pages on their own.                  
                     
 The issue isn't "negative" realities, it is saying something while investigating that might break contracts only to find later that it wasn't true.                  
                     
                     
 prof-dr-ir on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Mistakes happen... that page is probably still correct 99,9999% of the time!                   
                     
 /s                    
                     
                     
 rightbyte on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 These uptime numbers cloud providers gives out can't be nowhere near actual uptime.                   
                     
                     
 TimMeade on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Solid red now. Everything down                    
                     
                     
 crosspanda on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Definitely i agree with you. Although the statuses are updated later, it may cause many problems if it is not instantaneous.                   
                     
                     
 jim-greer on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It's correct for me now                    
                     
                     
 skinnymuch on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Pretty funny. I would normally assume they are connected to some testing unit that real users interface with. Vs internal APIs or however Google is doing this with them still being green                  
                     
                     
 oneeyedpigeon on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Everything red now: clean sweep                    
                     
                     
 akmittal on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It started showing red now                    
                     
                     
 allie1 on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Now it's all red                    
                     
                     
 papacho on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 everything is red now.                    
                     
                     
 biozdilek on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 its not green anymore                    
                     
                     
 INTPenis on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I don't think it's difficult, I think they just lie.                    
                     
 Monitoring is very simple, I even learned this from a document released by the Google devops team many years ago.                   
                     
 Always alert from the end user perspective. So in other words have an external server test login to Gmail. Simple as that.                   
                     
 They manually update that status page to not scare away stockholders.                   
                     
                     
 abalos on Dec 14, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 Out of curiosity, what response time do you expect on a page like that? And what level of detail? I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.                 
                     
                     
 JimDabell on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 > what response time do you expect on a page like that?                    
                     
 Faster than a free third-party website’s response time. Google should know they are down and tell people about it before Hacker News, Twitter, etc. Google should be the source of truth for Google service status, not social media.                 
                     
 > And what level of detail?                    
                     
 Enough to not tell people that there are “No issues” with services.                   
                     
 > I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.                  
                     
 Google employs enough people to do both.                    
                     
                     
 RichWalton on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I'd expect that status page to be automated based on a number of metrics / health checks. Our equivalent is.                   
                     
                     
 wbhart on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 I'd expect within seconds that Google is alerted of a very large number of issues with their servers and that the status page would be updated (the green light going to red) within seconds. It's now quite some time after the start of the outage and everything is still green on that status page.                
                     
                     
 throwawaylolx on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 How many employees do you think Google has? Do you think they're all working on the same task?                   
                     
                     
 pjc50 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 Well, probably a lot of them are sitting around doing nothing because Google's down right now.                   
                     
                     
 edf13 on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It's a big group of teams... one team is responsible for monitoring (And status reporting) alone                   
                     
                     
 ric2b on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 > I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.                  
                     
 It's not like they would be working on the status page right now, that work should have been done a long time ago...                   
                     
                     
 vineyardmike on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 If they know its broken, one of the _many_ engineers/support across Youtube+Gmail+etc that are all known to be down related to this bug should be able to update it in first few minutes. Especially if this isn't a 5 min fix.                 
                     
                     
 kalleboo on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 It should be faster than it takes TechCrunch to write an article about it                   
                     
                     
 robertlagrant on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]                    
                     
 TechCrunch don't need to verify anything.                    
                     
                     
 havetocharge on Dec 14, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                    
                     
 There should be enough people on that to communicate out as well as resolve.                   
                     
                     
                     
 502 more comments...                    
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
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Google outage – resolved      
 2316 points by abluecloud on Dec 14, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 827 comments 
  
        various services are broken - youtube returning error - gmail returning 502 - docs returning 500 - drive not working status page now reflecting outage: https://www.google.com/appsstatus  -------------- services look to be restored.      
     
        
     If all 6 million G Suite customers, with an average number of users at 25 per G Suite account, paying the $20/user fee, requested the three day credit for this breach in the SLA contract for the outage, it'd cost Google about 300 million dollars.Which is .22% of there COH this quarter...
    
    
    
        
     Your nines or their nines?I bet if you personally can't use it, but their overall reliability meets the bar, then they're within SLA. Don't ask why I know this.
    
    
        
      
 You know there are companies who build crawlers or health check agents exactly for this purpose, so that they know precisely from when to when the service they pay or they need for their business doesn't work and went out of SLA. I think it's brilliant and the only way to make any company pay. 
I believe you can sometimes get away with a couple of pingdom checks/jobs.   
    
    
        
     I don't know how it works in such cases, I mean, this is publicly known that there was an outage.What I believe is that customers will probably get free GCP credits and that's it, everything is good as before.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 not an announcement, seems like just a statement. I assume an official statement will come with the post mortem blog post in the next few days.   
    
    
    
    
        
     This topic just came up recently on a podcast I was on where someone said a large service was down for X amount of time and the service being down tanked his entire business while it was down for days. But he was compensated in hosting credits for the exact amount of down time for the 1 service that caused the issue. It took so long to resolve because it took support a while to figure out it was their service, not his site.So then I jokingly responded with that being like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!". If your SLA agreement is only for precisely calculated credits, that's not really going to help in the grand scheme of things.
    
    
        
     I like your anecdote, I might steal that one.IANAL, but I negotiate a lot of enterprise SaaS agreements. When considering the SLA, it is important to remember it is a legal document, not an engineering one. It has engineering impact and is up to engineering to satisfy, but the actual contents of it are better considered when wearing your lawyer hat, not your engineering one. e.g., What you're referring to is related to the limitation of liability clauses and especially "special" or "consequential" damages -- a category of damages that are not 'direct' damages but secondary. [1] Accepting _any_ liability for special or consequential damages is always a point of negotiation. As a service provider, you always try to avoid it because it is so hard to estimate the magnitude, and thus judge how much insurance coverage you need. Related, those paragraphs also contain a limitation of liability clause, often at capped at X times annual cost. Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them. This is just scratching the surface -- tons of color and depth here that is nuanced for every company and situation. It's why you employe attorneys! 1 - https://www.lexisnexis.com/lexis-practical-guidance/the-jour...
    
    
        
     &gt; Doesn't make much sense to sign up a client for $10k per year but accept $10M+ liability exposure for them.Businesses do this all the time, this is how they make money. And they use a combination of insurance and not %@$#@*! up.
    
    
        
      
 I've never seen an SLA that compensates for anything more than credit off your bill. I can't imagine a service that pays for loss of productivity, one outage and the whole company could be bankrupt. If your business depends on a cloud service for productivity you should have a backup plan if that service goes down.   
    
        
     I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue etc, but something like Slack's SLA[0] seems like it's moving in the right direction. They guarantee a 99.99% uptime (max downtime of 4 min/22 seconds per month) and give 10x credits for any downtime.Granted, there's probably not many businesses that are losing major revenue because slack's down for half an hour, but it's nice to at least see them acknowledge that 1 minute down deserves more than 1 minute of refunds! [0] https://slack.com/terms/service-level-agreement
    
    
        
      &gt; I haven't seen one (at least for a SaaS company) that will compensate for loss of productivity/revenue They won't show up on automated systems aimed at SMEs, but anybody taking out an "enterprise plan" with tailored pricing from a SaaS, will likely ask for tailored SLA conditions too (or rather should ask for them).
    
    
        
      
 It's hard to give a compensation for profit loss, as then you would have to know the profit of the customer beforehand and put an adequate pricing including that risk. It's almost like insurance!   
    
        
      
 In financial markets I have seen SLA's where you will make people whole on the losses they incur due to downtime you inflict on them.   
    
        
     Seems like you want insurance. As with the hospital bill you'd generally be paying a bunch of extra money for your health insurance plan to not get stuck with the bill.Not sure that exists for businesses, but I'd expect you'd need to go shopping separately if you want that. Seems like a good business idea if it doesn't exist.
    
    
        
     I think the idea here is that if the payment for SLA breach is just "don't pay for the time we were down" or (as I've seen in other SLAs) "half off during the time we were down" that doesn't feel like much of an incentive on the service provider.They have other incentives, obviously, like if everyone talks about how Google is down then that's bad for future business. But when thinking of SLAs I'm always surprised when they're not more drastic. Like "over 0.1% downtime: free service for a month".
    
    
        
      
 Independent 'a service was down' insurance isn't the same though. It is important for the cost to come out of the provider's pocket, thus giving them a huge financial incentive to not be down. Having that incentive in place is the most important part of an SLA.   
    
        
      
 Even with insurance, some of the cost will come out of the provider's pockets - as increased premiums at renewal (or even immediately, in some cases). Insurers might also force other onerous conditions on the provider as a prerequisite for continued coverage.   
    
        
     I hear you, but there's going to be a cost for that. For the sake of argument, say Google changes the SLA as you wish and ups the cost of their offering accordingly.Would they gain or lose market share? I don't think it's obvious one way or the other.
    
    
        
     &gt; . . . like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!".It's even slightly worse than that. SLAs generally refund you for the prorated portion of your monthly fee the service was out, so it's more like "here's a gift card for the exact value of the single dish we've determined caused your food poisoning." Hehe.
    
    
    
        
      
 Completely agree with your analogy but have you ever seen any SLA that provides any additional liability? I haven't seen them - you are stuck either relying on hosting services SLA or DIY.   
    
        
     I cannot share details for the obvious reason, but yes - there are SLAs signed into contract directly behind the scenes which result in automatic payouts of a condition isn't met and it's not a simple credit.Enterprise level SLAs are crafted by lawyers in negotiations behind the scenes and are not the same as what you see on random public services. Our customers have them with us, and we have them with our vendors. Contract negotiations take months at the $$$$ level.
    
    
        
      
 That is a fair point. Is this a situation where you asymmetrically powerful? I have to imagine you would have considerable clout to represent a fair bit of their revenue in order to dictate terms. When I wrote my comment it was in the vein of a smaller organization.   
    
        
      
 I am but a technical cog in the machine my friend, while I know about what goes on in business and contract negoatiations I cannot comment on power dynamics. I would assume it's like any other negotiation - whomever has the greatest leverage has the power, I doubt it's ever fairly balanced.   
    
    
        
     Not OP, but how do you measure them? Let's say, for example, you can send and receive email, but attaching files does not work. Is the service up or down?What if the majority of your users can access the service, but one of your BGP peers is not routing properly and some of your users are unable to access?
    
    
        
     Google do a very good job of defining their SLAs.In answer to your question, they'll accept evidence from your own monitoring system when you claim on the SLA. They pair that up to their own knowledge about how the system was performing, then make the grant. Google are exceptionally good at this, from my experience. Far better than most other companies, who aim to provide as little detail as possible while getting away with 'providing an SLA'.
    
    
    
        
      
 Down because email attachments are base64 encoded files written in plaintext into the body. So if those are not working, email itself is not working.   
    
        
     that was a bad example. i guess the comment was trying to say "how do you account for partial service degradations".(i dont think SLAs are BS btw)
    
    
        
      
 In this example: you get free days. Which depending on your business might be worthless if you have suffered more monetary loss due to the downtime than the free days are worth.   
    
        
      
 But still better than nothing. And for some (most?) people/businesses, probably worth more than any resulting monetary loss   
    
        
      
 Exactly; downtime doesn't cost a cloud service much. At worst it causes reputation damage, with possibly large companies deciding to go for a competitor, losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of millions.   
    
        
      
 Given the blast radius of this (all regions appear to be impacted) along with the fact that services that don't rely on auth are working as normal, it must be a global authN/Z issue. I do not envy Google engineers right now.   
    
        
     &gt; I do not envy Google engineers right now.A few years ago I released a bug in production that prevented users from logging into our desktop app. It affected about ~1k users before we found out and rolled back the release. I still remember a very cold feeling in my belly, barely could sleep that night. It is difficult to imagine what the people responsible for this are feeling right now.
    
    
        
     When I was interviewing at Morgan Stanley, I asked "how do you do this job if a mistake can cost people money?".The answer was "well, if you don't do anything, you make NO money".
    
    
        
     I'm reminded of the quote from Thomas J. Watson:&gt; Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
    
    
        
     Agreed, and also it's worth noting that we're talking about companies here. Yes, for any individual the amount of money lost is insane, but that's the risk for the company. If one individual can accidentally nearly bankrupt the company, then the company did not have proper risk management in place.That isn't too say that it wouldn't also affect my sleep quality.
    
    
    
        
      
 Depending on the company's culture, that calculus can vary. If management start firing subordinates for making mistakes, then what should be done to management if they fail to account for human error, resulting in multimillion-dollar losses?   
    
    
    
        
      
 That is because they are managers, most got where they are by assigning rewards to themselves.   
    
        
      
 Welp, as a new grad there, I had brought down one very important database server on a Sunday night (a series of really unfortunate events). Multiple senior DBAs had to be involved to resuscitate it. It started functioning normally just a few hours before market open in HK. If it was any later, it would have been some serious monetary loss. Needless to say, I was sweating bullets. Couldn't eat anything the entire day lol. Took me like 2 days to calm down. And this was after I was fully shielded cuz I was a junior. God knows what would've happened if someone more experienced had done that.   
    
        
      
 I brought down the order management system at a large bank during the middle of the trading day. The backup kicked in after about a minute but it was not fun on the trading floor.   
    
        
      
 I'm so glad I'm not the only one feeling deployment anxiety. The project I'm involved in doesn't really have serious money involved, but when there's a regression found only after production deployment my stress levels go up a notch.   
    
        
     When I was working at a pretty big IT provider in the electronic banking sector, we (management and senior devs) made it an unspoken rule, that:
- Juniors shall also handle production deployments regularly.
- A senior person is always on call (even if only unofficially / off the clock).
- Junior devs are never blamed for fuckups, irrespective of the damage they caused.That was the only way to help people develop routine regarding big production deployments.
    
    
        
     Same thing -- used to work at a very large hosting provider. One of our big internal infra management teams wouldn't consider newhires fully "part of the team" until they had caused a significant outage. It was genuinely a right of passage, as one person put it, "to cause a measurable part of the internet to disappear".I got to see a lot of people pass through this right of passage, and it was always fun to watch. Everyone would take it incredibly seriously, some VP would invariably yell at them, but at the end of the day their managers and all their peers were smiling and clapping them on the back.
    
    
    
    
        
     Yep. It was supposed to be a very small change. I blundered. My team understood that and was super supportive about it all too. But this was after it was all fixed.During the outage though, no one (obviously) had time for me. This was a very important server. The tension and anxiety on the remediation call was through the roof. Every passing hour someone even more important in the chain of command was joining the call. At that time I thought I was done for...
    
    
        
      
 I work for an extremely famous hospital in the American midwest. We're divided into three sections, one for clinical work, one for research, and one for education. I always tell people that I'm pretty content being in research (which is less sexy than clinical), because if I screw something up, some PI's project takes ten months and one week instead of ten months. In clinical, if you screw something up, somebody dies! I just don't think I could handle that level of stress.   
    
        
     Same.At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).
    
    
        
      
 Jesus. One would think you'd have some safeguards for that. Even Dropbox will give you an alert if you try to nuke over 1,000 files. More reasons to COLOR CODE your work environments, if possible.   
    
        
      
 Yes but that was eons ago. The safeguards are well and truly in-place now. Not just one, several in fact.   
    
    
    
        
      
 The trick is to be paranoid. You literally sit down and think exclusively about what COULD go wrong.   
    
    
    
        
     colorblind (red/green) person here - 5% of the male population just don't see color enough for it to be an important visual clue.So sure, color-code your environments, but if you find someone about to do something to a red environment that they clearly should only be doing to a green environment, just check if they're seeing what you're seeing before you sack them ;)
    
    
        
      
 My primary customer right now color codes both with "actual color", and with words - ie the RED environment is tagged with red color bars, and also big [black] letters in the [red] bars reading "RED"   
    
        
     &gt; At AWS, I once took an entire AZ down of a public-facing production service (with a mis-typed command), but that was nothing compared to when I accidentally deleted an entire region via internal console (too many browser tabs). Thank goodness turned out to be unused / unlaunched, non-production stack. I felt horrible for hours despite zero impact (in both the cases).It seems like a design flaw for actions like that to be so easy. E.g. &gt; Hey, we detected you want to delete an AWS region. Please have an authorized coworker enter their credentials to second your command.
    
    
        
     If it was indeed in-production, I'd never in a million years have had access rights to delete the stack. Those are gated just the way one would imagine they should be.The service stack for the region (and not an entire region itself) looked like prod, but wasn't. It made me feel like shit anyway.
    
    
    
        
      
 Irrelevant to the discussion, but I just wanted to say thank you for the categorized list of users I can follow on your profile!   
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     Several years back when I was working at Google I made a mistake that caused some of the special results in the knowledge cards to become unclickable for a small subset of queries for about an hour. As part of the postmortem I had to calculate how many people likely tried to interact with it while it was broken. It was a lot and really made me realize the magnitude of an otherwise seemingly small production failure. My boss didn't give me a hard time, just pointed me toward documentation about how to write the report. And crunching the numbers is what really made me feel the weight of it. It was a good process.I feel for the engineer who has to calculate the cost of this bug.
    
    
        
      
 This sounds like a good practice and hopefully something they still do. Calculating the exact numbers would definitely help cement the experience and its consequences into your mind.   
    
        
      
 Presumably there were more failures than a single engineer could've been responsible for here.   
    
        
     Its absolutely possible, the worst AWS outage was caused by one engineer running the wrong command [0]."This past Tuesday morning Pacific Time an Amazon Web Services engineer was debugging an issue with the billing system for the company’s popular cloud storage service S3 and accidentally mistyped a command. What followed was a several hours’ long cloud outage that wreaked havoc across the internet and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for AWS customers and others who rely on third-party services hosted by AWS." [0] - https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2017/03/02/aws-...
    
    
        
      
 If you alone were able to do it, then the system was designed badly. The bigger the impact, the more robust it has to be to prevent accidents.   
    
        
      
 The big mistake in the system is that everyone in the world is relying on Google services... These problems would have less impact with a more diverse ecosystem.   
    
        
     Would they have less impact? Or would it have the same impact, just distributed across many more outages?You can rely on Google outages being very few and far between, and recovering pretty fast. For the benefits you get from such a connected ecosystem, I'm not sure anyone is net positive from using a variety of different tools rather than Google supplying many of them.
    
    
    
        
     I'm not sure I see that as a fair comparison. I think it's best to use the same durations for this, as an entire day changes the level of impact. &lt;1hr outages have a fraction of the impact that an entire days outage might have.It's obviously subjective, but even with our entire work leaning on Google– from GMail, GDrive and Google Docs, through to all our infrastructure being in GCP– todays outage just meant everyone took an hour break. History suggests we won't see another of these for another year, so everyone taking a collective 60m break has been minimally impactful vs many smaller, isolated outages spread over the year.
    
    
    
        
     I remember how one of our engineers had his docker daemon connected to production instead of his local one and casually did a docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq) .Same thing happened to me but with CI, which felt bad enough already.
    
    
        
      
 "Hey let's make developers do two very different jobs, development, and operations. We'll call it DevOps. We'll save money. Everything will be fine."   
    
    
        
      
 Engineers shouldn’t deploy to prod directly, but sometimes it’s necessary to SSH into an instance for logs, stack dumps, etc. Source: worked for 2 big to very big tech cos.   
    
        
     For a large or v large tech co you should probably be aggregating logs to a centralised location that doesn't require access to production systems in this way. Stack dumps should also be collected safely off-system if necessary.Perhaps my industry is a little more security conscious (I don't know which industry you're talking about), but this doesn't seem like good practice.
    
    
        
      
 Let me be clear, I agree it should not be normal to SSH into a prod box. Our logs are centrally aggregated. But it’s one thing to say it’s not normal, but quite another to say engineers shouldn't have access, because I totally disagree with that.   
    
        
      
 What normally (should) happens in that unusual case is that the engineer is issued a special short-lifetime credential to do what needs to be done. An audit trail is kept of when and to whom the credential was issued, for what purpose, when it was revoked, etc.   
    
        
     Who fixes the centralised log system when that needs debugging?Unless prohibited in something like banking, following best practice to the letter is sometimes unacceptably slow for most industries.
    
    
        
      
 There should be tools that allow the team to gather such logs. Direct prod access is a recipe for disaster.   
    
        
      
 Not having those things centralized is also a huge operational failure regardless of company size.   
    
        
      
 Why not? (I think I can find some cases where production access from an engineer's workstation is a good idea)   
    
        
     It can be efficient, particularly in smaller companies, but that's where exactly this rule should be applied.In some industries, security and customer requirements will at times mandate that developer workstations have no access to production. Deployments must even be carried out using different accounts than those used to access internal services, for security and auditing purposes. There are of course good reasons for this; accidents, malicious engineers, overzealous engineers, lost/stolen equipment, risk avoidance, etc. When you apply this rule, it makes for more process and perhaps slower response times to problems, but accidents or other internal-related issues mentioned above drop to zero. Given how easy it is to destroy things these days with a single misplaced Kubernetes or Docker command, safeguards need to be put in place. Let me tell you a little story from my experience; I built myself a custom keyboard from a Numpad kit. I had gotten tired of typing so many docker commands in every day and I had the desire to build something. I built this little numpad into a full blown Docker control centre using QMK. A single key-press could deploy or destroy entire systems. One day, something slid off of something else on my desk, onto said keyboard, pressing several of the keys while I happened to have an SSH session to a remote server in focus. Suffice it to say, that little keyboard has never been seen since. On an unrelated topic, I don't have SSH access to production systems.
    
    
        
      
 This exactly. I have deleted database records from a production DB thinking I am executing on my development DB. I've kept separate credentials and revoked dev machine access to prod environment ever since.   
    
    
        
      
 Well, it's something that can happen to anyone, take it easy. When I made the transition from developer to manager and become responsible for this situations, at first every problem made me feel as you describe. Eventually what helped me to be free is the understanding that how we feel about a fact does not change anything about that fact.   
    
        
      
 Don't be too hard on yourself, no dev works in a silo, there is usually user acceptance testing and product owner sign offs involved so they also have to wear some of this too.   
    
        
      
 Nope, especially considering the implications of this, with the amount of people working remotely. Google Meet, Classroom, etc. are down. This is probably literally costing billions every minute just in loss of productivity.   
    
        
      
 Total world economic output is ~$150M / minute, so billions every minute is off by few orders of magnitude.   
    
        
     You are assuming that a minute of disruption can not cause more than a minute's loss of productivity. I don't think that assumption is justified.Consider an exactly one minute outage that affects multiple things I use for work. First, I may not immediately recognize that the outage is actually with some single service provider. If several things are out I'm probably going to suspect it is something on my end, or maybe with my ISP. I might spend several minutes thoroughly checking that possibility out, before noticing that whatever it was seems to have been resolved. Second, even if I immediately recognize it for what it is and immediately notice when it ends it might take me several minutes to get back to where I was. Not everything is designed to automatically and transparently recover from disruptions, and so I might have had things in progress when the outage stuck that will need manual cleanup and restarting.
    
    
        
      
 I'm also assuming most of the world doesn't grind to a halt when gmail is down. Crops keep growing and factories keep running.   
    
    
    
        
     Simple math says:World GDP (via Google) $80,934,771,028,340 Minutes per year 365 * 24 * 60 = 525,600 Divide and you get 153,985,485
    
    
    
    
    
        
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion  A billion is a number with two distinct definitions:   - 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10^9, as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both British and American English.   - 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10^12, as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion. This is the historical meaning in English and the current use in many non-English-speaking countries where billion and trillion 10^18 maintain their long scale definitions.  Nevertheless almost everyone uses 1B = 10^9 for technical discussions
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     Indeed. Also, Google’s revenue is about $300K per minute. The value they provide is likely higher than that, but as you said, being able to send an email an hour later than you hoped it’s fine in most cases. Also, Google Search was fine, and that’s their highest impact product.I’d guess actual losses to the world economy were more on the order of about $100K per minute, or about 1/3 of Google’s revenue. MAYBE a few hundred thousand per minute, though that seems unlikely with Search being unaffected, and everything else coming back. Certainly a far cry from billions per minute :)
    
    
        
     I never understood this type of calculation as it implies that time is directly converted into money. However, I struggle to come up with an example for this. Even the most trivial labor cases like producing paperclips don't seem to be directly converting time into profit: even you will make 10k units instead of 100k this hour, you don't sell them immediately. They bring revenue to the firm via a long chain of convoluted contracts (both legal and "transactional") which are very loosely coupled to the immediate output.Nothing is operating at minute margins unless it's explicitly priced on a minutely basis, like a cloud service. Even if a worked on a conveyor belt can't produce paperclips without looking at Google Docs sheet all the time, this will be absorbed by the buffers down the line. And only if the worker will fail to meet her monthly target due to this, loss of revenue might occur. But in this case the service has to be down for weeks. In case of more complex conversions of time into money, like in the most of intellectual work, this is even less obvious that short downtimes will cause any measurable harm.
    
    
        
      
 Besides the exaggerated figure, I always find these claims bizarre. Sure, there was some momentary loss, but aggregated over a month this will not even register.   
    
    
        
     In a previous lifetime I removed an "unused" TLS certificate. It turns out that it was a production cert that was being used to secure a whole state's worth of computers.In my defence, the cert was not labeled properly, nor was it used properly, and there was no documentation. It took us 2 days to create a new cert and apply it to our software and deliver it to the customer. Those were 2 days I'll never get back. However, when I was finished the process was documented and the cert was labeled, so I guess its a win.
    
    
    
        
     I am not sure why are they allowing it. Meaning why aren’t services completely isolated? Isn’t it obvious that in an intertwined environment those things are bound to happen (as in “question of when, not if”)? I understand, in smaller companies that are limited in resources (access to good developers and pressure to get product to market as soon as possible) we have single points of failure all over the place. But “the smartest developers on the planet”? What is it if not short-sighted disregard for risk management theories and practices? I mean, Calendar and Youtube, say, should be completely separate services hosted in different places, their teams should not even talk to each other. Yes, they can use same software components, frameworks and technologies. Standardization is very welcome. But decentralization should be an imperative.Edit: again downvotes started! Thanks to everyone “supporting freedom of expression” :)
    
    
        
      
 I've been in that situation before at one of my previous jobs, where some important IT infrastructure when down for the whole company. Nowhere as big of a scale as this, but it was easily one of the most stressful moments of my life   
    
        
      
 If this does not improve soon, we're looking at one of the most significant outages in recent internet history, at least from the number of people impacted.   
    
        
     Several others have shared their 'I broke things' experiences, and so I feel compelled to weigh in.Many years ago, I was directly responsible for causing a substantial percentage of all credit/debit/EBT authorizations from every WalMart store world-wide to time out, and this went on for several days straight. On the ground, this kind of timeout was basically a long delay at the register. Back then, most authorizations would take four or five seconds. The timeout would add more than 15 seconds to that. In other words, I gave many tens of millions of people a pretty bad checkout experience. This stat (authorization time) was and remains something WalMart focuses quite heavily on, in real time and historically, so it was known right away that something was wrong. Yet it took us (Network Engineering) days to figure it out. The root cause summary: I had written a program to scan (parallelized) all of the store networks for network devices. Some of the addresses scanned were broadcast and network addresses, which caused a massive amplification of return traffic which flooded the satellite networks. Info about why it took so long to discover is below. Back in the 1990s, when this happened, all of the stores were connected to the home office via two way Hughes satellite links. This was a relatively bandwidth limited resource that was managed very carefully for obvious reasons. I had just started and co-created the Network Management team with one other engineer. Basically prior to my arrival, there had been little systematic management of the network and network devices. I realized that there was nothing like a robust inventory of either the networks or the routers and hubs (not switches!) that made up those networks. We did have some notion of store numbers and what network ranges were assigned to them, but that was inaccurate in many cases. Given that there were tens of thousands of networks ranges in question, I wrote a program creatively called 'psychoping' that would ICMP scan all of those network ranges with adjustable parallelism. I ran it against the test store networks, talked it over with the senior engineers, and was cleared for takeoff. Thing is, I didn't start it right away; some other things came up that I had to deal with. I ended up started it over a week after review. Why didn't this get caught right away? Well, when timeouts started to skyrocket across the network, many engineers started working on the problem. None of the normal, typical problems were applicable. More troubling, none of the existing monitoring programs looked for ICMP at all, which is what I was using exclusively. So of course they immediately plugged a sniffer into the network and did data captures to see what was actually going on. And nothing unusual showed up, except a lot of drops. We're talking &gt; 20 years ago, so know that "sniffing" wasn't the trivial thing it is now. Network Engineering had a few extremely expensive Data General hardware sniffers. And to these expensive sniffers, the traffic I was generating was invisible. Two things: the program I wrote to generate the traffic had a small bug and was generating very slightly invalid packets. I don't remember the details, but it had something to do with the IP header. These packets were correct enough to route through all of the relevant networks, but incorrect enough for the Data General sniffer to not see them. So...there was a lot of 'intense' discussions between Network Engineering and all of the relevant vendors. (Hughes, ACC for the routers, Synoptics and ODS for the hubs) In the end, a different kind of sniffer was brought in, which was able to see the packets I was generating. I had helpfully put my userid and desk phone number in the packet data, just in case someone needed to track raw packets back to me. Though the impact was great, and it scared me to death, there were absolutely no negative consequences. WalMart Information Systems was, in the late 1990s, a very healthy organization.
    
    
        
      
 Makes sense, at work we have an application running on Google Cloud and everything seems to be working. So the outage is probably not at network or infrastructure level.   
    
    
    
        
     4:41AM PT, Google services have been restored to my accounts (free &amp; gsuite).And I have never seen them load so fast before - gmail progress bar barely seen for a fraction of a second whereas I am more used to seeing it for multiple seconds (2-3 sec) until it loads. I observe the same anecdotal speedup for other sites... drive, youtube, calendar. I wonder if they are throwing all the hardware they have at their services or I am encountering underutilized servers since it is not fixed for everyone. It is nice to experience (even if it is short lived) the snappiness of Google services if they weren't so multi-tenented.
    
    
        
     If this phenomenon is actually real instead of just perception then I'd guess it is down to reduced demand of some short. Some possibilities:a) users haven't all come back yet
b) Google is throttling how fast users can access services again to prevent further outages
c) to reduce load, apps have features turned off (which might make things directly faster on the user's end or just reduce load on the server side)
    
    
        
     At Google's scale, I'd expect it to be all of the above.I hope they make their learnings, post-mortem, etc. public so that we can all learn from it. My engineer hat is saying - "damn, I wish I was part of fixing this outage at their scale." My product owner hat is saying - "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...." :D
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I would guess autoscaling kicked in (RPC error rate caused higher CPU usage?) and now things will scale back down again.   
    
    
        
      
 Oh man, you're right. Bloated gmail loaded instantly. What's going on? It's loading almost 2x to 3x faster.   
    
        
      
 Isn't this a good indication that the performance problem if gmail may not be related to the "bloat" of the frontend itself?   
    
        
      
 It might suggest that the frontend isn't the only issue, at least - and maybe this explains why it's usually so slow, if the frontend can be fast on a fast enough backend. On the other hand, the speed of the "basic HTML" version implies that the frontend can be the issue.   
    
        
      
 Entirely possible as well that the "basic HTML" uses different API service in the background that are snappier for comparative lack of users.   
    
        
      
 I always thought gmail being slow is because of me using firefox but now it's surprisingly snappy. What the hell is going on?   
    
        
      
 Wow, it's faster in firefox than it used to be in chrome... while in chrome it's almost isntanteneous   
    
        
      
 I wish it was always like this. I hate how slow YouTube, Gmail, etc. often are normally.   
    
    
        
     So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again?Of course it will, - at least, it better - but what if it doesn't? And if it does, are you going to take countermeasures in case it happens again or is it just going to be 'back to normal' again?
    
    
        
     I guess a lot of people are fine with the risk.Everybody uses it, so if, like, Gmail loses all the emails, we are then in such a state that the consequences will be more bearable and socially normal. Most people are fine with accepting that whatever future thing will happen to most people will also happen to them. Because then the consequences will also be normal. If the apocalypse comes, it comes for almost all of us and that's consolation enough.
    
    
        
      
 This sounds like the good old 1970-80s "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" argument.   
    
    
    
        
     The way I see it, backups are a strategy to reduce risk of ruin.For me, backing up to the Cloud is fine, because I find the risk of my home being broken into and everything stolen AND the cloud goes down AND the cloud services are completely unrecoverable is a small enough risk to tolerate. I don't think it's possible to have permanently indestructible files in existence over a given time period.
    
    
        
      
 Different failure mode. If the cloud goes down, many more people are affected. If your self-hosted thing goes down, only you are affected. If everybody self-hosted, would the overall downtime be lower? Even if it were, would it be worth the effort of self-hosting?   
    
    
        
     Most of the things I backed up for myself are either gone forever or irretrievably lost.Most of the things I backed up with google remain largely accessible, except for an occasion like this. It's rare that any services I operate solo come back this quickly after there is a downing issue.
    
    
        
     I have the opposite experience, at least with regard to your first two paragraphs. Most of the things that I have backed up on other people's computers over the past 3-4 decades are irretrievably lost. But most of the things that I have taken care to make backups of on personal equipment over the years, are still with me.Cloud storage is still useful of course, but I prefer to view it as a cache rather than as a dependable backup.
    
    
        
      
 Of course it's viable as a backup. Availability != realibility. My data is still reliably saved in the cloud even if there is an outage for a few hours. The key point is backup, e.g. Dropbox. When you use Google Docs, it becomes a single source of truth and a SPOF.   
    
        
      
 This depends on the circumstances. If your personal photos are unaccessible then maybe it doesn't matter, but if it's your documentation for a mission critical bit of infrastructure then a few hours could be very significant. Somebody in that situation probably wouldn't agree with your assertion that "availability != reliability". If I can't access it when I need it then I wouldn't consider it reliable.   
    
        
      
 Whatever data I have backed up in the cloud is synced across multiple devices that I use. Even if the cloud disappeared altogether, I still have it. The cloud allows me to keep an up to date copy across various devices.   
    
        
     Both Google Drive/Photos and OneDrive have an option to only keep recently used files on your local device, and even periodically suggest they automatically remove local copies of unused files to "free up space".I highly suggest everyone disable this setting on their own, but also on their (perhaps less technical) friends' and relatives' devices. Otherwise, if anything happens to your account or - less likely - the storage provider or their hardware, your data could very well be gone forever. I can't believe anyone would want that.
    
    
        
     You don't need 'the cloud' to do that. Look into Syncthing. It does depend on an outside "discovery server" by default to enable syncing outside of your LAN, but you can run your own. https://syncthing.net/
    
    
        
      
 What's annoying is that synchronisation does't work for google slides or google docs. They are just synchronized as links to the webpage on my computer.   
    
        
      
 If you use Insync you have the option of converting to DOCX or ODT.
Insync has other issues though, my "sourcetreeconfig" is being downloaded as "sourcetreeconfig.xml".   
    
        
      
 Not 100% on that, but I think you can save these documents on Google Drive, and then they're treated (and synced) just like any other files.   
    
        
     &gt;So, anybody still feel like arguing that 'the cloud' is a viable back-up? Or is that a sore point right now? Just for a moment imagine: what if it never comes back again? Much less chance of that happening than my local backups getting borked...
    
    
    
        
     Of course cloud is a viable back up, similarly to physical drives.Both have vastly different failure modes and typical backup should use both of them. This way if all my backups are gone I likely have way more important issues that loss of files. (and yes, my backups are encrypted)
    
    
        
      
 Just a few moments ago, I wrote in my company's group chat this is the time when we buy NAS. 
We have a lot of documents not accessible right now in Google Drive.   
    
    
        
     What worries me the most is email. I basically don't use any other Google services other than Gmail and YouTube, but for email I really don't know of an alternative.Sure you can argue "move to Fastmail/Protonmail/Hey/whatever", but those can also go down on you just like Google is down now. And self hosting email is apparently not a thing due to complexity and having to forever fight with being marked as spam (ndr.: not my personal experience, I never tried self hosting, just relying what I read here on HN when the topic comes up). So, yeah, what do we do about email? I feel like we should have a solution to this by now, but somehow we don't.
    
    
        
      
 I've been happy with using Hosted Exchange on Microsoft. I own the domain so ultimately I can point the DNS to some other provider. Outlook stores the mails locally so I have a backup. I think the most important thing about E-Mail is to receive future E-Mails and not look at historical ones. In the end you can always ask the receipent to send you a copy of the email conversation - if you dont own the domain it get much harder to convince you actually own the email.   
    
    
    
        
     Yes, I know what's the point. But how do you avoid putting all your eggs in one basket? You can't host your email on more than one "provider" (including self host), and the vast majority of important services that you link your email to (bank, digital identity, taxes and other government services) does not allow you to have more than one linked to it; which means, that one goes down, you don't have one. Sure, I can give my accountant and my lawyer a second email address, hosted on a different provider, but that poses two problems: 1. how are they gonna know when one is working and one isn't? It's not like you get a notification if your email didn't reach most of the time, it just drops; 2. if you always send all emails to both addresses, now two providers have my data instead of one (of course excluding if one is self hosted). And you also need to always keep in mind that for all things important: one is none, two is one; so you should really have 3 addresses on 3 different providers according to that, which brings us back to the problems above. (and I'm not even mentioning the confusion that it would generate if you don't manage to get the same name with every provider "Wait, was it beshrkayali@gmail.com, or was it alibeshrkay@gmail.com? Or was that fastmail?")As I said (literally in the second sentence), I don't rely on Google for everything, as you mention. I don't actually rely on Google for anything other than gmail, and of that I am also unhappy. The point I was trying to make is that there aren't really alternatives, and I was hoping someone might come out with a suggestion about how to overcome that problem.
    
    
        
      
 You shouldn't use you@company.com as your main email, you should have your own domain. So `something@yourdomain.com` will always be yours no matter if you self host or use 3rd party. I currently use Fastmail and i've been very happy with them. If they fail or turn evil, I'll switch to something else maintaining the same address. Emails themselves should be downloaded/backed-up regularly, kind of like important documents you'd have on your disk.   
    
        
     &gt; You can't host your email on more than one "provider"You can do split delivery and have your email be delivered to two different destinations. It's less common than it used to be but it's trivial.
    
    
        
     I'm running my own mail server, and I think anyone who has some experience with Linux should be able to do the same in a day or two. Once it's set up it just works.You can still use Gmail and fall back to connecting directly to your server if Gmail is down. Some mails might be flagged as spam if the IP/domain has no reputation, but that quickly passes, at least that's my experience.
    
    
        
      
 I specifically use Gsuite so that I don't have to deal with managing a spam filter or dealing with IP reputation issues. I'd be willing to self-host almost anything else.   
    
        
     I guess something highly resilient would be - say - a mailserver on a rented VM replicating to two cloud providers via a service mesh.Nice and simple! :D
    
    
        
      
 A lot of domain registrars will host/relay mail for you if you don't want to think about it. Otherwise it's not too hard to host yourself. The sucky part is when it breaks because you can't really just put off fixing it.   
    
        
     I've been using mailu.io to host my own email server. Makes it real easy to manage yourself.I haven't had any issues with new domains being marked as spam, but I always make sure the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are set up.
    
    
        
      
 I’ve heard multiple founders argue that it’s safe to have downtime because of a cloud outage, because you’re not likely to be the highest importance service that your customers use that also had downtime.   
    
        
      
 Well yeah; I don't trust myself enough to own &amp; operate my own servers, and I cannot give myself any uptime guarantees - let alone at the scale that a cloud provider can offer me.   
    
        
     "The Cloud" is vague, and if you don't specify what it means then the answer to your question can only be "it depends".If the question is "anybody still feel like arguing that 'a single provider' is a viable back-up" then it's yes for most cases. A better strategy is of course to use multiple providers. The chances that it never comes back again is much lower.
    
    
        
     People would probably argue a “multi cloud” solution. Have your infrastructure be “cloud agnostic” and this sort of problem would be avoided.There was actually a project called “spinnaker” that was supposed to solve this problem. Whether the cost of paying 2 or more cloud providers is worth it for most companies is up in the air.
    
    
        
      
 "Multi-cloud" only works if you stick with the basics. Like disk storage, compute, and a well-supported database. Once you tie in into a cloud's specific offerings.....   
    
    
        
      
 I find the Anthos docs and talks so confusing. Half of them say Anthos is for hybrid between on-prem and GCP. The other half say it's for multicloud and hybrid.   
    
        
      
 Well, since a viable backup strategy requires at least 3 storage locations (eg the in-use primary, an on-site or off-site backup, and a secondary off-site backup) "the cloud" is fine as an off-site backup or secondary off-site backup.   
    
        
     Let's hope tailscale swoops in and creates a no-gimmicks, highly usable, private internet for everyone.They seemed to have figured out the hard parts already.
    
    
    
    
    
        
     Help! My Waymo taxi won't open the doors without me logging into the app. Its driving around in circles on route 500 and won't stop./s - for now ;)
    
    
        
      
 I know you’re joking, but I am curious if Waymo’s fleet was affected. Shouldn’t be right? But I’m also surprised every time I fresh login to Gmail and YouTube shows up in the intermediary redirect chain.   
    
    
        
      
 Gmail said my account was "temporarily" unavailable... had a moment considering if it wasn't temporary. Good reminder to remove my reliance on gmail especially.   
    
        
      
 For a second I legit thought Google banned my account for some reason. And I don't like it that I feel relieved..   
    
        
      
 Underrated comment. If the government freezes your bank account, at least you can take them to court. If Google mistakenly disables your account, there does not seem to be any legal recourse. Considering the extent to which people depend on their services, perhaps there should be a more elaborate appeal process.   
    
        
     They can freeze the account but I own the domain so I can point it anywhere I want and I have copies locally via imap.At this point the only reason I use it is because I grandfathered in on an old plan it's still free, if that changes I'll go elsewhere.
    
    
        
      
 Google doesn't disable ordinary rulefollowing accounts by mistake. They are aware of the false positive rate and don't care.   
    
        
      
 I agree, but the problem is that "ordinary rulefollowing" is not clearly defined by Google. Perhaps it was that innocent park frisbee party video with a Metallica sound played in the background by some other party there... and not only your video, but also your YouTube account, and worse, email account gets blocked. Maybe this scenario is dystopian - the point is that it is a black-box no-appeal/limited appeal system when such an event happens.   
    
        
      
 Google account terminations typically only affect the one service. If your YouTube account gets terminated for ToS violations, your email account will still work perfectly fine.   
    
        
      
 Same for me - and then I tried logging in to gmail in an incognito window and got "Couldn't find your Google account" which really scared me.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Thunderbird prompting me to login, and getting "Google does not recognize this email address" as a reply was a nice adrenaline spike, until I checked the status on HN!   
    
        
      
 This happened to me with a work email. For a moment I thought, "Well, I had a good run at this company.." My next thought was, "Ha, Google must be down - better check HackerNews."   
    
        
      
 I am still experiencing this problem on all my synced-to-Thunderbird Gmail accounts, so it either hasn't been completely fixed yet, or there's another ongoing issue.   
    
    
        
      
 Yes! It takes some work to switch, but it's worth it. Buy your own domain name, and link it to an existing service if you don't want to host yourself. You'll always be able to switch your mail alias when having issues with your email host.   
    
        
      
 Our entire library of video tutorials disappeared for a while. I was not happy, and the thought of losing our email.. Currently working with the team to make backups of absolutely everything off-site and off-Google. A good wake up call for us.   
    
    
        
      
 I really should try to get my stuff moved to my new address. Not self-hosted, but a non-profit that has been around for a while... Finally paid the membership fee.   
    
        
      
 The status page has proven itself useless again. According to that page, everything is working perfectly fine.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
     When I tried to login it said: 'this account does not exist'. So my first thought was some algorithm made a mistake and my account got deleted for no reason.I already imagined the only solution now was to write a medium post and hope it gets some traction on hackernews and google support steps in.
Thinking to myself I was an idiot for knowing all this and still thinking it wouldn't happen to me. And even though it turns out to be an outage, it gave me a bad enough feeling to start using a domain name I own for my email.
    
    
        
      
 Those hosting with their own domains on Google mail had an identical experience, if it makes you feel differently.   
    
        
     The advantage of a custom domain name is: As long as you can update DNS records, you can have your mail easily hosted elsewhere.Obviously not relevant for this kind of outage, but in the scenario outlined by GP - Google randomly kills you off, and there is nothing you can do - this is at least an emergency strategy.
    
    
        
      
 Yep, but losing access to my emails isn't that big of a deal, losing access to my email address is much worse. Especially since it's also my login on a lot of other services.   
    
        
      
 This topic is so hot it's crashing HN!
Super long server response time and I get this error quite oftenly: "We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!"   
    
    
    
    
        
     Interesting cascade effect of sites going down! I wonder where people will go next to check if HN is down?Also wondering if this is perhaps the fastest upvoted HN post ever? 8 mins -&gt; ~350 votes, 15 mins -&gt; ~750 votes. I wonder if @dang could chime in with some stats? Update: looks like it hit 1000 upvotes in ~25 mins! Update: 1500 in ~40 mins Update: 2000 in ~1 hour 20 mins (used the HN API for the timestamp)
    
    
        
      
 The recent youtube-dl takedown had a similar number of votes but still slightly slower, I think. I think it was &gt;500 in 30min and &gt;1000 in 60min if I remember correctly.   
    
        
      
 Some politics topics have shot up pretty quickly in the past but user and/or mod flags send them back to page 2 about as quickly.   
    
        
     Funny this post is already #7. Are we seeing many reports again?Stats right now: 1985 points | 1 hour ago | 597 comments
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 HN was having problem showing anything for the past 10 min or so. I was going to ask if HN was down, then I saw this.   
    
    
        
      
 Does this site also use Firebase, or do they only feed Firebase's Database so that other developers can build upon it?   
    
        
     Any source for that? Last information I have is that it's written in Arc Lisp and uses files rather than a database for storage.There is a public API on Firebase, but AFAIR it's just a mirror rather than the main storage.
    
    
    
    
    
        
     I, and probably many others here are like a status page for friends and family too... I had my wife thinking that the internet was broken, and tried tethering to phone and things and still didn't work, then showed me and I saw the status code errors and was like "it's actually parts of Google that are down".I love (and am deeply scared by) the dependence of Google and the confusion of it with the entire internet.
    
    
    
        
      
 I still like my physical switch on the wall to turn the light on and off very much.. for me it's hard to beat. I can even turn it on/off semi-remotely with e.g. a tennis ball.   
    
        
     If my Alexa fails, then I can also just turn the light off with the switch and when flipped back "on" again, then it will be on.Fallback to 'classical mode' works for me.
    
    
        
      
 If your home automation system requires a network connection to work then something is very wrong.   
    
        
      
 Right? Home automation is perfectly fine and mught even expose a secure authenticated API to the internet so you can say check and adjust the temperature remotely, but it shoukd never ever go down for lical use if the Internet connectivity or the remote service backend goes down.   
    
        
      
 Home Assistant rulez with non-cloud sensors. I never by sensors, cameras, switches which require connection to an external host. But I'm sure that most people will do it even with such outages too.   
    
    
        
      
 Google should write an AI application that checks on HN if their systems are working and display the result live on their status page. That would be more reliable than the current system they have in place (which is obviously not working at all).   
    
        
      
 It would probably just end up banning Googles own account and leave them with no human escalation option.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Even search seems to have issues. It can't seem to find rare pages at all, and ranking seems subpar for the past 15 minutes or so.   
    
    
    
        
     Found this relatively recently, seems to do a good job.Do love how more consumer services (ISPs &amp;c) always have some report of being down somewhere but its means nothing unless there's a big spike.
    
    
        
      
 What's the point of having a status page when it can't reliably tell you the factual status?   
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Then their status page is not unlike like target reporting in the USSR: completely fictional.   
    
        
      
 From personal experience and other Ops peoples stories, I'd assume that could be the case for many status pages ;)   
    
    
        
      
 No -- it needs to be red when it's having the outage for people to have confidence in it as an indicator. The reality is Google have no real incentive to provide an actual external status page that is accurate -- to do so is an admission of not upholding SLAs. These status pages are updated retrospectively. Use a third party one like DownDetector.   
    
        
     It is all green if you do not need to be logged in.If you are logged in, the page crashes with an error. You can still browse all services from Incognito (which for some is not an option).
    
    
        
     Are you saying the Google status page is correct then? Being logged in is part of being green I’d think.Also, you can’t use many parts of Gmail, Drive, Photos, etc, without being logged in.
    
    
        
      
 I think it just means the status page itself is not logged in. Apparently it should be...   
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Google made everyone get an account trying to force Google+ on to everyone. They don't get to pretend like that didn't happen by not factoring it into their status.   
    
    
    
        
     the parent comment to mine at time of writing was just:&gt; It is all green if you do not need to be log in. Giving the impression if you were logged in/didn't need to log in, that everything would be ok.
    
    
        
     I apologize for my ambiguous phrasing, and I feel bad that you were downvoted (I reupvoted you, but that’s only one vote).I wrote too fast because I thought it could help people work around the problem.
    
    
    
        
     It reflects the reality for them.The small print says: The problem with Gmail should be resolved for the vast majority of affected users. We will continue to work towards restoring service for the remaining affected users...  At Google scale, "remaining affected users" probably number in tens of millions. Sucks to be one of them, tho. But hey, it happens. As a SaaS maintainer, I can sympathise with any SREs involved in handling this, and know that no service can be up 100% of the time.
    
    
    
        
      
 Someone here in hn said at Amazon AWS they are required direct CTO approvals to reflect negative realities. Maybe that’s the case for anyone these days.   
    
        
     Not true. Only for written things like postmortems. Automated systems need to be vetted but can update things like status pages on their own.The issue isn't "negative" realities, it is saying something while investigating that might break contracts only to find later that it wasn't true.
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Definitely i agree with you. Although the statuses are updated later, it may cause many problems if it is not instantaneous.   
    
    
        
      
 Pretty funny. I would normally assume they are connected to some testing unit that real users interface with. Vs internal APIs or however Google is doing this with them still being green   
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     I don't think it's difficult, I think they just lie.Monitoring is very simple, I even learned this from a document released by the Google devops team many years ago. Always alert from the end user perspective. So in other words have an external server test login to Gmail. Simple as that. They manually update that status page to not scare away stockholders.
    
    
        
      
 Out of curiosity, what response time do you expect on a page like that? And what level of detail? I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.   
    
        
     &gt; what response time do you expect on a page like that?Faster than a free third-party website’s response time. Google should know they are down and tell people about it before Hacker News, Twitter, etc. Google should be the source of truth for Google service status, not social media. &gt; And what level of detail? Enough to not tell people that there are “No issues” with services. &gt; I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes. Google employs enough people to do both.
    
    
        
      
 I'd expect that status page to be automated based on a number of metrics / health checks. Our equivalent is.   
    
        
      
 I'd expect within seconds that Google is alerted of a very large number of issues with their servers and that the status page would be updated (the green light going to red) within seconds. It's now quite some time after the start of the outage and everything is still green on that status page.   
    
    
        
      
 Well, probably a lot of them are sitting around doing nothing because Google's down right now.   
    
        
      
 It's a big group of teams... one team is responsible for monitoring (And status reporting) alone   
    
        
     &gt; I'd much rather have their team focus on fixing this as fast as possible than trying to update that dashboard in the first 5 minutes.It's not like they would be working on the status page right now, that work should have been done a long time ago...
    
    
        
      
 If they know its broken, one of the _many_ engineers/support across Youtube+Gmail+etc that are all known to be down related to this bug should be able to update it in first few minutes. Especially if this isn't a 5 min fix.
Google outage – resolved
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415989
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106
Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID
2020-02-04
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 <a href="vote?id=22236214&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Not endorsing this, but according to <a href="https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variations">https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variat...</a><p>&gt; We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation.</p><p>&gt; The variations active for a given installation are determined by a seed number which is randomly selected on first run. If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy). If you would like to reset your variations seed, run Chrome with the command line flag “--reset-variation-state”. Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address), operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.
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 <a href="vote?id=22236778&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This is impressive doublespeak.<p>&gt; This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information</p><p>&gt; a seed number which is randomly selected on first run ... chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy)</p><p>They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy <i>probably</i> isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with <i>at least</i> 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives &gt;=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.</p><p>&gt; Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)</p><p>They even admit to inspecting the IP address...</p><p>&gt; operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.</p><p>...and many additional sources of entropy.</p><p>[1] why 24 bits instead of 32? The LSB of the address might be zeroed if the packet is affected by Googles faux-"anonymization" feature ( <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059</a> )
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 <a href="vote?id=22237637&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; &gt; Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)<p>&gt; They even admit to inspecting the IP address...</p><p>I don't think that sentence admits what you say? Chrome could be determining which experiments to run client-side.</p><p>Of course, when you visit a Google property, they needs must inspect your IP address to send a response to you, at a minimum. That goes for any site you might choose to visit. The existence of sufficient entropy to personally identify a site visitor is not a state secret. They do not need this chrome experiment seed to identify you, if that's a goal.
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 <a href="vote?id=22239696&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, it's not a "state secret" but it's not common knowledge either. Their privacy policy says that specific header can't be used to identify you, but fails to mention it can be combined with other information to make browser fingerprinting trivial.<p>If you don't know how all this works, which is true for most human beings, their privacy policy might give you the wrong impression.
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 <a href="vote?id=22239946&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; says that specific header can't be used to identify you<p>That's not what it says. It says the header won't contain PII, which is true. It can be linked to PII, but so can literally every bit of information you send to Google while logged into or otherwise using their services. A disclaimer to this effect would not have any purpose.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240174&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>That's the whole point. Using any Google service means they can easily personally identify you, that's what the privacy policy should explain.<p>That's their policy towards privacy, you don't have any. For some reason I can't fathom, you claim mentioning this in their privacy policy "would not have any purpose". Instead of honesty, their privacy policy is a wonder of public relations where it seems like they care deeply about protecting your privacy.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240641&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>We disagree about the purpose of privacy policies. I believe that privacy policies should describe how data <i>will</i> be used, not how it <i>could</i> be used. I just don't think a policy describing how data could be used is very useful, because it's going to be the same for all services.<p>Under this formulation, Google's policy is (presumably, lacking any data to the contrary) honest with respect to this value.
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 <a href="vote?id=22244346&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>"I believe that privacy policies should describe how the data will be used, not how it could be used."<p>Google's policy does not tell the user how her data will be used by Google's customers. The policy states Google will use the data to "provide better services". That is deliberately vague. That is the "purpose", but how exactly is the data used to achieve that purpose. There are no specifics with which a user could object.</p><p>Google does not only serve the search engine user, the email user, the YouTube user, etc. Its business is not free services. As such the policy is misleading as to what are the "Services" it may use the data to improve. Google's business is providing online ad services.</p><p>The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers. The policy reads as if it only collects data to provide better services to users. The "free" services are just bait to draw users in. The data is collected to improve online ad services.
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 <a href="vote?id=22246713&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers.<p>I understand that that is what you believe, but I do not think this is factually true about the data collected from this Chrome header. I believe that Chrome team collects it in order to understand the impact of Chrome experiments on performance.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241082&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>I believe that privacy policies should describe how data will be used, not how it could be used.</i><p>This is key. If you subscribe to the "how it could be used" version, then even say <i>possessing</i> an android phone would be a violation of the privacy policy. Which is absurd.
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 <p>This is a fair distinction, though it does not include the option of discussing how the data _won’t_ be used.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Per your observation, I would argue that the intent of the privacy policy as quoted above is pretty clear. When the policy says that the identifier doesn't contain PII, I believe that is meant to convey that it will not be used to identify you. But it's true that that use is not explicitly excluded. I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't tell you if being weasely in this way would count as fraud or not. Otoh, I suspect that Google is actually abiding by the spirit of the policy they wrote because honestly they have little to gain and much to lose by violating it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22240075&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>If I log in to my Google account once, they can associate that browser id with my account. Even if I log out, clear my cookies (and probably use the incognito mode), Google will be able to identify and follow me all over the Web.<p>I don't know about your PII thing, but it's personal data under the GDPR.
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 <p>AIUI GDPR restricts the handling and use of PII, not its existence. So it's PII under GDPR. Is Google misusing it? If so, that's an issue. If not, then it's kinda pointless to observe that it's PII under some possibly distinct legal definition than the one Google is using in its privacy policy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243012&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>So if you use a VPN service for example, they still know who you are because of this. I would say even if you’re visiting in private mode.<p>I see your point, but I also see how this will keep you identifiable.
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 <p>I don't math very much, but I would guess the intersection of these sets of people is nil: people who 1) use VPN to avoid tracking by Google 2) still log in to Google services from one of their networks and not the other 3) use the same Chrome profile on both. But suppose some small number exist who adopt this illogical and contradictory pattern of behavior. If Google is using this token for the purpose of tracking this tiny set of people when the vast majority could be tracked more easily via conventional means, it would imply that they are far more competent than I give them credit for.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238515&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives &gt;=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.<p>Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not? If the IPv4 address, user-agent string, or some other behavior is sufficient to reveal a great deal of stuff, we have a more serious problem than that 13 bits. I agree that 13-bit seed is a concern. But I am wondering if it is a concern per se, or its orchestration with something else. Of course, how/whether Google keeps those data also matters.
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 <a href="vote?id=22238640&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>One clarification:<p>- By default it's much more than 13 bits of entropy</p><p>- If you disable usage statistics then you are limited to 13 bits of entropy
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 <a href="vote?id=22239272&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not?<p>At the very least, having those 13 bits of entropy along with a /24 subnet allows you to have device-level granularity, whereas a /24 subnet may be shared by hundreds of households.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237671&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information<p>Except for everything you do on your browser. I'm so glad I haven't used Chrome for almost three years.
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 <p>Yes, if you have enough bits you can come up with a fingerprint, but that's not what PII means.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238167&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This.<p>A bank account number is consider PII. Knowing the bank name &amp; account number will uniquely identify the account holder's name, which is PII.
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 <a href="vote?id=22239271&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>... which is crazy unrealistic, since it's "PII" that can only stay "private" by collective agreement of every node in the network, but no accounting for the reality of network architecture in passing law, I guess.<p>Maybe a deep expectation of anonymity while accessing a worldwide network of cooperative machines is something people should stop telling the public they should expect?
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 <a href="vote?id=22239809&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Under GDPR you can use all the PII you reasonably need to provide expected services, you don't even need separate consent. But, if you have PII, the moment you use it for other purposes, or obtain/retain/share without proper cause, you are breaking the law.<p>IMHO, that is very reasonable.</p><p>Real world example - giving your phone number and information to your car mechanic / doctor / bank teller / plumber is reasonable. Using that information to score girls or ask donation for a puppy shelter would be considered improper.
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 <p>I totally agree, and I think the GDPR is also reasonable in that it allows you to use the IP address for essential security reasons, such as blocking bad actors based on IP address - it doesn't say "thou shalt not track IP addresses", it says you need consent if you're going to use it for anything that isn't essential for security or in your end user's best interest.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Or they can stay 'private' by not being stored or correlated with other user data. GDPR doesn't apply to the network itself, it applies to whoever is using it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>"Stored" is definitely the purpose of a router. "Correlated" can be necessary for debugging routing issues (or client-server connection issues that are tied to the intermediary fabric near the client doing something weird; hard to determine if an entire subnet is acting up if you aren't allowed to maintain state on errors correlated to IP address).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Where do you get the idea that GDPR doesn't allow you to process PII for the purpose of routing packets?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22237460&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.<p>Wat? You mean to tell me they can identify you if you log into their service?</p><p>Am I missing something here? Who cares?
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 <p>I care. I care that I even if I log off, even if I use a vpn, even if I go into incognito mode, they still can associate my requests with the account I initially logged in.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238123&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The problem is any website can do that. Incognito-bypassing fingerprinting is difficult to prevent, unless you use something like uMatrix to disallow JavaScript from everything but a few select domains.<p>This is a collection of random-ish unique-ish attributes. Any collection of such things can be used to track you, like installed fonts, installed extensions, etc. If this were just a set of meaningless encoded random numbers, then it's essentially a kind of cookie, but that's not what it is. This is (claimed to be) a collection of information that's useful and possibly needed by some backends when testing new Chrome features. It tells servers what your Chrome browser supports. The information is probably similar to "optimizeytvids=1,betajsparser=1".</p><p>So, the only question is if Google is actually using this to help fingerprint users in addition to the pragmatic use case. It certainly could be used that way, and it's possible they are, but they have so many other ways of doing that with much higher fidelity / entropy if they want to. If this were intended as a sneaky undisclosed fingerprinting technique, I think they would've ensured it was actually 100% unique per installation, with a state space in the trillions, rather than 8000.</p><p>Yes, this could be so sneaky that they took this into consideration and made it low-entropy to create plausible deniability while still being able to increase entropy when doing composite fingerprinting, but I think it's pretty unlikely. Also, 99% of the time they could probably just use use Google Analytics and Google login cookies to do this anyway.
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 <p>Maybe one actually useful non-advertising usage could be reCAPTCHA ?
If you read carefully, it says nowhere than there is the limit to 8000. There is this limit of 8000 only if you disable usage statistics / crash reports.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22242261&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Sorry about that, too late to edit it now. That is an important detail. If there are 32 or more different feature flags, then that's 4 billion unique states, which would be an effective fingerprint.<p>I still think it's pretty unlikely they're using it in that way or would in the future, and I think Google fuzzing this for those who opt out of telemetry is probably a signal of good faith in this instance. They realize the privacy implications and provide a way to disengage, even if they don't intend to abuse the information.</p><p>But of course the potential for abuse always remains. And the potential for (arguably) non-abusive tracking, like the possibility of it being used for bot detection by reCAPTCHA, as you say.
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 <p>reCAPTCHA is the most abusive type of tracking. Google simply denys you usage of captcha if you do not give them enough personal information. It doesn't matter if you enter the captcha correctly 20 times. It won't let you in.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is part of the bot detection, though. It's probably not "not enough personal information", it's "this truly seems like it is unlikely to be a legitimate device/person", due to the huge datasets they're working with. Same with Cloudflare and Tor. Once you operate a security service anywhere near that scale, you start to understand there are inherent challenges and tradeoffs like these,</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22247542&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>reCAPTCHA increasingly doesn't even give me a captcha. Instead, they simply deny me from even trying; They send this instead of the challenge:<pre><code> &lt;div&gt;
 &lt;noscript&gt;
 Please enable JavaScript to
 get a reCAPTCHA challenge.&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;/noscript&gt;
 &lt;div class="if-js-enabled"&gt;
 Please upgrade to a
 &lt;a href="[1]"&gt;supported browser&lt;/a&gt;
 to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.
 &lt;/div&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;a href="[2]" target="_blank"&gt;
 Why is this happening to me?&lt;/a&gt;
 &lt;/div&gt;
</code></pre>
They probably don't like my non-standard user agent string and they definitely don't like that I block a lot of their spyware, but reCAPTCHA used to work properly for many years with the same/similar browser configuration.<p>[1] <a href="https://support.google.com/recaptcha/?hl=en#6223828">https://support.google.com/recaptcha/?hl=en#6223828</a></p><p>[2] <a href="https://support.google.com/recaptcha#6262736">https://support.google.com/recaptcha#6262736</a>
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 <p>I mean, if you don't want Google to track you, then you probably shouldn't use their browser...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I believe someone else in the thread stated it's cleared for incognito, don't remember if they meant it's not sent or that it's a new value.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Normally you would only expect to be identified and tracked when using Google services when logged in. The significance of this post is that they would be able to identify and track you across all your usage of that browser installation regardless of if you've logged out, or say in an incognito window.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yes you are missing something important. Once they've tied the browser ID to your personal account they can track you across all google properties, even the ones that you didn't log into.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Unless you're running some extension that emulates FF's container tabs or something, it logs you into all G services. It would matter, though, if this header is still sent in incognito sessions.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22237751&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I still don't understand. When I log into gmail, it logs me into all Google services. If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place? Or visiting in the first place? After all, even if I click "log out," I'm only trusting Google that they unlinked the browser state from the account. If I trust them to do that, I don't see why I shouldn't trust them to ignore this experiment flag from Chrome, or at least not use it for tracking. If I don't trust them to avoid using the experiment state, I don't really see how you can trust them for anything.<p>Anyway, if you're not building Chrome from source, then you have to trust that they aren't putting anything bad in it. And if you are building chrome from source, you can observe that they only send this experiment ID to certain domains, and they already know who you are on those domains anyway.
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 <a href="vote?id=22246698&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place?<p>Good luck completing a google captcha without a Google account or using Chrome.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>If you browse the internet, they could know what websites are visited by the same person, but not who they are exactly.<p>If you visit a load of websites, then also log into google, they connect the two and they know what websites were visited by you specifically.
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 <p>I think the argument is they have other methods like cookies they could also use. The fact you trust them not to use those methods extends to this form of tracking.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22236306&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>They key in the wording is:
"If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy)."<p>"If, statistics are disabled."</p><p>In chrome://version you can see the active variations.
It seems to be pretty big numbers to be significant, and so far haven't observed duplicates.</p><p>Since this header is generated server-side, you have only to believe I guess ?
Plus why Doubleclick would need it :)
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 <p>That's basically saying "even if you opt out, we'll still try to track you, just not as much." Very unpleasant, but then again I'm not surprised to see this attitude from Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243615&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Combine a few pieces of information like this and you get a decisively unique fingerprint.<p>For example identifying individuals at work behind the same ip address.
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 <a href="vote?id=22236349&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>How many people will actually run chrome with a cli flag? It would be pretty impressive if every single person reading this thread did, but it probably won't even be that. Most people don't even touch their settings.<p>13 bits of entropy is far from a uuid (but to get it to that you need to disable some more settings, which again very few people do), but it's still plenty good enough to disambiguate individuals over time.
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 <p>And Google is certainly in a position to disambiguate that uuid to an individual as soon as they login to gmail or any other Google property!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It is an abuse of Chrome's position in the marketplace. Google is using their powerful position to give themselves tracking capabilities that other online players can't access. It is a major competitive advantage for Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>can't alternate browser makers who base on chromium simply disable that portion? like, I expect identifying users was a key business concern in moving Edge to Chromium. Is there something (other than work) preventing them from making it so it'll report back to microsoft-owned domains instead?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm using Vivaldi on MacOS and it doesn't send this header. I'm sure others like Brave don't send it either.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22236462&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Is it because Google's webapps will have their own a/b tests which use experimental features only available in Chrome perhaps?<p>I mean personally I think they should do client-side feature detection and be back to being standards compliant and not creepy. The only reason why I'd consider such a flag is because they optimize the payload server-side to return a certain a/b test, but even with that they could do the default version first, do feature detection, and then set a session cookie for that domain only that loads the a/b test.</p><p>My other Thought was that they test a feature that is implemented across Google's properties, e.g. something having to do with their account management.
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 <p>Cross-site cookies are soon getting blocked by Chrome starting Chrome 80 if I'm right (whereas this header isn't)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>So they build a personal back door to a feature that they've chosen to remove for everyone else? Because of it's potential for abuse, yet the very same company is somehow abusing it in a way more sinister way. Antitrust can't come soon enough.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238388&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Chrome will only block cross-site cookies that don't use HTTPS and the SameSite=Lax flag. It's easy for trackers to user HTTPS and SameSite=Lax. This Chrome change is mostly intended to protect against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, not to block trackers.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Couldn't the Chrome installations receive a request from Google that says "Do you want to try out a new thing?", and couldn't the Chrome installations say yes with a certain probability? The only difference I can see is that the subset of users that are guinea pigs couldn't be the same in each test (if Google wanted that the subset is always the same).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>So they're tracking people and using them as guinea pigs, the lack of respect for users is astounding.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Everybody imagine going back 15 years and tell yourself that you're using a web browser made by the parent company of DoubleClick. Your 15 year ago self would think you're a moron (assuming that 15 years ago you were old enough to know what DoubleClick was).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I always believed that tech-savvy people using Google Chrome are morons. It's the perfect blend of Google being evil trying to force it to everyone, the browser being dumbed down to masses so much it's missing the most basic features, and I guess privacy concerns too when using browser from advertising company.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's a really great way of conceptualizing it, if you assume Google is basically DoubleClick at it's core (which I think makes sense).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22237956&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Doubleclick ads were, originally, what prompted me to seek an adblock extension.<p>I think it was around 2006 that I got the extension for Firefox; Google bought them about a year later.
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 <p>Kind of true. The whole internet was much more of a toy back then. Tracking was not viewed so maliciously as now. Heck I might have even been convinced by a hard sell "this will help your favorite sites maximize their revenue".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I can only speak for myself, but myself from 15 years ago would not have cared so strongly about the choice of browser. I believe I was using the newly-ad-less Opera at the time, and new/cared little about the company making it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>My 15 year ago self would have taken a double helping of DoubleClick if my only choices were that or Internet Explorer 6.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22251454&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Do you remember what browsers were like when Chrome came out? I switched from Firefox the day it came out, and was very happy with performance and UI.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22239326&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>TL;DR I think whoever posted that is trying to bury the UA anonymizing feature by derailing the discussion.<p>What I'm seeing is an RFC for anonymizing parts of User-Agent in order to reduce UA based fingerprinting, which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing!</p><p>Then I see someone comments how that could negatively impact existing websites or Chromium-derived browsers, comments which are totally fair and make an argument that may not be a good idea doing this change because of that.</p><p>Then someone mentions the _existing_ x-client-data headers attached to requests that uniquely identify a Chrome installation. Then a lot of comments on that, including here on HN.</p><p>To me that's derailing the original issue. If we want to propose that Chrome remove those headers we should do so as a separate issue and have people comment/vote on that. By talking about it on the UA anonymizing proposal we are polluting that discussion and effectively stalling that proposal which, if approved, could improve privacy (especially since it will go into Chromium so then any non-Chrome builds can get the feature without having to worry about x-client-data that Chrome does).
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 <a href="vote?id=22241007&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed.<p>Ads are a business, and they are Google's business. They are how they make money. And like all businesses, they are competitive. Tracking is a way to make more money off online advertising. By removing tracking from their competitors while keeping it for themselves, Google stand to make a lot of money off this change.</p><p>Their motivations are not honest, but they're pushing them as if this is the high road. It isn't. It's the dirty low road of dominating the online ad business, made possible by their dominance in the browser market. And it's always been the end-goal of Chrome browser.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241942&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I think this is a common strategy of big players at any industry.<p>First, they do some dirty thing to gain a competitive edge when the industry is still new and unregulated. Later they develop an alternative way to achieve the same competitive edge, and then criticize other players for doing an old way, saying they should be "mature and responsible".
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 <a href="vote?id=22242103&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>See also first world countries industrializing/modernizing &amp; becoming rich/lifting people out of poverty using industrial techniques that pollute heavily, then "going green" and criticizing other players (India, China) for doing the same thing, saying they should be "mature and responsible".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243032&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Not really. "Going green" is a radical new concept for humanity that goes counter to all incentives and instincts and only recent developments have shown that painful measures are necessary. It was not a trick to get rich at other peoples expense.<p>India and China are suffering from their own pollution and have incentives to "go green" all by themselves, not because the West demands it.</p><p>Green technology is often high tech and tech that is accepted in Western markets and is helping to lift people out of poverty through market mechanism, not finger pointing.</p><p>Finally the first world got rich several generations ago. We are not related in any way, shape or form to any real or perceived sins of our grandfathers. Any such idea is old testament biblical theology.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243112&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>"Going green" is a relatively new concept, even for Western countries. By 1960 the West was seriously polluting its environment, but also extremely affluent and highly developed. There was far more of a gap between the average American and someone in Asia or Africa compared to today. The West polluted the developing world in the same way it polluted the Hudson or Cuyahoga.<p>It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet. It's more about where the standards are set and what is socially acceptable or understood.
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 <a href="vote?id=22244477&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet.<p>It's not recognizing anything, because it <i>hasn't been demonstrated</i> that growth is still compatible with not completely destroying the planet. It's deciding to not destroy the planet, and if that means pulling up the latter then golly gee sucks to be anyone who isn't up yet. We sure hope there are other ways up, but that's not much consolation.
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 <a href="vote?id=22244455&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>They should be mature and responsible, the west should have been, too, and has a long way to go.<p>We both are probably distant cousins due to our relation through Ghengis Khan, but that doesn't mean I should be bitter that I can't make my fortune by pillaging half the world like my distant ancestor did to great effect. It might be easy to make a fortune pillaging, but that doesn't mean I deserve to pillage because someone else did (or does), and I think I am in the right in detesting the scattered bands of warlords left in this world who do make their living by pillaging.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242830&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Just yesterday I had to disable anti fingerprinting I'd enabled in Firefox because despite having a solid IP and and existing cookies to login to Google, it's security system rejected me, even after answering security questions. Turn off fingerprinting and I could log in.<p>So, this is a round about way of agreeing with the hidden dark patterns that Google are bringing to the web. It must stop.
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 <p>I have to log into Gmail just to pass captchas. Every time I do it I die a little inside.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>All the more reason to keep bad actors in containers isolated from the rest of your web browsing. Google can fingerprint me all they want if that gets their rocks off, all they'd see is my gmail inbox that they see anyway.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Much of such discussions demonize the company, but we need to look broader. Google is a public company and its shareholders, since they share the company, are also to be pointed out. Discouraging such behaviour is better done by the shareholders by dumping shares since Google could very well argue that if it didn't work to maximize ad revenue, it would not be operating according to fiduciary responsibility principles. (IANAL .. just thinking out loud)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22260136&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>That is such short term thinking.<p>Doing unethical things because "We had to so the shareholders would make money" is such a cop-out. I see it just the opposite way. You have a duty to do things ethically so that in the long run customers continue to want to use your product. So that governments don't start going after you for the unethical things you do. So that other businesses will trust you and continue to work with you.</p><p>Here's an example: Huawei. They've reached out to me saying they'll pay me more than my employer and my commute will be shorter. No effing way. I'm sure I could make them a lot of money, but they're history of unethical behaviour is an instant deal-breaker for me. Others will, sure, but in the market of labor they're going to have a reduced supply because I'm surely not alone in this attitude.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243967&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I'm with you on the shareholders being complicit in the behaviour (through ignorance or inaction in a lot of cases), but unfortunately I'd guess 90% of said shareholders wouldn't be aware of the scummy tactics Google have undertaken, similar to Microsoft I'd say, outside of the IT/HN realm.<p>It's unfortunate. Profit of their shares is the only thing a lot of people look at (and willfully ignore anything else unless it slaps them in the face/becomes a major mainstream media event).
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 <a href="vote?id=22242862&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p><i>"I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed."</i><p>Pretty sure that was their main reason for helping push https-everywhere. A good idea generally, but hurt every other entity trying to do tracking more than it hurt Google.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242845&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; while keeping them fully-armed.<p>That's sort of a fragile assumption though. I mean, yes, there's enough specificity in this number that it <i>could</i> be used (in combination with other fingerprinting techniques) to disambiguate a user. And yes, only Google would be capable of doing this. So it's abusable, in the same way that lots of software like this is abusable by the disributor. And that's worth pointing out and complaing about, sure.</p><p>But it's not tracking. It's not. It's a cookie that identifies the gross configuration of the browser. And Google claims that it's not being used for tracking.</p><p>So all the folks with the hyperbole about user tracking for advertising purposes need to come out with their evidence that Google is lying about this. Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243235&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google claims that it's not being used for tracking<p>&gt; Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.</p><p>Allow me to introduce to you "mabbo's razor": If someone can make money by doing X and it's impossible for anyone to tell whether or not they are doing X, then they are probably doing X or else will as soon as you believe they won't.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241374&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>While I agree with some of your comment, I feel like it’s harsh to paint the whole chrome enterprise with that brush. Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser and a lot of devoted devs have spent a lot of time working on it. There’s an advertising aspect that it’s right to call out, but I think on the whole it was done to make the internet better, because the internet is google’s business too.<p>EDIT I just wanted to point out that a load of people have poured their lives into making Google Chrome the amazing bit of software that it is and suggesting that the end-goal has been entirely about supplying ads does a great disservice to their personal contributions.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243339&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>These aren't mutually exclusive things. The people working on Chrome were and are highly motivated, intelligent and passionate people, some of whom I call friends, who want to see the web become a better place. In that regard they have succeeded massively.<p>But by this point, Google has dropped billions of dollars on salaries for those developers to build Chrome (call it &gt;500 devs, &gt;$200k salaries, &gt;10 years). Google is not a charity. They didn't build Chrome with the intent to lose money on it. Everything else Google made that wasn't profitable is <i>gone</i> now, and yet here Chrome stands. Because it is an indirect profit center.</p><p>And you've pointed out the real issue: Chrome <i>was</i> about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser. 'Was'. But it did that! So what is it about now? Why would Google continue to pour money into it if they didn't expect to extract more money out of it in the future?</p><p>You can make the world better and make money while doing it. Ideally, that's what we all are doing.
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 <p>It wasn’t some noble mission to free the world. Chrome was always about Google controlling the client side of the web to guarantee their advertising access to web users. The ability to extract additional data from the user was a nice bonus.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The way I see it, both of these can be (and most likely are) true. Intentions of the company aren't usually the same as intentions of individual contributors (or even whole teams). The Web is Google's business - the more stuff happens on the Web, the more money they can eventually make of it. Advertising is how they make most of that money, so this is what they're protecting. But beyond that, Chrome answered a real need and a lot of hard-working people made it into a best-in-class browser.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22242086&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>"Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser "<p>Chrome is about establishing more control over the web to further the business objectives of Google and Alphabet.</p><p>The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor' is a function of the new kind of branding they helped introduce, something that an entire generation of particularly young people are being duped by.</p><p>'Brand' used to be the image that companies presented - it was a decision, a marketing tactic, usually invented by agencies. Google was one of the first to change that, to effectively 'internalize' the brand so that they (staff, even leaders) really kind of believed their own kool-aid. There's an incredible aura of 'authenticity' to this; when leaders really believe their own schtick, it rings more powerfully. (This is an issue for another thread.)</p><p>But Google has proven that in the long run, they're just a regular company. I don't think they are bad actors, and in the big picture, they're better than most. But, they're just a self-interested entity: they will do whatever is in their power and which is also legal, to leverage their incumbency and stymie competition.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242579&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor'<p>You put 'benevolent actor' in quotes as if the comment you are replying to contained that. It didn't.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242773&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Stress quotes. That is just one of the possible devices to achieve that.<p>I see a lot of that here, people misunderstanding basic speech/writing conventions. Maybe giving the op the benefit of doubt, assuming s/he knows what s/he is doing, can help avoid some of those.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240995&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing!<p>Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud.</p><p>Which means Google competitors are terribly disadvantaged, as they cannot use that.</p><p>Which not only reduces market diversity (contrary to TAG philosophy) but represents a significant conflict of interest for an organization proposing a major web standard change.</p><p>These issues are very relevant to the original proposal, especially in light of the fact that Noone outside of Google is terribly interested in this change. Any time a dominant player is the strongest (or only) advocate for a change that would coincidentally and disproportionately benefit its corporate interests, the proposal should be viewed very skeptically.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241048&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud.<p>So when Apple releases a privacy feature, that doesn't affect them as a business, we praise the feature or we say "except it doesn't affect Apple" and somehow try to argue how the feature is less valuable because of that?
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 <a href="vote?id=22243902&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Of course we'd say "except it doesn't affect Apple"...<p>If there's a privacy gap, (<i>and Apple is actively exploiting that gap</i>)</p><p>When Apple patches it, (<i>while leaving it open for themselves</i>)</p><p>They'll get called out.
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 <p>Apple is not engaged in illegal data harvesting to gain a competitive advantage over other services in the same space. Google's collection of personal data with the x-client-data header without user consent is illegal under GDPR.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This relies on the (unfounded) assumption that this pseudonymous ID is being used for tracking purposes and that Google is actively lying about it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22241321&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>GDPR treats an IP address as personal data. The data is not transmitted through an anonymizing network, so Google has access to the user's IP address when they receive the data.<p>Anything that is associated with personal data also becomes personal information, therefore Google is transmitting personal data without user consent, which is illegal.</p><p>Asking for consent is not required under GDPR when the data collection is needed for a service to function. This is not the case here, Google services function without receiving that header, the data is used by Google to gain a technical advantage over other web services.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241363&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; GDPR treats an IP address as personal data.<p>No it doesn't. GDPR only treats IP address as personal data if it is associated with actual identifying information (like name or address). Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR.</p><p>Edit: and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and <i>don't</i> join them, the ID isn't personal data.</p><p>IOW, the theoretical capability to make changes to a system to use info in a non-GDPR compliant way doesn't make the information or system noncompliant. You actually have to do the noncompliant things.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241405&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>An IP address is itself personal data, it does not have to be associated with other personal data.<p><a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/what-personal-data_en">https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...</a></p><p>&gt; Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR.</p><p>See my comment about consent not being required when the data is needed to provide a service. Logging is reasonably required to provide a service.</p><p>&gt; and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.</p><p>The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241464&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>See my edit. There's conflicting information on this. A dynamic IP, for example, isn't directly related to or relatable to a specific natural person without other context.<p>But even if that's the case, if you don't tie the pseudonymous ID to the IP, it isn't personal data. As far as I can tell, the transfer rules you reference are about transferring data out of the EU, and can be summarized as "you can't transfer data to a non-EU country and then process it in a way that violates the GDPR". Article 46 notes that transferring data is fine as long as appropriate safeguards are in place[1], and article 47[2] defines what constitutes those safeguards (in general, contractually/legally binding agreements with appropriate enforcement policies).</p><p>This goes back to what I said before: The theoretical capability to do noncompliant things doesn't make a system GDPR-noncompliant. You have to actually do noncompliant things to not comply.</p><p>[1]: <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/art-46-gdpr/">https://gdpr-info.eu/art-46-gdpr/</a></p><p>[2]: <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/art-47-gdpr/">https://gdpr-info.eu/art-47-gdpr/</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=22242467&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; &gt; and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.<p>&gt; The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law.</p><p>This cannot be the actual correct interpretation of the GDPR, because under this logic _all_ IP packets on the public internet (made by/to EU citizens) are covered by the GDPR because you are transmitting data alongside an IP address.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242036&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>There has been an EU court ruling on this exact question of whether dynamic IP addresses count as personal data even in contexts where the website operator in question does not have the means to associate it with an individual but another party (such as an ISP) does. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on this and it does count as personal data. [1]<p>Furthermore, GDPR itself specifically refers to online identifiers in Article 4 as falling under the definition of personal data[2] and then clarifies in Recital 30[3] that IP addresses count as online identifiers in this context. There seems to be no legal ambiguity in the EU on this topic at this point, but I would be not surprised to see parties who are not GDPR compliant pretend otherwise indefinitely.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2016-10/cp160112en.pdf">https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...</a></p><p>[2] <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/">https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/</a></p><p>[3] <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/">https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/</a>
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 <p>Interesting, TIL. That doesn't change the major point I was making though, which is that an anonymized identifier (such as the 13-bit ID under discussion) isn't personal info, even if it might have originally been collected along side data which is personal info. If I give you said 13 bit ID, you need other info to back out a single person, the anonymous ID corresponds to multiple IPs.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22242314&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I think you're still missing the point. Google transmits personal data to their servers without user consent. The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work. The nature of the data, what is being done with it on the server, and the location of the server are all irrelevant in this instance, the only important part is that personal data has left the browser in the form of a request, and it reached a Google server.<p>This data collection would only be exempt from GDPR if the data would be required for the service to function, but that is not the case with x-client-data.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242894&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work.<p>This is not correct. The x-client-data is <i>not</i> personal data. x-client-data associated with an IP address is personal data. As soon as you separate the client-data from the IP, the client data stops being personal data. IOW, the tuple (x-client-data, IP) is personal data. But x-client-data on its own isn't personal data, because it cannot be used to infer the IP on its own.</p><p>I don't know where you're getting this "if two pieces of data ever touch and one of them is personal data the other one is now also contaminated as personal data". It's not true. That would make the existence of anonymous data (which the GDPR specifies as a thing) practically speaking impossible to have on the web, since all requests are associated with the IP on receipt. (or actually even worse, it would make the process of anonymizing data impossible in general, since the anonymization process associates the anonymized data with the original personal data).</p><p>To be precise, the GDPR defines anonymized data as "data rendered anonymous in such a way that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable.". The x-client-data header is exactly that. The subject of the header is not identifiable by the x-client-data header alone. Therefore the header is anonymous and not subject to strong GDPR reqs.</p><p>For the client data header to be personal data, you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds. You're welcome to come up with such a scheme, but my intro CS classes taught me that bucketed hashing is irreversible, and with 8192 buckets, you're not going to be able to uniquely identify anyone specific.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243164&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The Chrome whitepaper is written in a way to make you believe there is only 8000 possibilities.<p>But read carefully what they say; they say there is only 8000 possibilities if the crash reporting functionality is disabled (not by default).</p><p>Otherwise the marker is a huge differentiator (I haven't seen any duplicates personally)
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 <a href="vote?id=22243995&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; That would make the existence of anonymous data practically speaking impossible to have on the web<p>For almost every type of data that <i>is</i> true. Transforming or substituting data doesn't make it anonymous; the patters in the data are still present. To produce actually anonymous data you have to do what the GDPR instructed: corrupt the data ("rendered anonymous") severely enough that the "data subject is ... no longer identifiable". You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise.</p><p>&gt; 8192 bucket</p><p>While others have pointed out that this isn't actually limited to 13 bits of entropy for most people, there are at least two reasons that field is still very personally identifying. First, "x-client-data on its own" never happens. Google isn't wasting time and money implementing this feature to make an isolated database with a single column. At no point will the x-client-data value (or any other type of data they capture) ever sit in isolation. I used the IPv4 Source Address as an example because it will necessarily be present in the header of the packets that transport the x-client-data header over the internet. Suggesting that Google would ever use this value in isolation is almost insulting to Google; why would they waste their expensive developer time to create, capture, and manage data that is obviously useless?</p><p>However, lets say they did make and isolated system that only ever received 13 bit integers stripped of all other data. Surely that wouldn't be personally identifiable? If they store it with a locally generated high resolution timestamp they can re-associate the data with personal accounts by correlating the timestamps with their other timestamped databases (web server access logs, GA, recaptcha, etc).</p><p>&gt; you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds</p><p>You should first describe why google would ever use that header and only that header. Even if they aren't <i>currently</i> using x-client-data as an identifier or as additional fingerprintable entropy, simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=22244282&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise.<p>Correct, and another anonymization technique (in place of differential privacy) is k-anonymity. In k-anonymity schemes, you ensure that in any given table no row corresponds to any fewer than k individuals. Why is this useful? Well let's say you have some, say, 10-15 bit identifier. You can take a request from a user that contains information that might when combined, be identifying. Say: coarseish location (state/country), device metadata (browser version, OS version), and coarse access time (the hour and day of week). Combining all 3 (or 4 if you include the psuedonymous ID) is enough to uniquely identify at least some users. Then let's say you also track some performance statistics about the browser itself.</p><p>But any single piece of data (plus the pseudonymous ID) is not enough to identify any specific user. So if you use the psuedonymous ID as a shared foreign key, you can join across the tables and get approximate crosstabs without uniquely identifying any specific user. Essentially, if you want to ask if there are performance differences between version N and version N+1, you can check the aggregate performance vs. the aggregate count of new vs. old browser version, and with 8K samples, you're able to draw reasonable conclusions. And in general you can do this across dimensions or combinations of dimensions that might normally contain enough pieces of info to identify a single user.</p><p>This is essentially the same idea as differential privacy, although without the same mathematical precision that differential privacy can provide. (By this I don't mean that the data can be re-identified, just that differential privacy can be used to provide tighter bounds on the anonymization, such that the statistical inferences you can gather are more precise. k-anonymity is, perhaps, a less mathematically elegant tool).</p><p>Specifically, I'm describing k-anonymity using x-client-data as a Quasi-identifier in place of something like IP or MAC address. You can find those terms in the "See Also" section of the differential privacy wiki page you linked. Google is mentioned in those pages as a known user of both differential privacy and k-anonymization in other tools.</p><p>Hopefully that answers your question of why Google would want such a thing.</p><p>&gt; simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future.</p><p>Yes, but that doesn't mean that they're currently in violation of the GDPR, which is what a number of people keep insisting. I'm not claiming that it's impossible for Google to be doing something nefarious with data (although I will say that in general I think that's an unreasonably high bar). Just that the collection of something like this isn't an indication of nefarious actions, and is in fact likely the opposite.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240015&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This is the equivalent of a protest, people are objecting to Google's illegal data harvesting practices in places that receive engagement, since that's the most effective way to get the word out and warn others.<p>Google's reasoning that this is not personal data is meaningless in the face of GDPR, which considers an IP address personal data. Google has access to the IP address when they receive the data, therefore they are transmitting personal information without user consent and control, which is illegal.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240160&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>It could be argued that a similar violation is present (since March 2019) in Chromium for the Widevine CDM provisioning request, see <a href="https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/471">https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/471</a><p>Basically all users opening the browser will contact www.googleapis.com to get a unique "Protected Media Identifier", without opening any web page and even before any ToS/EULA is accepted (and there is no user consent either).
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 <a href="vote?id=22240787&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I think the Widevine CDM request is needed for the service to function, though they could certainly delay it until a website requires DRM. GDPR allows the use of personal data without consent when it is required to provide a service for the user.<p>The personal data collected with the x-client-data header is not required for Google sites to function. Google uses the data to gain a technical advantage over other sites on the web, this is why the data collection in this case requires consent.
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 <p>Whether consent is legally required or not, as a user I want that service, whatever it is, to not work until I consent to the exposure of my personal data. Given that it apparently has something to do with DRM, I would be disabling the service anyway.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22241764&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Whether consent is legally required or not<p>Lets not guess it, lets file a complaint, and see if we can get Google sued for n billions of euros.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240085&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The poster is the author of Kiwi browser, which unfortunately is closed source [0], but I have reason to believe he is familiar - as I am for the Bromite project - with all the (sometimes shady) internals of the Chromium codebase; it is indeed off-topic to discuss the header issue there but I would say that there is no explicit intention to derail it (and no advantage), just incorrect netiquette.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecomment-435690397">https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecommen...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=22241649&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The Google employee argues that through UA-CH Google wants to disincetivise "allow" and "block" lists.<p>After many years of testing HTTP headers, IMO this really is a non-issue. Most websites return text/html just fine <i>without sending any UA header at all</i>.</p><p>What is an issue are the various ways websites try to coax users to download, install and use a certain browser.</p><p>Another related issue with Google Chrome is users getting better integration and performance when using Chrome with Google websites than they would if they used other clients. ^1 Some make the analogy to Microsoft where it was common for Microsoft software to integrate and perform better on Microsoft Windows whereas third party software was noticably worse to integrate and perform on that OS.</p><p>This leads to less user agent diversity. Users will choose what works best.</p><p>UA diversity is really a more important goal than privacy, or privacy in Chrome. The biggest privacy gains are not going to come from begging Google to make changes to Chrome. They could however come from making it easier for users to switch away from using Chrome and to <i>use other clients</i>. That requires some cooperation from websites as well as Google.</p><p>Those other clients could theoretically be written by anyone, not just large companies and organisations that are dependent on the online ad sales business. It would be relatively easy to achieve "privacy-by-design" in such clients. There is no rule that says users have to use a single UA to access every website. There needs to be choice.</p><p>For example, HN is a relatively simple website that does not require a large, complex browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. to read. It generates a considerable amount of traffic and stands as proof that simpler websites can be popular. Varying the UA header does not result in drastic differences in the text/html returned by the server.</p><p>1. Recently we saw Google exclude use of certain clients to access Gmail.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241774&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, but they would also need a valid TLS certificate?<p>A country's government could also take over the TLD and grab its traffic overnight.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240963&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The original issue is supposedly fingerprinting and privacy related.<p>If that's true then Google should be called out for their poor behaviour.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243130&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>As long as web developers continue to create (app-)sites that only work in the latest versions of Chrome(and Chromium-ish) browsers, giving users little effective choice over what browsers they can use, this sort of abusive behaviour will continue. The sort of "feature-racing" that Google engages in is ultimately harmful for the open web. Mozilla struggles to keep up, Opera surrendered a while ago, and more recently, Microsoft seems to have already given up completely.<p>I feel like it's time we "hold the Web back" again. Leave behind the increasingly-walled-garden of "modern" appsites and their reliance on hostile browsers, and popularise simple HTML and CSS, with forms for interactivity, maybe even just a little JavaScript where absolutely necessary. Something that is usable with a browser like Dillo or Netsurf, or even one of the text-based ones. Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google has, by allowing more browsers to appear and gain userbases.
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 <a href="vote?id=22244818&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This proposal would not accomplish what you intend. By slowing the adoption of open web technologies, developers and users would lean more heavily on mobile apps, which are also under Google's control considering Android's huge market share.<p>Developers who want to level the playing field need to develop sites that fully support Firefox and other browsers that are not based on Chromium. Users who want to see a more open web need to use Firefox and non-Chromium browsers, and complain to developers who don't properly support them.
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 <p>I'm talking about the vast majority of things people use websites for, which do not need a webapp much less a mobile app.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wish, but that's not what most people want. Hell, it's not what <i>designers</i> want. Thinking back to the Myspace days, people would have the worst websites imaginable. Granted, that was all done with little more than HTML and javascript, but I have little doubt what they would have done with things like HTML5 and even more javascript.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243296&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I have to agree with this.<p>The last decade or so has really reinforced to me that we all ignore or are ignorant of fundamental structural problems with most of the systems we rely on - with us wanting them to "just work."</p><p>We're all guilty of this, we just see it up close for the things that we're building and chide others who don't care. Meanwhile we ignore other fundamental structures of modern society.
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 <p>There's got to be a balance between every website looking exactly the same and fading out of my memory with one identical hamburger menu after another and dancing babies on geocities.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Are there really that many popular extensions not available on Firefox? I may be just one anecdote, but I think I'm pretty typical, and I've found the transition to Firefox to be quite pleasant, and uneventful.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Popular - no. Essential - yes. Case in point - my bank (top 5 in my country) which uses Chrome plugin for security purposes, you need it to create digital signature. So once a year I HAVE to install Chrome (key expires every year) and then delete it. I've also found at least one payment processor not working in Firefox, my city portal for public transport and several small sites. The worrying thing is the trend - with Firefox share dropping below 10% recently it will be abandoned more and more.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Installing Chrome was strictly needed only for banking plugin. Didn't have a chance to check yet with a new Chrome-Edge but will definitely try it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243713&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Firefox is really good.<p>My issue is with certain sites that typically either uses non standard Javascript apis that only work in blink or <i>relies</i> on non standard behavior of standard components (numeric form inputs was mentioned here yesterday).
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 <p>It doesn't happen often but sometimes, when a website doesn't work, I switch to chrome and it works there.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243287&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>HTML is not enough. It’s why templating languages / libraries were invented, and it’s why SPA’s are so popular. There’s a difference between “sites” and applications. The web has been trending toward supporting applications more and more for a very long time.<p>The only thing that will make people who want to preserve the content-web happy is if we split the protocols somehow, and that will never happen. This is not likely to change ever.
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 <a href="vote?id=22244097&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I havent had js on by default in years. Using a js enabled browser is a drastically worse experience.<p>suckless surf lest you enable js with a hotkey on a per-process basis if you really want it for something, but 90% of the time, I just close the tab that wants to waste my time.
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 <p>I think we at HN have a particular responsibility to keep the web free and open. This really is an arms race and only those of us building the tech have the power curtail FAANG's overreach. It might me time to choose a side and firmly push your work toward open web friendly tech.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22244538&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; [...] this sort of abusive behaviour will continue.<p>Can you elaborate what exactly is abusive behavior?</p><p>&gt; [...] reliance on hostile browsers, [...]</p><p>What exactly is a hostile browser?
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 <p>What article? The link is a github issue. And it's not like you referenced anything of that anyway. It's more like it just triggered you to output a general rant. So again: Care to elaborate?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22243519&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google has<p>You do realize/remember that Google is also a search-engine company, one that only stands to benefit (in terms of increased capability of advertising targeting) from a web that's simpler, and therefore more machine-legible.
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 <p>I’m not so sure about that. Google has the resources, a simpler web makes it easier for <i>competitors</i>, seems like google is already quite competent at machine reading just about everything, even sometimes things that you can’t fond/visit. Domination by web-apps is the equivalent to widening the moat.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238424&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there. The Chrome codebase has special features for Google’s own web properties.<p>I hope all these AGs suing google have some good tech advisors. It’s hard to keep track of all the nefarious things google has been up to over the past decade.
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 <a href="vote?id=22242545&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there.<p>???</p><p>Is "Darn, their browser only gets to track me on their own websites; if Google were playing fairly, they'd send the tracking header to <i>all</i> websites so I can be tracked more and have less privacy" the argument you're making here?</p><p>And it's debatable that this header is actually serving a tracking purpose at all. Being limited to their own web properties cements it as a diagnostic to me. What use is a tracking header that only gets sent to domains they already know you're visiting?
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 <a href="vote?id=22242872&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>You realize that whenever a user visits a page that uses AdWords, AdSense, or login via Google, they download a script file from one of those domains, right?<p>So a user can log into Google and then log out, tying that header data to whatever PII Google has attached to them, and future visits to any sites using those and probably other services can be attached to the individual, despite them having intended to be logged out of Google services.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243166&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>All I’m saying is the optics are not good. This is the kind of code you could show a jury. A high schooler who took “intro to CS” could understand what it’s doing.<p>It’s literally a conditional attached to a list of strings comprised solely of google advertising domains and hosts that distribute scripts from those domains.</p><p>When you’re talking about anti-trust, it doesn’t look good. Will this be a nail in the coffin? Unlikely. Will it help Google with its legal trouble? Definitely not.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240431&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Security flaw? Surely some entity is squatting youtube on some TLD?!<p>If there is a country TLD of X where Google owns google.X but entity Y owns youtube.X then entity Y gets the X-CLIENT-DATA header information. See usage of IsValidHostName() in code.
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 <p>If you strace chrome on linux it also picks up /etc/machine-id (or it did back when I looked), which is a 32 byte randomly generated string which uniquely identifies you and on some systems is used as the DHCP ID across reboots.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>First I thought reading /etc/machine-id would be expected if Chrome uses D-bus or pulseaudio libraries which depend on D-bus, and /etc/machine-id is part of D-bus. But no, they really use it for tracking purposes.<p>And in a sick twist they have this comment for it:</p><pre><code> std::string BrowserDMTokenStorageLinux::InitClientId() {
 // The client ID is derived from /etc/machine-id
 // (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html). As per
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 // is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting
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 <a href="vote?id=22239366&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>In fairness, the guidelines they reference suggest you do exactly what the comment says they're doing (assuming they're keying the hash). The guidelines seem explicitly written with the idea that unique identifiers _derived from_ this value are not similarly quarantined, provided that you cannot take the derived value and "reverse" it back to the original identifier.<p>Quoting from <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html">https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id....</a>:</p><p>This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve the original machine ID from the application-specific one.
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 <a href="vote?id=22256167&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I think it doesn't make much sense to protect it because in popular Linux distributions an unprivileged user can access such identifiers as MAC addresses of network interfaces, HDD serial numbers etc.<p>&gt; If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application,</p><p>Ideally there should be no stable identifiers accessible to untrusted applications.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241106&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; which is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting it.<p>This made me chuckle. "As per the rules, we'll put on a boxing glove before we punch your lights out". You wont get privacy, but at least there is some security!
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 <p>"Tracking purposes" is such a weasel word, when we're really talking about device management in an enterprise setting, and this code only gets activated if the root/administrator user has installed a token file on your computer.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Which (among many other things) can be faked with firejail, if you absolutely have to run Chromium (e.g. for testing):<pre><code> --machine-id
 Spoof id number in /etc/machine-id file - a new random id is generated inside the sandbox.
 
 Example:
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 <p>When puppeteer first came out I was nervous to use it for scraping because I could totally see Chrome pulling tricks like this to help recaptcha in identifying the bots. I’m still not convinced they aren’t.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What does tor do with it? Maybe pass it along in packet timing intervals, or something ... ;o)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>True, more precisely - 16 bytes, 32 hex characters. Your link is in agreement "The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during system installation or first boot and stays constant for all subsequent boots." And See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/MachineId">https://wiki.debian.org/MachineId</a> at least one distro uses it for the DHCP ID.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Now you are nitpicking. Your new link says exactly this “ This broadcasts the machine ID (hashed with a known fixed salt) over the LAN as the unique client identifier part of the DHCP protocol. (Other DHCP clients tend to use MAC addresses for this.) It also broadcasts the machine ID locally on each link as part of Ethernet LLDP, if enabled.”</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It is far from nitpicking to point out the gross inaccuracy of conflating one particular software with an entire operating system. systemd-networkd is not Debian.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22245101&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I'm surprised this hasn't gotten any mainstream tech press attention. Chrome's Privacy Whitepaper describes a number of privacy-questionable nonstandard headers which are only sent to Google services. Just try searching for X- here:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html">https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html</a></p><p>And for ease of reading, a few others:</p><p>&gt; On Android, your location will also be sent to Google via an X-Geo HTTP request header if Google is your default search engine, the Chrome app has the permission to use your geolocation, and you haven’t blocked geolocation for www.google.com (or country-specific origins such as www.google.de)</p><p>&gt; To measure searches and Chrome usage driven by a particular campaign, Chrome inserts a promotional tag, not unique to you or your device, in the searches you perform on Google. This non-unique tag contains information about how Chrome was obtained, the week when Chrome was installed, and the week when the first search was performed. ... This non-unique promotional tag is included when performing searches via Google (the tag appears as a parameter beginning with "rlz=" when triggered from the Omnibox, or as an “x-rlz-string” HTTP header).</p><p>&gt; On Android and desktop, Chrome signals to Google web services that you are signed into Chrome by attaching an X-Chrome-Connected and/or C-Chrome-ID-Consistency-Request header to any HTTPS requests to Google-owned domains. On iOS, the CHROME_CONNECTED cookie is used instead.
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 <a href="vote?id=22236611&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>PII concept is not the same for everyone/everywhere. For GDPR we have:<p>&gt; Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, <i></i>directly or indirectly<i></i>, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;</p><p>If this chrome browser ID is matched against a (for example) google account, then they can track every single person. And that is just a couple of IDs, let alone all the quantity of data they have.</p><p>It's against GDPR to not be clear about this kind of ID. If my browser has an unique ID that is transmitted, then this ID can be coupled with other information to retrieve my identity and behavior, so it should be informed (in the EU).</p><p>EDIT: TD;LR, hiding behind "there is no PII in that ID" is not enough.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237338&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Who's going to raise this issue though?<p>I'm sure there is someone out there who takes these kind of things seriously. Not me. I use firefox for that matter.</p><p>&gt; And what if they put this in the browser's T&amp;C?</p><p>Then the rest of GDPR applies: a clear message about the browser sending this info has to be shown, explaining why, with who they'll share it, the time they will keep this info, plus no auto opt-ins, the possibility of asking Google (or whatever) all the info relative to this ID and the option to cancel all the data, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237323&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII; it denies even innocuous feature-mode-distinguishing headers intended to allow for bug-identification of massively-distributed software installs.<p>If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."
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 <a href="vote?id=22237455&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Me too. Then a breach happens and someone with a straight face tells you: "we take your privacy very seriously", asking apologies, because the breach used some of your data to push some political campaign or to bother you with spam/extortions because that night you were watching some porn.<p>Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that works. Otherwise upper levels have an excuse to do all this "experience" telemetry, and we all are smart enough to see the consequences of a data breach.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237670&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that works<p>If you demand a perfection-of-function guarantee from something as complicated as a web browser, you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s (and I'm not even sure we'd be that far along by now).</p><p>If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "the software ever having the features I want to use" I'm also going to lean towards "the software ever having the features I want to use." And we know this is true for users in general because of the number of users who had Flash installed back-in-the-day in spite of the fact that it allowed a total bypass of the browser security model, because it had features that the browser lacked otherwise.
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 <p>Instead of giving my privacy away, I prefer software like anything that you have installed from a CD-ROM back in the 90's and didn't needed a weekly update. Games, 3D-Studio, Autocad (to name a few) were more complex than a web-browser (<i>a today's web-browser</i>) and didn't needed a weekly update or the hunger for <i>user-requested</i> features, let alone dialing home <i>because</i>. The world worked relatively fine without the <i>up-to-date</i> wankery we see today.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238238&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>I remember them.<p>They were also buggy and could crash their resident OSs all the way to a stuck state, and if they did, the solution was "Try not to trigger that bug again."</p><p>Software quality has significantly improved in the era of easy patch access and auto-patching.
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 <a href="vote?id=22238453&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Holy Jesus. Those things were chock full of security holes. If you used a web browser that arrived on a CD ROM you'd be advertising massive pwnability.<p>In fact, you could easily simulate this by using last year's Firefox.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241214&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Firefox, chrome, linux ... all are full of unnecessary complexity. The point being - we need daily patches to keep it from falling apart.<p>I have links (or lynx) on an old SuSE, maybe even a Mandriva CD. Would they be massively pwnable?
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 <p>Hard to say, but not necessarily a great example; exploits on software are a function both of attack surface / complexity and installed userbase (i.e. nobody bothers to see if lynx is pwnable because a zero-day against that browser will be worth, what, twenty bucks to gain access to the five people who use it?).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22241994&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Perhaps. Perhaps not. As a thought experiment:<p>How long would it be safe to go without browser updates with a browser of complexity/capabilies of links, if 50% of people used it?</p><p>With many people combing through it, would it become effectively unexploitable?
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 <a href="vote?id=22242145&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Probably not very long. Even with a small attack surface, if half the world uses it, the zero-days are valuable. Links is still vulnerable to<p>* application-layer attacks (it is still an HTTP client and HTML parser, and the protocols themselves are complicated to implement soundly, even if the newest features aren't included)</p><p>* protocol attacks (is links immune to buffer-overruns triggered by intentionally-malformed queries? Probably not, since it has no total-soundness verification. And the source code isn't open-source so )</p><p>* dependency attacks (it uses svgalib [<a href="https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-84/product_id-141/version_id-530/Svgalib-Svgalib-1.2.10.html">https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-84/p...</a>], and every third-party library is a potential attack vector)</p><p>* good old-fashioned UI spoofing (is links' UI design immune to allowing web pages to show an image that tricks the user into thinking they're looking at the links UI itself?)</p><p>In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application.
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 <a href="vote?id=22277147&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; .. source code isn't open-source ..<p>Not sure what you mean, but then what is this:
<a href="http://links.twibright.com/download/">http://links.twibright.com/download/</a></p><p>&gt; In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application.</p><p>Precisely, and because of that, with 50% people using it, an orders of magnitude smaller attack surface and a mostly fixed feature set (you could at least have a LTS version), just how many vulnerabilities are there to find? How many man-years of work until there is nothing¹ left to find? Do you think that just any code has exploitable vulnerabilities, you just need to look hard enough? And with each fix, you can repeat that ad nauseam?</p><p>With the current browser development efforts, would we end up with a 100% formally verified browser, including its dependencies, networking, and maybe even relevant parts of a linux kernel?</p><p>Judging by the change log[2], links is currently developed by 1 developer and occasional contributions.</p><p>¹ Nothing of sufficient importance, frequency and lack of reasonable mitigations like not clicking on browser look-alikes, server-side CSRF protections, etc.</p><p>[2] <a href="http://links.twibright.com/download/ChangeLog">http://links.twibright.com/download/ChangeLog</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=22240927&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s<p>I would actively prefer a web browser that lacks the features added since the '90s.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241030&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>That's understandable, but it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.<p>Browsers aren't just thin-clients to support HTTP protocol and HTML rendering. They've grown to adopt a new distributed computing paradigm, not unlike UNIX and its descendants grew to support a new multi-user-cum-multi-process paradigm. The things web development offers---location agnosticism, platform agnosticism, combined multimedia interaction, a workable security model for multi-source aggregate-component content---are eating software development, and the browser is becoming the OS of the modern era. We know users want this because users were willing to use Flash (even though Flash broke out of the security model of the old browser).</p><p>There'll always be a place for small text-based pages much as modern computing will always have a place for command-line tools, but the genie is out of the bottle and it won't be put back in.
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 <a href="vote?id=22251948&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.<p>I'm fully aware of this, and this, at heart, is why I'm certain that the day will come when I can no longer use the web at all.
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 <a href="vote?id=22241662&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>The mozilla suite in 1998 included a browser, an email/newsgroup client, an IRC client, an address book and an html editor.<p>Modern browsers for all their bloat actually have less features.
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 <a href="vote?id=22240911&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII<p>And I consider it far too narrow.</p><p>&gt; If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."</p><p>Fair enough. I would go for "more privacy", personally. There is no technical reason why both of our preferences couldn't be honored.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243055&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Well why does Chrome send this special header to only Google properties like YouTube and search and not the rest of the internet.<p>It really seems fishy and a lot of double speak. I really don’t trust Google here.
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 <a href="vote?id=22243185&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; and not the rest of the internet<p>Privacy issues aside, this might not help an antitrust case if one is brought against them.
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 <a href="vote?id=22237170&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>This it outrageous. Browsers are user-agents, not advertising accelerators. They should hide as much personal identifiable information as possible. This is exactly why using a browser from an advertising company is not a good idea. They use it to improve their service... The lie gets old...<p>This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing...</p><p>edit: pretty much exactly 10 years ago they already tried their shit with a unique id. We should have learned from that experience.
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 <a href="vote?id=22256011&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing...<p>You realize you can have multiple different browsers installed, right?
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 <a href="vote?id=22236220&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>According to <a href="https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html">https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html</a><p>"<i>We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation.</i>"</p><p>While this header may not contain personally identifiable information, its presence will make every request by this user far more unique and thus easier to track. I do not see Google saying they won't use it to improve their tracking of people.
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 <p>One click while logged into any Google property will be enough for them to permanently associate this GUID with your (shadow) account, they know it, and they know you know it too</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22236269&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>So, an extremely unique identifier for tracking purposes, that effectively no one knows exists, and no one knows can be changed at all?<p>With an obscure white paper that allows Google to claim they comply with the law because "they totally offer a way to change that and they even published that information to the web for anyone to find"?</p><p>Gotcha.
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 <a href="vote?id=22236653&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Don't be evil...<p>Until we are deployed enough that users don't have a choice...</p><p>Now that Google has cornered the market for Internet browsing, they're using that foothold to change how it works to suit their dominance. This is why they are not concerned about per-site tracking that Google Analytics does, as long as THEY as a company have direct browser-based tracking, they no longer need to provide tracking services to other private companies to know what is trending everywhere. This is also probably why they're trying to kill ad blockers and certain browser privacy extensions.... But they won't really matter to Google if everything is done at the browser level to begin with from now on. :/</p><p>If they make moves to scale back [free] Google Analytics, which they probably will at some point, it will only highlight this ideal... They may turn to selling their privately collected metrics and qualitative studies to companies after Google Analytics is rendered useless, and then that's unadulterated monopolistic profit for them and shareholders...</p><p>Diabolical.
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 <p>You are right, but they also know most people won't switch. They have an entire generation of folks that don't even think about privacy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There's also the subset of all of us who must use Chrome because &lt;solution X&gt; needed for work requires said browser. Google's dominance through Chrome extends to the whole ecosystem. Same thing with Apple inside their own (which is nowhere near a monopoly at 10-15% market share worldwide, thus totally fair game by comparison).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>On the other hand, people hate ads, so going to Firefox might actually be better option for new users.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They might and I used to be one of them, but now I use Google on Firefox isntead, because DuckDuckGo no longer yields useful results. The number of times I don't go "oh ffs, fine, !g" has been in steady decline over the last year, and at this point I've given up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238454&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"? It's not been applicable for half a decade now, and even in 2015 when it was officially removed from the last company documents, it was already a dead phrase.<p>Google had already cornered the market back in 2012, when it surpassed every other browser, with an absolute majority dominance (&gt;50% market share) achieved way back in 2015.</p><p>Google has been in control for a <i>long</i> time now.
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 <a href="vote?id=22238654&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Because of the deep irony? If you have a moto that binary and later decide to remove it, what is the world to infer?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22239484&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"?<p>Historical? It's not like it was 50 years ago.
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 <a href="vote?id=22279843&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>In a world where broadband internet hasn't even been available for 2 decades, 5 years is a bloody long time.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238760&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Please don't post blatantly false statements that are trivial to refute.<p>wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
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 <a href="vote?id=22238846&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Reminds me of this.<p>"There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning
department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start
making a fuss about it now"
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 <p>Are you talking about the same thing? Because the identifier above is claimed to have 13b of entropy. Is there another high entropy identifier?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>13b, if usage statistics are disabled (not the default). Otherwise, unspecified amount of entropy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>By default it's much more than 13b. Seems to be 13b only if you disable analytics/crash reports.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=22238248&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D22236106"></a> </td><td><p>Your comment is factually incorrect.<p>13 bits of entropy is not an extremely unique identifier.</p><p>The first three letters of your first name have more bits of entropy than that. It would be quite a trick to uniquely identify you by the first three letters of your first name.
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 <p>I fear the factual incorrectness isn't mine: the random string used is 13 bits of entropy <i>only if usage statics is disabled</i>, which isn't the case by default. By default, it uses an unspecified entropy (and you can bet real dollars that it'll be more then 13 bits worth).</p></div></td></tr>
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</td></div></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login            
              

  Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID ( github.com/w3ctag )           
 2292 points by rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 615 comments            
              
              
              
 janpot on Feb 4, 2020 | next [–]             
              
 Not endorsing this, but according to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variat...            
              
 > We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation.     
              
 > The variations active for a given installation are determined by a seed number which is randomly selected on first run. If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy). If you would like to reset your variations seed, run Chrome with the command line flag “--reset-variation-state”. Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address), operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.      
              
              
 pdkl95 on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is impressive doublespeak.             
              
 > This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information            
              
 > a seed number which is randomly selected on first run ... chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy)            
              
 They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives >=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.      
              
 > Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)            
              
 They even admit to inspecting the IP address...             
              
 > operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.             
              
 ...and many additional sources of entropy.             
              
 [1] why 24 bits instead of 32? The LSB of the address might be zeroed if the packet is affected by Googles faux-"anonymization" feature ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059 )           
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > > Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)            
              
 > They even admit to inspecting the IP address...             
              
 I don't think that sentence admits what you say? Chrome could be determining which experiments to run client-side.            
              
 Of course, when you visit a Google property, they needs must inspect your IP address to send a response to you, at a minimum. That goes for any site you might choose to visit. The existence of sufficient entropy to personally identify a site visitor is not a state secret. They do not need this chrome experiment seed to identify you, if that's a goal.        
              
              
 calibas on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yeah, it's not a "state secret" but it's not common knowledge either. Their privacy policy says that specific header can't be used to identify you, but fails to mention it can be combined with other information to make browser fingerprinting trivial.          
              
 If you don't know how all this works, which is true for most human beings, their privacy policy might give you the wrong impression.           
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > says that specific header can't be used to identify you             
              
 That's not what it says. It says the header won't contain PII, which is true. It can be linked to PII, but so can literally every bit of information you send to Google while logged into or otherwise using their services. A disclaimer to this effect would not have any purpose.         
              
              
 calibas on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's the whole point. Using any Google service means they can easily personally identify you, that's what the privacy policy should explain.           
              
 That's their policy towards privacy, you don't have any. For some reason I can't fathom, you claim mentioning this in their privacy policy "would not have any purpose". Instead of honesty, their privacy policy is a wonder of public relations where it seems like they care deeply about protecting your privacy.         
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 We disagree about the purpose of privacy policies. I believe that privacy policies should describe how data will be used, not how it could be used. I just don't think a policy describing how data could be used is very useful, because it's going to be the same for all services.         
              
 Under this formulation, Google's policy is (presumably, lacking any data to the contrary) honest with respect to this value.           
              
              
 3xblah on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 "I believe that privacy policies should describe how the data will be used, not how it could be used."            
              
 Google's policy does not tell the user how her data will be used by Google's customers. The policy states Google will use the data to "provide better services". That is deliberately vague. That is the "purpose", but how exactly is the data used to achieve that purpose. There are no specifics with which a user could object.        
              
 Google does not only serve the search engine user, the email user, the YouTube user, etc. Its business is not free services. As such the policy is misleading as to what are the "Services" it may use the data to improve. Google's business is providing online ad services.         
              
 The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers. The policy reads as if it only collects data to provide better services to users. The "free" services are just bait to draw users in. The data is collected to improve online ad services.         
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers.            
              
 I understand that that is what you believe, but I do not think this is factually true about the data collected from this Chrome header. I believe that Chrome team collects it in order to understand the impact of Chrome experiments on performance.          
              
              
 emmelaich on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > I believe that privacy policies should describe how data will be used, not how it could be used.            
              
 This is key. If you subscribe to the "how it could be used" version, then even say possessing an android phone would be a violation of the privacy policy. Which is absurd.           
              
              
 shuckles on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is a fair distinction, though it does not include the option of discussing how the data _won’t_ be used.            
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Per your observation, I would argue that the intent of the privacy policy as quoted above is pretty clear. When the policy says that the identifier doesn't contain PII, I believe that is meant to convey that it will not be used to identify you. But it's true that that use is not explicitly excluded. I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't tell you if being weasely in this way would count as fraud or not. Otoh, I suspect that Google is actually abiding by the spirit of the policy they wrote because honestly they have little to gain and much to lose by violating it.     
              
              
 GrayShade on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 If I log in to my Google account once, they can associate that browser id with my account. Even if I log out, clear my cookies (and probably use the incognito mode), Google will be able to identify and follow me all over the Web.          
              
 I don't know about your PII thing, but it's personal data under the GDPR.            
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 AIUI GDPR restricts the handling and use of PII, not its existence. So it's PII under GDPR. Is Google misusing it? If so, that's an issue. If not, then it's kinda pointless to observe that it's PII under some possibly distinct legal definition than the one Google is using in its privacy policy.         
              
              
 _trampeltier on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 You can't even login into gmail, at least from firefox in incognito mode.            
              
              
 GrayShade on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It works for me, at least with 2FA enabled.             
              
              
 bamboozled on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 So if you use a VPN service for example, they still know who you are because of this. I would say even if you’re visiting in private mode.           
              
 I see your point, but I also see how this will keep you identifiable.            
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I don't math very much, but I would guess the intersection of these sets of people is nil: people who 1) use VPN to avoid tracking by Google 2) still log in to Google services from one of their networks and not the other 3) use the same Chrome profile on both. But suppose some small number exist who adopt this illogical and contradictory pattern of behavior. If Google is using this token for the purpose of tracking this tiny set of people when the vast majority could be tracked more easily via conventional means, it would imply that they are far more competent than I give them credit for.    
              
              
 ajsnigrutin on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 So, someone starting up a vpn and opening incognito mode?             
              
              
 adriantam on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives >=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.      
              
 Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not? If the IPv4 address, user-agent string, or some other behavior is sufficient to reveal a great deal of stuff, we have a more serious problem than that 13 bits. I agree that 13-bit seed is a concern. But I am wondering if it is a concern per se, or its orchestration with something else. Of course, how/whether Google keeps those data also matters.     
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 One clarification:             
              
 - By default it's much more than 13 bits of entropy             
              
 - If you disable usage statistics then you are limited to 13 bits of entropy            
              
              
 asvitkine on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Actually, the low entropy provider is used for any field trials that get included in the header.            
              
 See: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/variations/v...            
              
              
 gruez on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 >Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not?           
              
 At the very least, having those 13 bits of entropy along with a /24 subnet allows you to have device-level granularity, whereas a /24 subnet may be shared by hundreds of households.           
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They have more than 13 bits of entropy             
              
 https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/metrics/entr...            
              
 Look how the function is called, high-entropy source :)             
              
              
 AsyncAwait on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 But if you disable telemetry, they'll only have 13?             
              
              
 ajsnigrutin on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 +ip +browser version +some os info +fonts info +screen resolution (well.. viewport size) + + +            
              
              
 coliveira on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information            
              
 Except for everything you do on your browser. I'm so glad I haven't used Chrome for almost three years.            
              
              
 skybrian on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yes, if you have enough bits you can come up with a fingerprint, but that's not what PII means.            
              
              
 tjoff on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It becomes PII the instant you can correlate that fingerprint with any PII.            
              
              
 mega_dingus on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This.             
              
 A bank account number is consider PII. Knowing the bank name & account number will uniquely identify the account holder's name, which is PII.           
              
              
 fmajid on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 IP addresses are considered PII under both GDPR and CCPA.             
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 ... which is crazy unrealistic, since it's "PII" that can only stay "private" by collective agreement of every node in the network, but no accounting for the reality of network architecture in passing law, I guess.          
              
 Maybe a deep expectation of anonymity while accessing a worldwide network of cooperative machines is something people should stop telling the public they should expect?           
              
              
 labawi on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Under GDPR you can use all the PII you reasonably need to provide expected services, you don't even need separate consent. But, if you have PII, the moment you use it for other purposes, or obtain/retain/share without proper cause, you are breaking the law.         
              
 IMHO, that is very reasonable.             
              
 Real world example - giving your phone number and information to your car mechanic / doctor / bank teller / plumber is reasonable. Using that information to score girls or ask donation for a puppy shelter would be considered improper.          
              
              
 GordonS on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I totally agree, and I think the GDPR is also reasonable in that it allows you to use the IP address for essential security reasons, such as blocking bad actors based on IP address - it doesn't say "thou shalt not track IP addresses", it says you need consent if you're going to use it for anything that isn't essential for security or in your end user's best interest.        
              
              
 outworlder on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Or they can stay 'private' by not being stored or correlated with other user data. GDPR doesn't apply to the network itself, it applies to whoever is using it.           
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 "Stored" is definitely the purpose of a router. "Correlated" can be necessary for debugging routing issues (or client-server connection issues that are tied to the intermediary fabric near the client doing something weird; hard to determine if an entire subnet is acting up if you aren't allowed to maintain state on errors correlated to IP address).        
              
              
 detaro on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Where do you get the idea that GDPR doesn't allow you to process PII for the purpose of routing packets?            
              
              
 forgotmypw38 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Don't forget that just about any registration requires recaptcha these days            
              
              
 clSTophEjUdRanu on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 >Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.            
              
 Wat? You mean to tell me they can identify you if you log into their service?            
              
 Am I missing something here? Who cares?             
              
              
 sildur on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I care. I care that I even if I log off, even if I use a vpn, even if I go into incognito mode, they still can associate my requests with the account I initially logged in.           
              
              
 meowface on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The problem is any website can do that. Incognito-bypassing fingerprinting is difficult to prevent, unless you use something like uMatrix to disallow JavaScript from everything but a few select domains.          
              
 This is a collection of random-ish unique-ish attributes. Any collection of such things can be used to track you, like installed fonts, installed extensions, etc. If this were just a set of meaningless encoded random numbers, then it's essentially a kind of cookie, but that's not what it is. This is (claimed to be) a collection of information that's useful and possibly needed by some backends when testing new Chrome features. It tells servers what your Chrome browser supports. The information is probably similar to "optimizeytvids=1,betajsparser=1".     
              
 So, the only question is if Google is actually using this to help fingerprint users in addition to the pragmatic use case. It certainly could be used that way, and it's possible they are, but they have so many other ways of doing that with much higher fidelity / entropy if they want to. If this were intended as a sneaky undisclosed fingerprinting technique, I think they would've ensured it was actually 100% unique per installation, with a state space in the trillions, rather than 8000.      
              
 Yes, this could be so sneaky that they took this into consideration and made it low-entropy to create plausible deniability while still being able to increase entropy when doing composite fingerprinting, but I think it's pretty unlikely. Also, 99% of the time they could probably just use use Google Analytics and Google login cookies to do this anyway.        
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Maybe one actually useful non-advertising usage could be reCAPTCHA ? If you read carefully, it says nowhere than there is the limit to 8000. There is this limit of 8000 only if you disable usage statistics / crash reports.          
              
              
 meowface on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Sorry about that, too late to edit it now. That is an important detail. If there are 32 or more different feature flags, then that's 4 billion unique states, which would be an effective fingerprint.          
              
 I still think it's pretty unlikely they're using it in that way or would in the future, and I think Google fuzzing this for those who opt out of telemetry is probably a signal of good faith in this instance. They realize the privacy implications and provide a way to disengage, even if they don't intend to abuse the information.        
              
 But of course the potential for abuse always remains. And the potential for (arguably) non-abusive tracking, like the possibility of it being used for bot detection by reCAPTCHA, as you say.          
              
              
 imtringued on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 reCAPTCHA is the most abusive type of tracking. Google simply denys you usage of captcha if you do not give them enough personal information. It doesn't matter if you enter the captcha correctly 20 times. It won't let you in.          
              
              
 meowface on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is part of the bot detection, though. It's probably not "not enough personal information", it's "this truly seems like it is unlikely to be a legitimate device/person", due to the huge datasets they're working with. Same with Cloudflare and Tor. Once you operate a security service anywhere near that scale, you start to understand there are inherent challenges and tradeoffs like these,       
              
              
 pdkl95 on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 reCAPTCHA increasingly doesn't even give me a captcha. Instead, they simply deny me from even trying; They send this instead of the challenge:           
              
 <div>             
 <noscript>             
 Please enable JavaScript to             
 get a reCAPTCHA challenge.<br>             
 </noscript>             
 <div class="if-js-enabled">             
 Please upgrade to a             
 <a href="[1]">supported browser</a>             
 to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.             
 </div>             
 <br><br>             
 <a href="[2]" target="_blank">             
 Why is this happening to me?</a>             
 </div>             
              
 They probably don't like my non-standard user agent string and they definitely don't like that I block a lot of their spyware, but reCAPTCHA used to work properly for many years with the same/similar browser configuration.          
              
 [1] https://support.google.com/recaptcha/?hl=en#6223828             
              
 [2] https://support.google.com/recaptcha#6262736             
              
              
 admax88q on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I mean, if you don't want Google to track you, then you probably shouldn't use their browser...            
              
              
 foota on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I believe someone else in the thread stated it's cleared for incognito, don't remember if they meant it's not sent or that it's a new value.           
              
              
 kag0 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Normally you would only expect to be identified and tracked when using Google services when logged in. The significance of this post is that they would be able to identify and track you across all your usage of that browser installation regardless of if you've logged out, or say in an incognito window.         
              
              
 clSTophEjUdRanu on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Ah. So I was missing something. Thanks for clarifying. That is alarming.            
              
              
 poxrud on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yes you are missing something important. Once they've tied the browser ID to your personal account they can track you across all google properties, even the ones that you didn't log into.           
              
              
 judge2020 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Unless you're running some extension that emulates FF's container tabs or something, it logs you into all G services. It would matter, though, if this header is still sent in incognito sessions.          
              
              
 asdfasgasdgasdg on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 I still don't understand. When I log into gmail, it logs me into all Google services. If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place? Or visiting in the first place? After all, even if I click "log out," I'm only trusting Google that they unlinked the browser state from the account. If I trust them to do that, I don't see why I shouldn't trust them to ignore this experiment flag from Chrome, or at least not use it for tracking. If I don't trust them to avoid using the experiment state, I don't really see how you can trust them for anything.    
              
 Anyway, if you're not building Chrome from source, then you have to trust that they aren't putting anything bad in it. And if you are building chrome from source, you can observe that they only send this experiment ID to certain domains, and they already know who you are on those domains anyway.         
              
              
 imtringued on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 >If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place?            
              
 Good luck completing a google captcha without a Google account or using Chrome.            
              
              
 mdiesel on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 If you browse the internet, they could know what websites are visited by the same person, but not who they are exactly.            
              
 If you visit a load of websites, then also log into google, they connect the two and they know what websites were visited by you specifically.           
              
              
 make3 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 he means they can continue to identify you after you log off            
              
              
 pests on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think the argument is they have other methods like cookies they could also use. The fact you trust them not to use those methods extends to this form of tracking.           
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They key in the wording is: "If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy)."           
              
 "If, statistics are disabled."             
              
 In chrome://version you can see the active variations. It seems to be pretty big numbers to be significant, and so far haven't observed duplicates.           
              
 Since this header is generated server-side, you have only to believe I guess ? Plus why Doubleclick would need it :)            
              
              
 userbinator on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's basically saying "even if you opt out, we'll still try to track you, just not as much." Very unpleasant, but then again I'm not surprised to see this attitude from Google.           
              
              
 m463 on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Combine a few pieces of information like this and you get a decisively unique fingerprint.            
              
 For example identifying individuals at work behind the same ip address.            
              
              
 some_random on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 How many people will actually run chrome with a cli flag? It would be pretty impressive if every single person reading this thread did, but it probably won't even be that. Most people don't even touch their settings.          
              
 13 bits of entropy is far from a uuid (but to get it to that you need to disable some more settings, which again very few people do), but it's still plenty good enough to disambiguate individuals over time.          
              
              
 Yeroc on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 And Google is certainly in a position to disambiguate that uuid to an individual as soon as they login to gmail or any other Google property!           
              
              
 JMTQp8lwXL on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is there a reason for only sending this header to Google web properties and not all domains?            
              
              
 macinjosh on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It is an abuse of Chrome's position in the marketplace. Google is using their powerful position to give themselves tracking capabilities that other online players can't access. It is a major competitive advantage for Google.          
              
              
 killface on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 can't alternate browser makers who base on chromium simply disable that portion? like, I expect identifying users was a key business concern in moving Edge to Chromium. Is there something (other than work) preventing them from making it so it'll report back to microsoft-owned domains instead?         
              
              
 leshenka on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm using Vivaldi on MacOS and it doesn't send this header. I'm sure others like Brave don't send it either.            
              
              
 Cthulhu_ on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is it because Google's webapps will have their own a/b tests which use experimental features only available in Chrome perhaps?           
              
 I mean personally I think they should do client-side feature detection and be back to being standards compliant and not creepy. The only reason why I'd consider such a flag is because they optimize the payload server-side to return a certain a/b test, but even with that they could do the default version first, do feature detection, and then set a session cookie for that domain only that loads the a/b test.       
              
 My other Thought was that they test a feature that is implemented across Google's properties, e.g. something having to do with their account management.           
              
              
 masswerk on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Isn't this what cookies are for?             
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Cross-site cookies are soon getting blocked by Chrome starting Chrome 80 if I'm right (whereas this header isn't)            
              
              
 CaveTech on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 So they build a personal back door to a feature that they've chosen to remove for everyone else? Because of it's potential for abuse, yet the very same company is somehow abusing it in a way more sinister way. Antitrust can't come soon enough.          
              
              
 cpeterso on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Chrome will only block cross-site cookies that don't use HTTPS and the SameSite=Lax flag. It's easy for trackers to user HTTPS and SameSite=Lax. This Chrome change is mostly intended to protect against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, not to block trackers.         
              
              
 CommanderData on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 I can think of a hundreds reasons why they do this. It doesn't make it right in any of those.            
              
              
 IshKebab on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Err yeah, because it adds loads of data that can be used to track you.            
              
              
 KCUOJJQJ on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Couldn't the Chrome installations receive a request from Google that says "Do you want to try out a new thing?", and couldn't the Chrome installations say yes with a certain probability? The only difference I can see is that the subset of users that are guinea pigs couldn't be the same in each test (if Google wanted that the subset is always the same).        
              
              
 flukus on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 So they're tracking people and using them as guinea pigs, the lack of respect for users is astounding.            
              
              
 kseistrup on Feb 6, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 How does one apply the “--reset-variation-state” flag on a chromebook?            
              
              
 tinus_hn on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 So it’s just a poor excuse to send an evercookie.             
              
              
 bsharitt on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Everybody imagine going back 15 years and tell yourself that you're using a web browser made by the parent company of DoubleClick. Your 15 year ago self would think you're a moron (assuming that 15 years ago you were old enough to know what DoubleClick was).         
              
              
 rplnt on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 I always believed that tech-savvy people using Google Chrome are morons. It's the perfect blend of Google being evil trying to force it to everyone, the browser being dumbed down to masses so much it's missing the most basic features, and I guess privacy concerns too when using browser from advertising company.         
              
              
 AndrewKemendo on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That's a really great way of conceptualizing it, if you assume Google is basically DoubleClick at it's core (which I think makes sense).           
              
              
 antisthenes on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Doubleclick ads were, originally, what prompted me to seek an adblock extension.            
              
 I think it was around 2006 that I got the extension for Firefox; Google bought them about a year later.            
              
              
 comboy on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Well, it depends. Do I get a funny animation following my cursor if I do it?            
              
              
 daxfohl on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Kind of true. The whole internet was much more of a toy back then. Tracking was not viewed so maliciously as now. Heck I might have even been convinced by a hard sell "this will help your favorite sites maximize their revenue".          
              
              
 Andrex on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I can only speak for myself, but myself from 15 years ago would not have cared so strongly about the choice of browser. I believe I was using the newly-ad-less Opera at the time, and new/cared little about the company making it.          
              
              
 kokey on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 My 15 year ago self would have taken a double helping of DoubleClick if my only choices were that or Internet Explorer 6.            
              
              
 heavyset_go on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Firefox and Opera existed at the time.             
              
              
 golergka on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Do you remember what browsers were like when Chrome came out? I switched from Firefox the day it came out, and was very happy with performance and UI.           
              
              
 garmaine on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I don’t use Chrome. Never have, never will. Why do you?             
              
              
 d1zzy on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 TL;DR I think whoever posted that is trying to bury the UA anonymizing feature by derailing the discussion.            
              
 What I'm seeing is an RFC for anonymizing parts of User-Agent in order to reduce UA based fingerprinting, which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing!           
              
 Then I see someone comments how that could negatively impact existing websites or Chromium-derived browsers, comments which are totally fair and make an argument that may not be a good idea doing this change because of that.          
              
 Then someone mentions the _existing_ x-client-data headers attached to requests that uniquely identify a Chrome installation. Then a lot of comments on that, including here on HN.           
              
 To me that's derailing the original issue. If we want to propose that Chrome remove those headers we should do so as a separate issue and have people comment/vote on that. By talking about it on the UA anonymizing proposal we are polluting that discussion and effectively stalling that proposal which, if approved, could improve privacy (especially since it will go into Chromium so then any non-Chrome builds can get the feature without having to worry about x-client-data that Chrome does).      
              
              
 mabbo on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed.            
              
 Ads are a business, and they are Google's business. They are how they make money. And like all businesses, they are competitive. Tracking is a way to make more money off online advertising. By removing tracking from their competitors while keeping it for themselves, Google stand to make a lot of money off this change.        
              
 Their motivations are not honest, but they're pushing them as if this is the high road. It isn't. It's the dirty low road of dominating the online ad business, made possible by their dominance in the browser market. And it's always been the end-goal of Chrome browser.         
              
              
 euske on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think this is a common strategy of big players at any industry.            
              
 First, they do some dirty thing to gain a competitive edge when the industry is still new and unregulated. Later they develop an alternative way to achieve the same competitive edge, and then criticize other players for doing an old way, saying they should be "mature and responsible".         
              
              
 sequoia on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 See also first world countries industrializing/modernizing & becoming rich/lifting people out of poverty using industrial techniques that pollute heavily, then "going green" and criticizing other players (India, China) for doing the same thing, saying they should be "mature and responsible".         
              
              
 UweSchmidt on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not really. "Going green" is a radical new concept for humanity that goes counter to all incentives and instincts and only recent developments have shown that painful measures are necessary. It was not a trick to get rich at other peoples expense.          
              
 India and China are suffering from their own pollution and have incentives to "go green" all by themselves, not because the West demands it.           
              
 Green technology is often high tech and tech that is accepted in Western markets and is helping to lift people out of poverty through market mechanism, not finger pointing.           
              
 Finally the first world got rich several generations ago. We are not related in any way, shape or form to any real or perceived sins of our grandfathers. Any such idea is old testament biblical theology.          
              
              
 jorblumesea on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 "Going green" is a relatively new concept, even for Western countries. By 1960 the West was seriously polluting its environment, but also extremely affluent and highly developed. There was far more of a gap between the average American and someone in Asia or Africa compared to today. The West polluted the developing world in the same way it polluted the Hudson or Cuyahoga.        
              
 It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet. It's more about where the standards are set and what is socially acceptable or understood.          
              
              
 naniwaduni on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet.           
              
 It's not recognizing anything, because it hasn't been demonstrated that growth is still compatible with not completely destroying the planet. It's deciding to not destroy the planet, and if that means pulling up the latter then golly gee sucks to be anyone who isn't up yet. We sure hope there are other ways up, but that's not much consolation.        
              
              
 asdff on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They should be mature and responsible, the west should have been, too, and has a long way to go.            
              
 We both are probably distant cousins due to our relation through Ghengis Khan, but that doesn't mean I should be bitter that I can't make my fortune by pillaging half the world like my distant ancestor did to great effect. It might be easy to make a fortune pillaging, but that doesn't mean I deserve to pillage because someone else did (or does), and I think I am in the right in detesting the scattered bands of warlords left in this world who do make their living by pillaging.      
              
              
 hyperbovine on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Apples to oranges: unlike software ecosystems which come and go, we’ve only got a single real one!            
              
              
 cmroanirgo on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Just yesterday I had to disable anti fingerprinting I'd enabled in Firefox because despite having a solid IP and and existing cookies to login to Google, it's security system rejected me, even after answering security questions. Turn off fingerprinting and I could log in.         
              
 So, this is a round about way of agreeing with the hidden dark patterns that Google are bringing to the web. It must stop.            
              
              
 svnpenn on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I have to log into Gmail just to pass captchas. Every time I do it I die a little inside.            
              
              
 asdff on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 All the more reason to keep bad actors in containers isolated from the rest of your web browsing. Google can fingerprint me all they want if that gets their rocks off, all they'd see is my gmail inbox that they see anyway.          
              
              
 sriku on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Much of such discussions demonize the company, but we need to look broader. Google is a public company and its shareholders, since they share the company, are also to be pointed out. Discouraging such behaviour is better done by the shareholders by dumping shares since Google could very well argue that if it didn't work to maximize ad revenue, it would not be operating according to fiduciary responsibility principles. (IANAL .. just thinking out loud)      
              
              
 mabbo on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That is such short term thinking.             
              
 Doing unethical things because "We had to so the shareholders would make money" is such a cop-out. I see it just the opposite way. You have a duty to do things ethically so that in the long run customers continue to want to use your product. So that governments don't start going after you for the unethical things you do. So that other businesses will trust you and continue to work with you.       
              
 Here's an example: Huawei. They've reached out to me saying they'll pay me more than my employer and my commute will be shorter. No effing way. I'm sure I could make them a lot of money, but they're history of unethical behaviour is an instant deal-breaker for me. Others will, sure, but in the market of labor they're going to have a reduced supply because I'm surely not alone in this attitude.       
              
              
 ta2243652626 on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 I'm with you on the shareholders being complicit in the behaviour (through ignorance or inaction in a lot of cases), but unfortunately I'd guess 90% of said shareholders wouldn't be aware of the scummy tactics Google have undertaken, similar to Microsoft I'd say, outside of the IT/HN realm.         
              
 It's unfortunate. Profit of their shares is the only thing a lot of people look at (and willfully ignore anything else unless it slaps them in the face/becomes a major mainstream media event).          
              
              
 tyingq on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 "I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed."            
              
 Pretty sure that was their main reason for helping push https-everywhere. A good idea generally, but hurt every other entity trying to do tracking more than it hurt Google.           
              
              
 ajross on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > while keeping them fully-armed.             
              
 That's sort of a fragile assumption though. I mean, yes, there's enough specificity in this number that it could be used (in combination with other fingerprinting techniques) to disambiguate a user. And yes, only Google would be capable of doing this. So it's abusable, in the same way that lots of software like this is abusable by the disributor. And that's worth pointing out and complaing about, sure.       
              
 But it's not tracking. It's not. It's a cookie that identifies the gross configuration of the browser. And Google claims that it's not being used for tracking.           
              
 So all the folks with the hyperbole about user tracking for advertising purposes need to come out with their evidence that Google is lying about this. Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.          
              
              
 mabbo on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Google claims that it's not being used for tracking             
              
 > Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.            
              
 Allow me to introduce to you "mabbo's razor": If someone can make money by doing X and it's impossible for anyone to tell whether or not they are doing X, then they are probably doing X or else will as soon as you believe they won't.          
              
              
 aidos on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 While I agree with some of your comment, I feel like it’s harsh to paint the whole chrome enterprise with that brush. Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser and a lot of devoted devs have spent a lot of time working on it. There’s an advertising aspect that it’s right to call out, but I think on the whole it was done to make the internet better, because the internet is google’s business too.       
              
 EDIT I just wanted to point out that a load of people have poured their lives into making Google Chrome the amazing bit of software that it is and suggesting that the end-goal has been entirely about supplying ads does a great disservice to their personal contributions.         
              
              
 mabbo on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 These aren't mutually exclusive things. The people working on Chrome were and are highly motivated, intelligent and passionate people, some of whom I call friends, who want to see the web become a better place. In that regard they have succeeded massively.         
              
 But by this point, Google has dropped billions of dollars on salaries for those developers to build Chrome (call it >500 devs, >$200k salaries, >10 years). Google is not a charity. They didn't build Chrome with the intent to lose money on it. Everything else Google made that wasn't profitable is gone now, and yet here Chrome stands. Because it is an indirect profit center.        
              
 And you've pointed out the real issue: Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser. 'Was'. But it did that! So what is it about now? Why would Google continue to pour money into it if they didn't expect to extract more money out of it in the future?         
              
 You can make the world better and make money while doing it. Ideally, that's what we all are doing.            
              
              
 taneq on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It wasn’t some noble mission to free the world. Chrome was always about Google controlling the client side of the web to guarantee their advertising access to web users. The ability to extract additional data from the user was a nice bonus.          
              
              
 TeMPOraL on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The way I see it, both of these can be (and most likely are) true. Intentions of the company aren't usually the same as intentions of individual contributors (or even whole teams). The Web is Google's business - the more stuff happens on the Web, the more money they can eventually make of it. Advertising is how they make most of that money, so this is what they're protecting. But beyond that, Chrome answered a real need and a lot of hard-working people made it into a best-in-class browser.      
              
              
 jariel on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 "Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser "            
              
 Chrome is about establishing more control over the web to further the business objectives of Google and Alphabet.            
              
 The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor' is a function of the new kind of branding they helped introduce, something that an entire generation of particularly young people are being duped by.          
              
 'Brand' used to be the image that companies presented - it was a decision, a marketing tactic, usually invented by agencies. Google was one of the first to change that, to effectively 'internalize' the brand so that they (staff, even leaders) really kind of believed their own kool-aid. There's an incredible aura of 'authenticity' to this; when leaders really believe their own schtick, it rings more powerfully. (This is an issue for another thread.)      
              
 But Google has proven that in the long run, they're just a regular company. I don't think they are bad actors, and in the big picture, they're better than most. But, they're just a self-interested entity: they will do whatever is in their power and which is also legal, to leverage their incumbency and stymie competition.        
              
              
 wuliwong on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor'            
              
 You put 'benevolent actor' in quotes as if the comment you are replying to contained that. It didn't.            
              
              
 henriquemaia on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Stress quotes. That is just one of the possible devices to achieve that.            
              
 I see a lot of that here, people misunderstanding basic speech/writing conventions. Maybe giving the op the benefit of doubt, assuming s/he knows what s/he is doing, can help avoid some of those.          
              
              
 lordlimecat on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 >which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing!             
              
 Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud.            
              
 Which means Google competitors are terribly disadvantaged, as they cannot use that.            
              
 Which not only reduces market diversity (contrary to TAG philosophy) but represents a significant conflict of interest for an organization proposing a major web standard change.           
              
 These issues are very relevant to the original proposal, especially in light of the fact that Noone outside of Google is terribly interested in this change. Any time a dominant player is the strongest (or only) advocate for a change that would coincidentally and disproportionately benefit its corporate interests, the proposal should be viewed very skeptically.        
              
              
 d1zzy on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud.            
              
 So when Apple releases a privacy feature, that doesn't affect them as a business, we praise the feature or we say "except it doesn't affect Apple" and somehow try to argue how the feature is less valuable because of that?          
              
              
 BoorishBears on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Of course we'd say "except it doesn't affect Apple"...             
              
 If there's a privacy gap, (and Apple is actively exploiting that gap)            
              
 When Apple patches it, (while leaving it open for themselves)            
              
 They'll get called out.             
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Apple is not engaged in illegal data harvesting to gain a competitive advantage over other services in the same space. Google's collection of personal data with the x-client-data header without user consent is illegal under GDPR.          
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This relies on the (unfounded) assumption that this pseudonymous ID is being used for tracking purposes and that Google is actively lying about it.           
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 GDPR treats an IP address as personal data. The data is not transmitted through an anonymizing network, so Google has access to the user's IP address when they receive the data.           
              
 Anything that is associated with personal data also becomes personal information, therefore Google is transmitting personal data without user consent, which is illegal.           
              
 Asking for consent is not required under GDPR when the data collection is needed for a service to function. This is not the case here, Google services function without receiving that header, the data is used by Google to gain a technical advantage over other web services.         
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > GDPR treats an IP address as personal data.             
              
 No it doesn't. GDPR only treats IP address as personal data if it is associated with actual identifying information (like name or address). Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR.        
              
 Edit: and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.           
              
 IOW, the theoretical capability to make changes to a system to use info in a non-GDPR compliant way doesn't make the information or system noncompliant. You actually have to do the noncompliant things.          
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 An IP address is itself personal data, it does not have to be associated with other personal data.            
              
 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...            
              
 > Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR.          
              
 See my comment about consent not being required when the data is needed to provide a service. Logging is reasonably required to provide a service.           
              
 > and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.           
              
 The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law.            
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 See my edit. There's conflicting information on this. A dynamic IP, for example, isn't directly related to or relatable to a specific natural person without other context.           
              
 But even if that's the case, if you don't tie the pseudonymous ID to the IP, it isn't personal data. As far as I can tell, the transfer rules you reference are about transferring data out of the EU, and can be summarized as "you can't transfer data to a non-EU country and then process it in a way that violates the GDPR". Article 46 notes that transferring data is fine as long as appropriate safeguards are in place[1], and article 47[2] defines what constitutes those safeguards (in general, contractually/legally binding agreements with appropriate enforcement policies).    
              
 This goes back to what I said before: The theoretical capability to do noncompliant things doesn't make a system GDPR-noncompliant. You have to actually do noncompliant things to not comply.          
              
 [1]: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-46-gdpr/             
              
 [2]: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-47-gdpr/             
              
              
 thenewnewguy on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 > > and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.           
              
 > The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law.            
              
 This cannot be the actual correct interpretation of the GDPR, because under this logic _all_ IP packets on the public internet (made by/to EU citizens) are covered by the GDPR because you are transmitting data alongside an IP address.          
              
              
 acqq on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 To help other readers:             
              
 "The European Commission maintains this website to enhance public access to information about its initiatives and European Union policies in general."           
              
 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...            
              
 "Home > Law > Law by topic > Data protection > Reform > What is personal data?"            
              
 "Examples of personal data             
              
 ...             
              
 - an Internet Protocol (IP) address;"             
              
              
 0xfffafaCrash on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 There has been an EU court ruling on this exact question of whether dynamic IP addresses count as personal data even in contexts where the website operator in question does not have the means to associate it with an individual but another party (such as an ISP) does. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on this and it does count as personal data. [1]        
              
 Furthermore, GDPR itself specifically refers to online identifiers in Article 4 as falling under the definition of personal data[2] and then clarifies in Recital 30[3] that IP addresses count as online identifiers in this context. There seems to be no legal ambiguity in the EU on this topic at this point, but I would be not surprised to see parties who are not GDPR compliant pretend otherwise indefinitely.       
              
 [1] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...            
              
 [2] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/             
              
 [3] https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/             
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Interesting, TIL. That doesn't change the major point I was making though, which is that an anonymized identifier (such as the 13-bit ID under discussion) isn't personal info, even if it might have originally been collected along side data which is personal info. If I give you said 13 bit ID, you need other info to back out a single person, the anonymous ID corresponds to multiple IPs.       
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think you're still missing the point. Google transmits personal data to their servers without user consent. The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work. The nature of the data, what is being done with it on the server, and the location of the server are all irrelevant in this instance, the only important part is that personal data has left the browser in the form of a request, and it reached a Google server.      
              
 This data collection would only be exempt from GDPR if the data would be required for the service to function, but that is not the case with x-client-data.           
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work.           
              
 This is not correct. The x-client-data is not personal data. x-client-data associated with an IP address is personal data. As soon as you separate the client-data from the IP, the client data stops being personal data. IOW, the tuple (x-client-data, IP) is personal data. But x-client-data on its own isn't personal data, because it cannot be used to infer the IP on its own.        
              
 I don't know where you're getting this "if two pieces of data ever touch and one of them is personal data the other one is now also contaminated as personal data". It's not true. That would make the existence of anonymous data (which the GDPR specifies as a thing) practically speaking impossible to have on the web, since all requests are associated with the IP on receipt. (or actually even worse, it would make the process of anonymizing data impossible in general, since the anonymization process associates the anonymized data with the original personal data).     
              
 To be precise, the GDPR defines anonymized data as "data rendered anonymous in such a way that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable.". The x-client-data header is exactly that. The subject of the header is not identifiable by the x-client-data header alone. Therefore the header is anonymous and not subject to strong GDPR reqs.        
              
 For the client data header to be personal data, you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds. You're welcome to come up with such a scheme, but my intro CS classes taught me that bucketed hashing is irreversible, and with 8192 buckets, you're not going to be able to uniquely identify anyone specific.      
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The Chrome whitepaper is written in a way to make you believe there is only 8000 possibilities.            
              
 But read carefully what they say; they say there is only 8000 possibilities if the crash reporting functionality is disabled (not by default).           
              
 Otherwise the marker is a huge differentiator (I haven't seen any duplicates personally)            
              
              
 pdkl95 on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > That would make the existence of anonymous data practically speaking impossible to have on the web            
              
 For almost every type of data that is true. Transforming or substituting data doesn't make it anonymous; the patters in the data are still present. To produce actually anonymous data you have to do what the GDPR instructed: corrupt the data ("rendered anonymous") severely enough that the "data subject is ... no longer identifiable". You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise.    
              
 > 8192 bucket             
              
 While others have pointed out that this isn't actually limited to 13 bits of entropy for most people, there are at least two reasons that field is still very personally identifying. First, "x-client-data on its own" never happens. Google isn't wasting time and money implementing this feature to make an isolated database with a single column. At no point will the x-client-data value (or any other type of data they capture) ever sit in isolation. I used the IPv4 Source Address as an example because it will necessarily be present in the header of the packets that transport the x-client-data header over the internet. Suggesting that Google would ever use this value in isolation is almost insulting to Google; why would they waste their expensive developer time to create, capture, and manage data that is obviously useless?
              
 However, lets say they did make and isolated system that only ever received 13 bit integers stripped of all other data. Surely that wouldn't be personally identifiable? If they store it with a locally generated high resolution timestamp they can re-associate the data with personal accounts by correlating the timestamps with their other timestamped databases (web server access logs, GA, recaptcha, etc).       
              
 > you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds          
              
 You should first describe why google would ever use that header and only that header. Even if they aren't currently using x-client-data as an identifier or as additional fingerprintable entropy, simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future.         
              
 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy            
              
              
 joshuamorton on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise.         
              
 Correct, and another anonymization technique (in place of differential privacy) is k-anonymity. In k-anonymity schemes, you ensure that in any given table no row corresponds to any fewer than k individuals. Why is this useful? Well let's say you have some, say, 10-15 bit identifier. You can take a request from a user that contains information that might when combined, be identifying. Say: coarseish location (state/country), device metadata (browser version, OS version), and coarse access time (the hour and day of week). Combining all 3 (or 4 if you include the psuedonymous ID) is enough to uniquely identify at least some users. Then let's say you also track some performance statistics about the browser itself.  
              
 But any single piece of data (plus the pseudonymous ID) is not enough to identify any specific user. So if you use the psuedonymous ID as a shared foreign key, you can join across the tables and get approximate crosstabs without uniquely identifying any specific user. Essentially, if you want to ask if there are performance differences between version N and version N+1, you can check the aggregate performance vs. the aggregate count of new vs. old browser version, and with 8K samples, you're able to draw reasonable conclusions. And in general you can do this across dimensions or combinations of dimensions that might normally contain enough pieces of info to identify a single user.   
              
 This is essentially the same idea as differential privacy, although without the same mathematical precision that differential privacy can provide. (By this I don't mean that the data can be re-identified, just that differential privacy can be used to provide tighter bounds on the anonymization, such that the statistical inferences you can gather are more precise. k-anonymity is, perhaps, a less mathematically elegant tool).       
              
 Specifically, I'm describing k-anonymity using x-client-data as a Quasi-identifier in place of something like IP or MAC address. You can find those terms in the "See Also" section of the differential privacy wiki page you linked. Google is mentioned in those pages as a known user of both differential privacy and k-anonymization in other tools.        
              
 Hopefully that answers your question of why Google would want such a thing.            
              
 > simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future.            
              
 Yes, but that doesn't mean that they're currently in violation of the GDPR, which is what a number of people keep insisting. I'm not claiming that it's impossible for Google to be doing something nefarious with data (although I will say that in general I think that's an unreasonably high bar). Just that the collection of something like this isn't an indication of nefarious actions, and is in fact likely the opposite.       
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is the equivalent of a protest, people are objecting to Google's illegal data harvesting practices in places that receive engagement, since that's the most effective way to get the word out and warn others.          
              
 Google's reasoning that this is not personal data is meaningless in the face of GDPR, which considers an IP address personal data. Google has access to the IP address when they receive the data, therefore they are transmitting personal information without user consent and control, which is illegal.         
              
              
 csagan5 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It could be argued that a similar violation is present (since March 2019) in Chromium for the Widevine CDM provisioning request, see https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/471           
              
 Basically all users opening the browser will contact www.googleapis.com to get a unique "Protected Media Identifier", without opening any web page and even before any ToS/EULA is accepted (and there is no user consent either).          
              
              
 dessant on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think the Widevine CDM request is needed for the service to function, though they could certainly delay it until a website requires DRM. GDPR allows the use of personal data without consent when it is required to provide a service for the user.          
              
 The personal data collected with the x-client-data header is not required for Google sites to function. Google uses the data to gain a technical advantage over other sites on the web, this is why the data collection in this case requires consent.          
              
              
 mokus on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Whether consent is legally required or not, as a user I want that service, whatever it is, to not work until I consent to the exposure of my personal data. Given that it apparently has something to do with DRM, I would be disabling the service anyway.          
              
              
 baybal2 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Whether consent is legally required or not             
              
 Lets not guess it, lets file a complaint, and see if we can get Google sued for n billions of euros.            
              
              
 csagan5 on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The poster is the author of Kiwi browser, which unfortunately is closed source [0], but I have reason to believe he is familiar - as I am for the Bromite project - with all the (sometimes shady) internals of the Chromium codebase; it is indeed off-topic to discuss the header issue there but I would say that there is no explicit intention to derail it (and no advantage), just incorrect netiquette.       
              
 [0]: https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecommen...            
              
              
 3xblah on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The Google employee argues that through UA-CH Google wants to disincetivise "allow" and "block" lists.            
              
 After many years of testing HTTP headers, IMO this really is a non-issue. Most websites return text/html just fine without sending any UA header at all.           
              
 What is an issue are the various ways websites try to coax users to download, install and use a certain browser.            
              
 Another related issue with Google Chrome is users getting better integration and performance when using Chrome with Google websites than they would if they used other clients. ^1 Some make the analogy to Microsoft where it was common for Microsoft software to integrate and perform better on Microsoft Windows whereas third party software was noticably worse to integrate and perform on that OS.       
              
 This leads to less user agent diversity. Users will choose what works best.            
              
 UA diversity is really a more important goal than privacy, or privacy in Chrome. The biggest privacy gains are not going to come from begging Google to make changes to Chrome. They could however come from making it easier for users to switch away from using Chrome and to use other clients. That requires some cooperation from websites as well as Google.        
              
 Those other clients could theoretically be written by anyone, not just large companies and organisations that are dependent on the online ad sales business. It would be relatively easy to achieve "privacy-by-design" in such clients. There is no rule that says users have to use a single UA to access every website. There needs to be choice.        
              
 For example, HN is a relatively simple website that does not require a large, complex browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. to read. It generates a considerable amount of traffic and stands as proof that simpler websites can be popular. Varying the UA header does not result in drastic differences in the text/html returned by the server.        
              
 1. Recently we saw Google exclude use of certain clients to access Gmail.            
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/google/core/...            
              
 Just thinking out loud.             
              
 What happens, let's say, if someone malicious buys youtube.vg and puts a SSL certificate on it ? Will they be able to collect the ID ?           
              
 I guess so ?             
              
              
 gdm85 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes, but they would also need a valid TLS certificate?             
              
 A country's government could also take over the TLD and grab its traffic overnight.            
              
              
 unapologetic on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The original issue is supposedly fingerprinting and privacy related.            
              
 If that's true then Google should be called out for their poor behaviour.            
              
              
 userbinator on Feb 5, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 As long as web developers continue to create (app-)sites that only work in the latest versions of Chrome(and Chromium-ish) browsers, giving users little effective choice over what browsers they can use, this sort of abusive behaviour will continue. The sort of "feature-racing" that Google engages in is ultimately harmful for the open web. Mozilla struggles to keep up, Opera surrendered a while ago, and more recently, Microsoft seems to have already given up completely.      
              
 I feel like it's time we "hold the Web back" again. Leave behind the increasingly-walled-garden of "modern" appsites and their reliance on hostile browsers, and popularise simple HTML and CSS, with forms for interactivity, maybe even just a little JavaScript where absolutely necessary. Something that is usable with a browser like Dillo or Netsurf, or even one of the text-based ones. Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google has, by allowing more browsers to appear and gain userbases.     
              
              
 commoner on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 This proposal would not accomplish what you intend. By slowing the adoption of open web technologies, developers and users would lean more heavily on mobile apps, which are also under Google's control considering Android's huge market share.          
              
 Developers who want to level the playing field need to develop sites that fully support Firefox and other browsers that are not based on Chromium. Users who want to see a more open web need to use Firefox and non-Chromium browsers, and complain to developers who don't properly support them.         
              
              
 userbinator on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm talking about the vast majority of things people use websites for, which do not need a webapp much less a mobile app.            
              
              
 TheCraiggers on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wish, but that's not what most people want. Hell, it's not what designers want. Thinking back to the Myspace days, people would have the worst websites imaginable. Granted, that was all done with little more than HTML and javascript, but I have little doubt what they would have done with things like HTML5 and even more javascript.        
              
              
 AndrewKemendo on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I have to agree with this.             
              
 The last decade or so has really reinforced to me that we all ignore or are ignorant of fundamental structural problems with most of the systems we rely on - with us wanting them to "just work."          
              
 We're all guilty of this, we just see it up close for the things that we're building and chide others who don't care. Meanwhile we ignore other fundamental structures of modern society.           
              
              
 asdff on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 There's got to be a balance between every website looking exactly the same and fading out of my memory with one identical hamburger menu after another and dancing babies on geocities.           
              
              
 koheripbal on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Are there really that many popular extensions not available on Firefox? I may be just one anecdote, but I think I'm pretty typical, and I've found the transition to Firefox to be quite pleasant, and uneventful.          
              
              
 Yizahi on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Popular - no. Essential - yes. Case in point - my bank (top 5 in my country) which uses Chrome plugin for security purposes, you need it to create digital signature. So once a year I HAVE to install Chrome (key expires every year) and then delete it. I've also found at least one payment processor not working in Firefox, my city portal for public transport and several small sites. The worrying thing is the trend - with Firefox share dropping below 10% recently it will be abandoned more and more.      
              
              
 koheripbal on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 In those cases, have you tried IE instead rather than installing Chrome?            
              
              
 Yizahi on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Installing Chrome was strictly needed only for banking plugin. Didn't have a chance to check yet with a new Chrome-Edge but will definitely try it.           
              
              
 eitland on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Firefox is really good.             
              
 My issue is with certain sites that typically either uses non standard Javascript apis that only work in blink or relies on non standard behavior of standard components (numeric form inputs was mentioned here yesterday).          
              
              
 bocytron on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It doesn't happen often but sometimes, when a website doesn't work, I switch to chrome and it works there.            
              
              
 amw-zero on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 HTML is not enough. It’s why templating languages / libraries were invented, and it’s why SPA’s are so popular. There’s a difference between “sites” and applications. The web has been trending toward supporting applications more and more for a very long time.         
              
 The only thing that will make people who want to preserve the content-web happy is if we split the protocols somehow, and that will never happen. This is not likely to change ever.           
              
              
 jakeogh on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I havent had js on by default in years. Using a js enabled browser is a drastically worse experience.            
              
 suckless surf lest you enable js with a hotkey on a per-process basis if you really want it for something, but 90% of the time, I just close the tab that wants to waste my time.           
              
              
 allovernow on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think we at HN have a particular responsibility to keep the web free and open. This really is an arms race and only those of us building the tech have the power curtail FAANG's overreach. It might me time to choose a side and firmly push your work toward open web friendly tech.         
              
              
 numlock86 on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > [...] this sort of abusive behaviour will continue.             
              
 Can you elaborate what exactly is abusive behavior?             
              
 > [...] reliance on hostile browsers, [...]             
              
 What exactly is a hostile browser?             
              
              
 userbinator on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What is mentioned in the title of this article.             
              
              
 numlock86 on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What article? The link is a github issue. And it's not like you referenced anything of that anyway. It's more like it just triggered you to output a general rant. So again: Care to elaborate?          
              
              
 derefr on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google has            
              
 You do realize/remember that Google is also a search-engine company, one that only stands to benefit (in terms of increased capability of advertising targeting) from a web that's simpler, and therefore more machine-legible.          
              
              
 riversflow on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I’m not so sure about that. Google has the resources, a simpler web makes it easier for competitors , seems like google is already quite competent at machine reading just about everything, even sometimes things that you can’t fond/visit. Domination by web-apps is the equivalent to widening the moat.         
              
              
 naniwaduni on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's fine for Google to benefit from things that everyone benefits from.            
              
              
 csagan5 on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Credits to the ungoogled-chromium project [0] for the patch [1] which is also used in Bromite since 15 February 2018 to prevent this type of leaks; see also my reply here: [2]           
              
 [0]: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium             
              
 [1]: https://github.com/bromite/bromite/blob/79.0.3945.139/build/...            
              
 [2]: https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/480#issuecomment-5...            
              
              
 ec109685 on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 You can see all the domains they add the header to here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/comp...            
              
 Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21034849            
              
              
 tbodt on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Actual list: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/google/core/...            
              
              
 chatmasta on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there. The Chrome codebase has special features for Google’s own web properties.           
              
 I hope all these AGs suing google have some good tech advisors. It’s hard to keep track of all the nefarious things google has been up to over the past decade.           
              
              
 c0restraint on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Perhaps you can send a summary to them, including the evidence?            
              
              
 akersten on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there.            
              
 ???             
              
 Is "Darn, their browser only gets to track me on their own websites; if Google were playing fairly, they'd send the tracking header to all websites so I can be tracked more and have less privacy" the argument you're making here?          
              
 And it's debatable that this header is actually serving a tracking purpose at all. Being limited to their own web properties cements it as a diagnostic to me. What use is a tracking header that only gets sent to domains they already know you're visiting?         
              
              
 randomdude402 on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You realize that whenever a user visits a page that uses AdWords, AdSense, or login via Google, they download a script file from one of those domains, right?           
              
 So a user can log into Google and then log out, tying that header data to whatever PII Google has attached to them, and future visits to any sites using those and probably other services can be attached to the individual, despite them having intended to be logged out of Google services.         
              
              
 chatmasta on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 All I’m saying is the optics are not good. This is the kind of code you could show a jury. A high schooler who took “intro to CS” could understand what it’s doing.           
              
 It’s literally a conditional attached to a list of strings comprised solely of google advertising domains and hosts that distribute scripts from those domains.           
              
 When you’re talking about anti-trust, it doesn’t look good. Will this be a nail in the coffin? Unlikely. Will it help Google with its legal trouble? Definitely not.           
              
              
 robocat on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Security flaw? Surely some entity is squatting youtube on some TLD?!            
              
 If there is a country TLD of X where Google owns google.X but entity Y owns youtube.X then entity Y gets the X-CLIENT-DATA header information. See usage of IsValidHostName() in code.           
              
              
 robocat on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Note this would be a privacy flaw which is not covered by the Chrome Rewards program (which only covers security flaws) so I haven’t bothered logging it as a bug since I don’t want to waste my time verifying it for nothing!          
              
 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...            
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 like youtube.vg that is available ?             
              
              
 AlphaWeaver on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 According to this source code [0], it looks like this is in Chromium as well. Does that mean this affects Electron applications?           
              
 [0]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/comp...            
              
              
 nornagon on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Electron maintainer here. Electron does not send this header.            
              
              
 croh on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Thanks for clarification.             
              
              
 currysausage on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Edge ("Edgium") doesn't appear to send this header. Neither does Chrome in Private or Guest Mode.            
              
              
 Ndymium on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Checked that Vivaldi doesn't seem to be sending this header.            
              
              
 carlsborg on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 If you strace chrome on linux it also picks up /etc/machine-id (or it did back when I looked), which is a 32 byte randomly generated string which uniquely identifies you and on some systems is used as the DHCP ID across reboots.          
              
              
 xfs on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 First I thought reading /etc/machine-id would be expected if Chrome uses D-bus or pulseaudio libraries which depend on D-bus, and /etc/machine-id is part of D-bus. But no, they really use it for tracking purposes.          
              
 And in a sick twist they have this comment for it:             
              
 std::string BrowserDMTokenStorageLinux::InitClientId() {             
 // The client ID is derived from /etc/machine-id             
 // (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html). As per            
 // guidelines, this ID must not be transmitted outside of the machine, which            
 // is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting            
 // it.             
              
              
 chias on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 In fairness, the guidelines they reference suggest you do exactly what the comment says they're doing (assuming they're keying the hash). The guidelines seem explicitly written with the idea that unique identifiers _derived from_ this value are not similarly quarantined, provided that you cannot take the derived value and "reverse" it back to the original identifier.        
              
 Quoting from https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id....:            
              
 This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve the original machine ID from the application-specific one.    
              
              
 superlupo on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Instead the machine ID should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key.           
              
 Reading https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/chrome/browser/policy/b..., I do not not see it being hashed with a key, just unkeyed sha1.           
              
              
 codedokode on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think it doesn't make much sense to protect it because in popular Linux distributions an unprivileged user can access such identifiers as MAC addresses of network interfaces, HDD serial numbers etc.          
              
 > If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application,            
              
 Ideally there should be no stable identifiers accessible to untrusted applications.            
              
              
 JdeBP on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Now go and read http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/machine-id.xm... and RFCs 3041 and 4941.            
              
              
 pbhjpbhj on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 What else is going to break if one randomises that ID (per boot or per hour, say)?            
              
              
 mc3 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What about running Chrome inside a container?             
              
              
 Tijdreiziger on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What about not running Chrome?             
              
              
 mc3 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > which is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting it.            
              
 This made me chuckle. "As per the rules, we'll put on a boxing glove before we punch your lights out". You wont get privacy, but at least there is some security!           
              
              
 RonanTheGrey on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > As per the rules, we'll put on a boxing glove before we punch your lights out            
              
 This also made me chuckle             
              
              
 mortehu on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 "Tracking purposes" is such a weasel word, when we're really talking about device management in an enterprise setting, and this code only gets activated if the root/administrator user has installed a token file on your computer.          
              
              
 jabedude on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That really is a cynical comment. It almost bothers me more than this header.            
              
              
 throwaway8941 on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Which (among many other things) can be faked with firejail, if you absolutely have to run Chromium (e.g. for testing):            
              
 --machine-id             
 Spoof id number in /etc/machine-id file - a new random id is generated inside the sandbox.            
              
 Example:             
 $ firejail --machine-id             
              
              
 GrayShade on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Chromium doesn't seem to read that file.             
              
              
 chatmasta on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 When puppeteer first came out I was nervous to use it for scraping because I could totally see Chrome pulling tricks like this to help recaptcha in identifying the bots. I’m still not convinced they aren’t.          
              
              
 commotionfever on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 firefor / tor also read this file             
              
              
 pbhjpbhj on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What does tor do with it? Maybe pass it along in packet timing intervals, or something ... ;o)            
              
              
 JdeBP on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That's not a correct description.             
              
 * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/machine-id.xm...            
              
              
 carlsborg on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 True, more precisely - 16 bytes, 32 hex characters. Your link is in agreement "The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during system installation or first boot and stays constant for all subsequent boots." And See https://wiki.debian.org/MachineId at least one distro uses it for the DHCP ID.         
              
              
 JdeBP on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 "At least one distro" is not correct either. It's used by systemd-networkd, specifically.            
              
 * http://jdebp.uk./Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/machine-id.xm...            
              
              
 carlsborg on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Now you are nitpicking. Your new link says exactly this “ This broadcasts the machine ID (hashed with a known fixed salt) over the LAN as the unique client identifier part of the DHCP protocol. (Other DHCP clients tend to use MAC addresses for this.) It also broadcasts the machine ID locally on each link as part of Ethernet LLDP, if enabled.”        
              
              
 JdeBP on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It is far from nitpicking to point out the gross inaccuracy of conflating one particular software with an entire operating system. systemd-networkd is not Debian.           
              
              
 carlsborg on Feb 6, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Nobody is conflating these two things, you are interpreting it that way.            
              
              
 augustk on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 And this is a legal thing to do?             
              
              
 om2 on Feb 5, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 I'm surprised this hasn't gotten any mainstream tech press attention. Chrome's Privacy Whitepaper describes a number of privacy-questionable nonstandard headers which are only sent to Google services. Just try searching for X- here:          
              
 https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html             
              
 And for ease of reading, a few others:             
              
 > On Android, your location will also be sent to Google via an X-Geo HTTP request header if Google is your default search engine, the Chrome app has the permission to use your geolocation, and you haven’t blocked geolocation for www.google.com (or country-specific origins such as www.google.de)         
              
 > To measure searches and Chrome usage driven by a particular campaign, Chrome inserts a promotional tag, not unique to you or your device, in the searches you perform on Google. This non-unique tag contains information about how Chrome was obtained, the week when Chrome was installed, and the week when the first search was performed. ... This non-unique promotional tag is included when performing searches via Google (the tag appears as a parameter beginning with "rlz=" when triggered from the Omnibox, or as an “x-rlz-string” HTTP header).     
              
 > On Android and desktop, Chrome signals to Google web services that you are signed into Chrome by attaching an X-Chrome-Connected and/or C-Chrome-ID-Consistency-Request header to any HTTPS requests to Google-owned domains. On iOS, the CHROME_CONNECTED cookie is used instead.         
              
              
 RonanTheGrey on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Holy rotten metal batman... those are pretty bad. Why in the world isn't everyone up in arms over this?....            
              
              
 scoutt on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 PII concept is not the same for everyone/everywhere. For GDPR we have:            
              
 > Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;      
              
 If this chrome browser ID is matched against a (for example) google account, then they can track every single person. And that is just a couple of IDs, let alone all the quantity of data they have.          
              
 It's against GDPR to not be clear about this kind of ID. If my browser has an unique ID that is transmitted, then this ID can be coupled with other information to retrieve my identity and behavior, so it should be informed (in the EU).          
              
 EDIT: TD;LR, hiding behind "there is no PII in that ID" is not enough.            
              
              
 Mirioron on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Who's going to raise this issue though? And what if they put this in the browser's T&C?            
              
              
 pbhjpbhj on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I thought they needed explicit consent. T&Cs ain't that.             
              
              
 scoutt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Who's going to raise this issue though?             
              
 I'm sure there is someone out there who takes these kind of things seriously. Not me. I use firefox for that matter.            
              
 > And what if they put this in the browser's T&C?             
              
 Then the rest of GDPR applies: a clear message about the browser sending this info has to be shown, explaining why, with who they'll share it, the time they will keep this info, plus no auto opt-ins, the possibility of asking Google (or whatever) all the info relative to this ID and the option to cancel all the data, etc.        
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII; it denies even innocuous feature-mode-distinguishing headers intended to allow for bug-identification of massively-distributed software installs.          
              
 If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."           
              
              
 scoutt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Me too. Then a breach happens and someone with a straight face tells you: "we take your privacy very seriously", asking apologies, because the breach used some of your data to push some political campaign or to bother you with spam/extortions because that night you were watching some porn.         
              
 Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that works. Otherwise upper levels have an excuse to do all this "experience" telemetry, and we all are smart enough to see the consequences of a data breach.         
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that works            
              
 If you demand a perfection-of-function guarantee from something as complicated as a web browser, you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s (and I'm not even sure we'd be that far along by now).          
              
 If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "the software ever having the features I want to use" I'm also going to lean towards "the software ever having the features I want to use." And we know this is true for users in general because of the number of users who had Flash installed back-in-the-day in spite of the fact that it allowed a total bypass of the browser security model, because it had features that the browser lacked otherwise.      
              
              
 scoutt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Instead of giving my privacy away, I prefer software like anything that you have installed from a CD-ROM back in the 90's and didn't needed a weekly update. Games, 3D-Studio, Autocad (to name a few) were more complex than a web-browser ( a today's web-browser ) and didn't needed a weekly update or the hunger for user-requested features, let alone dialing home because . The world worked relatively fine without the up-to-date wankery we see today.      
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I remember them.             
              
 They were also buggy and could crash their resident OSs all the way to a stuck state, and if they did, the solution was "Try not to trigger that bug again."           
              
 Software quality has significantly improved in the era of easy patch access and auto-patching.            
              
              
 scarejunba on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Holy Jesus. Those things were chock full of security holes. If you used a web browser that arrived on a CD ROM you'd be advertising massive pwnability.           
              
 In fact, you could easily simulate this by using last year's Firefox.            
              
              
 labawi on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Firefox, chrome, linux ... all are full of unnecessary complexity. The point being - we need daily patches to keep it from falling apart.           
              
 I have links (or lynx) on an old SuSE, maybe even a Mandriva CD. Would they be massively pwnable?            
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Hard to say, but not necessarily a great example; exploits on software are a function both of attack surface / complexity and installed userbase (i.e. nobody bothers to see if lynx is pwnable because a zero-day against that browser will be worth, what, twenty bucks to gain access to the five people who use it?).         
              
              
 labawi on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Perhaps. Perhaps not. As a thought experiment:             
              
 How long would it be safe to go without browser updates with a browser of complexity/capabilies of links, if 50% of people used it?           
              
 With many people combing through it, would it become effectively unexploitable?            
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Probably not very long. Even with a small attack surface, if half the world uses it, the zero-days are valuable. Links is still vulnerable to           
              
 * application-layer attacks (it is still an HTTP client and HTML parser, and the protocols themselves are complicated to implement soundly, even if the newest features aren't included)           
              
 * protocol attacks (is links immune to buffer-overruns triggered by intentionally-malformed queries? Probably not, since it has no total-soundness verification. And the source code isn't open-source so )          
              
 * dependency attacks (it uses svgalib [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-84/p...], and every third-party library is a potential attack vector)           
              
 * good old-fashioned UI spoofing (is links' UI design immune to allowing web pages to show an image that tricks the user into thinking they're looking at the links UI itself?)           
              
 In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application.           
              
              
 labawi on Feb 8, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > .. source code isn't open-source ..             
              
 Not sure what you mean, but then what is this: http://links.twibright.com/download/            
              
 > In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application.          
              
 Precisely, and because of that, with 50% people using it, an orders of magnitude smaller attack surface and a mostly fixed feature set (you could at least have a LTS version), just how many vulnerabilities are there to find? How many man-years of work until there is nothing¹ left to find? Do you think that just any code has exploitable vulnerabilities, you just need to look hard enough? And with each fix, you can repeat that ad nauseam?       
              
 With the current browser development efforts, would we end up with a 100% formally verified browser, including its dependencies, networking, and maybe even relevant parts of a linux kernel?          
              
 Judging by the change log[2], links is currently developed by 1 developer and occasional contributions.            
              
 ¹ Nothing of sufficient importance, frequency and lack of reasonable mitigations like not clicking on browser look-alikes, server-side CSRF protections, etc.           
              
 [2] http://links.twibright.com/download/ChangeLog             
              
              
 JohnFen on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s            
              
 I would actively prefer a web browser that lacks the features added since the '90s.            
              
              
 shadowgovt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's understandable, but it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.            
              
 Browsers aren't just thin-clients to support HTTP protocol and HTML rendering. They've grown to adopt a new distributed computing paradigm, not unlike UNIX and its descendants grew to support a new multi-user-cum-multi-process paradigm. The things web development offers---location agnosticism, platform agnosticism, combined multimedia interaction, a workable security model for multi-source aggregate-component content---are eating software development, and the browser is becoming the OS of the modern era. We know users want this because users were willing to use Flash (even though Flash broke out of the security model of the old browser).   
              
 There'll always be a place for small text-based pages much as modern computing will always have a place for command-line tools, but the genie is out of the bottle and it won't be put back in.          
              
              
 JohnFen on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.            
              
 I'm fully aware of this, and this, at heart, is why I'm certain that the day will come when I can no longer use the web at all.           
              
              
 flukus on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The mozilla suite in 1998 included a browser, an email/newsgroup client, an IRC client, an address book and an html editor.            
              
 Modern browsers for all their bloat actually have less features.            
              
              
 JohnFen on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Such suites are not browsers. They include a browser.             
              
              
 JohnFen on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII            
              
 And I consider it far too narrow.             
              
 > If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."           
              
 Fair enough. I would go for "more privacy", personally. There is no technical reason why both of our preferences couldn't be honored.           
              
              
 nojvek on Feb 5, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Well why does Chrome send this special header to only Google properties like YouTube and search and not the rest of the internet.           
              
 It really seems fishy and a lot of double speak. I really don’t trust Google here.            
              
              
 bonestamp2 on Feb 5, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 > and not the rest of the internet             
              
 Privacy issues aside, this might not help an antitrust case if one is brought against them.            
              
              
 raxxorrax on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 This it outrageous. Browsers are user-agents, not advertising accelerators. They should hide as much personal identifiable information as possible. This is exactly why using a browser from an advertising company is not a good idea. They use it to improve their service... The lie gets old...         
              
 This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing...            
              
 edit: pretty much exactly 10 years ago they already tried their shit with a unique id. We should have learned from that experience.           
              
              
 jaywalk on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Well when the browser is created by an advertising company...            
              
              
 iakov on Feb 6, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 >This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing...            
              
 You realize you can have multiple different browsers installed, right?            
              
              
 Tepix on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 According to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html            
              
 "We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation."     
              
 While this header may not contain personally identifiable information, its presence will make every request by this user far more unique and thus easier to track. I do not see Google saying they won't use it to improve their tracking of people.          
              
              
 goatinaboat on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 One click while logged into any Google property will be enough for them to permanently associate this GUID with your (shadow) account, they know it, and they know you know it too           
              
              
 TheRealPomax on Feb 4, 2020 | prev | next [–]             
              
 So, an extremely unique identifier for tracking purposes, that effectively no one knows exists, and no one knows can be changed at all?           
              
 With an obscure white paper that allows Google to claim they comply with the law because "they totally offer a way to change that and they even published that information to the web for anyone to find"?          
              
 Gotcha.             
              
              
 winternett on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Don't be evil...             
              
 Until we are deployed enough that users don't have a choice...            
              
 Now that Google has cornered the market for Internet browsing, they're using that foothold to change how it works to suit their dominance. This is why they are not concerned about per-site tracking that Google Analytics does, as long as THEY as a company have direct browser-based tracking, they no longer need to provide tracking services to other private companies to know what is trending everywhere. This is also probably why they're trying to kill ad blockers and certain browser privacy extensions.... But they won't really matter to Google if everything is done at the browser level to begin with from now on. :/    
              
 If they make moves to scale back [free] Google Analytics, which they probably will at some point, it will only highlight this ideal... They may turn to selling their privately collected metrics and qualitative studies to companies after Google Analytics is rendered useless, and then that's unadulterated monopolistic profit for them and shareholders...        
              
 Diabolical.             
              
              
 tigroferoce on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 True. But luckily you actually have a choice. Many opt for DuckDuckGo on Firefox, for instance.            
              
              
 LinuxBender on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You are right, but they also know most people won't switch. They have an entire generation of folks that don't even think about privacy.           
              
              
 K0SM0S on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 There's also the subset of all of us who must use Chrome because <solution X> needed for work requires said browser. Google's dominance through Chrome extends to the whole ecosystem. Same thing with Apple inside their own (which is nowhere near a monopoly at 10-15% market share worldwide, thus totally fair game by comparison).        
              
              
 Ygg2 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 On the other hand, people hate ads, so going to Firefox might actually be better option for new users.            
              
              
 klipt on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 You can probably be identified on Firefox too: https://amiunique.org            
              
              
 TheRealPomax on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 They might and I used to be one of them, but now I use Google on Firefox isntead, because DuckDuckGo no longer yields useful results. The number of times I don't go "oh ffs, fine, !g" has been in steady decline over the last year, and at this point I've given up.         
              
              
 TheRealPomax on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"? It's not been applicable for half a decade now, and even in 2015 when it was officially removed from the last company documents, it was already a dead phrase.          
              
 Google had already cornered the market back in 2012, when it surpassed every other browser, with an absolute majority dominance (>50% market share) achieved way back in 2015.           
              
 Google has been in control for a long time now.             
              
              
 Zenbit_UX on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Because of the deep irony? If you have a moto that binary and later decide to remove it, what is the world to infer?            
              
              
 darkarmani on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"?            
              
 Historical? It's not like it was 50 years ago.             
              
              
 TheRealPomax on Feb 9, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 In a world where broadband internet hasn't even been available for 2 decades, 5 years is a bloody long time.            
              
              
 gowld on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Please don't post blatantly false statements that are trivial to refute.            
              
 wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil             
              
              
 reddit_clone on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Reminds me of this.             
              
 "There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now"        
              
              
 Lio on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Beware of the leopard!             
              
              
 x0x0 on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Are you talking about the same thing? Because the identifier above is claimed to have 13b of entropy. Is there another high entropy identifier?           
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 13b, if usage statistics are disabled (not the default). Otherwise, unspecified amount of entropy.            
              
              
 asvitkine on Feb 5, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Actually, the low entropy provider is used for any field trials that get included in the header.            
              
 See: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/variations/v...            
              
              
 x0x0 on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 thanks. and ugh.             
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Just referred as High Entropy: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/metrics/entr...            
              
              
 clarry on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 13b plus IP is already huge, but browsers leak so much more than that.            
              
              
 rvnx on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 By default it's much more than 13b. Seems to be 13b only if you disable analytics/crash reports.            
              
              
 vkou on Feb 4, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Your comment is factually incorrect.             
              
 13 bits of entropy is not an extremely unique identifier.             
              
 The first three letters of your first name have more bits of entropy than that. It would be quite a trick to uniquely identify you by the first three letters of your first name.           
              
              
 TheRealPomax on Feb 4, 2020 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I fear the factual incorrectness isn't mine: the random string used is 13 bits of entropy only if usage statics is disabled , which isn't the case by default. By default, it uses an unspecified entropy (and you can bet real dollars that it'll be more then 13 bits worth).         
              
              
              
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Not endorsing this, but according to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#variat... &gt; We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation. &gt; The variations active for a given installation are determined by a seed number which is randomly selected on first run. If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy). If you would like to reset your variations seed, run Chrome with the command line flag “--reset-variation-state”. Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address), operating system, Chrome version and other parameters.
    
    
        
     This is impressive doublespeak.&gt; This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable information &gt; a seed number which is randomly selected on first run ... chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy) They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives &gt;=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service. &gt; Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address) They even admit to inspecting the IP address... &gt; operating system, Chrome version and other parameters. ...and many additional sources of entropy. [1] why 24 bits instead of 32? The LSB of the address might be zeroed if the packet is affected by Googles faux-"anonymization" feature ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059 )
    
    
        
     &gt; &gt; Experiments may be further limited by country (determined by your IP address)&gt; They even admit to inspecting the IP address... I don't think that sentence admits what you say? Chrome could be determining which experiments to run client-side. Of course, when you visit a Google property, they needs must inspect your IP address to send a response to you, at a minimum. That goes for any site you might choose to visit. The existence of sufficient entropy to personally identify a site visitor is not a state secret. They do not need this chrome experiment seed to identify you, if that's a goal.
    
    
        
     Yeah, it's not a "state secret" but it's not common knowledge either. Their privacy policy says that specific header can't be used to identify you, but fails to mention it can be combined with other information to make browser fingerprinting trivial.If you don't know how all this works, which is true for most human beings, their privacy policy might give you the wrong impression.
    
    
        
     &gt; says that specific header can't be used to identify youThat's not what it says. It says the header won't contain PII, which is true. It can be linked to PII, but so can literally every bit of information you send to Google while logged into or otherwise using their services. A disclaimer to this effect would not have any purpose.
    
    
        
     That's the whole point. Using any Google service means they can easily personally identify you, that's what the privacy policy should explain.That's their policy towards privacy, you don't have any. For some reason I can't fathom, you claim mentioning this in their privacy policy "would not have any purpose". Instead of honesty, their privacy policy is a wonder of public relations where it seems like they care deeply about protecting your privacy.
    
    
        
     We disagree about the purpose of privacy policies. I believe that privacy policies should describe how data will be used, not how it could be used. I just don't think a policy describing how data could be used is very useful, because it's going to be the same for all services.Under this formulation, Google's policy is (presumably, lacking any data to the contrary) honest with respect to this value.
    
    
        
     "I believe that privacy policies should describe how the data will be used, not how it could be used."Google's policy does not tell the user how her data will be used by Google's customers. The policy states Google will use the data to "provide better services". That is deliberately vague. That is the "purpose", but how exactly is the data used to achieve that purpose. There are no specifics with which a user could object. Google does not only serve the search engine user, the email user, the YouTube user, etc. Its business is not free services. As such the policy is misleading as to what are the "Services" it may use the data to improve. Google's business is providing online ad services. The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers. The policy reads as if it only collects data to provide better services to users. The "free" services are just bait to draw users in. The data is collected to improve online ad services.
    
    
        
     &gt; The truth is that Google collects data to provide better services to advertisers.I understand that that is what you believe, but I do not think this is factually true about the data collected from this Chrome header. I believe that Chrome team collects it in order to understand the impact of Chrome experiments on performance.
    
    
        
     &gt; I believe that privacy policies should describe how data will be used, not how it could be used. This is key. If you subscribe to the "how it could be used" version, then even say possessing an android phone would be a violation of the privacy policy. Which is absurd.
    
    
        
      
 This is a fair distinction, though it does not include the option of discussing how the data _won’t_ be used.   
    
        
      
 Per your observation, I would argue that the intent of the privacy policy as quoted above is pretty clear. When the policy says that the identifier doesn't contain PII, I believe that is meant to convey that it will not be used to identify you. But it's true that that use is not explicitly excluded. I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't tell you if being weasely in this way would count as fraud or not. Otoh, I suspect that Google is actually abiding by the spirit of the policy they wrote because honestly they have little to gain and much to lose by violating it.   
    
        
     If I log in to my Google account once, they can associate that browser id with my account. Even if I log out, clear my cookies (and probably use the incognito mode), Google will be able to identify and follow me all over the Web.I don't know about your PII thing, but it's personal data under the GDPR.
    
    
        
      
 AIUI GDPR restricts the handling and use of PII, not its existence. So it's PII under GDPR. Is Google misusing it? If so, that's an issue. If not, then it's kinda pointless to observe that it's PII under some possibly distinct legal definition than the one Google is using in its privacy policy.   
    
    
    
        
     So if you use a VPN service for example, they still know who you are because of this. I would say even if you’re visiting in private mode.I see your point, but I also see how this will keep you identifiable.
    
    
        
      
 I don't math very much, but I would guess the intersection of these sets of people is nil: people who 1) use VPN to avoid tracking by Google 2) still log in to Google services from one of their networks and not the other 3) use the same Chrome profile on both. But suppose some small number exist who adopt this illogical and contradictory pattern of behavior. If Google is using this token for the purpose of tracking this tiny set of people when the vast majority could be tracked more easily via conventional means, it would imply that they are far more competent than I give them credit for.   
    
    
        
     &gt; They are not including any PII... while creating a new identifier for each installation. 13 bits of entropy probably isn't a unique identifier iff you only look at that header in isolation. Combined with at least 24 additional bits[1] of entropy from the IPv4 Source Address field Google receives &gt;=37 bits of entropy, which is almost certainly a unique ID for the browser. Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not? If the IPv4 address, user-agent string, or some other behavior is sufficient to reveal a great deal of stuff, we have a more serious problem than that 13 bits. I agree that 13-bit seed is a concern. But I am wondering if it is a concern per se, or its orchestration with something else. Of course, how/whether Google keeps those data also matters.
    
    
        
     One clarification:- By default it's much more than 13 bits of entropy - If you disable usage statistics then you are limited to 13 bits of entropy
    
    
    
        
     &gt;Now this is interesting. If without that 13 bits of entropy, what will Google lost? Is it because of this 13 bits then Google suddenly able to track what they were not?At the very least, having those 13 bits of entropy along with a /24 subnet allows you to have device-level granularity, whereas a /24 subnet may be shared by hundreds of households.
    
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; This ... header ... will not contain any personally identifiable informationExcept for everything you do on your browser. I'm so glad I haven't used Chrome for almost three years.
    
    
        
      
 Yes, if you have enough bits you can come up with a fingerprint, but that's not what PII means.   
    
    
        
     This.A bank account number is consider PII. Knowing the bank name &amp; account number will uniquely identify the account holder's name, which is PII.
    
    
    
        
     ... which is crazy unrealistic, since it's "PII" that can only stay "private" by collective agreement of every node in the network, but no accounting for the reality of network architecture in passing law, I guess.Maybe a deep expectation of anonymity while accessing a worldwide network of cooperative machines is something people should stop telling the public they should expect?
    
    
        
     Under GDPR you can use all the PII you reasonably need to provide expected services, you don't even need separate consent. But, if you have PII, the moment you use it for other purposes, or obtain/retain/share without proper cause, you are breaking the law.IMHO, that is very reasonable. Real world example - giving your phone number and information to your car mechanic / doctor / bank teller / plumber is reasonable. Using that information to score girls or ask donation for a puppy shelter would be considered improper.
    
    
        
      
 I totally agree, and I think the GDPR is also reasonable in that it allows you to use the IP address for essential security reasons, such as blocking bad actors based on IP address - it doesn't say "thou shalt not track IP addresses", it says you need consent if you're going to use it for anything that isn't essential for security or in your end user's best interest.   
    
        
      
 Or they can stay 'private' by not being stored or correlated with other user data. GDPR doesn't apply to the network itself, it applies to whoever is using it.   
    
        
      
 "Stored" is definitely the purpose of a router. "Correlated" can be necessary for debugging routing issues (or client-server connection issues that are tied to the intermediary fabric near the client doing something weird; hard to determine if an entire subnet is acting up if you aren't allowed to maintain state on errors correlated to IP address).   
    
        
      
 Where do you get the idea that GDPR doesn't allow you to process PII for the purpose of routing packets?   
    
    
        
     &gt;Linking that browser ID to a personal account is trivial as soon as someone logs in to any Google service.Wat? You mean to tell me they can identify you if you log into their service? Am I missing something here? Who cares?
    
    
        
      
 I care. I care that I even if I log off, even if I use a vpn, even if I go into incognito mode, they still can associate my requests with the account I initially logged in.   
    
        
     The problem is any website can do that. Incognito-bypassing fingerprinting is difficult to prevent, unless you use something like uMatrix to disallow JavaScript from everything but a few select domains.This is a collection of random-ish unique-ish attributes. Any collection of such things can be used to track you, like installed fonts, installed extensions, etc. If this were just a set of meaningless encoded random numbers, then it's essentially a kind of cookie, but that's not what it is. This is (claimed to be) a collection of information that's useful and possibly needed by some backends when testing new Chrome features. It tells servers what your Chrome browser supports. The information is probably similar to "optimizeytvids=1,betajsparser=1". So, the only question is if Google is actually using this to help fingerprint users in addition to the pragmatic use case. It certainly could be used that way, and it's possible they are, but they have so many other ways of doing that with much higher fidelity / entropy if they want to. If this were intended as a sneaky undisclosed fingerprinting technique, I think they would've ensured it was actually 100% unique per installation, with a state space in the trillions, rather than 8000. Yes, this could be so sneaky that they took this into consideration and made it low-entropy to create plausible deniability while still being able to increase entropy when doing composite fingerprinting, but I think it's pretty unlikely. Also, 99% of the time they could probably just use use Google Analytics and Google login cookies to do this anyway.
    
    
        
      
 Maybe one actually useful non-advertising usage could be reCAPTCHA ?
If you read carefully, it says nowhere than there is the limit to 8000. There is this limit of 8000 only if you disable usage statistics / crash reports.   
    
        
     Sorry about that, too late to edit it now. That is an important detail. If there are 32 or more different feature flags, then that's 4 billion unique states, which would be an effective fingerprint.I still think it's pretty unlikely they're using it in that way or would in the future, and I think Google fuzzing this for those who opt out of telemetry is probably a signal of good faith in this instance. They realize the privacy implications and provide a way to disengage, even if they don't intend to abuse the information. But of course the potential for abuse always remains. And the potential for (arguably) non-abusive tracking, like the possibility of it being used for bot detection by reCAPTCHA, as you say.
    
    
        
      
 reCAPTCHA is the most abusive type of tracking. Google simply denys you usage of captcha if you do not give them enough personal information. It doesn't matter if you enter the captcha correctly 20 times. It won't let you in.   
    
        
      
 This is part of the bot detection, though. It's probably not "not enough personal information", it's "this truly seems like it is unlikely to be a legitimate device/person", due to the huge datasets they're working with. Same with Cloudflare and Tor. Once you operate a security service anywhere near that scale, you start to understand there are inherent challenges and tradeoffs like these,   
    
        
     reCAPTCHA increasingly doesn't even give me a captcha. Instead, they simply deny me from even trying; They send this instead of the challenge:  &lt;div&gt;
 &lt;noscript&gt;
 Please enable JavaScript to
 get a reCAPTCHA challenge.&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;/noscript&gt;
 &lt;div class="if-js-enabled"&gt;
 Please upgrade to a
 &lt;a href="[1]"&gt;supported browser&lt;/a&gt;
 to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.
 &lt;/div&gt;
 &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;
 &lt;a href="[2]" target="_blank"&gt;
 Why is this happening to me?&lt;/a&gt;
 &lt;/div&gt;
 
They probably don't like my non-standard user agent string and they definitely don't like that I block a lot of their spyware, but reCAPTCHA used to work properly for many years with the same/similar browser configuration.[1] https://support.google.com/recaptcha/?hl=en#6223828  [2] https://support.google.com/recaptcha#6262736
    
    
        
      
 I mean, if you don't want Google to track you, then you probably shouldn't use their browser...   
    
        
      
 I believe someone else in the thread stated it's cleared for incognito, don't remember if they meant it's not sent or that it's a new value.   
    
        
      
 Normally you would only expect to be identified and tracked when using Google services when logged in. The significance of this post is that they would be able to identify and track you across all your usage of that browser installation regardless of if you've logged out, or say in an incognito window.   
    
    
        
      
 Yes you are missing something important. Once they've tied the browser ID to your personal account they can track you across all google properties, even the ones that you didn't log into.   
    
        
      
 Unless you're running some extension that emulates FF's container tabs or something, it logs you into all G services. It would matter, though, if this header is still sent in incognito sessions.   
    
        
     I still don't understand. When I log into gmail, it logs me into all Google services. If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place? Or visiting in the first place? After all, even if I click "log out," I'm only trusting Google that they unlinked the browser state from the account. If I trust them to do that, I don't see why I shouldn't trust them to ignore this experiment flag from Chrome, or at least not use it for tracking. If I don't trust them to avoid using the experiment state, I don't really see how you can trust them for anything.Anyway, if you're not building Chrome from source, then you have to trust that they aren't putting anything bad in it. And if you are building chrome from source, you can observe that they only send this experiment ID to certain domains, and they already know who you are on those domains anyway.
    
    
        
     &gt;If I am worried about being tracked, surely my first mistake is logging in in the first place?Good luck completing a google captcha without a Google account or using Chrome.
    
    
        
     If you browse the internet, they could know what websites are visited by the same person, but not who they are exactly.If you visit a load of websites, then also log into google, they connect the two and they know what websites were visited by you specifically.
    
    
    
        
      
 I think the argument is they have other methods like cookies they could also use. The fact you trust them not to use those methods extends to this form of tracking.   
    
        
     They key in the wording is:
"If usage statistics and crash reports are disabled, this number is chosen between 0 and 7999 (13 bits of entropy).""If, statistics are disabled." In chrome://version you can see the active variations.
It seems to be pretty big numbers to be significant, and so far haven't observed duplicates. Since this header is generated server-side, you have only to believe I guess ?
Plus why Doubleclick would need it :)
    
    
        
      
 That's basically saying "even if you opt out, we'll still try to track you, just not as much." Very unpleasant, but then again I'm not surprised to see this attitude from Google.   
    
        
     Combine a few pieces of information like this and you get a decisively unique fingerprint.For example identifying individuals at work behind the same ip address.
    
    
        
     How many people will actually run chrome with a cli flag? It would be pretty impressive if every single person reading this thread did, but it probably won't even be that. Most people don't even touch their settings.13 bits of entropy is far from a uuid (but to get it to that you need to disable some more settings, which again very few people do), but it's still plenty good enough to disambiguate individuals over time.
    
    
        
      
 And Google is certainly in a position to disambiguate that uuid to an individual as soon as they login to gmail or any other Google property!   
    
    
        
      
 It is an abuse of Chrome's position in the marketplace. Google is using their powerful position to give themselves tracking capabilities that other online players can't access. It is a major competitive advantage for Google.   
    
        
      
 can't alternate browser makers who base on chromium simply disable that portion? like, I expect identifying users was a key business concern in moving Edge to Chromium. Is there something (other than work) preventing them from making it so it'll report back to microsoft-owned domains instead?   
    
        
      
 I'm using Vivaldi on MacOS and it doesn't send this header. I'm sure others like Brave don't send it either.   
    
        
     Is it because Google's webapps will have their own a/b tests which use experimental features only available in Chrome perhaps?I mean personally I think they should do client-side feature detection and be back to being standards compliant and not creepy. The only reason why I'd consider such a flag is because they optimize the payload server-side to return a certain a/b test, but even with that they could do the default version first, do feature detection, and then set a session cookie for that domain only that loads the a/b test. My other Thought was that they test a feature that is implemented across Google's properties, e.g. something having to do with their account management.
    
    
    
        
      
 Cross-site cookies are soon getting blocked by Chrome starting Chrome 80 if I'm right (whereas this header isn't)   
    
        
      
 So they build a personal back door to a feature that they've chosen to remove for everyone else? Because of it's potential for abuse, yet the very same company is somehow abusing it in a way more sinister way. Antitrust can't come soon enough.   
    
        
      
 Chrome will only block cross-site cookies that don't use HTTPS and the SameSite=Lax flag. It's easy for trackers to user HTTPS and SameSite=Lax. This Chrome change is mostly intended to protect against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks, not to block trackers.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Couldn't the Chrome installations receive a request from Google that says "Do you want to try out a new thing?", and couldn't the Chrome installations say yes with a certain probability? The only difference I can see is that the subset of users that are guinea pigs couldn't be the same in each test (if Google wanted that the subset is always the same).   
    
        
      
 So they're tracking people and using them as guinea pigs, the lack of respect for users is astounding.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Everybody imagine going back 15 years and tell yourself that you're using a web browser made by the parent company of DoubleClick. Your 15 year ago self would think you're a moron (assuming that 15 years ago you were old enough to know what DoubleClick was).   
    
        
      
 I always believed that tech-savvy people using Google Chrome are morons. It's the perfect blend of Google being evil trying to force it to everyone, the browser being dumbed down to masses so much it's missing the most basic features, and I guess privacy concerns too when using browser from advertising company.   
    
        
      
 That's a really great way of conceptualizing it, if you assume Google is basically DoubleClick at it's core (which I think makes sense).   
    
        
     Doubleclick ads were, originally, what prompted me to seek an adblock extension.I think it was around 2006 that I got the extension for Firefox; Google bought them about a year later.
    
    
    
        
      
 Kind of true. The whole internet was much more of a toy back then. Tracking was not viewed so maliciously as now. Heck I might have even been convinced by a hard sell "this will help your favorite sites maximize their revenue".   
    
        
      
 I can only speak for myself, but myself from 15 years ago would not have cared so strongly about the choice of browser. I believe I was using the newly-ad-less Opera at the time, and new/cared little about the company making it.   
    
        
      
 My 15 year ago self would have taken a double helping of DoubleClick if my only choices were that or Internet Explorer 6.   
    
    
        
      
 Do you remember what browsers were like when Chrome came out? I switched from Firefox the day it came out, and was very happy with performance and UI.   
    
    
        
     TL;DR I think whoever posted that is trying to bury the UA anonymizing feature by derailing the discussion.What I'm seeing is an RFC for anonymizing parts of User-Agent in order to reduce UA based fingerprinting, which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing! Then I see someone comments how that could negatively impact existing websites or Chromium-derived browsers, comments which are totally fair and make an argument that may not be a good idea doing this change because of that. Then someone mentions the _existing_ x-client-data headers attached to requests that uniquely identify a Chrome installation. Then a lot of comments on that, including here on HN. To me that's derailing the original issue. If we want to propose that Chrome remove those headers we should do so as a separate issue and have people comment/vote on that. By talking about it on the UA anonymizing proposal we are polluting that discussion and effectively stalling that proposal which, if approved, could improve privacy (especially since it will go into Chromium so then any non-Chrome builds can get the feature without having to worry about x-client-data that Chrome does).
    
    
        
     I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed.Ads are a business, and they are Google's business. They are how they make money. And like all businesses, they are competitive. Tracking is a way to make more money off online advertising. By removing tracking from their competitors while keeping it for themselves, Google stand to make a lot of money off this change. Their motivations are not honest, but they're pushing them as if this is the high road. It isn't. It's the dirty low road of dominating the online ad business, made possible by their dominance in the browser market. And it's always been the end-goal of Chrome browser.
    
    
        
     I think this is a common strategy of big players at any industry.First, they do some dirty thing to gain a competitive edge when the industry is still new and unregulated. Later they develop an alternative way to achieve the same competitive edge, and then criticize other players for doing an old way, saying they should be "mature and responsible".
    
    
        
      
 See also first world countries industrializing/modernizing &amp; becoming rich/lifting people out of poverty using industrial techniques that pollute heavily, then "going green" and criticizing other players (India, China) for doing the same thing, saying they should be "mature and responsible".   
    
        
     Not really. "Going green" is a radical new concept for humanity that goes counter to all incentives and instincts and only recent developments have shown that painful measures are necessary. It was not a trick to get rich at other peoples expense.India and China are suffering from their own pollution and have incentives to "go green" all by themselves, not because the West demands it. Green technology is often high tech and tech that is accepted in Western markets and is helping to lift people out of poverty through market mechanism, not finger pointing. Finally the first world got rich several generations ago. We are not related in any way, shape or form to any real or perceived sins of our grandfathers. Any such idea is old testament biblical theology.
    
    
        
     "Going green" is a relatively new concept, even for Western countries. By 1960 the West was seriously polluting its environment, but also extremely affluent and highly developed. There was far more of a gap between the average American and someone in Asia or Africa compared to today. The West polluted the developing world in the same way it polluted the Hudson or Cuyahoga.It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet. It's more about where the standards are set and what is socially acceptable or understood.
    
    
        
     &gt; It's not really about pulling up the ladder, but a recognizing that growth doesn't have to mean completely destroying the planet.It's not recognizing anything, because it hasn't been demonstrated that growth is still compatible with not completely destroying the planet. It's deciding to not destroy the planet, and if that means pulling up the latter then golly gee sucks to be anyone who isn't up yet. We sure hope there are other ways up, but that's not much consolation.
    
    
        
     They should be mature and responsible, the west should have been, too, and has a long way to go.We both are probably distant cousins due to our relation through Ghengis Khan, but that doesn't mean I should be bitter that I can't make my fortune by pillaging half the world like my distant ancestor did to great effect. It might be easy to make a fortune pillaging, but that doesn't mean I deserve to pillage because someone else did (or does), and I think I am in the right in detesting the scattered bands of warlords left in this world who do make their living by pillaging.
    
    
    
        
     Just yesterday I had to disable anti fingerprinting I'd enabled in Firefox because despite having a solid IP and and existing cookies to login to Google, it's security system rejected me, even after answering security questions. Turn off fingerprinting and I could log in.So, this is a round about way of agreeing with the hidden dark patterns that Google are bringing to the web. It must stop.
    
    
        
      
 I have to log into Gmail just to pass captchas. Every time I do it I die a little inside.   
    
        
      
 All the more reason to keep bad actors in containers isolated from the rest of your web browsing. Google can fingerprint me all they want if that gets their rocks off, all they'd see is my gmail inbox that they see anyway.   
    
        
      
 Much of such discussions demonize the company, but we need to look broader. Google is a public company and its shareholders, since they share the company, are also to be pointed out. Discouraging such behaviour is better done by the shareholders by dumping shares since Google could very well argue that if it didn't work to maximize ad revenue, it would not be operating according to fiduciary responsibility principles. (IANAL .. just thinking out loud)   
    
        
     That is such short term thinking.Doing unethical things because "We had to so the shareholders would make money" is such a cop-out. I see it just the opposite way. You have a duty to do things ethically so that in the long run customers continue to want to use your product. So that governments don't start going after you for the unethical things you do. So that other businesses will trust you and continue to work with you. Here's an example: Huawei. They've reached out to me saying they'll pay me more than my employer and my commute will be shorter. No effing way. I'm sure I could make them a lot of money, but they're history of unethical behaviour is an instant deal-breaker for me. Others will, sure, but in the market of labor they're going to have a reduced supply because I'm surely not alone in this attitude.
    
    
        
     I'm with you on the shareholders being complicit in the behaviour (through ignorance or inaction in a lot of cases), but unfortunately I'd guess 90% of said shareholders wouldn't be aware of the scummy tactics Google have undertaken, similar to Microsoft I'd say, outside of the IT/HN realm.It's unfortunate. Profit of their shares is the only thing a lot of people look at (and willfully ignore anything else unless it slaps them in the face/becomes a major mainstream media event).
    
    
        
      "I think the concern is that this disarms Google's competitors while keeping them fully-armed." Pretty sure that was their main reason for helping push https-everywhere. A good idea generally, but hurt every other entity trying to do tracking more than it hurt Google.
    
    
        
     &gt; while keeping them fully-armed.That's sort of a fragile assumption though. I mean, yes, there's enough specificity in this number that it could be used (in combination with other fingerprinting techniques) to disambiguate a user. And yes, only Google would be capable of doing this. So it's abusable, in the same way that lots of software like this is abusable by the disributor. And that's worth pointing out and complaing about, sure. But it's not tracking. It's not. It's a cookie that identifies the gross configuration of the browser. And Google claims that it's not being used for tracking. So all the folks with the hyperbole about user tracking for advertising purposes need to come out with their evidence that Google is lying about this. Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google claims that it's not being used for tracking&gt; Occam says that, no, it's probably just a misdesigned feature. Allow me to introduce to you "mabbo's razor": If someone can make money by doing X and it's impossible for anyone to tell whether or not they are doing X, then they are probably doing X or else will as soon as you believe they won't.
    
    
        
     While I agree with some of your comment, I feel like it’s harsh to paint the whole chrome enterprise with that brush. Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser and a lot of devoted devs have spent a lot of time working on it. There’s an advertising aspect that it’s right to call out, but I think on the whole it was done to make the internet better, because the internet is google’s business too.EDIT I just wanted to point out that a load of people have poured their lives into making Google Chrome the amazing bit of software that it is and suggesting that the end-goal has been entirely about supplying ads does a great disservice to their personal contributions.
    
    
        
     These aren't mutually exclusive things. The people working on Chrome were and are highly motivated, intelligent and passionate people, some of whom I call friends, who want to see the web become a better place. In that regard they have succeeded massively.But by this point, Google has dropped billions of dollars on salaries for those developers to build Chrome (call it &gt;500 devs, &gt;$200k salaries, &gt;10 years). Google is not a charity. They didn't build Chrome with the intent to lose money on it. Everything else Google made that wasn't profitable is gone now, and yet here Chrome stands. Because it is an indirect profit center. And you've pointed out the real issue: Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser. 'Was'. But it did that! So what is it about now? Why would Google continue to pour money into it if they didn't expect to extract more money out of it in the future? You can make the world better and make money while doing it. Ideally, that's what we all are doing.
    
    
        
      
 It wasn’t some noble mission to free the world. Chrome was always about Google controlling the client side of the web to guarantee their advertising access to web users. The ability to extract additional data from the user was a nice bonus.   
    
        
      
 The way I see it, both of these can be (and most likely are) true. Intentions of the company aren't usually the same as intentions of individual contributors (or even whole teams). The Web is Google's business - the more stuff happens on the Web, the more money they can eventually make of it. Advertising is how they make most of that money, so this is what they're protecting. But beyond that, Chrome answered a real need and a lot of hard-working people made it into a best-in-class browser.   
    
        
     "Chrome was about freeing the world of a truly terrible web browser "Chrome is about establishing more control over the web to further the business objectives of Google and Alphabet. The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor' is a function of the new kind of branding they helped introduce, something that an entire generation of particularly young people are being duped by. 'Brand' used to be the image that companies presented - it was a decision, a marketing tactic, usually invented by agencies. Google was one of the first to change that, to effectively 'internalize' the brand so that they (staff, even leaders) really kind of believed their own kool-aid. There's an incredible aura of 'authenticity' to this; when leaders really believe their own schtick, it rings more powerfully. (This is an issue for another thread.) But Google has proven that in the long run, they're just a regular company. I don't think they are bad actors, and in the big picture, they're better than most. But, they're just a self-interested entity: they will do whatever is in their power and which is also legal, to leverage their incumbency and stymie competition.
    
    
        
     &gt; The problem with this belief of Google as some kind of 'benevolent actor'You put 'benevolent actor' in quotes as if the comment you are replying to contained that. It didn't.
    
    
        
     Stress quotes. That is just one of the possible devices to achieve that.I see a lot of that here, people misunderstanding basic speech/writing conventions. Maybe giving the op the benefit of doubt, assuming s/he knows what s/he is doing, can help avoid some of those.
    
    
        
     &gt;which improves everyone's privacy, that's a good thing!Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud. Which means Google competitors are terribly disadvantaged, as they cannot use that. Which not only reduces market diversity (contrary to TAG philosophy) but represents a significant conflict of interest for an organization proposing a major web standard change. These issues are very relevant to the original proposal, especially in light of the fact that Noone outside of Google is terribly interested in this change. Any time a dominant player is the strongest (or only) advocate for a change that would coincidentally and disproportionately benefit its corporate interests, the proposal should be viewed very skeptically.
    
    
        
     &gt; Except it does not affect Google, because Google has this install ID to use both for tracking and preventing ad-fraud.So when Apple releases a privacy feature, that doesn't affect them as a business, we praise the feature or we say "except it doesn't affect Apple" and somehow try to argue how the feature is less valuable because of that?
    
    
        
     Of course we'd say "except it doesn't affect Apple"...If there's a privacy gap, (and Apple is actively exploiting that gap) When Apple patches it, (while leaving it open for themselves) They'll get called out.
    
    
        
      
 Apple is not engaged in illegal data harvesting to gain a competitive advantage over other services in the same space. Google's collection of personal data with the x-client-data header without user consent is illegal under GDPR.   
    
        
      
 This relies on the (unfounded) assumption that this pseudonymous ID is being used for tracking purposes and that Google is actively lying about it.   
    
        
     GDPR treats an IP address as personal data. The data is not transmitted through an anonymizing network, so Google has access to the user's IP address when they receive the data.Anything that is associated with personal data also becomes personal information, therefore Google is transmitting personal data without user consent, which is illegal. Asking for consent is not required under GDPR when the data collection is needed for a service to function. This is not the case here, Google services function without receiving that header, the data is used by Google to gain a technical advantage over other web services.
    
    
        
     &gt; GDPR treats an IP address as personal data.No it doesn't. GDPR only treats IP address as personal data if it is associated with actual identifying information (like name or address). Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR. Edit: and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data. IOW, the theoretical capability to make changes to a system to use info in a non-GDPR compliant way doesn't make the information or system noncompliant. You actually have to do the noncompliant things.
    
    
        
     An IP address is itself personal data, it does not have to be associated with other personal data. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...  &gt; Collecting IP address alone, and not associating it with anything else, is completely fine (otherwise nginx and apache's default configs would violate GDPR), and through them basically every website would violate GDPR. See my comment about consent not being required when the data is needed to provide a service. Logging is reasonably required to provide a service. &gt; and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data. The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law.
    
    
        
     See my edit. There's conflicting information on this. A dynamic IP, for example, isn't directly related to or relatable to a specific natural person without other context.But even if that's the case, if you don't tie the pseudonymous ID to the IP, it isn't personal data. As far as I can tell, the transfer rules you reference are about transferring data out of the EU, and can be summarized as "you can't transfer data to a non-EU country and then process it in a way that violates the GDPR". Article 46 notes that transferring data is fine as long as appropriate safeguards are in place[1], and article 47[2] defines what constitutes those safeguards (in general, contractually/legally binding agreements with appropriate enforcement policies). This goes back to what I said before: The theoretical capability to do noncompliant things doesn't make a system GDPR-noncompliant. You have to actually do noncompliant things to not comply. [1]: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-46-gdpr/  [2]: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-47-gdpr/
    
    
        
     &gt; &gt; and furthermore, even if it did (I see conflicting reports), if you collect IP Address and another pseudonymous ID and don't join them, the ID isn't personal data.&gt; The transmission of data is already covered by GDPR, you don't have to store the data to be bound by the law. This cannot be the actual correct interpretation of the GDPR, because under this logic _all_ IP packets on the public internet (made by/to EU citizens) are covered by the GDPR because you are transmitting data alongside an IP address.
    
    
    
        
     There has been an EU court ruling on this exact question of whether dynamic IP addresses count as personal data even in contexts where the website operator in question does not have the means to associate it with an individual but another party (such as an ISP) does. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on this and it does count as personal data. [1]Furthermore, GDPR itself specifically refers to online identifiers in Article 4 as falling under the definition of personal data[2] and then clarifies in Recital 30[3] that IP addresses count as online identifiers in this context. There seems to be no legal ambiguity in the EU on this topic at this point, but I would be not surprised to see parties who are not GDPR compliant pretend otherwise indefinitely. [1] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...  [2] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/  [3] https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-30/
    
    
        
      
 Interesting, TIL. That doesn't change the major point I was making though, which is that an anonymized identifier (such as the 13-bit ID under discussion) isn't personal info, even if it might have originally been collected along side data which is personal info. If I give you said 13 bit ID, you need other info to back out a single person, the anonymous ID corresponds to multiple IPs.   
    
        
     I think you're still missing the point. Google transmits personal data to their servers without user consent. The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work. The nature of the data, what is being done with it on the server, and the location of the server are all irrelevant in this instance, the only important part is that personal data has left the browser in the form of a request, and it reached a Google server.This data collection would only be exempt from GDPR if the data would be required for the service to function, but that is not the case with x-client-data.
    
    
        
     &gt; The value of x-client-data is personal data, because it is associated with an IP address during transit, due to how HTTP requests work.This is not correct. The x-client-data is not personal data. x-client-data associated with an IP address is personal data. As soon as you separate the client-data from the IP, the client data stops being personal data. IOW, the tuple (x-client-data, IP) is personal data. But x-client-data on its own isn't personal data, because it cannot be used to infer the IP on its own. I don't know where you're getting this "if two pieces of data ever touch and one of them is personal data the other one is now also contaminated as personal data". It's not true. That would make the existence of anonymous data (which the GDPR specifies as a thing) practically speaking impossible to have on the web, since all requests are associated with the IP on receipt. (or actually even worse, it would make the process of anonymizing data impossible in general, since the anonymization process associates the anonymized data with the original personal data). To be precise, the GDPR defines anonymized data as "data rendered anonymous in such a way that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable.". The x-client-data header is exactly that. The subject of the header is not identifiable by the x-client-data header alone. Therefore the header is anonymous and not subject to strong GDPR reqs. For the client data header to be personal data, you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds. You're welcome to come up with such a scheme, but my intro CS classes taught me that bucketed hashing is irreversible, and with 8192 buckets, you're not going to be able to uniquely identify anyone specific.
    
    
        
     The Chrome whitepaper is written in a way to make you believe there is only 8000 possibilities.But read carefully what they say; they say there is only 8000 possibilities if the crash reporting functionality is disabled (not by default). Otherwise the marker is a huge differentiator (I haven't seen any duplicates personally)
    
    
        
     &gt; That would make the existence of anonymous data practically speaking impossible to have on the webFor almost every type of data that is true. Transforming or substituting data doesn't make it anonymous; the patters in the data are still present. To produce actually anonymous data you have to do what the GDPR instructed: corrupt the data ("rendered anonymous") severely enough that the "data subject is ... no longer identifiable". You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise. &gt; 8192 bucket While others have pointed out that this isn't actually limited to 13 bits of entropy for most people, there are at least two reasons that field is still very personally identifying. First, "x-client-data on its own" never happens. Google isn't wasting time and money implementing this feature to make an isolated database with a single column. At no point will the x-client-data value (or any other type of data they capture) ever sit in isolation. I used the IPv4 Source Address as an example because it will necessarily be present in the header of the packets that transport the x-client-data header over the internet. Suggesting that Google would ever use this value in isolation is almost insulting to Google; why would they waste their expensive developer time to create, capture, and manage data that is obviously useless? However, lets say they did make and isolated system that only ever received 13 bit integers stripped of all other data. Surely that wouldn't be personally identifiable? If they store it with a locally generated high resolution timestamp they can re-associate the data with personal accounts by correlating the timestamps with their other timestamped databases (web server access logs, GA, recaptcha, etc). &gt; you'd need to describe a scheme such that, given an x-client-data header, and only an x-client-data header, you could identify one (and only one) unique person to whom that header corresponds You should first describe why google would ever use that header and only that header. Even if they aren't currently using x-client-data as an identifier or as additional fingerprintable entropy, simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy
    
    
        
     &gt; You need to do something like aggregate the data into a small number of groups such that individual records no longer exist. Techniques like "differential privacy" let you control precisely how "anonymous" your data is by e.g. mixing in carefully crafted noise.Correct, and another anonymization technique (in place of differential privacy) is k-anonymity. In k-anonymity schemes, you ensure that in any given table no row corresponds to any fewer than k individuals. Why is this useful? Well let's say you have some, say, 10-15 bit identifier. You can take a request from a user that contains information that might when combined, be identifying. Say: coarseish location (state/country), device metadata (browser version, OS version), and coarse access time (the hour and day of week). Combining all 3 (or 4 if you include the psuedonymous ID) is enough to uniquely identify at least some users. Then let's say you also track some performance statistics about the browser itself. But any single piece of data (plus the pseudonymous ID) is not enough to identify any specific user. So if you use the psuedonymous ID as a shared foreign key, you can join across the tables and get approximate crosstabs without uniquely identifying any specific user. Essentially, if you want to ask if there are performance differences between version N and version N+1, you can check the aggregate performance vs. the aggregate count of new vs. old browser version, and with 8K samples, you're able to draw reasonable conclusions. And in general you can do this across dimensions or combinations of dimensions that might normally contain enough pieces of info to identify a single user. This is essentially the same idea as differential privacy, although without the same mathematical precision that differential privacy can provide. (By this I don't mean that the data can be re-identified, just that differential privacy can be used to provide tighter bounds on the anonymization, such that the statistical inferences you can gather are more precise. k-anonymity is, perhaps, a less mathematically elegant tool). Specifically, I'm describing k-anonymity using x-client-data as a Quasi-identifier in place of something like IP or MAC address. You can find those terms in the "See Also" section of the differential privacy wiki page you linked. Google is mentioned in those pages as a known user of both differential privacy and k-anonymization in other tools. Hopefully that answers your question of why Google would want such a thing. &gt; simply saving the data gives Google the option to use it as an identifier in the future. Yes, but that doesn't mean that they're currently in violation of the GDPR, which is what a number of people keep insisting. I'm not claiming that it's impossible for Google to be doing something nefarious with data (although I will say that in general I think that's an unreasonably high bar). Just that the collection of something like this isn't an indication of nefarious actions, and is in fact likely the opposite.
    
    
        
     This is the equivalent of a protest, people are objecting to Google's illegal data harvesting practices in places that receive engagement, since that's the most effective way to get the word out and warn others.Google's reasoning that this is not personal data is meaningless in the face of GDPR, which considers an IP address personal data. Google has access to the IP address when they receive the data, therefore they are transmitting personal information without user consent and control, which is illegal.
    
    
        
     It could be argued that a similar violation is present (since March 2019) in Chromium for the Widevine CDM provisioning request, see https://github.com/bromite/bromite/issues/471 Basically all users opening the browser will contact www.googleapis.com to get a unique "Protected Media Identifier", without opening any web page and even before any ToS/EULA is accepted (and there is no user consent either).
    
    
        
     I think the Widevine CDM request is needed for the service to function, though they could certainly delay it until a website requires DRM. GDPR allows the use of personal data without consent when it is required to provide a service for the user.The personal data collected with the x-client-data header is not required for Google sites to function. Google uses the data to gain a technical advantage over other sites on the web, this is why the data collection in this case requires consent.
    
    
        
      
 Whether consent is legally required or not, as a user I want that service, whatever it is, to not work until I consent to the exposure of my personal data. Given that it apparently has something to do with DRM, I would be disabling the service anyway.   
    
        
     &gt; Whether consent is legally required or notLets not guess it, lets file a complaint, and see if we can get Google sued for n billions of euros.
    
    
        
     The poster is the author of Kiwi browser, which unfortunately is closed source [0], but I have reason to believe he is familiar - as I am for the Bromite project - with all the (sometimes shady) internals of the Chromium codebase; it is indeed off-topic to discuss the header issue there but I would say that there is no explicit intention to derail it (and no advantage), just incorrect netiquette.[0]: https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecommen...
    
    
        
     The Google employee argues that through UA-CH Google wants to disincetivise "allow" and "block" lists.After many years of testing HTTP headers, IMO this really is a non-issue. Most websites return text/html just fine without sending any UA header at all. What is an issue are the various ways websites try to coax users to download, install and use a certain browser. Another related issue with Google Chrome is users getting better integration and performance when using Chrome with Google websites than they would if they used other clients. ^1 Some make the analogy to Microsoft where it was common for Microsoft software to integrate and perform better on Microsoft Windows whereas third party software was noticably worse to integrate and perform on that OS. This leads to less user agent diversity. Users will choose what works best. UA diversity is really a more important goal than privacy, or privacy in Chrome. The biggest privacy gains are not going to come from begging Google to make changes to Chrome. They could however come from making it easier for users to switch away from using Chrome and to use other clients. That requires some cooperation from websites as well as Google. Those other clients could theoretically be written by anyone, not just large companies and organisations that are dependent on the online ad sales business. It would be relatively easy to achieve "privacy-by-design" in such clients. There is no rule that says users have to use a single UA to access every website. There needs to be choice. For example, HN is a relatively simple website that does not require a large, complex browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc. to read. It generates a considerable amount of traffic and stands as proof that simpler websites can be popular. Varying the UA header does not result in drastic differences in the text/html returned by the server. 1. Recently we saw Google exclude use of certain clients to access Gmail.
    
    
    
        
     Yes, but they would also need a valid TLS certificate?A country's government could also take over the TLD and grab its traffic overnight.
    
    
        
     The original issue is supposedly fingerprinting and privacy related.If that's true then Google should be called out for their poor behaviour.
    
    
        
     As long as web developers continue to create (app-)sites that only work in the latest versions of Chrome(and Chromium-ish) browsers, giving users little effective choice over what browsers they can use, this sort of abusive behaviour will continue. The sort of "feature-racing" that Google engages in is ultimately harmful for the open web. Mozilla struggles to keep up, Opera surrendered a while ago, and more recently, Microsoft seems to have already given up completely.I feel like it's time we "hold the Web back" again. Leave behind the increasingly-walled-garden of "modern" appsites and their reliance on hostile browsers, and popularise simple HTML and CSS, with forms for interactivity, maybe even just a little JavaScript where absolutely necessary. Something that is usable with a browser like Dillo or Netsurf, or even one of the text-based ones. Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google has, by allowing more browsers to appear and gain userbases.
    
    
        
     This proposal would not accomplish what you intend. By slowing the adoption of open web technologies, developers and users would lean more heavily on mobile apps, which are also under Google's control considering Android's huge market share.Developers who want to level the playing field need to develop sites that fully support Firefox and other browsers that are not based on Chromium. Users who want to see a more open web need to use Firefox and non-Chromium browsers, and complain to developers who don't properly support them.
    
    
        
      
 I'm talking about the vast majority of things people use websites for, which do not need a webapp much less a mobile app.   
    
        
      
 I wish, but that's not what most people want. Hell, it's not what designers want. Thinking back to the Myspace days, people would have the worst websites imaginable. Granted, that was all done with little more than HTML and javascript, but I have little doubt what they would have done with things like HTML5 and even more javascript.   
    
        
     I have to agree with this.The last decade or so has really reinforced to me that we all ignore or are ignorant of fundamental structural problems with most of the systems we rely on - with us wanting them to "just work." We're all guilty of this, we just see it up close for the things that we're building and chide others who don't care. Meanwhile we ignore other fundamental structures of modern society.
    
    
        
      
 There's got to be a balance between every website looking exactly the same and fading out of my memory with one identical hamburger menu after another and dancing babies on geocities.   
    
        
      
 Are there really that many popular extensions not available on Firefox? I may be just one anecdote, but I think I'm pretty typical, and I've found the transition to Firefox to be quite pleasant, and uneventful.   
    
        
      
 Popular - no. Essential - yes. Case in point - my bank (top 5 in my country) which uses Chrome plugin for security purposes, you need it to create digital signature. So once a year I HAVE to install Chrome (key expires every year) and then delete it. I've also found at least one payment processor not working in Firefox, my city portal for public transport and several small sites. The worrying thing is the trend - with Firefox share dropping below 10% recently it will be abandoned more and more.   
    
    
        
      
 Installing Chrome was strictly needed only for banking plugin. Didn't have a chance to check yet with a new Chrome-Edge but will definitely try it.   
    
        
     Firefox is really good.My issue is with certain sites that typically either uses non standard Javascript apis that only work in blink or relies on non standard behavior of standard components (numeric form inputs was mentioned here yesterday).
    
    
        
      
 It doesn't happen often but sometimes, when a website doesn't work, I switch to chrome and it works there.   
    
        
     HTML is not enough. It’s why templating languages / libraries were invented, and it’s why SPA’s are so popular. There’s a difference between “sites” and applications. The web has been trending toward supporting applications more and more for a very long time.The only thing that will make people who want to preserve the content-web happy is if we split the protocols somehow, and that will never happen. This is not likely to change ever.
    
    
        
     I havent had js on by default in years. Using a js enabled browser is a drastically worse experience.suckless surf lest you enable js with a hotkey on a per-process basis if you really want it for something, but 90% of the time, I just close the tab that wants to waste my time.
    
    
        
      
 I think we at HN have a particular responsibility to keep the web free and open. This really is an arms race and only those of us building the tech have the power curtail FAANG's overreach. It might me time to choose a side and firmly push your work toward open web friendly tech.   
    
        
     &gt; [...] this sort of abusive behaviour will continue.Can you elaborate what exactly is abusive behavior? &gt; [...] reliance on hostile browsers, [...] What exactly is a hostile browser?
    
    
    
        
      
 What article? The link is a github issue. And it's not like you referenced anything of that anyway. It's more like it just triggered you to output a general rant. So again: Care to elaborate?   
    
        
     &gt; Making sites that are usable in more browsers than the top 2 (or 1) will weaken the amount of control that Google hasYou do realize/remember that Google is also a search-engine company, one that only stands to benefit (in terms of increased capability of advertising targeting) from a web that's simpler, and therefore more machine-legible.
    
    
        
      
 I’m not so sure about that. Google has the resources, a simpler web makes it easier for competitors, seems like google is already quite competent at machine reading just about everything, even sometimes things that you can’t fond/visit. Domination by web-apps is the equivalent to widening the moat.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
     This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there. The Chrome codebase has special features for Google’s own web properties.I hope all these AGs suing google have some good tech advisors. It’s hard to keep track of all the nefarious things google has been up to over the past decade.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; This seems like a cut-and-dry case of getting caught in monopolistic behavior. The code is right there.??? Is "Darn, their browser only gets to track me on their own websites; if Google were playing fairly, they'd send the tracking header to all websites so I can be tracked more and have less privacy" the argument you're making here? And it's debatable that this header is actually serving a tracking purpose at all. Being limited to their own web properties cements it as a diagnostic to me. What use is a tracking header that only gets sent to domains they already know you're visiting?
    
    
        
     You realize that whenever a user visits a page that uses AdWords, AdSense, or login via Google, they download a script file from one of those domains, right?So a user can log into Google and then log out, tying that header data to whatever PII Google has attached to them, and future visits to any sites using those and probably other services can be attached to the individual, despite them having intended to be logged out of Google services.
    
    
        
     All I’m saying is the optics are not good. This is the kind of code you could show a jury. A high schooler who took “intro to CS” could understand what it’s doing.It’s literally a conditional attached to a list of strings comprised solely of google advertising domains and hosts that distribute scripts from those domains. When you’re talking about anti-trust, it doesn’t look good. Will this be a nail in the coffin? Unlikely. Will it help Google with its legal trouble? Definitely not.
    
    
        
     Security flaw? Surely some entity is squatting youtube on some TLD?!If there is a country TLD of X where Google owns google.X but entity Y owns youtube.X then entity Y gets the X-CLIENT-DATA header information. See usage of IsValidHostName() in code.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 If you strace chrome on linux it also picks up /etc/machine-id (or it did back when I looked), which is a 32 byte randomly generated string which uniquely identifies you and on some systems is used as the DHCP ID across reboots.   
    
        
      
 First I thought reading /etc/machine-id would be expected if Chrome uses D-bus or pulseaudio libraries which depend on D-bus, and /etc/machine-id is part of D-bus. But no, they really use it for tracking purposes.And in a sick twist they have this comment for it:   std::string BrowserDMTokenStorageLinux::InitClientId() {
 // The client ID is derived from /etc/machine-id
 // (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id.html). As per
 // guidelines, this ID must not be transmitted outside of the machine, which
 // is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting
 // it.     
    
        
     In fairness, the guidelines they reference suggest you do exactly what the comment says they're doing (assuming they're keying the hash). The guidelines seem explicitly written with the idea that unique identifiers _derived from_ this value are not similarly quarantined, provided that you cannot take the derived value and "reverse" it back to the original identifier.Quoting from https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/machine-id....: This ID uniquely identifies the host. It should be considered "confidential", and must not be exposed in untrusted environments, in particular on the network. If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application, the machine ID or any part of it must not be used directly. Instead the machine ID should be hashed with a cryptographic, keyed hash function, using a fixed, application-specific key. That way the ID will be properly unique, and derived in a constant way from the machine ID but there will be no way to retrieve the original machine ID from the application-specific one.
    
    
    
        
     I think it doesn't make much sense to protect it because in popular Linux distributions an unprivileged user can access such identifiers as MAC addresses of network interfaces, HDD serial numbers etc.&gt; If a stable unique identifier that is tied to the machine is needed for some application, Ideally there should be no stable identifiers accessible to untrusted applications.
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; which is why we hash it first and then encode it in base64 before transmitting it.This made me chuckle. "As per the rules, we'll put on a boxing glove before we punch your lights out". You wont get privacy, but at least there is some security!
    
    
    
        
      
 "Tracking purposes" is such a weasel word, when we're really talking about device management in an enterprise setting, and this code only gets activated if the root/administrator user has installed a token file on your computer.   
    
    
        
      
 Which (among many other things) can be faked with firejail, if you absolutely have to run Chromium (e.g. for testing):  --machine-id
 Spoof id number in /etc/machine-id file - a new random id is generated inside the sandbox.
 
 Example:
 $ firejail --machine-id     
    
    
        
      
 When puppeteer first came out I was nervous to use it for scraping because I could totally see Chrome pulling tricks like this to help recaptcha in identifying the bots. I’m still not convinced they aren’t.   
    
    
        
      
 What does tor do with it? Maybe pass it along in packet timing intervals, or something ... ;o)   
    
    
        
      
 True, more precisely - 16 bytes, 32 hex characters. Your link is in agreement "The machine ID is usually generated from a random source during system installation or first boot and stays constant for all subsequent boots." And See https://wiki.debian.org/MachineId at least one distro uses it for the DHCP ID.   
    
    
        
      
 Now you are nitpicking. Your new link says exactly this “ This broadcasts the machine ID (hashed with a known fixed salt) over the LAN as the unique client identifier part of the DHCP protocol. (Other DHCP clients tend to use MAC addresses for this.) It also broadcasts the machine ID locally on each link as part of Ethernet LLDP, if enabled.”   
    
        
      
 It is far from nitpicking to point out the gross inaccuracy of conflating one particular software with an entire operating system. systemd-networkd is not Debian.   
    
    
    
        
     I'm surprised this hasn't gotten any mainstream tech press attention. Chrome's Privacy Whitepaper describes a number of privacy-questionable nonstandard headers which are only sent to Google services. Just try searching for X- here: https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html  And for ease of reading, a few others: &gt; On Android, your location will also be sent to Google via an X-Geo HTTP request header if Google is your default search engine, the Chrome app has the permission to use your geolocation, and you haven’t blocked geolocation for www.google.com (or country-specific origins such as www.google.de) &gt; To measure searches and Chrome usage driven by a particular campaign, Chrome inserts a promotional tag, not unique to you or your device, in the searches you perform on Google. This non-unique tag contains information about how Chrome was obtained, the week when Chrome was installed, and the week when the first search was performed. ... This non-unique promotional tag is included when performing searches via Google (the tag appears as a parameter beginning with "rlz=" when triggered from the Omnibox, or as an “x-rlz-string” HTTP header). &gt; On Android and desktop, Chrome signals to Google web services that you are signed into Chrome by attaching an X-Chrome-Connected and/or C-Chrome-ID-Consistency-Request header to any HTTPS requests to Google-owned domains. On iOS, the CHROME_CONNECTED cookie is used instead.
    
    
    
        
     PII concept is not the same for everyone/everywhere. For GDPR we have:&gt; Article 4(1): ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified,  directly or indirectly , in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; If this chrome browser ID is matched against a (for example) google account, then they can track every single person. And that is just a couple of IDs, let alone all the quantity of data they have. It's against GDPR to not be clear about this kind of ID. If my browser has an unique ID that is transmitted, then this ID can be coupled with other information to retrieve my identity and behavior, so it should be informed (in the EU). EDIT: TD;LR, hiding behind "there is no PII in that ID" is not enough.
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Who's going to raise this issue though?I'm sure there is someone out there who takes these kind of things seriously. Not me. I use firefox for that matter. &gt; And what if they put this in the browser's T&amp;C? Then the rest of GDPR applies: a clear message about the browser sending this info has to be shown, explaining why, with who they'll share it, the time they will keep this info, plus no auto opt-ins, the possibility of asking Google (or whatever) all the info relative to this ID and the option to cancel all the data, etc.
    
    
        
     This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PII; it denies even innocuous feature-mode-distinguishing headers intended to allow for bug-identification of massively-distributed software installs.If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality."
    
    
        
     Me too. Then a breach happens and someone with a straight face tells you: "we take your privacy very seriously", asking apologies, because the breach used some of your data to push some political campaign or to bother you with spam/extortions because that night you were watching some porn.Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that works. Otherwise upper levels have an excuse to do all this "experience" telemetry, and we all are smart enough to see the consequences of a data breach.
    
    
        
     &gt; Programmers should stop pushing buggy or incomplete software as is, and start releasing software that worksIf you demand a perfection-of-function guarantee from something as complicated as a web browser, you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90s (and I'm not even sure we'd be that far along by now). If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "the software ever having the features I want to use" I'm also going to lean towards "the software ever having the features I want to use." And we know this is true for users in general because of the number of users who had Flash installed back-in-the-day in spite of the fact that it allowed a total bypass of the browser security model, because it had features that the browser lacked otherwise.
    
    
        
      
 Instead of giving my privacy away, I prefer software like anything that you have installed from a CD-ROM back in the 90's and didn't needed a weekly update. Games, 3D-Studio, Autocad (to name a few) were more complex than a web-browser (a today's web-browser) and didn't needed a weekly update or the hunger for user-requested features, let alone dialing home because. The world worked relatively fine without the up-to-date wankery we see today.   
    
        
     I remember them.They were also buggy and could crash their resident OSs all the way to a stuck state, and if they did, the solution was "Try not to trigger that bug again." Software quality has significantly improved in the era of easy patch access and auto-patching.
    
    
        
     Holy Jesus. Those things were chock full of security holes. If you used a web browser that arrived on a CD ROM you'd be advertising massive pwnability.In fact, you could easily simulate this by using last year's Firefox.
    
    
        
     Firefox, chrome, linux ... all are full of unnecessary complexity. The point being - we need daily patches to keep it from falling apart.I have links (or lynx) on an old SuSE, maybe even a Mandriva CD. Would they be massively pwnable?
    
    
        
      
 Hard to say, but not necessarily a great example; exploits on software are a function both of attack surface / complexity and installed userbase (i.e. nobody bothers to see if lynx is pwnable because a zero-day against that browser will be worth, what, twenty bucks to gain access to the five people who use it?).   
    
        
     Perhaps. Perhaps not. As a thought experiment:How long would it be safe to go without browser updates with a browser of complexity/capabilies of links, if 50% of people used it? With many people combing through it, would it become effectively unexploitable?
    
    
        
     Probably not very long. Even with a small attack surface, if half the world uses it, the zero-days are valuable. Links is still vulnerable to* application-layer attacks (it is still an HTTP client and HTML parser, and the protocols themselves are complicated to implement soundly, even if the newest features aren't included) * protocol attacks (is links immune to buffer-overruns triggered by intentionally-malformed queries? Probably not, since it has no total-soundness verification. And the source code isn't open-source so ) * dependency attacks (it uses svgalib [https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-84/p...], and every third-party library is a potential attack vector) * good old-fashioned UI spoofing (is links' UI design immune to allowing web pages to show an image that tricks the user into thinking they're looking at the links UI itself?) In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application.
    
    
        
     &gt; .. source code isn't open-source ..Not sure what you mean, but then what is this:
http://links.twibright.com/download/  &gt; In this thought experiment, any successful attack has massive value so we can expect bad actors to be hammering on the system and finding most such exploits available on the application. Precisely, and because of that, with 50% people using it, an orders of magnitude smaller attack surface and a mostly fixed feature set (you could at least have a LTS version), just how many vulnerabilities are there to find? How many man-years of work until there is nothing¹ left to find? Do you think that just any code has exploitable vulnerabilities, you just need to look hard enough? And with each fix, you can repeat that ad nauseam? With the current browser development efforts, would we end up with a 100% formally verified browser, including its dependencies, networking, and maybe even relevant parts of a linux kernel? Judging by the change log[2], links is currently developed by 1 developer and occasional contributions. ¹ Nothing of sufficient importance, frequency and lack of reasonable mitigations like not clicking on browser look-alikes, server-side CSRF protections, etc. [2] http://links.twibright.com/download/ChangeLog
    
    
        
     &gt; you'll never get a web browser with more features than the ones released in the '90sI would actively prefer a web browser that lacks the features added since the '90s.
    
    
        
     That's understandable, but it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.Browsers aren't just thin-clients to support HTTP protocol and HTML rendering. They've grown to adopt a new distributed computing paradigm, not unlike UNIX and its descendants grew to support a new multi-user-cum-multi-process paradigm. The things web development offers---location agnosticism, platform agnosticism, combined multimedia interaction, a workable security model for multi-source aggregate-component content---are eating software development, and the browser is becoming the OS of the modern era. We know users want this because users were willing to use Flash (even though Flash broke out of the security model of the old browser). There'll always be a place for small text-based pages much as modern computing will always have a place for command-line tools, but the genie is out of the bottle and it won't be put back in.
    
    
        
     &gt; it isn't what most people want---developers or users alike.I'm fully aware of this, and this, at heart, is why I'm certain that the day will come when I can no longer use the web at all.
    
    
        
     The mozilla suite in 1998 included a browser, an email/newsgroup client, an IRC client, an address book and an html editor.Modern browsers for all their bloat actually have less features.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; This is why I consider the GDPR to be unrealistically broad in its definition of PIIAnd I consider it far too narrow. &gt; If I'm given a forced choice between "more privacy" and "better software quality" I'm going to lean towards "better software quality." Fair enough. I would go for "more privacy", personally. There is no technical reason why both of our preferences couldn't be honored.
    
    
        
     Well why does Chrome send this special header to only Google properties like YouTube and search and not the rest of the internet.It really seems fishy and a lot of double speak. I really don’t trust Google here.
    
    
        
     &gt; and not the rest of the internetPrivacy issues aside, this might not help an antitrust case if one is brought against them.
    
    
        
     This it outrageous. Browsers are user-agents, not advertising accelerators. They should hide as much personal identifiable information as possible. This is exactly why using a browser from an advertising company is not a good idea. They use it to improve their service... The lie gets old...This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing... edit: pretty much exactly 10 years ago they already tried their shit with a unique id. We should have learned from that experience.
    
    
    
        
     &gt;This comment was sadly written in Chrome, since I need it for testing...You realize you can have multiple different browsers installed, right?
    
    
        
     According to https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html "We want to build features that users want, so a subset of users may get a sneak peek at new functionality being tested before it’s launched to the world at large. A list of field trials that are currently active on your installation of Chrome will be included in all requests sent to Google. This Chrome-Variations header (X-Client-Data) will not contain any personally identifiable information, and will only describe the state of the installation of Chrome itself, including active variations, as well as server-side experiments that may affect the installation." While this header may not contain personally identifiable information, its presence will make every request by this user far more unique and thus easier to track. I do not see Google saying they won't use it to improve their tracking of people.
    
    
        
      
 One click while logged into any Google property will be enough for them to permanently associate this GUID with your (shadow) account, they know it, and they know you know it too   
    
        
     So, an extremely unique identifier for tracking purposes, that effectively no one knows exists, and no one knows can be changed at all?With an obscure white paper that allows Google to claim they comply with the law because "they totally offer a way to change that and they even published that information to the web for anyone to find"? Gotcha.
    
    
        
     Don't be evil...Until we are deployed enough that users don't have a choice... Now that Google has cornered the market for Internet browsing, they're using that foothold to change how it works to suit their dominance. This is why they are not concerned about per-site tracking that Google Analytics does, as long as THEY as a company have direct browser-based tracking, they no longer need to provide tracking services to other private companies to know what is trending everywhere. This is also probably why they're trying to kill ad blockers and certain browser privacy extensions.... But they won't really matter to Google if everything is done at the browser level to begin with from now on. :/ If they make moves to scale back [free] Google Analytics, which they probably will at some point, it will only highlight this ideal... They may turn to selling their privately collected metrics and qualitative studies to companies after Google Analytics is rendered useless, and then that's unadulterated monopolistic profit for them and shareholders... Diabolical.
    
    
    
        
      
 You are right, but they also know most people won't switch. They have an entire generation of folks that don't even think about privacy.   
    
        
      
 There's also the subset of all of us who must use Chrome because &lt;solution X&gt; needed for work requires said browser. Google's dominance through Chrome extends to the whole ecosystem. Same thing with Apple inside their own (which is nowhere near a monopoly at 10-15% market share worldwide, thus totally fair game by comparison).   
    
        
      
 On the other hand, people hate ads, so going to Firefox might actually be better option for new users.   
    
    
        
      
 They might and I used to be one of them, but now I use Google on Firefox isntead, because DuckDuckGo no longer yields useful results. The number of times I don't go "oh ffs, fine, !g" has been in steady decline over the last year, and at this point I've given up.   
    
        
     Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"? It's not been applicable for half a decade now, and even in 2015 when it was officially removed from the last company documents, it was already a dead phrase.Google had already cornered the market back in 2012, when it surpassed every other browser, with an absolute majority dominance (&gt;50% market share) achieved way back in 2015. Google has been in control for a long time now.
    
    
        
      
 Because of the deep irony? If you have a moto that binary and later decide to remove it, what is the world to infer?   
    
        
     &gt; Why do people still dredge up Google's historical "don't be evil"?Historical? It's not like it was 50 years ago.
    
    
        
      
 In a world where broadband internet hasn't even been available for 2 decades, 5 years is a bloody long time.   
    
        
     Please don't post blatantly false statements that are trivial to refute.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
    
    
        
     Reminds me of this."There’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning
department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start
making a fuss about it now"
    
    
    
        
      
 Are you talking about the same thing? Because the identifier above is claimed to have 13b of entropy. Is there another high entropy identifier?   
    
        
      
 13b, if usage statistics are disabled (not the default). Otherwise, unspecified amount of entropy.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 By default it's much more than 13b. Seems to be 13b only if you disable analytics/crash reports.   
    
        
     Your comment is factually incorrect.13 bits of entropy is not an extremely unique identifier. The first three letters of your first name have more bits of entropy than that. It would be quite a trick to uniquely identify you by the first three letters of your first name.
    
    
        
      
 I fear the factual incorrectness isn't mine: the random string used is 13 bits of entropy only if usage statics is disabled, which isn't the case by default. By default, it uses an unspecified entropy (and you can bet real dollars that it'll be more then 13 bits worth).
Google tracks individual users per Chrome installation ID
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627105
Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
2021-12-20
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 <a href="vote?id=29627917&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Interesting how the three separate R/G/B images are taken independently a few ~seconds~ milliseconds apart, with a different color filter placed over the image sensor.<p>I assume this is to maximize resolution, since no Bayer interpolation [0] is needed to demosaic the output of a traditional image sensor that integrates the color filters onto the sensor pixels themselves. As these satellites are not intended to photograph things in motion, the color channel alignment artifacts seen here are a rare, small price to pay for vastly improved resolution and absence of demosaicing artifacts.</p><p>[0] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter</a>
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 <p>These are pushbroom linear sensors stacked up in the focal plane. The spectral channels are physically separated by larger distance than neighboring pixels in a Bayer grid. There is a time delay between each channel sweeping over the same location that gets corrected when the final imagery is aligned. The moving plane at altitude violates assumption of a static scene and exposes the scanning behavior.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29632718&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The B2 bomber photo isn't from a push boom sensor, because it would be distorted since it's moving relative to the camera. This would manifest itself as a shear along the motion vector . There is no shear in this photo, only spectral bands.<p>I've spent a number of years doing image orthorectification, and satellite imagery post-processing, then also worked on Google Earth and Google Maps, so I can tell you precisely what happened. This is a satellite image from a satellite which photographs different spectra at different times. There isn't enough parallax at typical orbital distance for this much displacement to come from multiple cameras. Looking at some parked cars, this looks like 20-30cm resolution per pixel, which is consistent with the newer earth imaging satellites.</p><p>Google Earth made a blog post about this a while ago (<a href="https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/03/planes-flight-rainbow-effect.html">https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/03/planes-flig...</a>)
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 <a href="vote?id=29633109&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Agree it wouldn’t be parallax from multiple cameras on the same satellite but the delay between images seems quite short for physical filter swapping (~20ms per filter).<p>(Edit: Actually DLP does it in about that amount of time, nvm)
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 <p>Shame we don't know what the delay between spectra is, would be fun to work out how fast the plane is traveling.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I've seen larger aberrations from satellite captures of planes. But I've no idea how to estimate height or speed by that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29632912&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>You can get height if you can find the shadow, and find the time that the photo was taken, because at any given time and date, you can compute sun position, and you know the precise lat/lng of the shadow. The shadow would need to be in the same photo, though. (actually, it's a bit to the northwest, just found it).<p>If you can find a vertical structure, like an antenna mast, you can measure shadow length and direction and if you know the height of the antenna, you have enough information for some trigonometry.</p><p>Speed is harder. You'd need to know the difference between exposures.
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 <p>Thanks! It's conveniently hidden by a grassy area and some trees which throw shadows of their own. Actually, I should be doing something more useful at the moment...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29633008&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Aha! Here we go. Here's a telephone pole:
<a href="https://earth.google.com/web/search/39.0303298,-93.58495/@39.0303223,-93.58490691,230.87707932a,67.38914248d,35y,351.22667355h,0t,0r/data=CigiJgokCfFGDVg6ZERAEaGjgcDYWkRAGSWqyHhIeFLAIXtTdN2bf1LA">https://earth.google.com/web/search/39.0303298,-93.58495/@39...</a><p>We know that telephone poles stick about 32 feet from the ground. Measuring the shadow in Google Earth above, it's about 20 feet. Now, it's a simple ratio.</p><p>Using Earth, I measured the distance from the plane to its shadow at about 2430 feet, that would put it at 3,900ft, which is surprisingly low, but I don't know the height of that pole for sure. It's the right ballpark, though.
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 <p>The B2 is based out of Whiteman AFB near Warrensburg, MO so roughly 25 miles or 40 km south of where the plane is so it is probably on its final approach to land or just took off.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>If it’s anything like space telescopes there are more than 3 spectral filters that can be selected which rules out a static Bayer-type filter system.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629716&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>FWIW, depending on the satellite (this one is probably WorldView 3), there usually more like ~6-7 channels in the visible.<p>It makes for easier top-of-atmosphere correction, and can be useful for things other than pretty pictures.
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 <a href="vote?id=29632608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Basically a 1D sensor that acquires a 2D image because the camera itself is moving.<p>Or a static camera and a moving subject. This same style of camera is used for "photo finishes" in races. The camera is literally the finish line, and the the first pixel to "cross the line" is the winner.
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 <p>Also office scanners. Basically, it's still a 2D image, but instead of two spatial dimensions, it has a spacial dimension and a time dimension.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I haven't seen a CCD CMOS, yet, and I don't _think_ microbolometers are CMOS-based (and wouldn't be surprised if no one publically tried).
Happy to see some exotic examples, though.
Those are always intriguing the hacker curiosity.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29634660&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Most CMOS imaging sensors in digital cameras do scan, but not like a push-broom sensor. The push-broom sensor only has a single line of pixels that physically moves (or that something moves across), like in a scanner or a photocopier. But as others have said, those sensors might also be fabricated with CMOS technology.<p>Whereas your normal digital camera has a fixed rectangular array of pixels, and the scanning is just reading them progressively (what's called 'rolling shutter') because it's hard to read them all quickly enough at once. Some more expensive sensors do 'global shutter' which usually has better motion characteristics for video.
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 <a href="vote?id=29629258&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Is the R/G/B separation greater because these sensors are built like TDI CCD lines?<p>edit: Seems like pushbroom is the name for TDI when it's put in a satellite.
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 <p>Exactly! I'm working on some stuff now to exploit this very effect, the small time difference in the bands can be used to find velocities of moving objects.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Is this at all analogous to how we used red/blue shift to determine the speed at which astronomical objects are moving towards/away from us?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>No, that’s the Doppler effect. This is a time delay between when different colors were captured.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is incredibly cool. What's the application (if it's possible to obscure whatever details you don't want to divulge)?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's not what I'm doing but it seems possible you could watch refraction patterns and tell that there are submerged objects, but you'd need to know the water depth without that object there, as there'd be no great way to tell if the object is a submarine or a pile of sand. Also, most of these satellites pass over fairly rarely so wouldn't be super useful for tracking things that move. I'm mostly interested in finding the piles of sand :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29631780&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>So... does anyone have a tool handy to correct the frames?<p>Better yet... does anyone have the corrected image?
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 <p>Funnily enough, I thought exactly the same when reading the parent post !
Grateful to be in such well-spoken company :)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It depends on the satellite. Weather satellites in GEO do because they aren't moving relative to the surface and they have time constraints for scanning the full earth disc. Higher resolution imaging satellites use linear sensors. However, they use TDI imaging which at a low level makes them superficially like an area array with limited vertical resolution but the light collection is still fundamentally different.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don’t think this is the case as we don’t see any rolling shutter distortion. The linear sensor scans just like a shutter curtain exhibiting the same distortion. The plane is proportioned correctly. Maybe the scan time is fast enough.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628907&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The google maps scale shows the plane as being pretty close to that length as well. I think the satellite is high enough up that altitude scaling for aircraft is going to be minimal.<p>I see about a 10 foot separation between colors.</p><p>Velocity = distance / time</p><p>400 mph is 587 fps.</p><p>10 / 587 = 17 ms
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 <p>Do they actually use satellites for their "satellite" view? I always assumed that it was done by aircraft.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29630713&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Depends on the needed resolution. You can cover a lot more earth, far more cheaply with a satellite with several meter wide pixels.<p>When I used to work in remote sensing I remember that Bing Maps had a very distinct resolution transition from spacecraft to aircraft. Aircraft coverage maps were a small subset of the total earth land area, but most US towns had some coverage at that time (~2012).</p><p>As you zoomed in, you could tell when Bing switched capture methods because the aircraft cameras were clearly off-nadir, and you'd see off-angle perception differences.
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 <a href="vote?id=29631599&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>They only use aircraft around larger urban areas. Satellite imagery is used for rural areas. You can see the resolution difference by seeing how far you can zoom in.<p>If you zoom in on a road near the pinned location for this post, and then go to, say, downtown kansas city, and zoom in you'll see a pretty significant difference.
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 <p>Flying a plane around the planet sounds a lot more expensive financially and thermodynamically than just beaming down images from an object constantly falling into the views you want to see.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's also the case that often there are more legal regulations around aerial imagery compared to satellite imagery.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Or you could just strap a camera to a few commercial airliners and have full coverage.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You'd only have full coverage of the jet routes. They don't just fly willy nilly across the globe.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's definitely a mix, depending on the area and the resolution. For urban places where they have 3D views and higher resolution, it's definitely planes. For a random place like this at low resolution, it's satellites.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>How low are these satellites? I wouldn't expect the altitude of a plane to be any significant proportion of the altitude of a satellite.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The satellites are probably greater than 400 km altitude, or so, while the plane is probably 10 km. The plane is in the same rough order of magnitude as really tall mountains, which the satellite is presumably designed to compensate for, so I agree with your general assessment.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The shadow is 750 m away and the sun is about 15 degrees off noon, so the B2 altitude is roughly 3 km. Cousin comment says the satellite altitude is 614 km, so I wouldn't expect parallax effects to be dominant. This is also evidenced by the fact that both the plane and ground are in focus and the plane is measured to be 70 feet long in google maps, which is what it is specified to be in reality.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That bomber is also likely quite low, since it's based out of an air force base in that area.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Sure, but when the word "calibrate" comes up, you want to account for even the not-very-significant factors.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I would assume that the plane or satellite moving affects this too, it's presumably being corrected but there might be some parallax.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You're absolutely correct, but as the aircraft is much closer to the ground than the imaging satellite I disregarded it. Spherical cows and all that :) I'm sure a military analyst would do the calculations!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It actually works out to be pretty close. A satellite flying ~17k mph at 250 miles altitude would largely have the same angular displacement from the ground as a plane moving 400 mph at 31,000 feet. Most satellites fly in an easterly direction, so the question would ultimately be what the inclination of the orbit is relative to the direction of flight.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think this plane is flying much lower and slower. The B2s are based at Whiteman AFB, which is about 25 miles south of this photograph. The prevailing winds in this part of the country are from the south, so I suspect that it is about to turn onto the final leg of its approach for a landing to the south. I’d guess that it’s no more than 8-10K’ and traveling at a 2-300 knots max.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Definitely. Rule of thumb in a jet is to slow down if you're closer than 3x the altitude. So at 8k feet you want to be at least 24 nautical miles (27 normal miles) away or if closer you want to be slowing down (or descending). If you don't slow down before you're going to have to do so in the descend and typical jets can't really slow down much in that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I asked google maps to get directions from there to Whiteman AFB. Unfortunately, flight directions were not available.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Hey welcome to the list, I've been on it since Primary School believe it or not, but only found out a few years ago!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628797&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Most imaging satellites are in sun synchronous orbits so likely in this case moving north or south and slightly retrograde e.g. west.<p>I'd bet orbital motion is negligible here because the distortion seems to the eye to be entirely in the direction of the plane's apparent motion vector and I don't see any significant skew to that.
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 <p>That's super interesting! I love this discussion. Would the satellite be that low though? 250 miles (400km) is still going to experience significant atmospheric drag. Fine for a cheap mass deployment like Starlink, but I'd expect an imaging satellite to be set up for a longer mission duration. Then again maybe the cost of additional mass for station-keeping is worth it for the imaging quality.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well no the speed of the satellite is irrelevant there, the background is not getting distorded at all</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Isn't the speed of the sat irrelevant as it should correct for this anyways for all images it takes?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Interesting, I would have made the opposite assumption ("the satellite is moving so much faster than everything else, we can estimate the interval from the satellite's speed alone). It seems both speeds might have a similar impact, as per sibling comment.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Interesting. A search for those gradients could help find all fast moving objects in the satellite images.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What an awful picture of the NRO Director. Surely they have plenty of experience in photography in less than ideal conditions. So why have this photo as the first thing I can see on their website?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The juxtaposition of the Ursa Major and Onyx/Vega patches almost gave me whiplash. Judging by the list of patches it seems like NRO is a fun place to work. Thanks for sharing!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Fun is maybe not quite the word I'd use. The juxtaposition of all the wording about "defense" and menacing-looking characters that would definitely be the villain and not the hero in any comic book or movie is... unsettling. Even if it's a self-aware joke about their public image (like the squid giving the whole Earth the hug of death), it's maybe gone a bit too far?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The gorilla holding the US flag is my favourite. And it might just be me, but the Nemesis badge has to be a sphincter, right? It reminds me of the Greendale flag in community.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I like how they quit looking like patches and just turned into stickers. Even with a black budget, they still had to cut corners and reduce spending on incidentals too?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's 2021, give them a break. Corporate photos have been non-professional, taken by the wife in the bathroom style for 18months now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Is there a way to subscribe to comments? I'd love to see the result of this idea but am not savvy enough to spin it up myself very easily</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Click the timestamp for the comment, then click "favorite", then set a reminder in your calendar to check your favorited comments (link in your profile).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What do you mean by “copy/paste cache”? If you mean the clipboard history, there’s no such thing on macOS. If you mean the clipboard (= the last thing you copied), Siri can work with the Shortcuts app, which itself can read the clipboard.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The shadow is about 2500 feet away. Judging from nearby houses the sun is probably about 15 degrees SouthEast of noon.<pre><code> 2500 ft * sin( 15 ) = 650 ft
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Someone should double-check my geometry though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Doing it this way allows not only higher resolution, but you can also use different types of filter for specialist applications. Infrared for example, or some kind of narrow band pass filters etc.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629266&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>I literally have a 720nm lowpass infrared filter in front of me for use in photography.<p>Infrared imaging is not "military", it's public, common, and legal.
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 <p>I think what they meant is prior to the "digital farming revolution" if you called up a satellite/arial imagery company and requested anything other than visible spectrum, you'd not only get some strange looks - they'd also alert the government.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I grabbed my red and blue glasses because this vaguely looked like a 3D anaglyph to me, and while it's not the clearest such image, it definitely appears as a cohesive object hovering above a flat map. Further I zoom out, it definitely looks like it. Inadvertent byproduct of however this was photographed or stitched?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Is it possible this is a a pushbroom sensor, where red, green, and blue sensors are moved along the path of the plane or satellite that's taking the image? My understanding is those have a higher effective resolution than frame-based sensors, which would make sense here.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Seems unlikely to me. With push broom, I'd think you'd get characteristic squishing, stretching, or skewing of objects in motion depending on whether the object was moving against, with, or perpendicular to the push broom path. In this case with the imaging satellite probably in polar orbit and the plane flying east, you likely see the plane horizontally skewed as each horizontal row of pixels captured the plane further east.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Also came here to discuss this. Super interesting opportunity to reverse what they're doing. Yeah I'd agree it's color filters which would avoid duplicating lenses (probably the most expensive component) or dividing the light energy. Filters would give you the most photons per color per shot. I wonder if the filters are mechanical or electronic somehow. As another commenter calculated, it's 10ms between shots, which is not that impractical to move physical filters around when you consider modern consumer camera shutter speeds of around 0.125 milliseconds max.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is what we do all the time for astrophography! We buy monochrome cameras without an IR filter and take 3 photos and recombine them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wonder if there are ways to get superior (compared to Bayer) color images from conventional raw-capable monochrome digital cameras (like Leica Q2 Monochrom) in static scenes using similar workflows of taking three separate shots.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Many cameras, especially medium format like Fuji GFX, can do "pixel shift" capture, where they use the sensor stabilization to shift the sensor by one pixel at a time to ensure red, green, and blue are each captured at all pixels, without needing demosaicing. The camera has to be mounted on a tripod for this to work - like any stacking requires, really.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628709&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Interesting. Sadly, I believe the Photoshop approach would not produce a DNG file that you could normally interpret in a raw processor of your choice. Looks like pixel shift cameras (which apparently still use Bayer sensors, just moving them around, to debayer at capture time so to speak) is the most practical option at the moment.<p>I’m curious if it is technically possible for a digital sensor to capture the entire light spectrum of the scene, without the need for RGB separation at any stage—similar to Lippmann plate[0].</p><p>[0] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippmann_plate">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippmann_plate</a>
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 <p>I looked at Foveon before, and got the impression that it still effectively relies on RGB separation/recombination, though in a more elegant way than Bayer sensors. (That said, Sigma’s doing some really cool stuff.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky‘s work shows both the benefits and drawbacks of the swapping filters approach</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's standard when using reflectic/catadioptic objectives to peek back at where the satellites are: <a href="https://www.astroshop.eu/filter-wheels-filter-sliders/starlight-xpress-usb-filterwheel-7x-1-25-t2-t2/p,23748">https://www.astroshop.eu/filter-wheels-filter-sliders/starli...</a>
This one has USB, the same style with manual operation via a teethed wheel is like 169 EUR at that shop.
Or consider rigging a burnt-out DLP projector's filter wheel up, which comes with a motor and encoder that you could use to capture imagery with the filters they provide at much higher frame rates (a few hundred fps in the monochrome domain seem usual these days, AFAIK, for good consumer DLP projectors).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That sounds very interesting. I feel like firmware/hardware automation combo that swaps RGB filters and takes exposures in accord could provide interesting workflows for owners of those monochrome digital cameras.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I wouldn't be surprised if these military bombing dudes not only took R, G, B, but also near IR, far IR, UV, and various other things. If they did it would make no sense to try to make a Bayer filter for all of that and rather just have multiple filtered cameras pointed at the same direction.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Actually the camera is (assuming geostationary orbits arę not used for imaging) moving ar speeds much much faster than the plane</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's a lot of words to rationalize away what is very clearly and obviously a cloaking device at work!!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629187&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>“Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image, fast-moving objects – like planes in flight – don’t quite match up, producing the rainbow effect.<p>[2] <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631c4029e9d1">https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29630329&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image<p>That's the same as taking a (normal, digital) photograph (sans additional non-rgb layers), just explained.
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 <p>The difference is typical digital cameras have a bayer filter in front of the sensor to allow taking a single color picture vs. here it sounds like multiple captures with individual filters (e.g. 1 blue, 1 red, 1 green, 1 monochrome) that are later combined into a color picture.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29633645&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The point was at all color photos record electromagnetic radiation in visible colors.<p>The “it doesn’t take photos it record electromagnetic radiation” is a silly thing to say.
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 <a href="vote?id=29638911&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>There's some subtlety here. Colors are percepts- phenomena that happen in the brain. Wavelengths and radiation describe natural electromagnetic phenomena, not percepts.<p>Example: Infrared has no "color". It's possible to induce the illusion of colors in the absence of light altogether. I appreciate that the article took care with this language, as it's a deep and fascinating topic.
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 <p>"Chemical" photography captures electromagnetic radiation as well, but converts it into bonding energy, not into electrical signals.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Does anyone have a theory on why some photos have a rainbow plane and a solid white place offset?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They take a separate high-res monochromatic picture. (As image compression theory tells us, if you can afford to sacrifice some colour resolution for monochromatic resolution -- do it.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's interesting how some satellites take the alpha channel pic before the RGB channels, and some do it after. The lag also changes. Alpha &amp; RGB have similar lags for some, but alpha is way off on others.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29632719&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Do you mean luminance? Alpha usually refers to the transparency channel in an RGBA image.<p>Whereas I believe you're describing more of a YUV setup
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 <p>What does alpha channel mean in this context? Usually it means transparency but how would you take a picture of that?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628167&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>I live on a farm very close to this area.<p>All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago.</p><p>This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.
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 <p>On Google Earth you can use the timeline feature to actually see when the imagery was captured (or at least uploaded?). The plane sitting near the hangers was from a capture in May 2016. Google Earth currently shows several newer captures, including one from September 2021. The current one from September 2021 is actually far more interesting in my opinion. In it, you can see a B2 sitting in a field about a quarter up the runway (38°43'27.63"N 93°32'54.86"W) with stuff scattered all around it and trucks sitting on the runway. <a href="https://i.imgur.com/lh1hkWN.png">https://i.imgur.com/lh1hkWN.png</a></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Ah very interesting! I saw the skid marks on the runway north of the plane and was wondering if it was an emergency landing situation considering that it was just on the side of the runway. Pretty cool to read the article and get the other half of the story.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm very intrigued as to what is going on here - it almost looks as if it veered off the runway. Anyone got any suggestions?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29630611&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The op of this thread replied to my comment with a military.com article, and in that article there is a link to an article on thedrive, <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42392/damaged-b-2-spirit-is-sitting-wing-down-off-the-runway-after-landing-mishap">https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42392/damaged-b-2-spir...</a><p>"According to sources, the B-2 experienced a hydraulic failure in flight and had its port main landing gear collapse during landing, sending it off the runway with its wing dug into the ground. We cannot confirm that this was the case at this time, but the satellite image above does concur with the gear collapse/wing down aspect of the incident. While it is possible the aircraft was rolled off the runway after the fact, this is unlikely, especially considering its wing-down disposition. The damage to the aircraft also remains unknown. "
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 <a href="vote?id=29630198&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>They're often deployed elsewhere for missions and/or training, but the home base for all of them is Whiteman AFB. There's only 20 of them.<p>I do wonder how many megatons of nuclear weapons are stored there, about 20 miles from my house. Maybe best not to think on that too much. :)
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 <p>Yeah I panned over to the munitions bunkers (I think there is a better name I forget) and there seemed to be so few, but I guess you don't need much space for nukes...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29630124&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Omg, are they sooo huge?<p>I just realised how big they are for the first time in my life. What a sight!</p><p>[edit] 
172ft = 52m wingspan!
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 <p>I was blessed by a low flyover in Lancaster, CA back in '94 or so. It's absolutely stunning to have something that big and that quiet glide over you.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There's really no point. A few high sensitivity assets are lower resolution, but any state actor that wants very high resolution shots of military facilities already has it and on a quicker update cadence than google maps allows.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In the initial years of Google Earth and similar services, a number of military and intelligence facilities were blurred.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29635352&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>This isn’t an answer to your inflammatory question, but there are only a handful of nation states with nuclear weapons, and France is one of them.<p>These aren’t hand-me-down US warheads on the back of a missile truck: the flagship of the French navy is a 40,000 tonne nuclear armed, nuclear powered aircraft carrier floating above a strategic submarine fleet that can destroy the world.
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 <p>Are we talking about the same France? France, one of Europes largest military powers which actually use their military in various conflicts around the globe?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Maybe their argument is that France has nothing to fear from anyone, so why the secrecy? Of course it's nonsense no matter how you spin it. All militaries love secrecy (except maybe the ones that are just for show, but I expect even the Swiss Guard in the Vatican has its secrets).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm guessing their comment is from the view of the French being "cheese eating, surrender monkeys", a view not supported by France's long military history. This view was supported, for at least a few years, by a Google "I feel lucky" search for "French military victories" taking you to a Google search mockup site which suggested "Maybe you mean: French military surrenders".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Apart from the fact that the view of France as "surrender monkeys" is nonsense, it also makes no sense as an argument that their military wouldn't be interested in secrecy.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Because they're a NATO member with a pretty large and advanced military force, in a very accessible area of Europe?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the biggest threat to domestic military facilities are foreign state actors but rather domestic terrorists, and those usually don't have access to any military-grade satellites.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Interesting that you mention only domestic military facilities... When I was deployed to Afghanistan ten years ago, with rockets and mortar rounds landing daily inside the perimeter of our Forward Operating Base, I was irritated to see recent and high-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps. I can see my sleeping tent, office building(s), and parked helicopters in perfect clarity. The imagery hasn't been updated since then, so you can still see everything despite this base being abandoned years ago.
<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9428134,69.0629605,492m/data=!3m1!1e3">https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9428134,69.0629605,492m/data...</a></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Do they need military-grade imagery? The Chinese or Russian militaries do because they’re trying to estimate war-time performance but I find it hard to believe that there are any domestic terrorists building sensor arrays to support SAM batteries. If they’re trying to blow one up, the resolution on a consumer drone or telescope would likely be more than enough.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29630121&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>It's 2021 (for another couple weeks) and <i>everyone</i> has access to imaging satellites with almost instant turnaround, for a negligible fee.<p>Consider yourself corrected.
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 <p>According to the pricing tab, it costs ~$20 to get a 1 km2 area with a 30-50cm resolution.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29632113&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>And if you ask for a shot of the “wrong” coordinates, how long until a nice person with a badge knocks on your door?<p>Seems like an obvious kind of honeypot?
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 <p>For my family's semi-rural home I'm seeing that I can buy 0.5m (500cm) imagery from the last year for $250. No historical images with higher resolution I can buy. To task a new a photo at 40cm resolution would cost $1,800.00 from KOMPSAT-3A. (and it'd be a 10km x 10km area)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I googled it and came up with multiple answers. Instead of demanding people prove their work, take reasonable statements in good faith imo.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Not all of them. Some of them just don’t offer photos of that area, even though they offer literally every other inch of the earth in at least SOME scan, a lot of these are missing.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628293&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>I was about to say, I grew up about 10 minutes from here and they were a common sight. Always thrilling to see.<p>IIRC Whiteman has an air show every year where you can get "up close" to them.
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 <p>The best air show I've ever been to was at Will Rogers World Airport in OKC. I figure some of it must be the proximity to Tinker, but also other bases in the area. Back in 95 (could have been 96, but not any later, as I left the area late that year), they brought a B-2 to the show, flew it around the airport for a while, landed it, waited a while so people could get take as many pictures as they wanted, then took off and flew it home. At the same show, they brought an F-117, did the flyby, and landed it. Then taxi'd it over to a static display area so people could get close. I was able to walk underneath it and touch it. As a young airman, I was absolutely floored. And this was in 95 or 96, so we were still really impressed with how exotic these planes were.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629268&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Yes, nice comment.<p>I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)
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 <p>Apparently prior to getting their hands on a MiG-25 from a defector who took one to Japan, many in the western military and intelligence communities envisioned it to have super avionic powers (that persisted for a long time in the civilian sphere). They thought it was agile and fast. What they didn't know is that it could only sustain those speeds for short spurts (else the engines suffered from metal fatigue due to temperature) and the maneuverability they envisioned from the geometry proved to be false (it had a very wide turning radius)...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah I remember being thrilled seeing them while canoeing on the Gasconade when I was a kid in the 90s. I believe that we saw one refueling behind a KC-10 in the air as well.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I grew up in the south of the state but I remember them flying overhead when I was a kid now and again. Always stood out like a sore thumb, left a particular contrail too as I recall.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628003&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The aircraft seems to be a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit.<p>&gt; The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. Designed during the Cold War, it is a flying wing design with a crew of two.[1][3] The bomber is subsonic and can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628320&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>My father-in-law helped design the pilot seat for that.<p>Unfortunately he was unable to make the transition to computer aided design. After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.
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 <a href="vote?id=29629903&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>In case anyone else is reading and thinking of that predicament, it needn't be a showstopper.<p>You have a couple of options:</p><p>You can do it the old way, and pay someone to convert it into the new way (I know a mechanical engineer who either sketches things or does 2D on a computer, and pays someone else to 3D it) which can then be sent to the client or manufacturer or whatever.</p><p>Or, if you're doing the whole product to sell, you can do it however you want, no one cares how their product was designed, just that the end product is good. I don't know how the housing on the monitor I'm looking at was designed, and I don't care, I just care that it's decent.</p><p>I feel like I count rant about this for a while, but all the "rules" change if you're taking clients or customers and not looking for FTE. It's got its own challenges, but with a few good / high paying clients, it's even easier than FTE, you can grow or not if you want.
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 <p>Not sure if the Air Force will buy bomber seats from the back of a truck of some guy who designs them with paper and pencil.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29632787&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>If not, the defense contractor will subcontract to you and mark it up 4000% :)<p>Also, the government generally has policies that some % of things have to come from small businesses, sometimes they'll hire you just in order to check a box, I'd guess.</p><p>Nevertheless, if you can design an airplane seat, there are other customers than the air force.</p><p>Lots of niche machines are made by 3 or 4 people and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, to farms, to factories, to anyone in business. Consumers will argue with you for a week over a $10 purchase, but people buying things to make money with won't bat an eye at $10,000.</p><p>There's a great big world out there and every hurdle doesn't have to be jumped, you can just walk around it half the time.
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 <a href="vote?id=29629179&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.<p>That's unfortunate to hear. Hope he's doing well now, in his retirement life.
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 <a href="vote?id=29632051&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Of course he's doing well, he has the best son-in-law ever ;)<p>Jokes aside, he's doing fine. They got by on my mother-in-law's teacher salary and were lucky enough to get in on the California housing game in the early '80s. They mostly don't have to worry about the bills, and all their kids live within 15 minutes of them - we see them around 1-2x per week. And if they ever did run into issues, one of us could take them in.</p><p>I just like to keep it in mind because I've been subject to fairly good fortunes when it comes to career. Same thing with all my relatives. But my wife's family has had more bumps along the way.
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 <p>My dad went through a similar transition. In his case, the world transitioned away gradually from his skill set. He was able to continue moving to new jobs that needed his legacy skill set, until eventually he couldn't find them easily anymore. By the time he was in this predicament, he couldn't find a a path to restart his education. The critical issue was employment, once he found a job, the critical issue was working and keeping that job. He didn't have the luxury of taking the time to build a new skillset.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Learning things becomes much harder when you are older. Our brains are physically less receptive to the process of learning.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don’t think this is true. I think responsibilities pile up and/or the need to learn more is less. The physical ability to learn is probably hardly impacted.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's a nice idea but definitely not reality. Just try learning a language at different stages of life. I guess you could argue it's still the responsibilities holding you back but the difference is so stark that it's clear it's not just that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29637496&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Learning a new language after decades of reinforcing the knowledge of a native language is hard. I’ve attempted multiple times. Personally, I don’t think it has much to do with physical ability as much as baggage from the previous language.<p>I am right handed. Learning to write neatly with my left hand would be difficult too. I don’t think my brain is less capable of doing it though.
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 <p>That's while probably really effective at its job, it's not really the most of anything. The B-1B for example is faster and can carry more ordinance.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's effective enough to have bombed the shit out of a chinese embassy in '99. Look it up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yes, which is why in this case, it was effective against the already smashed small serbian anti air capabillities. And not against chinese ones.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The measured wingspan (using the Google Maps distance measure tool) is around 200 feet whereas the measured wingspan of a B-2 on the ground at nearby Whiteman AFB is the nominal 172 feet, so its altitude AGL is roughly 14% of the altitude of the camera plane that took the photo.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>A small roll of the place at the time the photo was taken could also explain this difference.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Good math. I don't know why everyone else is assuming this photo is from a spacecraft. Virtually all of the aerial images of America on Google Earth are taken with aircraft, not spacecraft.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629557&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights.<p>In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.
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 <p>Would be disappointing for them to remove it for basically no reason, especially considering you can see a B-2 parked on the tarmac (<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%B033'37.0%22W/@38.7250408,-93.5604979,184m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x943968ed52c54f3f!8m2!3d38.7249797!4d-93.5602792">https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%...</a>) in the nearby Whiteman AFB. The B-2 was first flown 32 years ago. Its existence is neither covert or secret, but often used to do flybys at freaking football games where thousands of recording devices are present and active. There's virtually no national security risk with these images because any imagery obtainable by Google Maps would've been obtainable by whatever adversary long ago, plus some more.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29628464&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Correct, but don't misunderestimate the power of knowledge.<p>Let's assume that some adversary is out there keeping track of these planes, and knows that they can scan Google maps for the RGB artifact by the engines to locate them reliably and programmatically.</p><p>Now Google maps becomes a repository for information that adversary may use to validate other information. Maybe this confirms the schedule for some training excersise. Maybe this particular B2 being in this location validates or invalidates other information about US troop strength abroad.</p><p>I was taught to always "assume your adversary is capable of going through your trash" and try to prepare my "trash" accordingly.
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 <a href="vote?id=29628773&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>The fatal premise is assuming Google Maps updates these areas frequently enough to provide useful info. The military security implications of Google Earth have existed since its launch and Google Maps by relation is no stranger to it. This is not new info and it hardly counts as "knowledge" much less with "power".<p>Reconnaissance satellite technology isn't US-exclusive (<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-space-wars/a-54691887">https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-spa...</a>, Ctrl+F "Spy satellites in numbers") and those who have a meaningful need to track B-2 movements most likely have their own tools that are up to date, more accurate, and not bound by laws or regulations a US domiciled company is subjected to. What we see on Google Maps is almost guaranted to be 100% "trash" from a military intelligence perspective because actual valuable information has always been obtainable without Google Maps for entities who are capable and in need.
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 <p>Similar to how the president brings his own toilet when doing foreign visits so enemies can't analyze his poop to see what medicines he's taking or what medical conditions he has.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Kim Jong Un does that, but I can't find record of any other world leader doing so. That takes a special level of paranoia.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Spare a thought for the presidential aide responsible for safeguarding POTUS's poop, so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I'd hate to be the person assigned to "doodie duty".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Any adversary that the USA cared about already can get this info from their own satellites. They aren't using Google Maps.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Impressive level of paranoia from a citizen of a country with 800 bases around the world. Mad propz for your mass media.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29629348&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>So the US should have no defensive doctrine at all because we have so many spoils of war?<p>Whatever country you are in would do the same if it could.
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 <a href="vote?id=29628851&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Honestly with the known ties between the US government and Google, if I were a state-level adversary I'd probably be wondering why Google <i>wasn't</i> scrubbing the plane programmatically, rather than assuming that I had caught someone in a 'Gotcha!' moment.<p>In other words; this google maps link has been circulating around the net for the past week and a half <i>at least</i> -- seemingly originating from either a Discord or the chans; if I were some foreign intelligence analyst I'd definitely be considering the premise that these photos have been so widespread and uncensored simply as an online show-of-force.</p><p>( personal anecdote : as an amateur aviation enthusiast/plane-watcher, the B2, as majestic as she is, isn't particularly rare to catch in the skies -- and nowhere near 'secret' )
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 <a href="vote?id=29628790&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>i doubt they'd remove it for security reasons - as you say, there's nothing secret about what this plane is doing here. more that they'd remove it for the same reasons they remove clouds or any other in-air objects that obscure the thing they're actually trying to take photos of.<p>the plane isn't part of the map, so it shouldn't be on the map. even if it's not obscuring anything, they use satellite photos to generate building outlines, and this isn't a building. given how many planes there are flying all the time, and how infrequently you see them on google maps, they must make an effort to publish satellite imagery that doensn't have planes in it.
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 <a href="vote?id=29629836&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>I wouldn't expect it to get deleted for any kind of security reason... but it will get replaced, and possibly faster because there's a defect. Moving object artifacts are undesirable and make the image more difficult to use especially for automation (such as Google's registration). They tend to get knocked out automatically over time as the composition algorithms try to keep a neatly consistent scene. They may even be handled as clouds depending on which methods Google uses to avoid cloud cover. This is the same force that has slowly worked most alignment and registration marks out of Google imagery (for a long time aerial imagery usually contained registration marks etched into the camera optics), although you will still find them especially in areas that are more challenging to register by machine vision (deserts, etc).<p>Aircraft in Keyhole and Google Earth used to be <i>extremely</i> common before the composition methods improved and more imagery sources became available. You could just about make out the traffic pattern at some airports. You can still find them but they're much rarer today.
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 <p>Too bad they can't mark a tile (such as this one) to preserve forever from the backend control plane.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=29631844&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D29627105"></a> </td><td><p>Ugh, so when Google does a normal map update, unless there just happens to be a B-2 flying in the same spot, the conspiracy nutjobs are going to think there's some Google / US government conspiracy.<p>The truth is the fact these planes exist and that there is a base nearby is public knowledge. Any country that cares already has its satellite imagery at much higher resoltion and realtime.
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 <p>lol why would they? The B-2 even flies with radar reflectors in civil airspace so that ATC can track it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 </tbody></div>||||I|||| Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login            
              

  Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps ( google.com )           
 2244 points by edge17 on Dec 20, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 374 comments            
              
              
              
 MontyCarloHall on Dec 20, 2021 | next [–]             
              
 Interesting how the three separate R/G/B images are taken independently a few ~seconds~ milliseconds apart, with a different color filter placed over the image sensor.           
              
 I assume this is to maximize resolution, since no Bayer interpolation [0] is needed to demosaic the output of a traditional image sensor that integrates the color filters onto the sensor pixels themselves. As these satellites are not intended to photograph things in motion, the color channel alignment artifacts seen here are a rare, small price to pay for vastly improved resolution and absence of demosaicing artifacts.       
              
 [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter             
              
              
 kevin_thibedeau on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 These are pushbroom linear sensors stacked up in the focal plane. The spectral channels are physically separated by larger distance than neighboring pixels in a Bayer grid. There is a time delay between each channel sweeping over the same location that gets corrected when the final imagery is aligned. The moving plane at altitude violates assumption of a static scene and exposes the scanning behavior.       
              
              
 oppositelock on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The B2 bomber photo isn't from a push boom sensor, because it would be distorted since it's moving relative to the camera. This would manifest itself as a shear along the motion vector . There is no shear in this photo, only spectral bands.          
              
 I've spent a number of years doing image orthorectification, and satellite imagery post-processing, then also worked on Google Earth and Google Maps, so I can tell you precisely what happened. This is a satellite image from a satellite which photographs different spectra at different times. There isn't enough parallax at typical orbital distance for this much displacement to come from multiple cameras. Looking at some parked cars, this looks like 20-30cm resolution per pixel, which is consistent with the newer earth imaging satellites.     
              
 Google Earth made a blog post about this a while ago (https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/03/planes-flig...)            
              
              
 jcims on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Agree it wouldn’t be parallax from multiple cameras on the same satellite but the delay between images seems quite short for physical filter swapping (~20ms per filter).           
              
 (Edit: Actually DLP does it in about that amount of time, nvm)             
              
              
 bpye on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Shame we don't know what the delay between spectra is, would be fun to work out how fast the plane is traveling.            
              
              
 dalmo3 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I've seen larger aberrations from satellite captures of planes. But I've no idea how to estimate height or speed by that.            
              
              
 oppositelock on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You can get height if you can find the shadow, and find the time that the photo was taken, because at any given time and date, you can compute sun position, and you know the precise lat/lng of the shadow. The shadow would need to be in the same photo, though. (actually, it's a bit to the northwest, just found it).         
              
 If you can find a vertical structure, like an antenna mast, you can measure shadow length and direction and if you know the height of the antenna, you have enough information for some trigonometry.          
              
 Speed is harder. You'd need to know the difference between exposures.            
              
              
 ryan_j_naughton on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 For those interested, here is the shadow: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'28.8%22N+93%C2%...            
              
 Took me a while to find it, so thought I'd save someone else the scrolling/search cost.            
              
              
 rob74 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Thanks! It's conveniently hidden by a grassy area and some trees which throw shadows of their own. Actually, I should be doing something more useful at the moment...           
              
              
 oppositelock on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Aha! Here we go. Here's a telephone pole: https://earth.google.com/web/search/39.0303298,-93.58495/@39...            
              
 We know that telephone poles stick about 32 feet from the ground. Measuring the shadow in Google Earth above, it's about 20 feet. Now, it's a simple ratio.           
              
 Using Earth, I measured the distance from the plane to its shadow at about 2430 feet, that would put it at 3,900ft, which is surprisingly low, but I don't know the height of that pole for sure. It's the right ballpark, though.          
              
              
 abrowne on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not too low if landing? From another comment:             
              
 > This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.           
              
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628167             
              
              
 rookderby on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Probably headed to Whiteman AFB. Here's one parked: https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.7%22N+93%C2%...            
              
              
 mountainofdeath on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 The B2 is based out of Whiteman AFB near Warrensburg, MO so roughly 25 miles or 40 km south of where the plane is so it is probably on its final approach to land or just took off.           
              
              
 kloch on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 If it’s anything like space telescopes there are more than 3 spectral filters that can be selected which rules out a static Bayer-type filter system.           
              
              
 Scene_Cast2 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 For anyone wondering about what a pushboom sensor is - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72....            
              
 Basically a 1D sensor that acquires a 2D image because the camera itself is moving.            
              
 In this case, I'd imagine that there are 3 such sensors for RGB.             
              
              
 chris_va on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 FWIW, depending on the satellite (this one is probably WorldView 3), there usually more like ~6-7 channels in the visible.            
              
 It makes for easier top-of-atmosphere correction, and can be useful for things other than pretty pictures.            
              
              
 hermitdev on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 > Basically a 1D sensor that acquires a 2D image because the camera itself is moving.            
              
 Or a static camera and a moving subject. This same style of camera is used for "photo finishes" in races. The camera is literally the finish line, and the the first pixel to "cross the line" is the winner.          
              
              
 dangerbird2 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Also office scanners. Basically, it's still a 2D image, but instead of two spatial dimensions, it has a spacial dimension and a time dimension.           
              
              
 nopenopenopeno on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is CMOS a type of pushboom sensor?             
              
              
 AussieWog93 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 CMOS is a manufacturing method for integrated circuits.             
              
 Any type of sensor could be CMOS.             
              
              
 namibj on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I haven't seen a CCD CMOS, yet, and I don't _think_ microbolometers are CMOS-based (and wouldn't be surprised if no one publically tried). Happy to see some exotic examples, though. Those are always intriguing the hacker curiosity.          
              
              
 nopenopenopeno on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Thanks for answering!             
              
              
 stephen_g on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Most CMOS imaging sensors in digital cameras do scan, but not like a push-broom sensor. The push-broom sensor only has a single line of pixels that physically moves (or that something moves across), like in a scanner or a photocopier. But as others have said, those sensors might also be fabricated with CMOS technology.         
              
 Whereas your normal digital camera has a fixed rectangular array of pixels, and the scanning is just reading them progressively (what's called 'rolling shutter') because it's hard to read them all quickly enough at once. Some more expensive sensors do 'global shutter' which usually has better motion characteristics for video.        
              
              
 formerly_proven on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Is the R/G/B separation greater because these sensors are built like TDI CCD lines?            
              
 edit: Seems like pushbroom is the name for TDI when it's put in a satellite.            
              
              
 amcoastal on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Exactly! I'm working on some stuff now to exploit this very effect, the small time difference in the bands can be used to find velocities of moving objects.           
              
              
 tech_timc on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The same effect can be used to estimate cloud heights, and to identify aircraft flying above clouds.            
              
 Parallax based Cloud Detection for Sentinel-2 Analysis Ready Data Generation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332999809_Parallax_...           
              
 Aircraft Detection above Clouds by Sentinel-2 MSI Parallax https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/15/3016            
              
              
 magicroot75 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is this at all analogous to how we used red/blue shift to determine the speed at which astronomical objects are moving towards/away from us?           
              
              
 oivey on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 No, that’s the Doppler effect. This is a time delay between when different colors were captured.            
              
              
 magicroot75 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Ah gotcha. Makes sense. Thanks!             
              
              
 samhw on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is incredibly cool. What's the application (if it's possible to obscure whatever details you don't want to divulge)?            
              
              
 amcoastal on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Its coastal physics work, you can infer near shore conditions by watching wave propagation.            
              
              
 geoduck14 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 So... like where submarines are based on water disturbances?             
              
              
 amcoastal on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's not what I'm doing but it seems possible you could watch refraction patterns and tell that there are submerged objects, but you'd need to know the water depth without that object there, as there'd be no great way to tell if the object is a submarine or a pile of sand. Also, most of these satellites pass over fairly rarely so wouldn't be super useful for tracking things that move. I'm mostly interested in finding the piles of sand :)       
              
              
 Ziggy_Zaggy on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 So... does anyone have a tool handy to correct the frames?             
              
 Better yet... does anyone have the corrected image?             
              
              
 AnthonBerg on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I must say there is quite some beauty in the choice and structure of words here.            
              
              
 skanderbm on Dec 22, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Funnily enough, I thought exactly the same when reading the parent post ! Grateful to be in such well-spoken company :)            
              
              
 baybal2 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I think modern satellites have matrix sensors             
              
              
 kevin_thibedeau on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It depends on the satellite. Weather satellites in GEO do because they aren't moving relative to the surface and they have time constraints for scanning the full earth disc. Higher resolution imaging satellites use linear sensors. However, they use TDI imaging which at a low level makes them superficially like an area array with limited vertical resolution but the light collection is still fundamentally different.       
              
              
 gswdh on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I don’t think this is the case as we don’t see any rolling shutter distortion. The linear sensor scans just like a shutter curtain exhibiting the same distortion. The plane is proportioned correctly. Maybe the scan time is fast enough.          
              
              
 ericbarrett on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 My napkin calculations are that the three channels are ~10ms apart, given the bomber is 69 feet nose-to-tail* and an assumption of 400 mph velocity.           
              
 * http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/B2Spr09.pdf             
              
              
 willis936 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The google maps scale shows the plane as being pretty close to that length as well. I think the satellite is high enough up that altitude scaling for aircraft is going to be minimal.           
              
 I see about a 10 foot separation between colors.             
              
 Velocity = distance / time             
              
 400 mph is 587 fps.             
              
 10 / 587 = 17 ms             
              
              
 fullstop on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Do they actually use satellites for their "satellite" view? I always assumed that it was done by aircraft.            
              
              
 Cd00d on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Depends on the needed resolution. You can cover a lot more earth, far more cheaply with a satellite with several meter wide pixels.           
              
 When I used to work in remote sensing I remember that Bing Maps had a very distinct resolution transition from spacecraft to aircraft. Aircraft coverage maps were a small subset of the total earth land area, but most US towns had some coverage at that time (~2012).         
              
 As you zoomed in, you could tell when Bing switched capture methods because the aircraft cameras were clearly off-nadir, and you'd see off-angle perception differences.           
              
              
 reportingsjr on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They only use aircraft around larger urban areas. Satellite imagery is used for rural areas. You can see the resolution difference by seeing how far you can zoom in.           
              
 If you zoom in on a road near the pinned location for this post, and then go to, say, downtown kansas city, and zoom in you'll see a pretty significant difference.           
              
              
 willis936 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Flying a plane around the planet sounds a lot more expensive financially and thermodynamically than just beaming down images from an object constantly falling into the views you want to see.           
              
              
 dzhiurgis on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You are only interested in urban areas which is less than 1% of total earth surface            
              
              
 omoikane on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's also the case that often there are more legal regulations around aerial imagery compared to satellite imagery.            
              
              
 fullstop on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I looked it up. There are some satellite images, but a lot of it is done by aircraft.            
              
              
 op00to on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Or you could just strap a camera to a few commercial airliners and have full coverage.            
              
              
 dylan604 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You'd only have full coverage of the jet routes. They don't just fly willy nilly across the globe.            
              
              
 ehsankia on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's definitely a mix, depending on the area and the resolution. For urban places where they have 3D views and higher resolution, it's definitely planes. For a random place like this at low resolution, it's satellites.          
              
              
 0xQSL on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 One might be able to calibrate this by using cars in the area close to the shot [1]. Assuming most cars are driving at the speed limit           
              
 [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B059'37.1%22N+93%C2%...            
              
              
 myself248 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The cars aren't flying at altitude though. They're farther from the satellite.            
              
              
 contravariant on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 How low are these satellites? I wouldn't expect the altitude of a plane to be any significant proportion of the altitude of a satellite.           
              
              
 natosaichek on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The satellites are probably greater than 400 km altitude, or so, while the plane is probably 10 km. The plane is in the same rough order of magnitude as really tall mountains, which the satellite is presumably designed to compensate for, so I agree with your general assessment.         
              
              
 tech_timc on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The Google Maps image copyright is for Maxar, which means the collector is likely Worldview-3, which is at nominally 614 km above the Earth.           
              
 https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/missions/worldview-3             
              
              
 willis936 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The shadow is 750 m away and the sun is about 15 degrees off noon, so the B2 altitude is roughly 3 km. Cousin comment says the satellite altitude is 614 km, so I wouldn't expect parallax effects to be dominant. This is also evidenced by the fact that both the plane and ground are in focus and the plane is measured to be 70 feet long in google maps, which is what it is specified to be in reality.       
              
              
 exabrial on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That bomber is also likely quite low, since it's based out of an air force base in that area.            
              
              
 myself248 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Sure, but when the word "calibrate" comes up, you want to account for even the not-very-significant factors.            
              
              
 ATsch on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I would assume that the plane or satellite moving affects this too, it's presumably being corrected but there might be some parallax.           
              
              
 ericbarrett on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You're absolutely correct, but as the aircraft is much closer to the ground than the imaging satellite I disregarded it. Spherical cows and all that :) I'm sure a military analyst would do the calculations!          
              
              
 jcims on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It actually works out to be pretty close. A satellite flying ~17k mph at 250 miles altitude would largely have the same angular displacement from the ground as a plane moving 400 mph at 31,000 feet. Most satellites fly in an easterly direction, so the question would ultimately be what the inclination of the orbit is relative to the direction of flight.        
              
              
 chrissnell on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think this plane is flying much lower and slower. The B2s are based at Whiteman AFB, which is about 25 miles south of this photograph. The prevailing winds in this part of the country are from the south, so I suspect that it is about to turn onto the final leg of its approach for a landing to the south. I’d guess that it’s no more than 8-10K’ and traveling at a 2-300 knots max.        
              
              
 t0mas88 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Definitely. Rule of thumb in a jet is to slow down if you're closer than 3x the altitude. So at 8k feet you want to be at least 24 nautical miles (27 normal miles) away or if closer you want to be slowing down (or descending). If you don't slow down before you're going to have to do so in the descend and typical jets can't really slow down much in that.        
              
              
 dylan604 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I asked google maps to get directions from there to Whiteman AFB. Unfortunately, flight directions were not available.            
              
              
 bigiain on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 And you are now on a list...             
              
              
 dylan604 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I've been on a list for so so long now that this one is just another. No big deal.            
              
              
 Terry_Roll on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Hey welcome to the list, I've been on it since Primary School believe it or not, but only found out a few years ago!            
              
              
 Sporktacular on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 How did you find out?             
              
              
 bragr on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Most imaging satellites are in sun synchronous orbits so likely in this case moving north or south and slightly retrograde e.g. west.           
              
 I'd bet orbital motion is negligible here because the distortion seems to the eye to be entirely in the direction of the plane's apparent motion vector and I don't see any significant skew to that.          
              
              
 ericbarrett on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That's super interesting! I love this discussion. Would the satellite be that low though? 250 miles (400km) is still going to experience significant atmospheric drag. Fine for a cheap mass deployment like Starlink, but I'd expect an imaging satellite to be set up for a longer mission duration. Then again maybe the cost of additional mass for station-keeping is worth it for the imaging quality.       
              
              
 penagwin on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You can find a list of satellites here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database            
              
 According to the image on Google maps it was taken by Maxar. Maxar appears to have a few satellites, looks like 5 in geostationary orbit (~35,700km), 3 at about 400km and 1 at about 500km.           
              
              
 Koshkin on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 https://globalcomsatphone.com/satellites-and-their-altitudes...             
              
              
 jcims on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Looks like you nailed it! ctrl+f pushbroom in the thread if you haven’t seen it.            
              
              
 matbatt38 on Dec 24, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Well no the speed of the satellite is irrelevant there, the background is not getting distorded at all            
              
              
 the-dude on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Isn't the speed of the sat irrelevant as it should correct for this anyways for all images it takes?            
              
              
 xmonkee on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 yeah, exactly             
              
              
 joan_kode on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Interesting, I would have made the opposite assumption ("the satellite is moving so much faster than everything else, we can estimate the interval from the satellite's speed alone). It seems both speeds might have a similar impact, as per sibling comment.          
              
              
 okl on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Can you calculate the time of day from the shadow's length as well?            
              
 https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%...             
              
              
 jerry1979 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Interesting. A search for those gradients could help find all fast moving objects in the satellite images.            
              
              
 lmc on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 A guy did it with trucks for Sentinel-2 data. https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Monitor...            
              
              
 crehn on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is there a dataset with all the close-up satellite images somewhere?            
              
              
 dsl on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 https://www.nro.gov/             
              
              
 iamtedd on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What an awful picture of the NRO Director. Surely they have plenty of experience in photography in less than ideal conditions. So why have this photo as the first thing I can see on their website?          
              
              
 jcims on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 It’s so bad it seems unlikely it isn’t a joke. I mean look at their mission patches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_launches           
              
              
 mekkkkkk on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The juxtaposition of the Ursa Major and Onyx/Vega patches almost gave me whiplash. Judging by the list of patches it seems like NRO is a fun place to work. Thanks for sharing!           
              
              
 _l4lu on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Fun is maybe not quite the word I'd use. The juxtaposition of all the wording about "defense" and menacing-looking characters that would definitely be the villain and not the hero in any comic book or movie is... unsettling. Even if it's a self-aware joke about their public image (like the squid giving the whole Earth the hug of death), it's maybe gone a bit too far?        
              
              
 coderenegade on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The gorilla holding the US flag is my favourite. And it might just be me, but the Nemesis badge has to be a sphincter, right? It reminds me of the Greendale flag in community.           
              
              
 dylan604 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I like how they quit looking like patches and just turned into stickers. Even with a black budget, they still had to cut corners and reduce spending on incidentals too?           
              
              
 jcims on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Mine is definitely L-66 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-66_Patch.png            
              
 Not a huge fan of the vector art badges though, I want some embroidery!            
              
              
 bigiain on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Plot twist - that was taken from geosynchronous orbit.             
              
              
 AnotherGoodName on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 It's 2021, give them a break. Corporate photos have been non-professional, taken by the wife in the bathroom style for 18months now.           
              
              
 IAmGraydon on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Now that’s an interesting idea. Anyone care to spin this up?             
              
              
 druadh on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Is there a way to subscribe to comments? I'd love to see the result of this idea but am not savvy enough to spin it up myself very easily           
              
              
 coldpie on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Click the timestamp for the comment, then click "favorite", then set a reminder in your calendar to check your favorited comments (link in your profile).           
              
              
 dzhiurgis on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Can Siri work with whats in your copy/paste cache?             
              
              
 hk__2 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 What do you mean by “copy/paste cache”? If you mean the clipboard history, there’s no such thing on macOS. If you mean the clipboard (= the last thing you copied), Siri can work with the Shortcuts app, which itself can read the clipboard.          
              
              
 dzhiurgis on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I mean like "create a reminder to check link from my clipboard tomorrow"            
              
              
 perilousacts on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That's a super interesting idea. I would love to see something like this.            
              
              
 elwell on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 /subscribe             
              
              
 t0bia_s on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Shadow of this object is also distorted: https://goo.gl/maps/VWwtt1PbLJVkbiBS9            
              
              
 diggernet on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Thank you. I was wondering where that was. Now, can someone calculate the plane's altitude?            
              
              
 willis936 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The shadow is about 2500 feet away. Judging from nearby houses the sun is probably about 15 degrees SouthEast of noon.            
              
 2500 ft * sin( 15 ) = 650 ft             
              
 Someone should double-check my geometry though.             
              
              
 tomerv on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think you need to divide by tan(15) instead, which would give 9330 ft.            
              
              
 willis936 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Wouldn't that be the 3D distance between the shadow and the plane?            
              
 https://i.imgur.com/HWA1iZu.png             
              
 Edit: nope you're totally right. Brain fart. It's toa, not soa.             
              
              
 HPsquared on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Doing it this way allows not only higher resolution, but you can also use different types of filter for specialist applications. Infrared for example, or some kind of narrow band pass filters etc.          
              
              
 birdyrooster on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Unless you aren’t military and then no infrared for you             
              
              
 urschrei on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Nonsense. Landsat 8 bands 5, 6, and 7 are infrared bands (5 is NIR, and 6 & 7 are shortwave or SWIR), and bands 10 and 11 are lower-resolution thermal infrared (TIRS).           
              
 Source: http://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-are-band-designations-landsat-...            
              
              
 can16358p on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I literally have a 720nm lowpass infrared filter in front of me for use in photography.            
              
 Infrared imaging is not "military", it's public, common, and legal.            
              
              
 dsl on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I think what they meant is prior to the "digital farming revolution" if you called up a satellite/arial imagery company and requested anything other than visible spectrum, you'd not only get some strange looks - they'd also alert the government.          
              
              
 wantsanagent on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Oh? Planet offers infrared imaging to farmers.             
              
              
 _dv46 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I grabbed my red and blue glasses because this vaguely looked like a 3D anaglyph to me, and while it's not the clearest such image, it definitely appears as a cohesive object hovering above a flat map. Further I zoom out, it definitely looks like it. Inadvertent byproduct of however this was photographed or stitched?         
              
              
 trothamel on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is it possible this is a a pushbroom sensor, where red, green, and blue sensors are moved along the path of the plane or satellite that's taking the image? My understanding is those have a higher effective resolution than frame-based sensors, which would make sense here.         
              
              
 bragr on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Seems unlikely to me. With push broom, I'd think you'd get characteristic squishing, stretching, or skewing of objects in motion depending on whether the object was moving against, with, or perpendicular to the push broom path. In this case with the imaging satellite probably in polar orbit and the plane flying east, you likely see the plane horizontally skewed as each horizontal row of pixels captured the plane further east.       
              
              
 mmaunder on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Also came here to discuss this. Super interesting opportunity to reverse what they're doing. Yeah I'd agree it's color filters which would avoid duplicating lenses (probably the most expensive component) or dividing the light energy. Filters would give you the most photons per color per shot. I wonder if the filters are mechanical or electronic somehow. As another commenter calculated, it's 10ms between shots, which is not that impractical to move physical filters around when you consider modern consumer camera shutter speeds of around 0.125 milliseconds max.     
              
              
 malfist on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is what we do all the time for astrophography! We buy monochrome cameras without an IR filter and take 3 photos and recombine them.           
              
              
 c54 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Your guess is exactly right, this type of imaging is pretty common with satellite imaging for the reasons you mentioned. Scott Manley talks about it in this video iirc https://youtu.be/Wah1DbFVFiY          
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wonder if there are ways to get superior (compared to Bayer) color images from conventional raw-capable monochrome digital cameras (like Leica Q2 Monochrom) in static scenes using similar workflows of taking three separate shots.          
              
              
 thrtythreeforty on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Many cameras, especially medium format like Fuji GFX, can do "pixel shift" capture, where they use the sensor stabilization to shift the sensor by one pixel at a time to ensure red, green, and blue are each captured at all pixels, without needing demosaicing. The camera has to be mounted on a tripod for this to work - like any stacking requires, really.        
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Initially I thought pixel shift might be the way to go, but stumbling across [0] I got an impression it isn’t necessarily as great as it sounds (and, I guess, neither would be any three-shot RGB-filter-swapping composite).          
              
 [0] https://www.dearsusan.net/2020/11/09/nyquist-mtf-pixel-shift...            
              
              
 MontyCarloHall on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Absolutely! [0]             
              
 In fact, the first color photos in the world were taken this way in the early 1900s [1]: take three monochrome exposures onto black and white transparencies with R/G/B filters, and then project the three images together.          
              
 [0] https://leicarumors.com/2020/01/29/color-photography-with-th...            
              
 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky             
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Interesting. Sadly, I believe the Photoshop approach would not produce a DNG file that you could normally interpret in a raw processor of your choice. Looks like pixel shift cameras (which apparently still use Bayer sensors, just moving them around, to debayer at capture time so to speak) is the most practical option at the moment.        
              
 I’m curious if it is technically possible for a digital sensor to capture the entire light spectrum of the scene, without the need for RGB separation at any stage—similar to Lippmann plate[0].           
              
 [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippmann_plate             
              
              
 tpolzer on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 There are Sigma cameras with a Foveon sensor that can do it:             
              
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor             
              
 Though they're not as good in most other dimensions as conventional Bayer filter sensors (most Amazon reviews e.g. say that it's impossible to photograph moving human subjects without daylight iirc).          
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I looked at Foveon before, and got the impression that it still effectively relies on RGB separation/recombination, though in a more elegant way than Bayer sensors. (That said, Sigma’s doing some really cool stuff.)          
              
              
 skhr0680 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky‘s work shows both the benefits and drawbacks of the swapping filters approach            
              
              
 Koshkin on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 [1909]             
              
              
 namibj on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's standard when using reflectic/catadioptic objectives to peek back at where the satellites are: https://www.astroshop.eu/filter-wheels-filter-sliders/starli... This one has USB, the same style with manual operation via a teethed wheel is like 169 EUR at that shop. Or consider rigging a burnt-out DLP projector's filter wheel up, which comes with a motor and encoder that you could use to capture imagery with the filters they provide at much higher frame rates (a few hundred fps in the monochrome domain seem usual these days, AFAIK, for good consumer DLP projectors).     
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 22, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Love both ideas…             
              
              
 ChrisMarshallNY on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 The first imaging driver that I wrote was for an HD frame store that had a camera with a spinning filter disk.            
              
              
 goblin89 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That sounds very interesting. I feel like firmware/hardware automation combo that swaps RGB filters and takes exposures in accord could provide interesting workflows for owners of those monochrome digital cameras.          
              
              
 dheera on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wouldn't be surprised if these military bombing dudes not only took R, G, B, but also near IR, far IR, UV, and various other things. If they did it would make no sense to try to make a Bayer filter for all of that and rather just have multiple filtered cameras pointed at the same direction.         
              
              
 mrcode007 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Different wave lengths travel at different speeds through glass and air and focus differently even on the same lens when color photos are taken in the single frame.           
              
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration             
              
              
 bragr on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 True but if that were the case here it would also likely affect the ground.            
              
              
 aeroman on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 You can use this difference in time to calculate the speed (although you also have to account for parallax for an aircraft)            
              
 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6651096/             
              
              
 agilob on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 There is plenty of RGB planes on Google Maps https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rgb+plane+on+google+maps+!gi            
              
              
 123anonanonanon on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Actually the camera is (assuming geostationary orbits arę not used for imaging) moving ar speeds much much faster than the plane            
              
              
 threevox on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That's a lot of words to rationalize away what is very clearly and obviously a cloaking device at work!!            
              
              
 thot_experiment on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Fun fact: this is called a Harris Shutter effect when it's done for art purposes.            
              
              
 abbassi on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 First RED, then BLUE, and last but not least GREEN!             
              
              
 Jiocus on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Artist James Bridle calls them "Rainbow planes" and has used this in his art.            
              
 Rainbow Plane 002: Kiev. October 29, 2014: https://booktwo.org/notebook/rainbow-plane-002-kiev/            
              
 Rainbow Planes: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/sets/72157637938061015/            
              
              
 robocat on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 “Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image, fast-moving objects – like planes in flight – don’t quite match up, producing the rainbow effect.       
              
 [2] https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631...            
              
              
 Phrodo_00 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 > Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image         
              
 That's the same as taking a (normal, digital) photograph (sans additional non-rgb layers), just explained.            
              
              
 ihattendorf on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The difference is typical digital cameras have a bayer filter in front of the sensor to allow taking a single color picture vs. here it sounds like multiple captures with individual filters (e.g. 1 blue, 1 red, 1 green, 1 monochrome) that are later combined into a color picture.         
              
              
 wodenokoto on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The point was at all color photos record electromagnetic radiation in visible colors.            
              
 The “it doesn’t take photos it record electromagnetic radiation” is a silly thing to say.            
              
              
 daniel_reetz on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 There's some subtlety here. Colors are percepts- phenomena that happen in the brain. Wavelengths and radiation describe natural electromagnetic phenomena, not percepts.           
              
 Example: Infrared has no "color". It's possible to induce the illusion of colors in the absence of light altogether. I appreciate that the article took care with this language, as it's a deep and fascinating topic.          
              
              
 s1artibartfast on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This could be a comparative description of digital vs Chemical photography            
              
              
 nkmnz on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 "Chemical" photography captures electromagnetic radiation as well, but converts it into bonding energy, not into electrical signals.           
              
              
 wodenokoto on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Both are still capturing light.             
              
              
 keymone on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Reminds me of when Russia tried to blame Ukraine for downing the MH17 by producing a satellite image of the plane being chased by a jet fighter and even capturing the moment of launching the missile. Of course none of the moving objects had any sign of the color shifting.         
              
 https://nationalpost.com/news/russian-satellite-image-of-mh1...             
              
              
 phreeza on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Well it's a b&w image so...             
              
              
 djmips on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Does anyone have a theory on why some photos have a rainbow plane and a solid white place offset?            
              
              
 kqr on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They take a separate high-res monochromatic picture. (As image compression theory tells us, if you can afford to sacrifice some colour resolution for monochromatic resolution -- do it.)           
              
              
 mcdonje on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's interesting how some satellites take the alpha channel pic before the RGB channels, and some do it after. The lag also changes. Alpha & RGB have similar lags for some, but alpha is way off on others.          
              
              
 dagmx on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Do you mean luminance? Alpha usually refers to the transparency channel in an RGBA image.            
              
 Whereas I believe you're describing more of a YUV setup             
              
              
 defaultcompany on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 What does alpha channel mean in this context? Usually it means transparency but how would you take a picture of that?            
              
              
 msisk6 on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 I live on a farm very close to this area.             
              
 All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago.           
              
 This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.           
              
              
 akie on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Seems like you're right - there's one parked on (indeed) Whiteman Air Force Base right here https://goo.gl/maps/x8738SicBvtSPqmR6           
              
              
 Hogarth01 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 On Google Earth you can use the timeline feature to actually see when the imagery was captured (or at least uploaded?). The plane sitting near the hangers was from a capture in May 2016. Google Earth currently shows several newer captures, including one from September 2021. The current one from September 2021 is actually far more interesting in my opinion. In it, you can see a B2 sitting in a field about a quarter up the runway (38°43'27.63"N 93°32'54.86"W) with stuff scattered all around it and trucks sitting on the runway. https://i.imgur.com/lh1hkWN.png     
              
              
 msisk6 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Good timing on that capture.             
              
 https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/09/16/b-2-rolled-of...             
              
              
 Hogarth01 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Ah very interesting! I saw the skid marks on the runway north of the plane and was wondering if it was an emergency landing situation considering that it was just on the side of the runway. Pretty cool to read the article and get the other half of the story.         
              
              
 glitchcrab on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I'm very intrigued as to what is going on here - it almost looks as if it veered off the runway. Anyone got any suggestions?            
              
              
 Hogarth01 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The op of this thread replied to my comment with a military.com article, and in that article there is a link to an article on thedrive, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42392/damaged-b-2-spir...          
              
 "According to sources, the B-2 experienced a hydraulic failure in flight and had its port main landing gear collapse during landing, sending it off the runway with its wing dug into the ground. We cannot confirm that this was the case at this time, but the satellite image above does concur with the gear collapse/wing down aspect of the incident. While it is possible the aircraft was rolled off the runway after the fact, this is unlikely, especially considering its wing-down disposition. The damage to the aircraft also remains unknown. "     
              
              
 glitchcrab on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Ouch, that sounds expensive! Thanks for the follow-up.             
              
              
 KptMarchewa on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They can also be seen at Hickam AFB here: https://www.google.com/maps/@21.3310109,-157.946255,241m/dat...            
              
              
 msisk6 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They're often deployed elsewhere for missions and/or training, but the home base for all of them is Whiteman AFB. There's only 20 of them.           
              
 I do wonder how many megatons of nuclear weapons are stored there, about 20 miles from my house. Maybe best not to think on that too much. :)           
              
              
 pwarner on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yeah I panned over to the munitions bunkers (I think there is a better name I forget) and there seemed to be so few, but I guess you don't need much space for nukes...           
              
              
 ccozan on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Omg, are they sooo huge?             
              
 I just realised how big they are for the first time in my life. What a sight!            
              
 [edit] 172ft = 52m wingspan!             
              
              
 msisk6 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 They don't really seem that big in person. And they're amazingly hard to see from any distance since they're essentially just a thin flat airfoil.           
              
 Here's a not-especially-good video I just uploaded of one flying over my farm from this summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyXSuFj0naQ           
              
              
 invalidusernam3 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Off topic but wow your farm is beautiful             
              
              
 thieving_magpie on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
              
 Beautiful place to live.             
              
              
 jimmyed on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 +1 to your farm's beauty. Would you be open to hosting me for a day or two there?!            
              
              
 01100011 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I was blessed by a low flyover in Lancaster, CA back in '94 or so. It's absolutely stunning to have something that big and that quiet glide over you.           
              
              
 AviationAtom on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They have pretty big appetites, they eat a lot.             
              
              
 rbolla on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 that's awesome.. I thought Army bases are masked on maps.             
              
              
 renzo88 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 There's really no point. A few high sensitivity assets are lower resolution, but any state actor that wants very high resolution shots of military facilities already has it and on a quicker update cadence than google maps allows.          
              
              
 KennyBlanken on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 In the initial years of Google Earth and similar services, a number of military and intelligence facilities were blurred.            
              
              
 hk__2 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This is still the case today. See for example this military base in France: https://goo.gl/maps/gRLEBcCQB9CCx8Au6            
              
              
 jimmyed on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Why does _france_ need to hide their millitary bases? I mean, France?            
              
              
 gorgoiler on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This isn’t an answer to your inflammatory question, but there are only a handful of nation states with nuclear weapons, and France is one of them.           
              
 These aren’t hand-me-down US warheads on the back of a missile truck: the flagship of the French navy is a 40,000 tonne nuclear armed, nuclear powered aircraft carrier floating above a strategic submarine fleet that can destroy the world.          
              
              
 widforss on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Are we talking about the same France? France, one of Europes largest military powers which actually use their military in various conflicts around the globe?           
              
              
 mcv on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Maybe their argument is that France has nothing to fear from anyone, so why the secrecy? Of course it's nonsense no matter how you spin it. All militaries love secrecy (except maybe the ones that are just for show, but I expect even the Swiss Guard in the Vatican has its secrets).         
              
              
 LMMojo on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I'm guessing their comment is from the view of the French being "cheese eating, surrender monkeys", a view not supported by France's long military history. This view was supported, for at least a few years, by a Google "I feel lucky" search for "French military victories" taking you to a Google search mockup site which suggested "Maybe you mean: French military surrenders".        
              
              
 mcv on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Apart from the fact that the view of France as "surrender monkeys" is nonsense, it also makes no sense as an argument that their military wouldn't be interested in secrecy.           
              
              
 mbg721 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Because they're a NATO member with a pretty large and advanced military force, in a very accessible area of Europe?            
              
              
 capableweb on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the biggest threat to domestic military facilities are foreign state actors but rather domestic terrorists, and those usually don't have access to any military-grade satellites.          
              
              
 warner25 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Interesting that you mention only domestic military facilities... When I was deployed to Afghanistan ten years ago, with rockets and mortar rounds landing daily inside the perimeter of our Forward Operating Base, I was irritated to see recent and high-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps. I can see my sleeping tent, office building(s), and parked helicopters in perfect clarity. The imagery hasn't been updated since then, so you can still see everything despite this base being abandoned years ago. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9428134,69.0629605,492m/data...     
              
              
 acdha on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Do they need military-grade imagery? The Chinese or Russian militaries do because they’re trying to estimate war-time performance but I find it hard to believe that there are any domestic terrorists building sensor arrays to support SAM batteries. If they’re trying to blow one up, the resolution on a consumer drone or telescope would likely be more than enough.        
              
              
 tgsovlerkhgsel on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Those generally avoid hardened targets like military bases.             
              
              
 jldl805 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's 2021 (for another couple weeks) and everyone has access to imaging satellites with almost instant turnaround, for a negligible fee.           
              
 Consider yourself corrected.             
              
              
 boomskats on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Have you considered including a source that supports your statement?            
              
              
 mynameismonkey on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not OP, and no idea on pricing, but https://www.spymesat.com/new-tasking.html appears to allow you task a satellite selfie on demand           
              
              
 hk__2 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 According to the pricing tab, it costs ~$20 to get a 1 km2 area with a 30-50cm resolution.            
              
              
 zaroth on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 And if you ask for a shot of the “wrong” coordinates, how long until a nice person with a badge knocks on your door?            
              
 Seems like an obvious kind of honeypot?             
              
              
 varenc on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 For my family's semi-rural home I'm seeing that I can buy 0.5m (500cm) imagery from the last year for $250. No historical images with higher resolution I can buy. To task a new a photo at 40cm resolution would cost $1,800.00 from KOMPSAT-3A. (and it'd be a 10km x 10km area)         
              
              
 renzo88 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I googled it and came up with multiple answers. Instead of demanding people prove their work, take reasonable statements in good faith imo.           
              
              
 laurent92 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 But do such consumer services mask military targets? Probably yes.            
              
              
 hhh on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not all of them. Some of them just don’t offer photos of that area, even though they offer literally every other inch of the earth in at least SOME scan, a lot of these are missing.           
              
              
 tylerflick on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I was about to say, I grew up about 10 minutes from here and they were a common sight. Always thrilling to see.            
              
 IIRC Whiteman has an air show every year where you can get "up close" to them.            
              
              
 rootusrootus on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The best air show I've ever been to was at Will Rogers World Airport in OKC. I figure some of it must be the proximity to Tinker, but also other bases in the area. Back in 95 (could have been 96, but not any later, as I left the area late that year), they brought a B-2 to the show, flew it around the airport for a while, landed it, waited a while so people could get take as many pictures as they wanted, then took off and flew it home. At the same show, they brought an F-117, did the flyby, and landed it. Then taxi'd it over to a static display area so people could get close. I was able to walk underneath it and touch it. As a young airman, I was absolutely floored. And this was in 95 or 96, so we were still really impressed with how exotic these planes were.  
              
              
 _the_inflator on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yes, nice comment.             
              
 I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)          
              
              
 mc32 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Apparently prior to getting their hands on a MiG-25 from a defector who took one to Japan, many in the western military and intelligence communities envisioned it to have super avionic powers (that persisted for a long time in the civilian sphere). They thought it was agile and fast. What they didn't know is that it could only sustain those speeds for short spurts (else the engines suffered from metal fatigue due to temperature) and the maneuverability they envisioned from the geometry proved to be false (it had a very wide turning radius)...     
              
              
 KptMarchewa on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Poland still operates MIG-29s, as well as extremely outdated Su-22.            
              
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force#Current_inven...             
              
              
 neurotech1 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The Romanian MiG-21s [0], Polish MiG-21s (when in service, before retirement) and MiG-29s along with the Bulgarian MiG-29s were upgraded to NATO standards. The primary upgrades were the radios and IFF transponder. I'm not sure if they all included          
              
 It is widely rumored that certain spare parts for NATO MiG-29s are actually made in US, from sources initially supporting the Adversary training missions of the 57th Wing Nellis AFB and US Navy Adversary training missions, including TOPGUN department. This is primarily for the MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters.         
              
 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-2...            
              
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Wing             
              
 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Aviation_Warfighting_Dev...            
              
              
 zhan_eg on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Well, when talking about NATO countries, MIGs and older aircrafts - Romania and Croatia still operate MIG-21s [1] :)            
              
 And MIG-29s are present also in the Bulgarian [2] and Slovak [3] airforce too.            
              
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Curren...            
              
 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Air_Force#Current_in...            
              
 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_Air_Force#Current_inven...            
              
              
 cossatot on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Yeah I remember being thrilled seeing them while canoeing on the Gasconade when I was a kid in the 90s. I believe that we saw one refueling behind a KC-10 in the air as well.           
              
              
 gshubert17 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Whiteman AFB is about 20 miles south and a little east of the plane in this image.            
              
              
 ilamont on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Do you think you could obtain video of base's plutonium isolation module?            
              
 (sorry, couldn't resist obscure early Simpsons reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8s4AvjnPFk)            
              
              
 troutwine on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I grew up in the south of the state but I remember them flying overhead when I was a kid now and again. Always stood out like a sore thumb, left a particular contrail too as I recall.           
              
              
 mvkel on Dec 22, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Curious: ever hear any sonic booms?             
              
              
 scyzoryk_xyz on Dec 21, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Have you ever visited the „Clock Nook”?             
              
              
 niix on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 This is amazing!             
              
              
 omoikane on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Looks like this was first posted to reddit by user "Hippowned": https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/rkl23...            
              
 And then various news sites picked it up, such as this one: https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-f...            
              
 The link to Google Maps appears to be lifted from the above, but credits to the original redditor who found it was lost.            
              
              
 teodorlu on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 The aircraft seems to be a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit.             
              
 > The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. Designed during the Cold War, it is a flying wing design with a crew of two.[1][3] The bomber is subsonic and can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.    
              
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit             
              
              
 bcrosby95 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 My father-in-law helped design the pilot seat for that.             
              
 Unfortunately he was unable to make the transition to computer aided design. After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.           
              
              
 PostOnce on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 In case anyone else is reading and thinking of that predicament, it needn't be a showstopper.            
              
 You have a couple of options:             
              
 You can do it the old way, and pay someone to convert it into the new way (I know a mechanical engineer who either sketches things or does 2D on a computer, and pays someone else to 3D it) which can then be sent to the client or manufacturer or whatever.          
              
 Or, if you're doing the whole product to sell, you can do it however you want, no one cares how their product was designed, just that the end product is good. I don't know how the housing on the monitor I'm looking at was designed, and I don't care, I just care that it's decent.         
              
 I feel like I count rant about this for a while, but all the "rules" change if you're taking clients or customers and not looking for FTE. It's got its own challenges, but with a few good / high paying clients, it's even easier than FTE, you can grow or not if you want.         
              
              
 a2800276 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Not sure if the Air Force will buy bomber seats from the back of a truck of some guy who designs them with paper and pencil.            
              
              
 PostOnce on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 If not, the defense contractor will subcontract to you and mark it up 4000% :)            
              
 Also, the government generally has policies that some % of things have to come from small businesses, sometimes they'll hire you just in order to check a box, I'd guess.           
              
 Nevertheless, if you can design an airplane seat, there are other customers than the air force.            
              
 Lots of niche machines are made by 3 or 4 people and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, to farms, to factories, to anyone in business. Consumers will argue with you for a week over a $10 purchase, but people buying things to make money with won't bat an eye at $10,000.         
              
 There's a great big world out there and every hurdle doesn't have to be jumped, you can just walk around it half the time.            
              
              
 abhiminator on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 >After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.            
              
 That's unfortunate to hear. Hope he's doing well now, in his retirement life.            
              
              
 bcrosby95 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Of course he's doing well, he has the best son-in-law ever ;)             
              
 Jokes aside, he's doing fine. They got by on my mother-in-law's teacher salary and were lucky enough to get in on the California housing game in the early '80s. They mostly don't have to worry about the bills, and all their kids live within 15 minutes of them - we see them around 1-2x per week. And if they ever did run into issues, one of us could take them in.        
              
 I just like to keep it in mind because I've been subject to fairly good fortunes when it comes to career. Same thing with all my relatives. But my wife's family has had more bumps along the way.          
              
              
 FearlessNebula on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Could he not take a class or an apprenticeship for CAD?             
              
              
 Skunkleton on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 My dad went through a similar transition. In his case, the world transitioned away gradually from his skill set. He was able to continue moving to new jobs that needed his legacy skill set, until eventually he couldn't find them easily anymore. By the time he was in this predicament, he couldn't find a a path to restart his education. The critical issue was employment, once he found a job, the critical issue was working and keeping that job. He didn't have the luxury of taking the time to build a new skillset.     
              
              
 xvector on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Learning things becomes much harder when you are older. Our brains are physically less receptive to the process of learning.            
              
              
 cyberlurker on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 I don’t think this is true. I think responsibilities pile up and/or the need to learn more is less. The physical ability to learn is probably hardly impacted.           
              
              
 quietbritishjim on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's a nice idea but definitely not reality. Just try learning a language at different stages of life. I guess you could argue it's still the responsibilities holding you back but the difference is so stark that it's clear it's not just that.          
              
              
 cyberlurker on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Learning a new language after decades of reinforcing the knowledge of a native language is hard. I’ve attempted multiple times. Personally, I don’t think it has much to do with physical ability as much as baggage from the previous language.          
              
 I am right handed. Learning to write neatly with my left hand would be difficult too. I don’t think my brain is less capable of doing it though.           
              
              
 geph2021 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 And The B-2s are apparently stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base[1]. Just due south of the image. Perhaps lining up for a landing approach?           
              
 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteman_Air_Force_Base             
              
              
 systemvoltage on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 The B-2 Spirit is insane. People usually know the SR-71, but I personally think the B-2 is straight up savage - aesthetically alien, impossibly aerial, and incomprehensibly powerful. Its silhoutte is terrifying: https://i.imgur.com/WqMvxXg.jpg          
              
 What a beast: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-2-stealth-b...            
              
              
 Phrodo_00 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 That's while probably really effective at its job, it's not really the most of anything. The B-1B for example is faster and can carry more ordinance.           
              
              
 systemvoltage on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 B-1B is not as stealthy. B-2 Spirit is in a different league along with the F-117.            
              
 Also I learned something new: It's not 'ordinance', but 'ordnance'[1]. Almost looks like a spelling mistake.            
              
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance             
              
              
 jlkuester7 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Mind=blown. I have been saying this wrong for so long!             
              
              
 bnastic on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 It's effective enough to have bombed the shit out of a chinese embassy in '99. Look it up.            
              
              
 hutzlibu on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 And embassies in foreign lands are usually very well defended against bomb raids?            
              
              
 nine_k on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Large foreign capital cities usually have thick air defense "umbrellas".            
              
              
 hutzlibu on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Yes, which is why in this case, it was effective against the already smashed small serbian anti air capabillities. And not against chinese ones.           
              
              
 kingcharles on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Every time I've seen one fly overhead I've thought that it looks like a beautiful alien spacecraft.            
              
              
 FearlessNebula on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 They have a radar cross section of a large bird             
              
              
 CarVac on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 The measured wingspan (using the Google Maps distance measure tool) is around 200 feet whereas the measured wingspan of a B-2 on the ground at nearby Whiteman AFB is the nominal 172 feet, so its altitude AGL is roughly 14% of the altitude of the camera plane that took the photo.         
              
              
 lopuhin on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 A small roll of the place at the time the photo was taken could also explain this difference.            
              
              
 jeffbee on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Good math. I don't know why everyone else is assuming this photo is from a spacecraft. Virtually all of the aerial images of America on Google Earth are taken with aircraft, not spacecraft.           
              
              
 oh_sigh on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The attribution on google maps for the image is for a satellite imaging company.            
              
              
 jeffbee on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights.         
              
 In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.           
              
              
 Quentak on Dec 20, 2021 | prev | next [–]             
              
 Screenshot for when it will have been deleted by Google https://i.imgur.com/toSC5a0.png .            
              
              
 ssnistfajen on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | next [–]             
              
 Would be disappointing for them to remove it for basically no reason, especially considering you can see a B-2 parked on the tarmac ( https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%... ) in the nearby Whiteman AFB. The B-2 was first flown 32 years ago. Its existence is neither covert or secret, but often used to do flybys at freaking football games where thousands of recording devices are present and active. There's virtually no national security risk with these images because any imagery obtainable by Google Maps would've been obtainable by whatever adversary long ago, plus some more.    
              
              
 zelon88 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Correct, but don't misunderestimate the power of knowledge.             
              
 Let's assume that some adversary is out there keeping track of these planes, and knows that they can scan Google maps for the RGB artifact by the engines to locate them reliably and programmatically.          
              
 Now Google maps becomes a repository for information that adversary may use to validate other information. Maybe this confirms the schedule for some training excersise. Maybe this particular B2 being in this location validates or invalidates other information about US troop strength abroad.         
              
 I was taught to always "assume your adversary is capable of going through your trash" and try to prepare my "trash" accordingly.            
              
              
 ssnistfajen on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 The fatal premise is assuming Google Maps updates these areas frequently enough to provide useful info. The military security implications of Google Earth have existed since its launch and Google Maps by relation is no stranger to it. This is not new info and it hardly counts as "knowledge" much less with "power".         
              
 Reconnaissance satellite technology isn't US-exclusive (https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-spa..., Ctrl+F "Spy satellites in numbers") and those who have a meaningful need to track B-2 movements most likely have their own tools that are up to date, more accurate, and not bound by laws or regulations a US domiciled company is subjected to. What we see on Google Maps is almost guaranted to be 100% "trash" from a military intelligence perspective because actual valuable information has always been obtainable without Google Maps for entities who are capable and in need.    
              
              
 HideousKojima on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Similar to how the president brings his own toilet when doing foreign visits so enemies can't analyze his poop to see what medicines he's taking or what medical conditions he has.           
              
              
 carabiner on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Kim Jong Un does that, but I can't find record of any other world leader doing so. That takes a special level of paranoia.            
              
              
 HideousKojima on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Can't find a source on the president doing that at the moment, but Stalin examined the poop of visiting leaders:            
              
 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926             
              
              
 toomanyrichies on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Spare a thought for the presidential aide responsible for safeguarding POTUS's poop, so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I'd hate to be the person assigned to "doodie duty".           
              
              
 adolph on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 That would be some Gattaca level paranoia             
              
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca             
              
              
 pigbearpig on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Any adversary that the USA cared about already can get this info from their own satellites. They aren't using Google Maps.            
              
              
 throwaway21_ on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Impressive level of paranoia from a citizen of a country with 800 bases around the world. Mad propz for your mass media.            
              
              
 zelon88 on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 So the US should have no defensive doctrine at all because we have so many spoils of war?            
              
 Whatever country you are in would do the same if it could.             
              
              
 serf on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Honestly with the known ties between the US government and Google, if I were a state-level adversary I'd probably be wondering why Google wasn't scrubbing the plane programmatically, rather than assuming that I had caught someone in a 'Gotcha!' moment.          
              
 In other words; this google maps link has been circulating around the net for the past week and a half at least -- seemingly originating from either a Discord or the chans; if I were some foreign intelligence analyst I'd definitely be considering the premise that these photos have been so widespread and uncensored simply as an online show-of-force.        
              
 ( personal anecdote : as an amateur aviation enthusiast/plane-watcher, the B2, as majestic as she is, isn't particularly rare to catch in the skies -- and nowhere near 'secret' )           
              
              
 notatoad on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 i doubt they'd remove it for security reasons - as you say, there's nothing secret about what this plane is doing here. more that they'd remove it for the same reasons they remove clouds or any other in-air objects that obscure the thing they're actually trying to take photos of.         
              
 the plane isn't part of the map, so it shouldn't be on the map. even if it's not obscuring anything, they use satellite photos to generate building outlines, and this isn't a building. given how many planes there are flying all the time, and how infrequently you see them on google maps, they must make an effort to publish satellite imagery that doensn't have planes in it.        
              
              
 jcrawfordor on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 I wouldn't expect it to get deleted for any kind of security reason... but it will get replaced, and possibly faster because there's a defect. Moving object artifacts are undesirable and make the image more difficult to use especially for automation (such as Google's registration). They tend to get knocked out automatically over time as the composition algorithms try to keep a neatly consistent scene. They may even be handled as clouds depending on which methods Google uses to avoid cloud cover. This is the same force that has slowly worked most alignment and registration marks out of Google imagery (for a long time aerial imagery usually contained registration marks etched into the camera optics), although you will still find them especially in areas that are more challenging to register by machine vision (deserts, etc).
              
 Aircraft in Keyhole and Google Earth used to be extremely common before the composition methods improved and more imagery sources became available. You could just about make out the traffic pattern at some airports. You can still find them but they're much rarer today.         
              
              
 jaytaylor on Dec 20, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 Too bad they can't mark a tile (such as this one) to preserve forever from the backend control plane.            
              
              
 magicroot75 on Dec 21, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Wait until you see what's hiding in the cornfield under the B-2.             
              
              
 pigbearpig on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Ugh, so when Google does a normal map update, unless there just happens to be a B-2 flying in the same spot, the conspiracy nutjobs are going to think there's some Google / US government conspiracy.          
              
 The truth is the fact these planes exist and that there is a base nearby is public knowledge. Any country that cares already has its satellite imagery at much higher resoltion and realtime.           
              
              
 iFreilicht on Dec 22, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 You can already see it happening in the first reply to this parent:            
              
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29628333             
              
              
 okl on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Here's another: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001'18.5%22N+93%C2%...            
              
              
 carabiner on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 lol why would they? The B-2 even flies with radar reflectors in civil airspace so that ATC can track it.            
              
              
 Tempest1981 on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Is Google taking their own satellite pictures now, or are these from Maxar, or another provider?            
              
              
 iFreilicht on Dec 22, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]             
              
 This particular image was done by Maxar, you can see it in the lower right corner.            
              
              
 jacquesm on Dec 20, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]             
              
 Super, thank you!             
              
              
              
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Interesting how the three separate R/G/B images are taken independently a few ~seconds~ milliseconds apart, with a different color filter placed over the image sensor.I assume this is to maximize resolution, since no Bayer interpolation [0] is needed to demosaic the output of a traditional image sensor that integrates the color filters onto the sensor pixels themselves. As these satellites are not intended to photograph things in motion, the color channel alignment artifacts seen here are a rare, small price to pay for vastly improved resolution and absence of demosaicing artifacts. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
    
    
        
      
 These are pushbroom linear sensors stacked up in the focal plane. The spectral channels are physically separated by larger distance than neighboring pixels in a Bayer grid. There is a time delay between each channel sweeping over the same location that gets corrected when the final imagery is aligned. The moving plane at altitude violates assumption of a static scene and exposes the scanning behavior.   
    
        
     The B2 bomber photo isn't from a push boom sensor, because it would be distorted since it's moving relative to the camera. This would manifest itself as a shear along the motion vector . There is no shear in this photo, only spectral bands.I've spent a number of years doing image orthorectification, and satellite imagery post-processing, then also worked on Google Earth and Google Maps, so I can tell you precisely what happened. This is a satellite image from a satellite which photographs different spectra at different times. There isn't enough parallax at typical orbital distance for this much displacement to come from multiple cameras. Looking at some parked cars, this looks like 20-30cm resolution per pixel, which is consistent with the newer earth imaging satellites. Google Earth made a blog post about this a while ago (https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/03/planes-flig...)
    
    
        
     Agree it wouldn’t be parallax from multiple cameras on the same satellite but the delay between images seems quite short for physical filter swapping (~20ms per filter).(Edit: Actually DLP does it in about that amount of time, nvm)
    
    
        
      
 Shame we don't know what the delay between spectra is, would be fun to work out how fast the plane is traveling.   
    
        
      
 I've seen larger aberrations from satellite captures of planes. But I've no idea how to estimate height or speed by that.   
    
        
     You can get height if you can find the shadow, and find the time that the photo was taken, because at any given time and date, you can compute sun position, and you know the precise lat/lng of the shadow. The shadow would need to be in the same photo, though. (actually, it's a bit to the northwest, just found it).If you can find a vertical structure, like an antenna mast, you can measure shadow length and direction and if you know the height of the antenna, you have enough information for some trigonometry. Speed is harder. You'd need to know the difference between exposures.
    
    
    
        
      
 Thanks! It's conveniently hidden by a grassy area and some trees which throw shadows of their own. Actually, I should be doing something more useful at the moment...   
    
        
     Aha! Here we go. Here's a telephone pole:
https://earth.google.com/web/search/39.0303298,-93.58495/@39... We know that telephone poles stick about 32 feet from the ground. Measuring the shadow in Google Earth above, it's about 20 feet. Now, it's a simple ratio. Using Earth, I measured the distance from the plane to its shadow at about 2430 feet, that would put it at 3,900ft, which is surprisingly low, but I don't know the height of that pole for sure. It's the right ballpark, though.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 The B2 is based out of Whiteman AFB near Warrensburg, MO so roughly 25 miles or 40 km south of where the plane is so it is probably on its final approach to land or just took off.   
    
        
      
 If it’s anything like space telescopes there are more than 3 spectral filters that can be selected which rules out a static Bayer-type filter system.   
    
    
        
     FWIW, depending on the satellite (this one is probably WorldView 3), there usually more like ~6-7 channels in the visible.It makes for easier top-of-atmosphere correction, and can be useful for things other than pretty pictures.
    
    
        
     &gt; Basically a 1D sensor that acquires a 2D image because the camera itself is moving.Or a static camera and a moving subject. This same style of camera is used for "photo finishes" in races. The camera is literally the finish line, and the the first pixel to "cross the line" is the winner.
    
    
        
      
 Also office scanners. Basically, it's still a 2D image, but instead of two spatial dimensions, it has a spacial dimension and a time dimension.   
    
    
    
        
      
 I haven't seen a CCD CMOS, yet, and I don't _think_ microbolometers are CMOS-based (and wouldn't be surprised if no one publically tried).
Happy to see some exotic examples, though.
Those are always intriguing the hacker curiosity.   
    
    
        
     Most CMOS imaging sensors in digital cameras do scan, but not like a push-broom sensor. The push-broom sensor only has a single line of pixels that physically moves (or that something moves across), like in a scanner or a photocopier. But as others have said, those sensors might also be fabricated with CMOS technology.Whereas your normal digital camera has a fixed rectangular array of pixels, and the scanning is just reading them progressively (what's called 'rolling shutter') because it's hard to read them all quickly enough at once. Some more expensive sensors do 'global shutter' which usually has better motion characteristics for video.
    
    
        
     Is the R/G/B separation greater because these sensors are built like TDI CCD lines?edit: Seems like pushbroom is the name for TDI when it's put in a satellite.
    
    
        
      
 Exactly! I'm working on some stuff now to exploit this very effect, the small time difference in the bands can be used to find velocities of moving objects.   
    
    
        
      
 Is this at all analogous to how we used red/blue shift to determine the speed at which astronomical objects are moving towards/away from us?   
    
        
      
 No, that’s the Doppler effect. This is a time delay between when different colors were captured.   
    
    
        
      
 This is incredibly cool. What's the application (if it's possible to obscure whatever details you don't want to divulge)?   
    
    
    
        
      
 That's not what I'm doing but it seems possible you could watch refraction patterns and tell that there are submerged objects, but you'd need to know the water depth without that object there, as there'd be no great way to tell if the object is a submarine or a pile of sand. Also, most of these satellites pass over fairly rarely so wouldn't be super useful for tracking things that move. I'm mostly interested in finding the piles of sand :)   
    
        
     So... does anyone have a tool handy to correct the frames?Better yet... does anyone have the corrected image?
    
    
    
        
      
 Funnily enough, I thought exactly the same when reading the parent post !
Grateful to be in such well-spoken company :)   
    
    
        
      
 It depends on the satellite. Weather satellites in GEO do because they aren't moving relative to the surface and they have time constraints for scanning the full earth disc. Higher resolution imaging satellites use linear sensors. However, they use TDI imaging which at a low level makes them superficially like an area array with limited vertical resolution but the light collection is still fundamentally different.   
    
        
      
 I don’t think this is the case as we don’t see any rolling shutter distortion. The linear sensor scans just like a shutter curtain exhibiting the same distortion. The plane is proportioned correctly. Maybe the scan time is fast enough.   
    
    
        
     The google maps scale shows the plane as being pretty close to that length as well. I think the satellite is high enough up that altitude scaling for aircraft is going to be minimal.I see about a 10 foot separation between colors. Velocity = distance / time 400 mph is 587 fps. 10 / 587 = 17 ms
    
    
        
      
 Do they actually use satellites for their "satellite" view? I always assumed that it was done by aircraft.   
    
        
     Depends on the needed resolution. You can cover a lot more earth, far more cheaply with a satellite with several meter wide pixels.When I used to work in remote sensing I remember that Bing Maps had a very distinct resolution transition from spacecraft to aircraft. Aircraft coverage maps were a small subset of the total earth land area, but most US towns had some coverage at that time (~2012). As you zoomed in, you could tell when Bing switched capture methods because the aircraft cameras were clearly off-nadir, and you'd see off-angle perception differences.
    
    
        
     They only use aircraft around larger urban areas. Satellite imagery is used for rural areas. You can see the resolution difference by seeing how far you can zoom in.If you zoom in on a road near the pinned location for this post, and then go to, say, downtown kansas city, and zoom in you'll see a pretty significant difference.
    
    
        
      
 Flying a plane around the planet sounds a lot more expensive financially and thermodynamically than just beaming down images from an object constantly falling into the views you want to see.   
    
    
        
      
 It's also the case that often there are more legal regulations around aerial imagery compared to satellite imagery.   
    
    
        
      
 Or you could just strap a camera to a few commercial airliners and have full coverage.   
    
        
      
 You'd only have full coverage of the jet routes. They don't just fly willy nilly across the globe.   
    
        
      
 It's definitely a mix, depending on the area and the resolution. For urban places where they have 3D views and higher resolution, it's definitely planes. For a random place like this at low resolution, it's satellites.   
    
    
    
        
      
 How low are these satellites? I wouldn't expect the altitude of a plane to be any significant proportion of the altitude of a satellite.   
    
        
      
 The satellites are probably greater than 400 km altitude, or so, while the plane is probably 10 km. The plane is in the same rough order of magnitude as really tall mountains, which the satellite is presumably designed to compensate for, so I agree with your general assessment.   
    
    
        
      
 The shadow is 750 m away and the sun is about 15 degrees off noon, so the B2 altitude is roughly 3 km. Cousin comment says the satellite altitude is 614 km, so I wouldn't expect parallax effects to be dominant. This is also evidenced by the fact that both the plane and ground are in focus and the plane is measured to be 70 feet long in google maps, which is what it is specified to be in reality.   
    
        
      
 That bomber is also likely quite low, since it's based out of an air force base in that area.   
    
        
      
 Sure, but when the word "calibrate" comes up, you want to account for even the not-very-significant factors.   
    
        
      
 I would assume that the plane or satellite moving affects this too, it's presumably being corrected but there might be some parallax.   
    
        
      
 You're absolutely correct, but as the aircraft is much closer to the ground than the imaging satellite I disregarded it. Spherical cows and all that :) I'm sure a military analyst would do the calculations!   
    
        
      
 It actually works out to be pretty close. A satellite flying ~17k mph at 250 miles altitude would largely have the same angular displacement from the ground as a plane moving 400 mph at 31,000 feet. Most satellites fly in an easterly direction, so the question would ultimately be what the inclination of the orbit is relative to the direction of flight.   
    
        
      
 I think this plane is flying much lower and slower. The B2s are based at Whiteman AFB, which is about 25 miles south of this photograph. The prevailing winds in this part of the country are from the south, so I suspect that it is about to turn onto the final leg of its approach for a landing to the south. I’d guess that it’s no more than 8-10K’ and traveling at a 2-300 knots max.   
    
        
      
 Definitely. Rule of thumb in a jet is to slow down if you're closer than 3x the altitude. So at 8k feet you want to be at least 24 nautical miles (27 normal miles) away or if closer you want to be slowing down (or descending). If you don't slow down before you're going to have to do so in the descend and typical jets can't really slow down much in that.   
    
        
      
 I asked google maps to get directions from there to Whiteman AFB. Unfortunately, flight directions were not available.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Hey welcome to the list, I've been on it since Primary School believe it or not, but only found out a few years ago!   
    
    
        
     Most imaging satellites are in sun synchronous orbits so likely in this case moving north or south and slightly retrograde e.g. west.I'd bet orbital motion is negligible here because the distortion seems to the eye to be entirely in the direction of the plane's apparent motion vector and I don't see any significant skew to that.
    
    
        
      
 That's super interesting! I love this discussion. Would the satellite be that low though? 250 miles (400km) is still going to experience significant atmospheric drag. Fine for a cheap mass deployment like Starlink, but I'd expect an imaging satellite to be set up for a longer mission duration. Then again maybe the cost of additional mass for station-keeping is worth it for the imaging quality.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Well no the speed of the satellite is irrelevant there, the background is not getting distorded at all   
    
        
      
 Isn't the speed of the sat irrelevant as it should correct for this anyways for all images it takes?   
    
    
        
      
 Interesting, I would have made the opposite assumption ("the satellite is moving so much faster than everything else, we can estimate the interval from the satellite's speed alone). It seems both speeds might have a similar impact, as per sibling comment.   
    
    
        
      
 Interesting. A search for those gradients could help find all fast moving objects in the satellite images.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 What an awful picture of the NRO Director. Surely they have plenty of experience in photography in less than ideal conditions. So why have this photo as the first thing I can see on their website?   
    
    
        
      
 The juxtaposition of the Ursa Major and Onyx/Vega patches almost gave me whiplash. Judging by the list of patches it seems like NRO is a fun place to work. Thanks for sharing!   
    
        
      
 Fun is maybe not quite the word I'd use. The juxtaposition of all the wording about "defense" and menacing-looking characters that would definitely be the villain and not the hero in any comic book or movie is... unsettling. Even if it's a self-aware joke about their public image (like the squid giving the whole Earth the hug of death), it's maybe gone a bit too far?   
    
        
      
 The gorilla holding the US flag is my favourite. And it might just be me, but the Nemesis badge has to be a sphincter, right? It reminds me of the Greendale flag in community.   
    
        
      
 I like how they quit looking like patches and just turned into stickers. Even with a black budget, they still had to cut corners and reduce spending on incidentals too?   
    
    
    
        
      
 It's 2021, give them a break. Corporate photos have been non-professional, taken by the wife in the bathroom style for 18months now.   
    
    
        
      
 Is there a way to subscribe to comments? I'd love to see the result of this idea but am not savvy enough to spin it up myself very easily   
    
        
      
 Click the timestamp for the comment, then click "favorite", then set a reminder in your calendar to check your favorited comments (link in your profile).   
    
    
        
      
 What do you mean by “copy/paste cache”? If you mean the clipboard history, there’s no such thing on macOS. If you mean the clipboard (= the last thing you copied), Siri can work with the Shortcuts app, which itself can read the clipboard.   
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 The shadow is about 2500 feet away. Judging from nearby houses the sun is probably about 15 degrees SouthEast of noon.  2500 ft * sin( 15 ) = 650 ft
 
Someone should double-check my geometry though.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Doing it this way allows not only higher resolution, but you can also use different types of filter for specialist applications. Infrared for example, or some kind of narrow band pass filters etc.   
    
    
    
        
     I literally have a 720nm lowpass infrared filter in front of me for use in photography.Infrared imaging is not "military", it's public, common, and legal.
    
    
        
      
 I think what they meant is prior to the "digital farming revolution" if you called up a satellite/arial imagery company and requested anything other than visible spectrum, you'd not only get some strange looks - they'd also alert the government.   
    
    
        
      
 I grabbed my red and blue glasses because this vaguely looked like a 3D anaglyph to me, and while it's not the clearest such image, it definitely appears as a cohesive object hovering above a flat map. Further I zoom out, it definitely looks like it. Inadvertent byproduct of however this was photographed or stitched?   
    
        
      
 Is it possible this is a a pushbroom sensor, where red, green, and blue sensors are moved along the path of the plane or satellite that's taking the image? My understanding is those have a higher effective resolution than frame-based sensors, which would make sense here.   
    
        
      
 Seems unlikely to me. With push broom, I'd think you'd get characteristic squishing, stretching, or skewing of objects in motion depending on whether the object was moving against, with, or perpendicular to the push broom path. In this case with the imaging satellite probably in polar orbit and the plane flying east, you likely see the plane horizontally skewed as each horizontal row of pixels captured the plane further east.   
    
        
      
 Also came here to discuss this. Super interesting opportunity to reverse what they're doing. Yeah I'd agree it's color filters which would avoid duplicating lenses (probably the most expensive component) or dividing the light energy. Filters would give you the most photons per color per shot. I wonder if the filters are mechanical or electronic somehow. As another commenter calculated, it's 10ms between shots, which is not that impractical to move physical filters around when you consider modern consumer camera shutter speeds of around 0.125 milliseconds max.   
    
        
      
 This is what we do all the time for astrophography! We buy monochrome cameras without an IR filter and take 3 photos and recombine them.   
    
    
        
      
 I wonder if there are ways to get superior (compared to Bayer) color images from conventional raw-capable monochrome digital cameras (like Leica Q2 Monochrom) in static scenes using similar workflows of taking three separate shots.   
    
        
      
 Many cameras, especially medium format like Fuji GFX, can do "pixel shift" capture, where they use the sensor stabilization to shift the sensor by one pixel at a time to ensure red, green, and blue are each captured at all pixels, without needing demosaicing. The camera has to be mounted on a tripod for this to work - like any stacking requires, really.   
    
    
    
        
     Interesting. Sadly, I believe the Photoshop approach would not produce a DNG file that you could normally interpret in a raw processor of your choice. Looks like pixel shift cameras (which apparently still use Bayer sensors, just moving them around, to debayer at capture time so to speak) is the most practical option at the moment.I’m curious if it is technically possible for a digital sensor to capture the entire light spectrum of the scene, without the need for RGB separation at any stage—similar to Lippmann plate[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippmann_plate
    
    
    
        
      
 I looked at Foveon before, and got the impression that it still effectively relies on RGB separation/recombination, though in a more elegant way than Bayer sensors. (That said, Sigma’s doing some really cool stuff.)   
    
        
      
 Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky‘s work shows both the benefits and drawbacks of the swapping filters approach   
    
    
        
      
 It's standard when using reflectic/catadioptic objectives to peek back at where the satellites are: https://www.astroshop.eu/filter-wheels-filter-sliders/starli...
This one has USB, the same style with manual operation via a teethed wheel is like 169 EUR at that shop.
Or consider rigging a burnt-out DLP projector's filter wheel up, which comes with a motor and encoder that you could use to capture imagery with the filters they provide at much higher frame rates (a few hundred fps in the monochrome domain seem usual these days, AFAIK, for good consumer DLP projectors).   
    
    
    
        
      
 That sounds very interesting. I feel like firmware/hardware automation combo that swaps RGB filters and takes exposures in accord could provide interesting workflows for owners of those monochrome digital cameras.   
    
        
      
 I wouldn't be surprised if these military bombing dudes not only took R, G, B, but also near IR, far IR, UV, and various other things. If they did it would make no sense to try to make a Bayer filter for all of that and rather just have multiple filtered cameras pointed at the same direction.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Actually the camera is (assuming geostationary orbits arę not used for imaging) moving ar speeds much much faster than the plane   
    
        
      
 That's a lot of words to rationalize away what is very clearly and obviously a cloaking device at work!!   
    
    
    
    
        
     “Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible image, fast-moving objects – like planes in flight – don’t quite match up, producing the rainbow effect.[2] https://blog.mapbox.com/putting-landsat-8s-bands-to-work-631...
    
    
        
     &gt; Rather than taking a photograph, satellite sensors record electromagnetic radiation in the red, blue, green, and high-resolution panchromatic (black-and-white) bands (as well as several not visible to the human eye, as this Mapbox[2] post helpfully explains). When these bands are combined to produce a visible imageThat's the same as taking a (normal, digital) photograph (sans additional non-rgb layers), just explained.
    
    
        
      
 The difference is typical digital cameras have a bayer filter in front of the sensor to allow taking a single color picture vs. here it sounds like multiple captures with individual filters (e.g. 1 blue, 1 red, 1 green, 1 monochrome) that are later combined into a color picture.   
    
        
     The point was at all color photos record electromagnetic radiation in visible colors.The “it doesn’t take photos it record electromagnetic radiation” is a silly thing to say.
    
    
        
     There's some subtlety here. Colors are percepts- phenomena that happen in the brain. Wavelengths and radiation describe natural electromagnetic phenomena, not percepts.Example: Infrared has no "color". It's possible to induce the illusion of colors in the absence of light altogether. I appreciate that the article took care with this language, as it's a deep and fascinating topic.
    
    
    
        
      
 "Chemical" photography captures electromagnetic radiation as well, but converts it into bonding energy, not into electrical signals.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Does anyone have a theory on why some photos have a rainbow plane and a solid white place offset?   
    
        
      
 They take a separate high-res monochromatic picture. (As image compression theory tells us, if you can afford to sacrifice some colour resolution for monochromatic resolution -- do it.)   
    
        
      
 It's interesting how some satellites take the alpha channel pic before the RGB channels, and some do it after. The lag also changes. Alpha &amp; RGB have similar lags for some, but alpha is way off on others.   
    
        
     Do you mean luminance? Alpha usually refers to the transparency channel in an RGBA image.Whereas I believe you're describing more of a YUV setup
    
    
        
      
 What does alpha channel mean in this context? Usually it means transparency but how would you take a picture of that?   
    
        
     I live on a farm very close to this area.All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago. This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.
    
    
    
        
      
 On Google Earth you can use the timeline feature to actually see when the imagery was captured (or at least uploaded?). The plane sitting near the hangers was from a capture in May 2016. Google Earth currently shows several newer captures, including one from September 2021. The current one from September 2021 is actually far more interesting in my opinion. In it, you can see a B2 sitting in a field about a quarter up the runway (38°43'27.63"N 93°32'54.86"W) with stuff scattered all around it and trucks sitting on the runway. https://i.imgur.com/lh1hkWN.png    
    
    
        
      
 Ah very interesting! I saw the skid marks on the runway north of the plane and was wondering if it was an emergency landing situation considering that it was just on the side of the runway. Pretty cool to read the article and get the other half of the story.   
    
        
      
 I'm very intrigued as to what is going on here - it almost looks as if it veered off the runway. Anyone got any suggestions?   
    
        
     The op of this thread replied to my comment with a military.com article, and in that article there is a link to an article on thedrive, https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42392/damaged-b-2-spir... "According to sources, the B-2 experienced a hydraulic failure in flight and had its port main landing gear collapse during landing, sending it off the runway with its wing dug into the ground. We cannot confirm that this was the case at this time, but the satellite image above does concur with the gear collapse/wing down aspect of the incident. While it is possible the aircraft was rolled off the runway after the fact, this is unlikely, especially considering its wing-down disposition. The damage to the aircraft also remains unknown. "
    
    
    
    
        
     They're often deployed elsewhere for missions and/or training, but the home base for all of them is Whiteman AFB. There's only 20 of them.I do wonder how many megatons of nuclear weapons are stored there, about 20 miles from my house. Maybe best not to think on that too much. :)
    
    
        
      
 Yeah I panned over to the munitions bunkers (I think there is a better name I forget) and there seemed to be so few, but I guess you don't need much space for nukes...   
    
        
     Omg, are they sooo huge?I just realised how big they are for the first time in my life. What a sight! [edit] 
172ft = 52m wingspan!
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I was blessed by a low flyover in Lancaster, CA back in '94 or so. It's absolutely stunning to have something that big and that quiet glide over you.   
    
    
    
        
      
 There's really no point. A few high sensitivity assets are lower resolution, but any state actor that wants very high resolution shots of military facilities already has it and on a quicker update cadence than google maps allows.   
    
        
      
 In the initial years of Google Earth and similar services, a number of military and intelligence facilities were blurred.   
    
    
    
        
     This isn’t an answer to your inflammatory question, but there are only a handful of nation states with nuclear weapons, and France is one of them.These aren’t hand-me-down US warheads on the back of a missile truck: the flagship of the French navy is a 40,000 tonne nuclear armed, nuclear powered aircraft carrier floating above a strategic submarine fleet that can destroy the world.
    
    
        
      
 Are we talking about the same France? France, one of Europes largest military powers which actually use their military in various conflicts around the globe?   
    
        
      
 Maybe their argument is that France has nothing to fear from anyone, so why the secrecy? Of course it's nonsense no matter how you spin it. All militaries love secrecy (except maybe the ones that are just for show, but I expect even the Swiss Guard in the Vatican has its secrets).   
    
        
      
 I'm guessing their comment is from the view of the French being "cheese eating, surrender monkeys", a view not supported by France's long military history. This view was supported, for at least a few years, by a Google "I feel lucky" search for "French military victories" taking you to a Google search mockup site which suggested "Maybe you mean: French military surrenders".   
    
        
      
 Apart from the fact that the view of France as "surrender monkeys" is nonsense, it also makes no sense as an argument that their military wouldn't be interested in secrecy.   
    
        
      
 Because they're a NATO member with a pretty large and advanced military force, in a very accessible area of Europe?   
    
        
      
 Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the biggest threat to domestic military facilities are foreign state actors but rather domestic terrorists, and those usually don't have access to any military-grade satellites.   
    
        
      
 Interesting that you mention only domestic military facilities... When I was deployed to Afghanistan ten years ago, with rockets and mortar rounds landing daily inside the perimeter of our Forward Operating Base, I was irritated to see recent and high-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps. I can see my sleeping tent, office building(s), and parked helicopters in perfect clarity. The imagery hasn't been updated since then, so you can still see everything despite this base being abandoned years ago.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.9428134,69.0629605,492m/data...    
    
        
      
 Do they need military-grade imagery? The Chinese or Russian militaries do because they’re trying to estimate war-time performance but I find it hard to believe that there are any domestic terrorists building sensor arrays to support SAM batteries. If they’re trying to blow one up, the resolution on a consumer drone or telescope would likely be more than enough.   
    
    
        
     It's 2021 (for another couple weeks) and everyone has access to imaging satellites with almost instant turnaround, for a negligible fee.Consider yourself corrected.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 According to the pricing tab, it costs ~$20 to get a 1 km2 area with a 30-50cm resolution.   
    
        
     And if you ask for a shot of the “wrong” coordinates, how long until a nice person with a badge knocks on your door?Seems like an obvious kind of honeypot?
    
    
        
      
 For my family's semi-rural home I'm seeing that I can buy 0.5m (500cm) imagery from the last year for $250. No historical images with higher resolution I can buy. To task a new a photo at 40cm resolution would cost $1,800.00 from KOMPSAT-3A. (and it'd be a 10km x 10km area)   
    
        
      
 I googled it and came up with multiple answers. Instead of demanding people prove their work, take reasonable statements in good faith imo.   
    
    
        
      
 Not all of them. Some of them just don’t offer photos of that area, even though they offer literally every other inch of the earth in at least SOME scan, a lot of these are missing.   
    
        
     I was about to say, I grew up about 10 minutes from here and they were a common sight. Always thrilling to see.IIRC Whiteman has an air show every year where you can get "up close" to them.
    
    
        
      
 The best air show I've ever been to was at Will Rogers World Airport in OKC. I figure some of it must be the proximity to Tinker, but also other bases in the area. Back in 95 (could have been 96, but not any later, as I left the area late that year), they brought a B-2 to the show, flew it around the airport for a while, landed it, waited a while so people could get take as many pictures as they wanted, then took off and flew it home. At the same show, they brought an F-117, did the flyby, and landed it. Then taxi'd it over to a static display area so people could get close. I was able to walk underneath it and touch it. As a young airman, I was absolutely floored. And this was in 95 or 96, so we were still really impressed with how exotic these planes were.   
    
        
     Yes, nice comment.I remember being part of the staff of NATO's only MIG squadron during military service. People considered a MIG within NATO a sensation, while I was simply bored. I saw them every day in droves. ;)
    
    
        
      
 Apparently prior to getting their hands on a MiG-25 from a defector who took one to Japan, many in the western military and intelligence communities envisioned it to have super avionic powers (that persisted for a long time in the civilian sphere). They thought it was agile and fast. What they didn't know is that it could only sustain those speeds for short spurts (else the engines suffered from metal fatigue due to temperature) and the maneuverability they envisioned from the geometry proved to be false (it had a very wide turning radius)...   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Yeah I remember being thrilled seeing them while canoeing on the Gasconade when I was a kid in the 90s. I believe that we saw one refueling behind a KC-10 in the air as well.   
    
    
    
        
      
 I grew up in the south of the state but I remember them flying overhead when I was a kid now and again. Always stood out like a sore thumb, left a particular contrail too as I recall.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
     The aircraft seems to be a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit.&gt; The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. Designed during the Cold War, it is a flying wing design with a crew of two.[1][3] The bomber is subsonic and can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound class (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit
    
    
        
     My father-in-law helped design the pilot seat for that.Unfortunately he was unable to make the transition to computer aided design. After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.
    
    
        
     In case anyone else is reading and thinking of that predicament, it needn't be a showstopper.You have a couple of options: You can do it the old way, and pay someone to convert it into the new way (I know a mechanical engineer who either sketches things or does 2D on a computer, and pays someone else to 3D it) which can then be sent to the client or manufacturer or whatever. Or, if you're doing the whole product to sell, you can do it however you want, no one cares how their product was designed, just that the end product is good. I don't know how the housing on the monitor I'm looking at was designed, and I don't care, I just care that it's decent. I feel like I count rant about this for a while, but all the "rules" change if you're taking clients or customers and not looking for FTE. It's got its own challenges, but with a few good / high paying clients, it's even easier than FTE, you can grow or not if you want.
    
    
        
      
 Not sure if the Air Force will buy bomber seats from the back of a truck of some guy who designs them with paper and pencil.   
    
        
     If not, the defense contractor will subcontract to you and mark it up 4000% :)Also, the government generally has policies that some % of things have to come from small businesses, sometimes they'll hire you just in order to check a box, I'd guess. Nevertheless, if you can design an airplane seat, there are other customers than the air force. Lots of niche machines are made by 3 or 4 people and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, to farms, to factories, to anyone in business. Consumers will argue with you for a week over a $10 purchase, but people buying things to make money with won't bat an eye at $10,000. There's a great big world out there and every hurdle doesn't have to be jumped, you can just walk around it half the time.
    
    
        
     &gt;After the defense cutbacks in the 90s, he could only find minimum wage jobs for the rest of his working life.That's unfortunate to hear. Hope he's doing well now, in his retirement life.
    
    
        
     Of course he's doing well, he has the best son-in-law ever ;)Jokes aside, he's doing fine. They got by on my mother-in-law's teacher salary and were lucky enough to get in on the California housing game in the early '80s. They mostly don't have to worry about the bills, and all their kids live within 15 minutes of them - we see them around 1-2x per week. And if they ever did run into issues, one of us could take them in. I just like to keep it in mind because I've been subject to fairly good fortunes when it comes to career. Same thing with all my relatives. But my wife's family has had more bumps along the way.
    
    
    
        
      
 My dad went through a similar transition. In his case, the world transitioned away gradually from his skill set. He was able to continue moving to new jobs that needed his legacy skill set, until eventually he couldn't find them easily anymore. By the time he was in this predicament, he couldn't find a a path to restart his education. The critical issue was employment, once he found a job, the critical issue was working and keeping that job. He didn't have the luxury of taking the time to build a new skillset.   
    
        
      
 Learning things becomes much harder when you are older. Our brains are physically less receptive to the process of learning.   
    
        
      
 I don’t think this is true. I think responsibilities pile up and/or the need to learn more is less. The physical ability to learn is probably hardly impacted.   
    
        
      
 That's a nice idea but definitely not reality. Just try learning a language at different stages of life. I guess you could argue it's still the responsibilities holding you back but the difference is so stark that it's clear it's not just that.   
    
        
     Learning a new language after decades of reinforcing the knowledge of a native language is hard. I’ve attempted multiple times. Personally, I don’t think it has much to do with physical ability as much as baggage from the previous language.I am right handed. Learning to write neatly with my left hand would be difficult too. I don’t think my brain is less capable of doing it though.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 That's while probably really effective at its job, it's not really the most of anything. The B-1B for example is faster and can carry more ordinance.   
    
    
    
        
      
 It's effective enough to have bombed the shit out of a chinese embassy in '99. Look it up.   
    
    
    
        
      
 Yes, which is why in this case, it was effective against the already smashed small serbian anti air capabillities. And not against chinese ones.   
    
    
    
        
      
 The measured wingspan (using the Google Maps distance measure tool) is around 200 feet whereas the measured wingspan of a B-2 on the ground at nearby Whiteman AFB is the nominal 172 feet, so its altitude AGL is roughly 14% of the altitude of the camera plane that took the photo.   
    
        
      
 A small roll of the place at the time the photo was taken could also explain this difference.   
    
        
      
 Good math. I don't know why everyone else is assuming this photo is from a spacecraft. Virtually all of the aerial images of America on Google Earth are taken with aircraft, not spacecraft.   
    
    
        
     Interesting, but I'm not sure that is dispositive. That company is credited for images even where they are obviously aerial. Google Maps images are an algorithmic mash-up of many sources, I imagine they credit partial or possible sources conservatively, to keep from omitting any potentially relevant rights.In many tiles they don't credit anybody, so the absences of Google's own image credit doesn't mean anything. The first party does not need to credit themselves.
    
    
    
        
      
 Would be disappointing for them to remove it for basically no reason, especially considering you can see a B-2 parked on the tarmac (https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B043'29.9%22N+93%C2%...) in the nearby Whiteman AFB. The B-2 was first flown 32 years ago. Its existence is neither covert or secret, but often used to do flybys at freaking football games where thousands of recording devices are present and active. There's virtually no national security risk with these images because any imagery obtainable by Google Maps would've been obtainable by whatever adversary long ago, plus some more.   
    
        
     Correct, but don't misunderestimate the power of knowledge.Let's assume that some adversary is out there keeping track of these planes, and knows that they can scan Google maps for the RGB artifact by the engines to locate them reliably and programmatically. Now Google maps becomes a repository for information that adversary may use to validate other information. Maybe this confirms the schedule for some training excersise. Maybe this particular B2 being in this location validates or invalidates other information about US troop strength abroad. I was taught to always "assume your adversary is capable of going through your trash" and try to prepare my "trash" accordingly.
    
    
        
     The fatal premise is assuming Google Maps updates these areas frequently enough to provide useful info. The military security implications of Google Earth have existed since its launch and Google Maps by relation is no stranger to it. This is not new info and it hardly counts as "knowledge" much less with "power".Reconnaissance satellite technology isn't US-exclusive (https://www.dw.com/en/modern-spy-satellites-in-an-age-of-spa..., Ctrl+F "Spy satellites in numbers") and those who have a meaningful need to track B-2 movements most likely have their own tools that are up to date, more accurate, and not bound by laws or regulations a US domiciled company is subjected to. What we see on Google Maps is almost guaranted to be 100% "trash" from a military intelligence perspective because actual valuable information has always been obtainable without Google Maps for entities who are capable and in need.
    
    
        
      
 Similar to how the president brings his own toilet when doing foreign visits so enemies can't analyze his poop to see what medicines he's taking or what medical conditions he has.   
    
        
      
 Kim Jong Un does that, but I can't find record of any other world leader doing so. That takes a special level of paranoia.   
    
    
        
      
 Spare a thought for the presidential aide responsible for safeguarding POTUS's poop, so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I'd hate to be the person assigned to "doodie duty".   
    
    
        
      
 Any adversary that the USA cared about already can get this info from their own satellites. They aren't using Google Maps.   
    
        
      
 Impressive level of paranoia from a citizen of a country with 800 bases around the world. Mad propz for your mass media.   
    
        
     So the US should have no defensive doctrine at all because we have so many spoils of war?Whatever country you are in would do the same if it could.
    
    
        
     Honestly with the known ties between the US government and Google, if I were a state-level adversary I'd probably be wondering why Google wasn't scrubbing the plane programmatically, rather than assuming that I had caught someone in a 'Gotcha!' moment.In other words; this google maps link has been circulating around the net for the past week and a half at least -- seemingly originating from either a Discord or the chans; if I were some foreign intelligence analyst I'd definitely be considering the premise that these photos have been so widespread and uncensored simply as an online show-of-force. ( personal anecdote : as an amateur aviation enthusiast/plane-watcher, the B2, as majestic as she is, isn't particularly rare to catch in the skies -- and nowhere near 'secret' )
    
    
        
     i doubt they'd remove it for security reasons - as you say, there's nothing secret about what this plane is doing here. more that they'd remove it for the same reasons they remove clouds or any other in-air objects that obscure the thing they're actually trying to take photos of.the plane isn't part of the map, so it shouldn't be on the map. even if it's not obscuring anything, they use satellite photos to generate building outlines, and this isn't a building. given how many planes there are flying all the time, and how infrequently you see them on google maps, they must make an effort to publish satellite imagery that doensn't have planes in it.
    
    
        
     I wouldn't expect it to get deleted for any kind of security reason... but it will get replaced, and possibly faster because there's a defect. Moving object artifacts are undesirable and make the image more difficult to use especially for automation (such as Google's registration). They tend to get knocked out automatically over time as the composition algorithms try to keep a neatly consistent scene. They may even be handled as clouds depending on which methods Google uses to avoid cloud cover. This is the same force that has slowly worked most alignment and registration marks out of Google imagery (for a long time aerial imagery usually contained registration marks etched into the camera optics), although you will still find them especially in areas that are more challenging to register by machine vision (deserts, etc).Aircraft in Keyhole and Google Earth used to be extremely common before the composition methods improved and more imagery sources became available. You could just about make out the traffic pattern at some airports. You can still find them but they're much rarer today.
    
    
        
      
 Too bad they can't mark a tile (such as this one) to preserve forever from the backend control plane.   
    
    
        
     Ugh, so when Google does a normal map update, unless there just happens to be a B-2 flying in the same spot, the conspiracy nutjobs are going to think there's some Google / US government conspiracy.The truth is the fact these planes exist and that there is a base nearby is public knowledge. Any country that cares already has its satellite imagery at much higher resoltion and realtime.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 lol why would they? The B-2 even flies with radar reflectors in civil airspace so that ATC can track it.
Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627105
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935
Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked
2021-02-08
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 <a href="vote?id=26066326&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.<p>We see this again and again. The cynic in me sees Stadia as yet another internal promotion scheme, masquerading as a product.</p><p>I doubt this will ever change. The internal momentum of the company culture will make it so. What does it mean for investors? Google has enough money they can just buy their way into markets indefinitely. It will probably keep them going, but I don't expect huge growth. I'd probably be putting my money into other stocks if I had to choose. I honestly don't think people would miss Google much if it was gone.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067894&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Stadia, from day one, has seemed like an engineering-oriented project. It's a cool tech that nobody asked for and not many people actually want (and has been atrociously packaged as an actual product). I can just hear the kickoff meeting:<p>"We have some of the best cloud engineers in the world, we have one of the biggest fleets of data centers. Not a lot of companies could reasonably implement cloud gaming, but I bet we could!"</p><p>That part is true! But then:</p><p>"Productization? Pricing? Market-fit? Customer service and messaging? Whatever, we've got good tech, it'll sell itself. We can figure all that other stuff out later, that's the easy part."</p><p>...cue the flop. It was always going to be this way.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068279&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Are you sure people don’t want it? I think it’s one of the biggest market potentials in gaming right now.<p>I’m quickly approaching 40, and I would like nothing more to not have to own the windows desktop that I only use for one thing. To play blood bowl 2 (and eventually 3) a few times a week. If I could do that from a browser on my MacBook, you can bet I’d never own another desktop in this life.</p><p>That’s anecdotal or course, but there’s quite a lot of us.
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 <a href="vote?id=26076288&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I used both. When time came to Play cyberpunk, I went for Stadia.<p>It runs a lot better (streaming quality, glitches, start-up times) are incredible. 
Using Stadia in general is a polished (yet basic) experience. 
In contrast Nvidia very much felt like a hack. Log-in in my steam account, seeing weird window glitches.</p><p>I see a lot of comments negative on stadia here,based on bias rather then actual experience. 
Stadia is nothing short of tech star even with its downsides compare to the rest of the market.
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 <a href="vote?id=26092855&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I can't speak about Nvidia, but we just hosted a ~25 person LAN party at work and decided to go with Stadia... never again. Some people couldn't even make an account because they didn't have a credit card (even though we planned to mostly play free titles). Literally every game needed 20-40 minutes before we finally got everyone in - we never pinpointed the root cause, but a combination of restarting Chrome (emptying cache), relogging into Stadia, rebooting PCs and re-hosting a match, we managed to play a few titles. In a couple cases, we just gave up trying to get more than a handful of people in the game. Some people couldn't ever get their keyboard or mouse working in some titles (myself included, one game in particular was fine for awhile, then suddenly my mouse stopped registering in-game - rebooting and having the host restart the server didn't help - googling my issue says I'm not alone).<p>Some of these titles I've played multiplayer via Steam without any of the related issues, granted Steam/Stadia is an apples/oranges comparison.</p><p>At the end I suggested we try Armagetron. 2.7MB download and runs on Mac/Win/Linux/Potatoes. I started up a private server and we were running a 16-player game without any issues in literally 5 minutes.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070080&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah I don't see how nVidia doesn't dominate this market. Their product just makes way more sense.<p>To even get on Stadia you have to port to their custom Linux distribution, which is a pretty huge ask for most games.
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 <p>Publishers specifically pulled out of Geforce Now because they didn't like the idea of people not having to buy the game again.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069721&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Unfortunately Stadia is the only one that supports 4K (I'm a casual user of Nvidia's service since it was in beta)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070438&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Does 4k matter? The way you state it makes it sound like it's a major issue (disclaimer: I've never seen a 4k game)<p>This is an honest question, since I don't game much (witcher 3, death stranding and a few point and click) , and regular 1080 doesn't bother me, so I'm genuinely curious.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070973&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Would describe Stadia 4k to be inline with native 1080p, at least when playing stadia in a browser. Stadia 4k may look better using a chromecast ultra, but I haven't tried that.<p>And It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrate, feel like we need some kind of standard, because bitrate means nothing to most people.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071941&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrate<p>Yep. I see a good example of this when I watch gameplay videos on Youtube in the highest available 1080p bitrate, and regularly see results that look far worse than playing the game in 720p, maybe even 480p. For example, it's obviously very common to pan the camera through a high-detail scene, which is trivial for a GPU to do, but incredibly information dense for a video encoder. So anything with a lot of detail blurs (in a very ugly way, not like motion blur) when there's movement.</p><p>And Youtube has the advantage that the video has as much time to record as Youtube will allow it, it doesn't need to be done with low-latency settings as Stadia does.</p><p>Of course, cable TV is even worse, but ordinary consumers don't seem to have noticed or cared about that either.
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 <a href="vote?id=26077232&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I'm not sure about Europe, but in the US it's very rare to see bitrates even a large fraction of that. (I don't see a minimum bitrate on the ATSC Wikipedia page, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it's often lower than 6 Mbps.) Worse still, in a bunch of places the cable companies still deliver MPEG-2 video, which is going to look pretty atrocious at anything other than an extremely high bitrate. It's a big disadvantage compared to Youtube. Plus a whole bunch of programs are in 60 fps, which need a higher bitrate anyway.<p>I plugged in my cable box for the first time in months to watch the Super Bowl, and was shocked at how terrible the video was. I could see obvious artifacts without glasses on, and I can't even tell 720p from 1080p at that distance. Some of my relatives have those MPEG-2 channels, and I remember them being significantly worse.</p><p>Not trying to say that cable TV can <i>never</i> be better than Youtube's quality, of course, just trying to give a general impression of my experience with various American cable companies.
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 <a href="vote?id=26084536&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Nice I'll check that out.<p>12 Mbps MPEG-4 should be quite good, for the stations that support it.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071508&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>At least with game streaming services, I suspect advertising resolution serves the double purpose of being understandable to most consumers, while specifically obfuscating bitrate, which is the sacrificed statistic.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It depends on the game. Anything that has a lot of text or small icons - e.g. many strategies - benefits from high DPI in the same way desktop apps do.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26068340&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The narrow "want to play games on my mac" problem could be solved if game developers chose to build the game cross-platform from the start and release a mac build. Many games are already cross-platform, as they run on both Windows and consoles. The fact that so many game companies don't even bother with a mac build shows they don't want to solve this for whatever reason (probably mac just not profitable enough).<p>If a developer is not willing to lift a finger to port to mac (a small market, but one with a known size), why would they port to Stadia or some other unknown market?
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 <a href="vote?id=26071078&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Because macs are terrible platforms for games. They have been very low end for a long time (m1 notwithstanding), and they have been killing off opengl, the only cross platform rendering API (before vulkan, which they don't support). Also their insistence on breaking changes means your back catalog needs constant maintenance. That's normal for app developers, but not gamedev. Oh, and if you do make the port, they will be about 1% of your users. Or less. So, to summarize, mac support is expensive, difficult, and not profitable. Should we still do it? I tend to think you're better of spending your time on linux support.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26075413&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Maybe MacOS isn't a good push for gaming for either developers or Apple. I definitely think iOS is. The Apple Arcade Subscription plan seems to be part of that for gaming. I've seen a lot of people on the subway and even at work sometimes playing mobile games on their iOS device, from Call of Duty Mobile to racing games to tower defense.<p>I imagine when Apple expands their desktop and laptop lineup to M1 chips, it's going to include many of the games that are available from their mobile catalog.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068790&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easy (and most of the smaller games that use those engines do release Mac builds); doing a Mac build from an in-house engine may be a ton of work<p>But more importantly: Mac hardware usually isn't really equipped for high-end games. If you have a pro-tier machine you might do okay, but nobody <i>buys</i> Macs for gaming, at the very least. It's just too niche of a market to go through a lot of effort to support it
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 <a href="vote?id=26070053&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easy<p>You'd think, but a lot of mainstream engine-based games that could "easily" have a mac port never get one, even an unofficial one offered as totally unsupported. Look at <i>Among Us</i> for example. Not by any stretch a high-end game. It runs on Windows, Android, iOS, a bunch of XBoxen, and probably other consoles. I bet the developer could spit out a working native macOS version with the push of a button, but so far hasn't.</p><p><i>Kerbal Space Program</i> is another example. When last I checked, they did have a native mac version, but it was hamstrung in some way--I think it was limited to 32-bit or something.</p><p>I can't imagine these examples are actually a huge amount of effort to make happen. As a fan and programmer I'd be willing to do it for free.
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 <a href="vote?id=26075131&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>KSP has been 64-bit on Mac from around the same time as Windows and is still fully supported.<p>A lot of games did drop off the Mac when it moved to 64-bit only though.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069914&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Still has a bigger market share than Linux, with people that actually pay for games, and all major engines support Metal.<p>Whereas GNU/Linux, even with the massive amount of games targeting Android, hardly gets to see them.</p><p>Same applies to Stadia, which is mostly GNU/Linux + Vulkan, with Google sponsoring Unity and Unreal as well.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069887&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Apple's moving to the M1 chip for desktop/laptop Macs. That's going to make the target look more like top-end Mac hardware… and the iPhone.<p>The latter isn't a niche market, it's a 'not high-end' market. But that could evolve, I think.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068601&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think it's impossible that streamed games will find a market, but I think there are several hurdles that (unsurprisingly) weren't apparent to a company with no experience in the industry:<p>1) PC gamers tend to revel in owning (building, customizing, optimizing) their hardware; not just because it lets them play the games they want to play, but even for its own sake. RGB arrays, overclocking, custom case builds. Streaming can't compete with that.</p><p>2) "Casual" gamers already have powerful devices in their pockets with thousands and thousands of games available, including many free ones and many high-quality ones.</p><p>3) Console gamers are presumably the target (?) market. But an Xbox Series S costs $299. The (absolute minimum) Stadia starter kit costs $99; you're already a third of the way there. And then there's the subscription fee. And <i>then</i> you still have to buy the games. Something I don't think Google realized is that over a console generation, the dominant cost quickly becomes the games themselves, not the hardware. If Stadia users still have to buy them at full-price - $60 a pop - that $200 you saved at the beginning quickly becomes a diminishing fraction. You just aren't saving that much, and in exchange, you get the constant risk that your whole library will simply be killed at any moment, as well as...</p><p>4) The latency. The problem with latency is it's not a fully solvable issue, no matter how much hardware or money you throw at the problem. There's a physical lower bound on how long it takes electricity to get from your house to a data center and back. And then there's all the routing infrastructure run by your ISP, which a) is outside of Google or Microsoft or whoever's ability to improve, and b) is unlikely to be improved by the ISP because game streaming is basically the only usecase where bleeding-edge latency actually matters. And in terms of how much it matters: one frame at 60FPS translates to 16.7ms. Client-rendered multiplayer games don't have as much of an issue with higher latencies because of client-side prediction: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_prediction">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_prediction</a></p><p>Here's the only way I could see game streaming being successful:</p><p>An all-you-can-eat, Netflix-style buffet of big-budget games. Like Apple Arcade, except it has games like Call of Duty and Borderlands that you could normally only play on a console or a gaming PC. You pay a monthly fee, and you never have to buy or even download a game. Dedicated thin-client hardware is a waste; anybody who wants to buy hardware will just buy a console. Your target customers don't want that. Instead this would only be playable on existing platforms, primarily desktop/web/mobile, though possibly existing consoles as well.</p><p>That would be a decent value-proposition for some people. Those playing really fast-paced games and/or sticklers for latency wouldn't go for it, <i>some</i> existing phone-gamers might, but mostly you would get people like your friend from college who just wants to play Borderlands with you but isn't really a "gamer" outside of that.</p><p>Microsoft is the most clearly-positioned company to succeed at this, as far as I can tell. They have two decades of experience in the industry, they have cloud chops and datacenters, and they carry clout with publishers and even have in-house studios (because a subscription-only game buffet it going to be a tough sell when it comes to license-holders).</p><p>And of course they've already started: Xbox Game Pass is a smallish version of the all-you-can-eat subscription, and they've been experimenting with cloud-hosted releases. You can even play Control on your Nintendo Switch via Microsoft's cloud. That's pretty cool.</p><p>But I don't think this will ever make gaming PCs or even consoles obsolete, mainly because of the unsolvability of the latency issue. It will be good enough for some people.</p><p>Oh and Stadia will die anyway, because Google doesn't understand any of the above
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 <a href="vote?id=26072076&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Yours is a thoughtful post and doesn't deserve a quick, dismissive response, so I want to hedge the following just by acknowledging that.<p>I'd say your problems 1-3 can be summarized by saying you don't think there's a market for it. I don't think I agree. The prospective market for it is probably console gamers who want to play PC games that aren't ported to their console.</p><p>Even CP2077 might be an example of this, because from what I've heard the performance is absolutely terrible on consoles, and if you haven't already spent heavily on an upgraded computer with a graphics card that's going to set you back $1K, you probably can't play it there either. So if you're the stereotypical console gamer, who doesn't care about perfect graphics and the lowest possible latencies, Stadia is going to sound like a pretty decent deal.</p><p>And that's before you get to exclusives.
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 <a href="vote?id=26081411&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>- CP2077 could be viewed as a one time inter-generational fluke, where a project was designed with the ambition of PS5, then half-heartedly fitted into a PS4. Once people get their next gen consoles, this use case probably goes away. Can you imagine a lot more of these CP2077-like scenarios that justify being a Stadia user?<p>- Stadia will be just as vulnerable to "exclusive content fragmentation" as consoles. Now that they've shuttered their internal studio, they will in fact, be constantly on the defensive in the war of exclusive content.
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 <a href="vote?id=26084529&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, I was only using Cyberpunk as an example of how a console player might play a game on Stadia that <i>was</i> released on their console if it performed better. (Or even equivalently, since Stadia has other advantages like easy travel.) But I think the much bigger draw will be for games that are PC exclusives or PC/XBOX, for Playstation folks.<p>I suppose it remains to be seen how successful Stadia will be at pull these titles to its platform. I think you're right to worry about fragmentation. If developers view Stadia as "just another platform" that they can just choose not to support when creating exclusives, it'll fail. If Stadia can get them to view it as a kind of drop-in that lets a much larger number of people (with, say, underpowered hardware) play their game, they'll be more likely to view it as a win.</p><p>One other plausible market: people for whom the upfront cost of a platform is still too high. It's a lot easier for most parents to justify buying Cyberpunk for Stadia for their kid for Christmas than it is a brand new $500 console, or God forbid the several thousand dollar PC you'd need to play it.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070860&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I hate doing this, but I feel like I need to pick at each of your described hurdles, because I think each of them make assumptions or assertions that don't hold up.<p>1. You claim PC gamers do it for the hardware as much as the software. Let's assume the data backs that - it certainly seems like it's likely to be true. And I'm biased in wanting to believe it too, because I like to build and revel in the machines that run the games I own. What isn't true is that those same people, people like me, cannot also be attracted to things like Stadia.</p><p>2. Services like Stadia do not replace the many games that people play on the many devices that already exist. It's not a "one or the other" thing. They allow those devices to play more games.</p><p>The biggest flaw is in suggesting that casual gamers (a term which is flawed for many other reasons) wouldn't be a potential market for a thing like Stadi. Mobile game sales account for almost half of ALL game related sales. 48%, in fact. $76 billion in sales. A thing like Stadia means that people can play more games on their devices.</p><p>And let me say, games on Stadia play incredibly well on my iPad that's a few generations old. That's <i>very</i> attractive. Being able to play PC quality games on my iPad when I travel is worth every penny. I'd even argue it's easier to play games on Stadia than it is to play natively installed games. With Stadia, there's no downloading of the game, no installing, not time wasted waiting for updates. You just turn it on, and it works.</p><p>First, where you say "casual gamers", I think what you're trying to say is "people who play games on their mobile devices." You go on to describe the abilities that mobile devices have. While I won't dispute that, one thing I think you're missing is that services like Stadia make it even easier to play games on those devices that don't exist for those devices, or will at some future date, optimized to run on those mobile devices.</p><p>I'll probably beat this horse to death, but to compare: I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my iPad through Stadia minutes after it was available. It took nearly a day before I could run it on my PC, and after the first several patches I just stopped bothering. Granted, the game is a beautiful mess, but the point is: it was effortless on the iPad, and has been ever since. Not only that, but I can switch to my iPhone, or to my PC and pick up right where I left off. If I do it quick enough, the game just unpaused when I jump to the new device. And I can travel and still play. There's no way my PC, with its UV reactive liquid cooling is going to travel with me.</p><p>3. Stadia starter kit is optional. Stadia is free. Do you have a controller? Keyboard and mouse? A web browser? You're good. There is no required subscription fee. You buy the games, and they cost the same as console games. So yeah, if you have a device that can run modern browsers, you don't need to buy a console.</p><p>4. I assume when you mention latency, you mean "input latency" - meaning, the time it takes for the game to react to your button press or mouse movement. There are indeed hard limits to how low input latency can be. The game cannot update its entire model and render it in 0ms. It has to make calculations based on your inputs, then show you what changed. But that's not the only constraint. Consider the entire picture: a target on the screen moves, and you need to shoot it. If you're good, it'll take you about 100ms to react. Most people can't react in less than 150ms. It takes 5-10ms to transmit your reaction over USB. It takes the simulation any number of milliseconds to process and tell the monitor to redraw itself. Let's assume the processing time of the game engine is 0ms. The best monitors will add 2ms to the clock.</p><p>So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction.</p><p>And that's on your PC. No networking.</p><p>What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30ms. To be fair, that's what I've seen on my pretty normal cable company internet connection over 5ghz Wifi. With most games, you'd never notice the extra time. Are you going to notice it as a pro gamer playing FPS competitively? Probably.</p><p>Your assertion that Stadia will die is about the most right thing you've said. Even with a market, Google tends to kill things seemingly at random. What will help it die quicker is if Nvidia's service is able to outperform Stadia in terms of simplicity and streaming speeds.</p><p>But saying streaming based gaming won't find a market reminds me a lot of what the cable companies and Blockbuster used to say about Netflix.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071332&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction.<p>People can perceive delays smaller than their reaction window. For argument I'll say it's 50ms is the perceivability barrier, since we seem to throwing numbers around here. I can get 50 or 60 ms lag on my wifi often, and I would say that I have a pretty good connection. So therefore, the input lag potential with stadia is significant. 60 &gt; 50.
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 <a href="vote?id=26072268&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I think the more important fact is that people can be <i>affected</i> by small amounts of latency, even if they can't react that quickly or perhaps even discern that latency is occurring.<p>The obvious example here is a precision platformer like Celeste, but you can say the same (with less and less applicability) to other games, starting with FPS.</p><p>In Celeste, there are a handful of frame-perfect inputs in the game. This means you have less than a 20 ms window to get your input in, or you're dead (the game's only failure state). How is this possible, if human reaction time is only ~100 ms at best? It's because there's a difference between reaction time and <i>timing</i>. Reaction time measures your time-to-react to an unpredictable stimulus. <i>Timing</i> is your reaction to a predictable stimulus. Most of the time in games you are reacting to a stimulus that is at least somewhat predictable.</p><p>So with a little training you can reliably make that frame perfect jump. But if Stadia adds 60 ms of latency, that means your character is over 3 frames ahead of where you think she is. You're going to miss that jump <i>a lot</i> until you can reprogram your brain to account for the latency, as much as possible. And even then you'll probably find it harder. Throw in a little <i>variability</i> to the latency, so you think the character is 3 frames behind but she's actually 4, and you're doomed.</p><p>Granted, not every game is a precision platformer, so there are diminishing returns for low latency in other types of game. But if you, say, enable cross-play between Stadia and non-Stadia in a shooter, the local players are probably going to have a <i>huge</i> advantage. Even making it work against an AI opponent would require some significant work to make the AI's reaction time keyed to Stadia's measurement of latency, not whatever you originally hard-coded into the game.
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 <a href="vote?id=26072126&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You reacting to something is not the same as reacting + seeing the rendered frame.<p>There's an entire chain of things that contribute to latency, and network latency is only one part of that chain.</p><p>From what I've experienced on a pretty normal, non-optimized wifi connection (meaning I just plugged a cheap TP Link router in and did nothing to its default settings), I don't notice the latency that Stadia contributes making any difference compared to whatever amount of latency I get on my capable PC.</p><p>That's not to say network latency doesn't matter. It matters a lot to pro CS:GO players, for example, (who have reaction times in the 130-300ms range, for what it's worth). Those players are will to pay for high poll rate mice to shave off a few milliseconds from input latency, or build $5k+ machines stuff with insanely fast CPUs and GPUs, with $2k+ monitors with 1ms latency.</p><p>But Stadia isn't for that kind of game play.</p><p>Like I said in another comment, the talk around streaming games is almost identical to people who scoffed at services like Netflix when they first started streaming. You had Laserdisc nerds freaking out about how the streaming would produce compression artifacts, and people like Mark Cuban saying that people were crazy to think streaming video was the way to go, (all while pitching his HD satellite service).</p><p>Having used Stadia as a "normal" person might, I'm certain that in the not too distant future, streaming based gaming services will be as mainstream as Netflix is today. Despite whatever compromises it has to make.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071430&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30ms<p>I can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low.</p><p>Latency on speed tests varies between 15 (off peak no load) and 100ms (normal).</p><p>There is no way that by the time that all adds up, stadia is going to be a better experience than local.</p><p>My internet is also shared with other people, in a country with notoriously subpar internet (yay Australia), the closer we get to reality, the less appealing stadia becomes. The kind of game streaming I could get behind is the rainway/local streaming approach where I run the game on local hardware (pc/PS5) and stream to convenient device.
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 <p>&gt; I can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low.<p>OT, but I'm curious, what kind of router do you have? That seems really bad. I tested this on my laptop (over WiFi, in a <i>very</i> heavy traffic apartment building) and see the following:</p><pre><code> 50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 49115ms
 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.751/1.436/5.000/0.812 ms
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I don't say that to brag, I really think that's definitely expected for any LAN device.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I’m on my phone at the moments, so I’ll paste proper numbers when I’m back, but when I tried it last week it was like 18/370/60/1478/etc ms. Bear in mind, this was In the same room as the router.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Finally got a chance to test:<pre><code> 63 packets transmitted, 63 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
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 <a href="vote?id=26087638&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>That's really dreadful, I'm sorry you even have to deal with that. Can you replace the router? Even the cheapest bottom of the barrel router from your local big box store should be able to get a response to you in under 5 ms pretty reliably. (I'm assuming your WiFi / access point is built in to your router.)<p>What model of router is it? This really feels like a situation where something has to be broken, I can't imagine any router, no matter how cheap, has an expected ping rtt maxing out at around 2 seconds. Notably, your minimum rtt is under 2 ms, so it's definitely capable of getting a response to you faster than that, maybe it's just overloaded or something?
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 <a href="vote?id=26071937&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I never said Stadia would be better than local when it comes to latency, though I wouldn't blame you for assuming that's what I meant. Latency will be increased.<p>An argument I was trying to make is that for other reasons, and for a lot of games, Stadia is better than local when you take the entire experience into account. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of where the overall experience is subjectively better. My RTX 3070 based system renders the game and its bugs beautifully, far better than Stadia does. But is that $4500-worth of eye candy worth it compared to the $0.00-worth of totally acceptable Stadia? Lag-wise, I don't notice a difference.</p><p>I prefer playing the game on Stadia now because it's just so simple. I can use a controller or mouse and keyboard with my iPad and play from anywhere in my house. And not just my house - I've played it over a LTE connections several times without issue.</p><p>As far as latency goes - people tend to get hung up network latency when it's only a small part of the latency story. Granted, at 100ms, it becomes a bigger part of the story, but people either don't know about, or forget, that there's more:</p><p>There's peripheral latency, "system" latency (which includes CPU, render queue, and GPU), then display latency for single player games.</p><p>Stadia, or any streaming service, adds network latency. For me, with a pretty normal American internet connection provided by a craptastic provider (because it's the only choice I have), it works great.</p><p>For what it's worth, I've also played with some of the "local" streaming tech. No joke, Stadia performs better than streaming using Steam's local streaming app, by a long shot. There's the iPad app (the name escapes me at the moment) that lets me stream my XBox to the iPad, and it's better, but still way worst than Stadia.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068804&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>One quick nitpick: The latency in streaming isn't as bad as you'd think<p>Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games</p><p>(This obviously doesn't apply to high-end play on twitch shooters or fighting games though, those are pretty much screwed when it comes to streaming)
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 <a href="vote?id=26069723&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt; Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games<p>Source please?</p><p>I have produced / designed / managed a few AAA games in my life and none of them had a 200ms latency between when you pressed a button and something happened on screen. That delay would be horrible for a fighting game or a driving game. How are you even defining "something happening on screen"?</p><p>Let's suppose you are right, that there is a longish latency between when your input is polled and when the game systems fully react. That happens to some extent in RTSs, because changes in the game state are synchronized. But in that case the delay isn't going to hide the network latency, it is going to be added on top of the network latency.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071267&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Worst out of the 23 games listed in the first link has 8 frames of latency at 120 fps, which is about 66ms. Monitor input lag included.<p>200ms, while possible, is far from "most AAA+ games", as OP stated.</p><p>Sure, there's people that play on lowest-end consoles, on a crappy LCD TV with game mode disabled, but let's not consider that the norm for all players/all AAA+ games, and I'm going to need hard sources showing whether those worst case environments get even close to triple digit latencies.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070335&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>They might be talking about engine delay (ie. frame times/framerate) but i've moreso seen delays of 100-150 milliseconds deemed acceptable by people playing console games on an old flat screen TV that doesn't have a low-latency mode available, and I haven't really experienced this on anything other than consoles since even cheap PC monitors tend to have &lt;10ms display lag[0].<p>0: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015WCV70W">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015WCV70W</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070704&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You probably know this 100ms = 10 FPS. What kind of display shows video at less than 10fps? Game engines aren't always synced to frame rates, particularly simulations. But a simulation that updates every 0.1s isn't great for fidelity.<p>A 30 fps game could go through a complete loop, updating everything: object positions, inputs in 33ms. At 60 fps assuming everything is synced to frame rate that would 16 ms.</p><p>I was asking for the commenter's source of information so I didn't have to guess what he or she meant. It's possible to make a game that doesn't respond a user's input in less than 200ms, but why would you? You don't need to be making a technical tour de force to respond in 16-33ms.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070122&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen<p>Absolutely false, and I don't know where you got that from.</p><p>If there was a game that had that kind of latency between input and reaction, people would notice and the reviews would be horrible.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068905&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Wow, I didn't realize it was that high. I stand corrected.<p>I think most of the above still applies, but maybe expand "it'll be good enough for some people" to include some portion of average console-gamers (assuming the rest of the productization is done right, and assuming those console-gamers have fairly good internet)</p><p>The thing is that, even there, if you're putting it on a TV you're likely not going to want to plug in your Macbook or whatever. Which means, if you don't already have a console, you're going to be buying dedicated hardware regardless. Which significantly cuts into the "savings"/"no-purchase" angle, and steepens the question of "what's the point of this?"</p><p>One thought though: Microsoft <i>could</i> use this as a way to keep last-gen console owners engaged. At some future date when the Xbox Series Y or Z or whatever comes out, people with a Series S might still be able to play the latest games by streaming them. They're using dedicated hardware that plugs into a TV, but it's hardware they <i>already bought</i> which is essentially being repurposed.</p><p>Edit: Another thing is that the subscription model and the streaming model don't have to go hand-in-hand. I think game subscriptions are absolutely the future, but I think there will always be a market for devices that download and run those subscribed games locally.
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 <p>At 30 fps a 200ms lag would be over 6 frames of delay between input and the action happening on screen. Can you point to any examples of AAA games that actually have this much input lag?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26075979&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games<p>This is one of the worst parts of game Streaming - games potentially being designed around it, making them worse for everyone else.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068890&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You don't need to buy a Stadia controller to play Stadia.<p>It's free with an optional subscription for games and 4k.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068919&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The confusing messaging around that question has been a big part of the problem<p>Regardless though, I think buying full-priced games that you don't actually own is the real non-starter. These aren't $0.99 songs on iTunes; these are $60 investments.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069856&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>i'd like to think even a middling engineer would be able to recognize an intractable infrastructure problem that is entirely out of their hands. stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as well. space age technology does not mean shit if your customers are still in the age of horse and buggy.<p>terraria also highlights the utter absurdity of game streaming. it can and has been ported to practically every relevant device and costs less than a big mac. google invented a billion dollar laser to cook microwave popcorn.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070458&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as well<p>To add a layer of situational irony here: Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractable
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 <a href="vote?id=26070586&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractable<p>This failure was more political in nature though, the technical solution is there
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 <p>And we arrive at the premise. They can build the tech, but they can't be bothered to navigate the social dynamics that make up the rest of the world.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>While the local politics are certainly an issue, their quirky micro-trenching methodology was also clearly a failure</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26073799&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The problem with Stadia is that it's a platform geared for AAA games, but doesn't provide much value for them. It can provide good value for more casual games/gamers, but Google's ego means the service isn't geared for casuals.<p>When I write Stadia doesn't provide much value for AAA games, we need to look at it from both the gamer and the dev side. For gamers, if money was no object, one is better off with either a decked-out PC (better performance) or a console (wider variety). Stadia's main advantage is potentially being cheaper - which is precisely the gaming crowd which doesn't attract AAA gamedev companies.</p><p>For AAA developers, they need to port their game to a different API, then pay the Google tax, in order to appear on a small platform whose users are often drawn in by being cheap and are <i>less</i> likely to pay for your product.</p><p>There's no technical advantage for AAA - now that Google has closed their studios, nobody will try to make features that are only possible in cloud gaming in Stadia. If Google couldn't, can you? What happens when you ran into a problem, can you handle Google "support"?</p><p>Stadia could be good for casuals. Except it doesn't have any good discoverability features or even a search bar. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't need discoverability, but indies or anyone searching for them really do. Its payment model (direct 'purchase', no gamepass) is OK for AAA, but not as a good for casuals. And of course, one still needs to port the game which can be difficult and relatively expensive for indies (Luna is just a VM by comparison).</p><p>Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model.</p><p>So Stadia is geared for AAA games/gamers, but doesn't provide good features for AAA, and even Google itself couldn't manage to make cloud-gaming-only features. Stadia can be useful for casual gaming, but the platform just isn't geared for that, and Google is unlikely to change that. Likely result is cancellation within a few years.
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 <a href="vote?id=26079966&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model.<p>There are also many prestigious and lucrative engineering goals at Google that are totally untouchably intractable because money is involved. The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review. If an established app is deluged by negative reviews, take a look at what’s happening. It’s either become a Trojan horse or a victim of 3rd world scamware competition. The average review for an app does not go from 4.5 stars to 1.5 stars overnight without cause!</p><p>Attempting to address this glaring deficiency leads to the following problem: the other engineers who rallied to solve it, in the past, are no longer with Google. Do you like your job? Find a technical problem with no downside, in that case!!!!!!
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 <a href="vote?id=26088204&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review.<p>The last sentence is key: 'for human review'. Google feels humans are damage to be routed around. If there was a way to everything in ML they'd go for it, but if your solution requires human review it's a no-go.
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 <p>my friend at Google reported almost exactly that: it's an amazing technical achievement, really pushes the cutting edge of what's possible. And the sales and marketing have no idea how to do anything with it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069916&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Stadia works amazingly well which was actually surprising. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 4k with just a controller and Chromecast stick is frankly amazing.<p>Consoles are great if you play enough, but I found that every time I could squeeze an hour here or there to play, the Xbox needed to update yet again for 20 minutes, and by then something else has come up and I am out.</p><p>Stadia lets you jump in and out, no updates as far as I have seen, and just magically works.</p><p>Disclaimer: I don't work for Google or any of the game studios and was actually skeptical they could solve the latency challenge.
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 <p>Slightly OT but you deal with the updates issue by leaving it running in rest mode all the time. When something needs updating the console will get a ping, download + install, and go back to sleep. Makes things much easier.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>they need an experience that sells the actual upsides of game streaming in the same way that mario 64 sold 3d movement and the analog stick. 
'here's popular game except worse' will never be a winnable pitch. even casual users who don't know what latency means will instinctively recognize that all the games just feel kind of shitty to play. you need a tailor made experience where latency is a much more negligible factor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>To be fair, that described Google Glass as well and look where that product went.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069538&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>This is not just Google. All other tech companies including Facebook are using the same system to promote workers. As a result:<p>* Nobody is held accountable for the long term success of the product. Making little things work nice is not rewarded. Maintaining UX is defiantly not rewarded.</p><p>* Rewarding process over product. That's why you see so many Google products shut down. It takes a few people from L7 to L8 to build it and rewards someone from L6 to L7 to wind it down. Every annual performance review in the process is all roses and rainbows!
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 <a href="vote?id=26070201&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.<p>This goes well beyond Stadia - Google has an air of institutional contempt for humans, especially humans who aren't inside Google. Dealing with humans who are struggling with getting bounced by "the algorithm" is something they simply aren't interested in.
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 <p>I think that their higher tier promotion system is partly to blame, and could be easily fixed. As I understand it, at a certain management level, the most effective way to pad out your promotion packet is to launch a new product. These packets are judged by an anonymous review board. This board could change the culture overnight by updating the criteria to reward managers that grow products or retain paid customers. Heck, if they just updated the definition of a successful launch to include a year+ of operation &amp; growth or even just a proper roadmap, we might start to see and end to the usual pattern.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069589&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I wonder if it's the lack of a single founder?<p>Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk - founders at the top who owned it.</p><p>More directly, Gabe Newell and Valve.</p><p>It might be that google started with Page/Brin and co-ownership might have weakened that a bit, and now they are not to be found.</p><p>Not that a single founder is a surefire recipe.
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 <a href="vote?id=26074973&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, "Paypal Mafia", For valve Mike Harrington would like to have a word with you.<p>Bill, Steve, Elon, Gabe, were never alone masterminds and definitely not single founders because in companies they created there always was someone else who had shares.
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 <a href="vote?id=26074984&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Sort of, but it's really a goog HR problem.<p>That you can only be promoted by creating new things (even if entirely useless) and not by maintaining and supporting existing things (that customers actually want) is an HR problem.
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 <a href="vote?id=26084721&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem.<p>I can recommend reading In The Plex. Quite literally the founders wanted to invert the usual model and put engineers first. There were some anecdotes from those in roles like marketing and so on that they felt like second class citizens.
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 <p>Quite ironic that it's an engineering company and stuff doesn't work how it's supposed to so often. I'm looking at you, Google Cloud :P</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063313&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don't even exist.<p>You could of course sue Google, but that's an extremely expensive and time-consuming option, rarely worth it for a mere consumer. Going to court certainly won't make your suspended account become unsuspended any quicker.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064700&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You know it’s funny that lots of the basic functions of business with consumers (eg, ability to return items) were set and codified in the US as the Uniform Commercial Code [0] that was established in 1952. Before then it was wild and variable.<p>What’s really interesting is that it seems like of hacker-like in how it was implemented. It was published as a guide and then states passed laws to implement.</p><p>Reminds me of a de facto standard that is then implemented by vendors.</p><p>I suppose we could start up some form of Uniform Consumer Commercial Code (UC3) that set up practices that are good that could then be passed by states.</p><p>I shudder to think through all the arguments about how it would specify some “don’t be evil on social cause X” that it almost smarts my conspiracy brain that the “corporations” started this trend to bikeshed/scissor statement society so they can’t make meaningful economic and commercial policy.</p><p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=26065529&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The problem with this sort of thing is that because it's interstate commerce, states usually do not have standing to regulate effectively.<p>The Federal government struggles to implement new regulatory authority because of political challenges. Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!"), biased against marginalized minority or cultural groups ("My marginalized constituency of blind, alcoholic yak herders have a religious prohibition against reading contracts"), or a unfair mandate restraint of trade ("The Chamber of Meme Commerce believes that this rule will cost 10,000,000 jobs in the meme industry and kill puppies."), etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067724&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>This was addressed in the UCC and is pretty simple actually as each state implements laws to saw who has jurisdiction and how to handle.<p>It also bypasses the federal government in that the code is established by some big council and implemented in (most) states.</p><p>That’s why when I live in Missouri and buy something from a vendor in New York, they still have to accept returns, issue refunds, provide for basic warranties, etc. and if I have problems I can easily get remediation in state courts.</p><p>There’s 50+ years of where this works ok. Not perfect and lots of room for improvement. But better than the current shitshow that exists like this article describes. If we had the minimum level of legal structure, it would be so helpful.</p><p>Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”</p><p>Google’s free (and even non-free) services are causing harm to people and aren’t being supported.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067881&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”<p>Why does the UCC covers free knives, but not paid Google services?
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 <p>Because Google One, for example, is a service governed by a contract which details performance expectations.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26071320&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>All products have a warranty of merchantability defined by UCC. Basically goods need to be average/expected quality.<p>With services it’s a little different because there is no average unless the contract is missing performance terms. If you agree to a term of performance, then that is the obligation.
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 <a href="vote?id=26066049&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>If it was sold to a resident in some state online currently that resident can sue in the local courts. The business is considered to operate in all states.<p>The alternative is all suits under ~$75k(?) don't get heard because they don't meet the requirements for federal court, which obviously can't be right.
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 <p>I suspect that the major tech providers are so pervasive that the impacts of account-locking span all party lines.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26067070&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!")<p>This is just an awful example. There is not a free speech right to pay for your own speech by committing crimes, and nobody claims or would claim that there is. Similarly, you don't see the argument made that vendors enjoy the constitutional right to sell fake pills. What spammers want to do, and what anti-spammers want to stop them from doing, is to advertise real pills, and yes, there are extensive free speech implications <i>there</i>.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069306&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The EU recently proposed The Digital Services Act, which is a DCMA like legislation (with both copyright infringement and other illegal content like CP as targets).<p>Part of that draft law pretty clearly states that companies must have a proper appeal process for banned accounts. This would apply to "decisions taken by the online platform on the ground that the information provided by the recipients is illegal content or incompatible with its terms and conditions", which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans.</p><p>They must provide details of what part of the Terms of Service they claim you violated: "where the decision is based on the alleged incompatibility of the information with the terms and conditions of the provider, a reference to the contractual ground relied on and explanations as to why the information is considered to be incompatible with that ground".</p><p>If the internal appeals process fails, the consumer can take the company to online binding arbitration (with the consumer's choice of accredited arbitrators certified by the member state). The company always pays its own costs in the process, and must reimburse the user's costs if the company loses.
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 <p>Claiming that "an indefinite suspension" is just a type of temporary suspension and different from a ban will have you laughed out of any actual court.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26068327&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Agreed. We generally allow companies to refuse service for nearly any reason, and in most cases this is a good policy. However, there are exceptions to that rule. One extreme are utilities which as both monopolies and essential services are required to do business with nearly any paying customer, and have strict rules processes about shutting of service for lack of payment. Residential rentals are another example. They don't hold a monopoly, but are an essential service, and as such they can generally choose who to do business with (although not quite as freely as your average business), but have strict legal processes they have to follow regarding evictions.<p>I think there are online business who are essential enough that some consumer protections are applicable. Very few reach the level of monopoly that utilities have in my mind, and even those it isn't clear to me that they are "natural" monopoly like utilities, and as such other antitrust approaches may be more beneficial.</p><p>However, I think there are a number of competitive, yet essential services online that deserve a legal protections regarding service termination. Identity providers absolutely fall in that category IMO - it is unacceptable for example for Facebook to lock your account in a manner that prevents you from not only using their services but every other third-party service which you authenticate using "Logon with Facebook". I think email is another that rises to this level. At a minimum email providers should be required to forward mail for a fixed period of time after choosing to stop doing business with a customer.
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 <p>I think there also needs to be a law that, once you have accepted responsibility for storing someone else's data, that you can't delete it "on a whim" without offering some minimum retention period ok your data. As an example: a storage facility is allowed to stop doing business with me, but they legally can't just destroy all my stuff on a moment's notice... we have laws for minimum retention periods.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Also if you violate the storage facilities rules and they cancel the lease, they can't turn off the electricity at your house just because they happen to have the same parent company.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063945&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The Kafka solution to this will be our terms of service prohibit single spacing after periods and you are in violation. Therefore we can terminate your account at any time of our choosing.<p>Alternately we could prohibit posting in any language other than Latin and Klingon, or using the letter e, or accessing our services using any unapproved operating system (and our only approved OS is windows 3.11 with winsock drivers).</p><p>Anyway the point is now the company can ban you for any reason at all. Being the wrong religion, voting for the wrong candidate, being the wrong race, etc.
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 <p>Not just "can", but "will". And given how effectively these companies are using their size and power (and m-word) to crush the competition, it's long past time for some anti-trust action.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063865&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies<p>I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary.</p><p>If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.</p><p>They do this stuff because people _need_ them and they know that people won't just drop them en mass.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064854&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.<p>Its also <i>possible</i> to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068880&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>If you are equating a world without Facebook to a world without running water, you need to spend a week camping, where you leave your phone at home.<p>You'll very quickly discover why they are not at all alike.
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 <p>Oh if you think running water is important, try growing up in a desert. You will quickly realize still water is enough. WTF is this line of logic?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070282&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>1. I'm not sure you understand what running water means. It's not water that flows down a river, it's water that comes from a tap. The whole point of running water is that a utility delivers it to your home, regardless of whether or not your town is in a rain forest, or the middle of a desert.<p>2. You'll die in three days without water. You'll probably be healthier if you spent three days without Facebook.</p><p>3. I can't collect water for myself where I live. I suppose I <i>could</i> walk down to the lake, and manually bring up a few buckets of water, but it won't be safe for me to drink. I suppose I can also go buy bottled water, at a ~million-percent markup. There is no economic alternative for me to get water, other than through the water pipes laid to my apartment, by my water utility. I am a <i>completely</i> captive customer for my utility. My water utility has monopoly control of special-purpose one-of-a-kind infrastructure that is used to deliver water to my apartment. <i>That</i> is why my utility is regulated.</p><p>4. Unlike with my tap water, there are plenty of functioning alternatives to... Whatever it is that Facebook does for me. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, my life would be mildly disrupted for a week or two, and then would go on with little change.</p><p>On the hierarchy of needs, we have air at the top, followed closely by water, shelter, and food, followed at some distance by electricity, and way down the street, that we can barely make out, by grabbing a pair of binoculars, we will see 'Facebook'.</p><p>It's just not that important.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068888&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Why not? The qualification being for public utility should be "is this basic infrastructure humans need to live now?". And the answer is yes. Facebook controls most of the big public speaking forums and google controls so much and in so many spaces that it would be foolish for me to even try listing.<p>I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities.</p><p>I don't see the impediment here.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069363&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities.<p>Water/Sewage and Trash are typically run by the city/county government, although it is common for the actual work to be handled by a contracted company.</p><p>Power, natural gas, phone, and most others is almost always a private company.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071081&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>No traditional utility company does what Google has routinely shown to do as in the original post though. There's still a bill to pay and expectations of reasonable service (I assume if I just left my tap on and drew as just electricity as I could I'd eventually get some phone calls and massive bills) that allows these companies to be profitable.<p>Google isn't at the point it needs to be nationalized, but something needs to be done to limit the fallout that occurs when users are kicked off essential services with no recourse.
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 <p>In reality, there is no impediment to designating Google as a public utility other than the elected representatives making it so.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064753&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Antitrust regulation.<p>Seriously, the only reason Google is unaccountable is its scale. Otherwise "Google but with customer support" would be an obvious market opportunity. And the only reason losing your Google account is so impactful is that it controls everything from access to apps on your phone to your email to your calendar to being able to chat with friends. It's theoretically possible to vote with your wallet against Google, but far harder than against, say, Chick-fil-A, which means no boycott gets further than an HN comment.</p><p>No startup can compete with Google for those services because Google can <i>artificially</i> offer them for free, and for very high quality, because it's all funded by their advertising business. (Not to mention that a startup would <i>have</i> to "do things that don't scale" and offer real customer support... which also costs money.)</p><p>It's not a fair market at that point - you can't say Google is surviving because they offer the best value to customers, simply because the value is so disconnected from the service being offered. And in the other direction, potential customers like me who mostly avoid Google are still "paying" for it in that we're still seeing (and being tracked by) Google ads.</p><p>Every incentive mechanism behind the underlying assumptions of a market-based economy - that companies that provide more value are more likely to succeed in the market - is completely broken when you allow trusts like Alphabet to exist.
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 <p>Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26065044&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; You could self host your own email<p>You can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with).</p><p>My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.
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 <a href="vote?id=26065272&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it.<p>We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing <i>just</i> our email servers. They are a massive PITA.
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 <p>I have self-hosted E-mail for myself and my family for years, probably close to a decade now--I lost count. It's a learning curve at first but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch. Occasionally, like once every two years or so, I find my spam filter process crashed and failed to relaunch or something, causing delivery delays.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26068664&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>"...but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch"<p>...until your upstream changes something.
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 <p>No, also people who host themselves and enjoy the hobby time and don't understand how the general public lives.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That is a very, very limited scope for Google/Facebook. Almost to the point of me suspecting you are strawmanning it. In fact, google/facebook is so endemic to our infrastructure that you can literally delete you google account. Get it scrubbed from the internet, they will still track you. Identify you. And show you ads. If you try to block their services, some pages stop functioning. It is on the verge of impossible to escape them</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26066080&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>OK, you can lead your "resistance" to big tech your way.<p>Meanwhile, I'll be pushing my representative for regulatory action.
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 <a href="vote?id=26140627&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention.<p>IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064086&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; drop them en mass<p>The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.</p><p>And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064513&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.<p>And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.
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 <a href="vote?id=26066025&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott.<p>Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068743&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible.<p>There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc.</p><p>Discoverability is really the only problem left.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063374&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You're not seeing the other side of the coin - the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove. If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will) there will be far more spam going around the Internet.<p>Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.</p><p>(I am offering no solutions here, for I know none)
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 <a href="vote?id=26063744&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I think this is a convenient narrative for an abusive pattern of behavior by Google. The company is infamous for having non-existent customer service. It's not a matter of their AI having too many false positives, it's that when there is a false positive you have literally no recourse even if you're a well known business partner.<p>Are we really going to believe that Google, one of the highest grossing companies in the world, doesn't have the money to provide even basic level customer service? If it were really a matter of not being able to afford it, certainly they could offer it for a fee. No, they're stubbornly refusing to address the issues, relying on this lie, and using their market dominance to avoid having to answer for it.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063862&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Technically they do offer customer service if you pay them with their Google One product. I have phone numbers and human access very quickly, because I pay for it.<p>Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063903&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.<p>Which they will do literally on a whim. Who are you going to call then?
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 <a href="vote?id=26063399&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will)<p>It's not a request, it's a requirement. If your account is suspended, you deserve an explanation. You should get one without having to request it.</p><p>I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063446&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I heard on a podcast recently that a trading system needs to keep logs of why a particular trade was executed for several years just in case the authority wants it. So it isn't too much effort to build a similar report or log of behaviour to explain why someone was banned.<p>Obviously this will also help the spammers who will use this information to get around the filters.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063956&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Complete speculation because I don't actually know how this works, but I wonder if the explanation would be something like this:<p>"You've been banned because our black box ML algorithm says your usage patterns share similar traits to those of known spammers."
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 <p>Some government decisions are indirectly forbidden from using black box "algorithms" because they are obligated by law to explain (on demand) the steps that the algorithm took to reach its decision. Maybe something like this should also apply to some private companies ?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064426&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Thats kinda what the PayPal support told me when I asked why half of my in-store payments via Google Pay get rejected.<p>Most were payments of about 2€ in the same store next to work.</p><p>Whatever I dont use it anymore
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 <p>For the record, they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time, to avoid getting caught. Same as with anticheat software.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063660&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time<p>We've heard this excuse countless times, but it's simply not acceptable. The foundation of our legal system is that it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person. How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?
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 <p>This isnt criminal law. This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that (e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people out) but for the most part a business that doesnt want your business doesnt have to serve you, right or wrong.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063919&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This isnt criminal law.<p>Not yet, but that's my whole point, it needs to be: It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.</p><p>You can't really compare getting kicked out of a bar with losing access to your gmail. There are no "algorithms" automatically kicking innocent people out of bars. Getting kicked out of a bar is a direct human interaction, which is exactly what I'm demanding.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063878&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The reason people are incensed about FAANGMP doing so is because, in their respective markets, they're monopolies.<p>No one would care if Google banning a developer meant they could list their app through a non-Play app store with decent exposure, or a non-App Store at all.</p><p>But that's not the reality we live in.</p><p>So it's more like if Walmart moved into my podunk town, put all the local shops out of business, and then banned me.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063913&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Hmmmm. I thought it was Apple that banned sideloading.<p>Maybe Google kicked this guy out for the same reason they fired off their own Stadia devs.
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 <p>There is speculation that Google will ban sideloading in the near future, too. That is, it will extend its Advanced Protection model to mass-market Android. Then, sideloading will only be possible for that tiny minority of nerds like us who know how to use ADB and install an .apk over the command line.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064154&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think the "but you can" rounding error alternate Android app stores and side-loading constitute a viable developer alternative. *<p>* Except in China, in which case it's only true for their domestic Android market
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 <a href="vote?id=26064297&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out.<p>Not exactly?</p><p>It's certainly not criminal law. Proof beyond reasonable doubt has no place here.</p><p>But it's also not exactly the relationship between a host and guest, where the guest has no rights save what the host grants. Website terms of service purport to be contracts, so there is a contractual rather than ex gratia basis for the relationship.</p><p>So, begin interpreting website terms of service as contracts of adhesion, and read in a duty for website operators to enforce those terms fairly, with a reasonable basis (on the balance of probabilities) for harmful decisions.</p><p>This isn't the <i>current</i> law, of course, but it's not hard to imagine the law reaching that place from here.
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 <p>But then they should be required to refund your purchases, fx in the app store or their movie store.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063930&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;&gt;e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people out<p>Well they can, just not for the sole reason of being black...</p><p>&gt;&gt;This isnt criminal law.</p><p>No it is Civil Tort law, but that does not mean your rights are completely removed, nor that principle does not apply</p><p>&gt;&gt;This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that</p><p>Absolutely, and those limits are normally set either by over riding civil / businessl law passed the government, or a contract entered into by 2 parties</p><p>The problem with Google and many other online platforms is their ToS (their contract) is sooooooo one side that IMO it should be considered an unconscionable contract thus void and unenforeable.</p><p>Also we have things like Truth in Advertising laws, many times these platforms Public messaging, and advertisement in no way match their terms of service</p><p>I am fully in support of the right of a private business to choose who they want to do business with. I am not however in favor of allowing business to use marketing manipulation, false advertisement, and unconscionable contracts in the form of ClickWrapped Terms of Service to abuse the public</p><p>the "mah private business" defense is a weak one, very weak, and it is telling that people defending the large companies with this defense often times do not support it in other contexts.</p><p>Google has every right to choose who it does business with, but it need to make those choices in transparent, and public manner.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063847&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>the legal system deals with a finite number of people; the internet enables that finite number of people to act as a potentially infinite number of entities, without a great way of disaggregating them into people.<p>E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.</p><p>This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users. So one way or another people who are real, legitimate and with good intentions somehow pay the cost of the harm that is being done on the internet. This is a hard problem.</p><p>Source: am thinking/working on this sort of stuff; not representing my employer, my opinions are my own etc. etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064230&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users.<p>A way to square this circle is to have rights engage at the point of payment.</p><p>A truly pseudonymous account with no monetization (going either way) has little intrinsic value, and less need for KYC-like identification.</p><p>On the other hand, an account with some sort of payment history (either giving money in the case of purchases or receiving money in the case of developers/website hosts placing advertising) faces a higher standard. There's a reasonable probability of real economic harm if the account is nuked arbitrarily, and at the same time any money flow is open to theft or money laundering concerns, triggering moral if not legal KYC obligations.</p><p>The latter should also help prevent the proliferation of straw bad actors, since providing payment imposes a direct cost, while the KYC rules open up the possibility of more direct action for flagrant breaches of contract / use of the platform for other abuses.</p><p>The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.
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 <a href="vote?id=26065037&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.<p>Maybe. A few problems here:</p><p>1. payments come with privacy concerns, unless maybe you're talking about zero-knowledge-based blockchains, but we're a LONG way from such functionality being widespread</p><p>2. $0.001/email is actually very reasonable for an attacker; they'd probably gladly pay even up to $1 or more, depending on their exact needs, <i>especially</i> if that comes with an elevated privileges account</p><p>3. all of this is easily defeated by fanouts. E.g. if they sign up with bob@gmail.com and then are able to use bob+1@gmail.com, bob+2@gmail.com etc. to sign up for a different service, this defeats the purpose
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 <a href="vote?id=26065292&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.<p>Again, it's not a "request".</p><p>If spam detection and account suspension can be automated, then suspension notifications can also be automated.</p><p>I'm not sure I understand where the 10 million number is coming from. Are you suggesting that 1 spammer can create 10 million accounts on your system (which appears to be Facebook)?</p><p>Regardless, no spammer has the time to get on the phone and personally dispute 10 million account suspensions — disputes which are unlikely to succeed if there is good evidence — so I'm not sure how the system grinds to a halt.
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 <a href="vote?id=26065774&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?<p>&gt; Again, it's not a "request" [..] suspension notifications can also be automated.</p><p>Can you clarify what you mean by "protecting" them? I'm not sure suspension notifications qualify as meaningful protection
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 <a href="vote?id=26065946&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>This was specified in my original comment: "At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations." <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063313">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063313</a><p>Except for the part where someone has to answer phone calls, it could be automated if the account suspension itself is automated.</p><p>I'll also point out my later comment: "I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever." <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063399">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063399</a></p><p>And to forestall any replies that providing information to suspended accounts would help the spammers, I've already responded to that point: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063660">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063660</a></p><p>Temporary account suspensions that you can quickly reverse on appeal are annoying but could be justified to fight abuse, as long as they don't happen too often. On the other hand, indefinite account suspensions that are impossible to reverse, such as the case of Andrew Spinks of Terraria, are simply indefensible, there's no justification whatsoever for that.
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 <a href="vote?id=26066055&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.<p>This is absolutely spot on, with the caveat that you do need to disaggregate from accounts to people, which is the hard problem. Having people call a phone number is definitely not going to work as a way of achieving this disaggregation. I'm pretty sure I could create a system to bring that call center to a halt with fairly minimal cost in less than a week of coding.</p><p>As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.
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 <a href="vote?id=26066354&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.<p>I think we may be talking about different things? I was just talking about a scaling problem of providing legal notifications of account suspensions and providing a means on getting them unsuspended. I wasn't talking about DoS attacks.</p><p>Lots of companies have call centers, so I'm not sure what you're envisioning here, or what financial gain there would be for spammers to DoS the call center. After all, their accounts are already getting suspended by the algorithms, regardless of whether innocent consumers have any appeal to this, and DoSing the call center won't help spammers get their accounts unsuspended.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063905&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Out of curiosity, what's current thinking (broad strokes) on methods to address this?<p>My first guess would be third-party attestation of identity, with stored credential disposal on a short schedule? Essentially normal-user-verification-as-a-service?
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 <a href="vote?id=26065069&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>privacy, online safety, no false positives<p>Pick two.</p><p>Different companies do different trade-offs. The optimal solution depends on how the internet community weighs each individual axis
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 <a href="vote?id=26063717&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>When someone is in court on charges of child abuse, maybe we don't want them to know in case they (After serving their sentence) or their friends go for reprisals. Maybe the next child abuser might know their likely avenue of getting caught. Yet still we tell them the charges and evidence and give them a chance to defend themselves. Often in my country, given the damage such allegations could cause to both the victim and alleged (but not yet proven) perpetrator, we don't even reveal the identities of culprits until there's a guilty verdict.<p>If we can extend that courtesy to people accused of child abuse, surely we should extend it to people accused of internet spam?
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 <p>I imagine if that happen in real courts. And You got jail without any info on why on how to evade - or You will behave properly on not go in jail</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well it would still be better, because it's at least documented what kind of activity will lead into that.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You don't have to tell them how you detected them but you can tell them what they did wrong. A lot of times when these cases come up there is nothing in the reason you got banned that would help you avoid the ban. It's purely to avoid any kind of accountability (if they say you got banned for a reason that is plainly not true because their algorithms suck)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It would also give non-spammers a better understanding of why they were banned and teach them to be better humans. It’s this lack of empathy that’s leading to more and more anger online.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063807&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I think we give up on that when we agree to the rule<p>Google has the right to suspend, remove your account without prior notice</p><p>I'm sure there should be a clause like that in their TOS
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 <a href="vote?id=26063890&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>This is an age old problem in the criminal justice system. A solved problem.<p>After a lot of trials with various approaches, we settled on letting some criminals go free over convicting someone on weak evidence. Second we decided that trials should be open and evidence viewable by default.</p><p>Finally you generally have the option to give some security to stay out of jail during trial.</p><p>Closing a google account is a punishment worse than many criminal convictions. And will only get more important as we progress to an all digital existence.
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 <a href="vote?id=26065297&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.<p>Hire them directly instead of via labor farms, pay them an actual living wage, give them full health benefits, <i>and hire enough of them to prevent overload</i>.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063536&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove.<p>Maybe allowing single service providers to capture several billions of users is the problem here.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063618&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Perhaps the process should cost $100 or $500, so that actual spammers can’t use it<p>Maybe they really just need to offer a paid account option with real support, since that has much better incentives
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 <p>No need in charges.
Strong person identification via Passport or Bank. Limit those request per identified person or throttle them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063708&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>There is a paid option: for $6/month you can use gmail with your own domain name. It's targeted at businesses but you can use it as an individual.<p><a href="https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html">https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html</a></p><p>It includes support, but I'm not sure if that helps in cases where google thinks you have abused the service. I just use it because I like having my own domain, and so that I don't lose access to my email if google locks me out. The idea is that I can update my domain's MTX records and use another email service.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063906&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Support does not include if your account gets suspended or if you lose access.<p>We had a paid Google App account. One of our workers would only login from their computer. It died, and she tried to login from the new computer. It gave a unrecognized machine error, and we had to hire someone to resuscitate the old computer for her.</p><p>I know of a company that had the entire companies' accounts suspended without warning because one user did something that violated their terms, but they could not figure out what. The company lost three months of revenue from it and I am not sure if it caused bankruptcy. No help at all from G.
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 <p>About a year ago, I started migrating to a vanity domain, currently hosted at Google, for this reason. If I get locked out of Google, I lose my history, but at least I can move to another provider and avoid being locked out of my life for the indefinite future.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Friendly reminder to anybody reading this with a Google account: it's not a perfect solution, but head over to Google Takeout and grab a dump of your account data while you're thinking of it. I did one last year, and at the same time reconfigured my phone camera roll to back up somewhere outside the Google ecosystem, so now all I'm missing is an up to date email mirror.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Meta: my comment above is being downvoted significantly. I'm not sure what I did to offend. There was a remark about the need for a paid option, and I pointed out that it already exists. I have no agenda here and was just sharing what I know.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I suspect it might be because the OP is about getting your account locked out, and several commenters have said that even paid accounts lose access to human support when they're locked out, so it's not actually a solution.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069302&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>But surely it’s possible to use methods other than what currently seems to be the first and only solution: “your account has been banned, bye”.<p>For example, if an automated system thinks an account is sending spam, enforcing a (very low) outgoing email rate limit would be a much more reasonable first step.
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 <a href="vote?id=26072623&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>So just start charging for service, and keep a non-refundable deposit for spam/abuse.<p>Let every abuser requests those explanations, if the decision doesn't change, the money is still kept, which <i>funds</i> that service.
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 <p>no if the AI can be used to automate the banning it can be used to provide the electronic news email of the rule violated.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well their main argument against it is that if you don't tell scammers which rule exactly they are breaking they can't improve until the app is approved. But of course that hits normal customers too. It's the equivalent of arresting random people on the street and not telling them why - surely, innocent people will just get their lawyer to free them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26063863&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>So what is the proper Blackstone's ratio for you in these situation?<p>Is 1000 innocents ok to punish as long as 1 spam message is stopped?
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 <a href="vote?id=26070218&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.<p>It isn't the only solution to this problem. Not using their products is another one. However, in some sectors (e.g. smartphones) it is next to impossible to not use their products, especially because they are build on centralized schemes. But regulating those things is probably harder than a consumer rights bill. But the downside is probably, that a consumer rights bill would not just affect the few large corporations, but many smaller ones too.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063342&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;<i>You could of course sue Google</i><p>Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.
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 <a href="vote?id=26063405&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.<p>Which would be meaningless in the EU (I think. Possibly just Germany) as you can’t waive that right.
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 <p>It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064870&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.<p>For consumers or businesses? Not being nitpicky here: I am not familiar with the French ruling, so I would genuinely want to know - as regulations tend to differ (businesses, even single sole trader ones, do not enjoy consumer protections). Not really relevant for the Terraria dev as it is his personal account that is banned, from the sound of it - but important.
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 <p>As a consumer, every time the clause is not specifically negotiated, it is considered "abusive" and void (for businesses it may be different). If as a consumer you negotiate a contract with an arbitration clause it will be enforceable however if it is a generic clause in the terms&amp; condition it will not.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26076155&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; For consumers or businesses?<p>For consumers. Businesses are considered to have both more (legal) resources to conduct deals as well as a need for more flexibility. However in this case this sounds like the account was personal, so even if it was used for business purposes, the deal was personal. In Europe (France here) typically the distinction is not in the use but in the contracting party.</p><p>A business is registered with tax authorities and has an identifying number, if you contract a service without such a number you're doing so personally so for such purposes you're a consumer and bound by consumer laws. Indeed, all registration forms for services ask you for that number and business address. Services that don't want to / can't be subject to consumer protection laws or are not allowed to sell to private individuals require that number and verify it. Services that allow both individuals and businesses ask for it and may treat you differently based on it.
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 <p>Forced arbitration is against French law. Google cannot force you to go to a specific company for arbitration (that, conveniently enough, happens to always rule in their favor). It has to be explicitly negotiated between the two parties. This also holds true for companies. It has to be explicitly negotatied.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I <i>think</i> in Germany it would be legal for businesses. B2B contracts allow most things that are illegal in a B2C context.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that U.S. courts have found that suing is a right that can't be waived by contract. Certainly an agreement to enter arbitration can be introduced as evidence against you in a a lawsuit, but any decent lawyer should be able to prevent an arbitration agreement from getting your lawsuit thrown out.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's not an accurate description of current consumer arbitration precedent in the US.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Its not fair when you have to get attention on twitter before getting issues like this resolved. Some of us don't use twitter for one thing</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think we’re in a post consumer lawsuit era. Almost every terms of service on earth requires arbitration, or else absolves the vendor of any liability whatsoever</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Arbitration isn't so bad. It still costs the company every time they have to deal with a case.
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 <a href="vote?id=26066944&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.<p>Nope. That gives players like Google a platform to negotiate from now and in the future, and it won't curb abuses long term. These abuses are a symptom of economic concentration and a lack of competitive markets. The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067024&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.<p>Why not both?</p><p>A consumer bill of rights and breaking up Google are not mutually exclusive. Consumer protection laws protect consumers from all companies big and small, present and future. Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".</p><p>It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067260&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated. We have utility designations for instances where it makes sense, and even then you see customer abuses. Forcing companies to focus on competition and survival is the best way to make sure they treat their customers well. Abuses pop up when customers don't have the choice to take their business elsewhere.<p>&gt; Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".</p><p>The same regulator that has the power to break them up also has the power to prevent the next Google. Good pricing regulations have the power to prevent the next Google. These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately.</p><p>&gt; It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.</p><p>That's probably because it wasn't successful in the classical sense. Geroge Bush won the 2000 election and settled the case before it went to judgment. If it had, and Microsoft had been forced to break up, we may not be in the current situation.
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 <a href="vote?id=26067533&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated.<p>The Bill of Rights were written over 200 years ago and could really use a rewrite for modern times, but passing constitutional amendments is much more difficult than passing laws. Moreover, the issues involved in the Bill of Rights are much more contentious, whereas pretty much everyone is annoyed by Google's complete lack of customer service.</p><p>I also find this statement to be somewhat at odds with your later statement: "These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately." How does your Bill of Rights analogy not also apply to your own argument about antitrust?</p><p>I would say that consumer protection laws that can be applied in an ongoing, daily basis are better than antitrust laws, because antitrust enforcement is a monumental task that at best can take years to achieve, only comes into play when problems have already gotten out of hand, and may not have the desired results, as you mentioned. Better to try to prevent some of the problems from occurring in the first place, with laws that apply to all companies without exception, instead of trying to just go after a few of the current biggest troublemakers.</p><p>And Google is far from the only company who pulls this crap, so at the very least we would need <i>multiple</i> successful antitrust actions.</p><p>Right to repair is a similar issue. So, breaking up Google and Facebook might help somewhat with the account suspension issue, but then we also have to break up Apple. And John Deere! And other companies. Or... we could pass right to repair laws. Antitrust feels a lot like Whac-A-Mole to me. Not that antitrust is bad, but you knock down one BigCo, and another arises. Why not more directly address the abuses caused by the BigCos?
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 <a href="vote?id=26067845&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The abuse is economic concentration, everything else is treating symptoms. Antitrust, price regulations, fair competition laws and the like are the remedy to that abuse. Obviously we would need to do more than one action - I'm talking about restructuring the economy. It's only whack-a-mole if you go one at a time. Knock-off a few big ones and the rest will settle to get the best deal possible.<p>I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply, and we are certainly capable of putting a stop to these abuses and enforcing laws that create fair, competitive markets. I agree it's a longer term project, but it's the only one that will actually solve the issues. It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068023&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply<p>I don't believe we're impotent, which is why I'm suggesting new laws such as a consumer bill of rights and right to repair. I think that antitrust is actually too little too late in addressing problems. After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)</p><p>&gt; It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.</p><p>I think we disagree about which is the long term fix and which is the short term fix. I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068248&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)<p>That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.</p><p>&gt; I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.</p><p>Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.</p><p>Further, how would you make it "permanent"? Constitutional amendments are a non-starter right now, and Congress can't pass laws that have 80%+ popular support. You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068498&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.<p>It was merely a play on words, but the point was that antitrust only kicks in when significant market power is involved, some kind of restraint on competition, whereas other laws protect consumers from abuses by companies of all sizes, even the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies.</p><p>&gt; Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.</p><p>Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.</p><p>&gt; Further, how would you make it "permanent"?</p><p>What do you mean? Laws are permanent by default, unless the legislators write an expiration date into the law.</p><p>&gt; You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.</p><p>Tell that to AT&amp;T. ;-)
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 <a href="vote?id=26070107&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.<p>It's not strange if you look at historical priors. The US Government has frequently succeeded at regulation that involves rulemaking, investigation, and prosecuting abuses. The same government has failed to achieve its' goals any time it tried compliance based regulation. Sure, both are subject to regulatory capture, but I've only seen the one model succeed.</p><p>I'm generally against these types of "consumer protection" movements explicitly because they target the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies. Consumer protection costs wind up driving those smaller businesses out and promote corporate concentration. Once you have that, the corporations are writing the rules, and the laws stop protecting customers (see: Boeing 737MAX).</p><p>&gt; Tell that to AT&amp;T.</p><p>ATT, Verizon or T-Sprint? If they don't answer I can leave a messaging on their answering machine using free long distance, or send an email using a modem. Just a few things that resulted from that breakup...</p><p>And we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution. Look at how much effort it took to undo that breakup, and they still haven't gotten back to the Ma Bell days.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070256&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution<p>I think that kind of disproves your point, but maybe we should just stop there. :-)
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 <a href="vote?id=26063929&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights"...<p>Maybe? But I worry that politicians will use that as a tool. Look what DeSantis is trying down here in Florida. He wants to fine "Big Tech" for banning politicians during an election. Personally, I'm tired of the lies and provocations and hate speech of some politicians and I don't think any company should be compelled to share those messages.
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 <p>So those evil politicians will do what? Force corporations to indiscriminately ban arbitrary people without possibility of appeal? Oh, wait a minute...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064134&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.<p>Google is a private company who offers free internet services in exchange for your privacy being violated. They have no customer service because you are not a customer as customers pay. You have no rights on their platform because again, you are not a paying customer. And you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up. They don't owe you anything at that pont.</p><p>So stop expecting "paying customer" treatment from a shady adware dealer who gives you "free" "integrated platform" stuff to get you hooked. That's an old drug dealer tactic anyway.</p><p>Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that. Otherwise stop whining about the tyranny of "free" platforms such as google, twitter, facebook, etc.</p><p>The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's to warn people of the rights and privacy hazards of free internet platforms.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064325&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that.<p>Andrew Spinks, the author of the linked tweet, was a business partner of Google's. That didn't save him.
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 <p>Partner is not a customer. They don't care about any human on their platform because their platform is not designed to care about humans, only exploit them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26064190&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's ...<p>Should governments allow caller ID spoofing, spam bordering on harassment, or lazy oligopolies to be negligent?</p><p>Governments should do whatever we agree they should. Both governments and companies serve the humans.
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 <a href="vote?id=26064198&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>To be fair, even as a paying customer, you don't get much more "customer service".<p>The same also applies for Google Play Store where without a doubt you paid at least once and continue for every in-app purchase.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068815&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with <i>billions</i> of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.<p>At that level, "percentage" is an insufficient measure. You want "permillionage", or maybe more colloquially "DPM" for "Defects Per Million" or even "DPB".</p><p>You'll still get false positives though, so you provide an appeal process. But what's to prevent the bad actors from abusing the appeal process while leaving your more clueless legitimate users lost in the dust?</p><p>(As the joke goes: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists" [1])</p><p>Can you build <i>any</i> vetting process, and associated appeal process, that successfully keeps all the bad actors out, and doesn't exclude your good users? What about those on the edge? Or those that switch? Or those who are busy, or wary?</p><p>There's a lot of money riding on that.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a_t.html">https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069840&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I think this is a balancing act of risks, and I wanted to bring up what I believe to be a success story when it comes to handling suspensions: Microsoft.<p>One thing I believe Microsoft gets right is that suspensions are isolated to the service whose TOS was violated. I.e. violating the hotmail TOS doesn't suspend you from their other services. I think this makes the impact of a false positive less catastrophic, while still removing actual problematic users from the service. This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.
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 <a href="vote?id=26069904&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Yup, I agree this is the better solution. The monolithic "one account rules <i>everything</i>" approach just increases the user's vulnerability.<p>It's largely what made Facebook's forcing usage of their account for Oculus users so ass-backwards.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070617&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.<p>It may be an artifact of Microsoft actually being regulated for monopolistic practices.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071123&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>That isn’t what they’re asserting.<p>I worked there for more than a decade. The settlement changed behavior - you thought about how to avoid future trust-like behavior.
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 <p>If we did that at Microsoft when we were bringing Hotmail under the MS umbrella, DOJ would have ripped the company into 10 pieces</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070512&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>If you're implying that there's just no way to support their users then I'm going to disagree.<p>At Google's scale and profitability, saying you can't build an appeals process that supports your paying users is just ridiculous. And at this point the collateral damage to Stadia's already tenuous reputation is going to be a lot more than paying someone to vet him manually.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071663&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Honestly, the answer is to charge people a fee, in order to appeal a ban. A fee that covers the cost of investigating the incident, making it revenue-neutral. This way, Google would have every incentive to investigate thoroughly all appeals, including repeated appeals by the same person.<p>From the user's perspective, it's still a pretty good deal. There's a 99.999% chance that you get to use gmail/youtube/etc for free. And a 0.001% chance that you'll end up a statistic, and need to pay a nominal fee for an appeal.</p><p>Unfortunately, I don't think the above will ever happen, because it would be a PR nightmare. "Google wants to charge you money, just to appeal a ban!" It's still better than the status quo, where people have almost no recourse when they are banned. But it still sounds way better in the media, if you just pretend as though these things never happen. Hence the status quo - use automated systems to cheaply get to a 99.999% success rate, and spend as little money as possible on the remaining 0.001%
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 <a href="vote?id=26073521&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?<p>The answer is to force google to be open and more transparent through regulations and have to scale up to deal with it and eat into their profits.</p><p>The assumption up front should not be that we need to care about protecting their profits.
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 <a href="vote?id=26073783&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Absurd but not new. Equifax was charging people to freeze their credit for a while after the breach, until public pressure mounted.<p>They probably made a TON of money off of that, and off the credit protection services they offer directly or through subsidiaries.
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 <a href="vote?id=26076093&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?<p>It need not be, as long as the fee is less than the cost. It could be symbolic (say $1). But the problem is that it would be seen as a revenue generator whether it is or not.
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 <p>They don't even have to keep the fee of the query is legitimate. They can reimburse it or keep it in the user's wallet when they consider that this was either a false positive or a honest mistake. The cost would be minimal but would deter a lot of people trying to game the system.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26073087&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I completely agree.<p>And if companies don't want to do it, that should be easy to regulate though. Requiring a human centric appeal process even if it has a fee, and prohibiting blanket account bans (if you get banned on gmail it doesn't affect your android and play store accounts, for example)</p><p>There are other provisions that I consider important like not being able to reuse email addresses and requiring the forwarding of email for at least 6 months after any account termination (getting banned from your email address can have disastrous consequences)
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 <p>Google One, which costs 2$ a month, as far as I can tell provides you with some level of support, which is definitely more than zero.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26069111&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>The problem with unjustified bans due to some algorithm is also: These cases might not even be a close calls like: “oh yeah this person did something that is in the grey area of what our policies state. I will ban him but he might interpret things differently.”<p>No if you enforce your policies strictly by (machine learning) algorithms it could just be a matter of misinterpreting a different language, slang, irony or something else. Which makes these bans even more infuriating.
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 <p>The lesson here is: you are too big. If you were smaller, you could manage these issues. But you choose to be big instead.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26074716&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Counter-counter example, even if you do reach someone at Amazon they're not necessarily going to do anything useful.<p>I've had a problem with my Amazon account for <i>years</i> now, after Amazon billed me (on my seller account) for something they shouldn't have.</p><p>After I complained, they agreed to refund it. Except the refund never arrived.</p><p>Asked <i>many</i> times over the years "WTF?", and someone always promises to look into it after agreeing they can see the problem.</p><p><i>Never</i> to be heard from again. Same pattern has happened every single time (many times). Obviously, something about it puts it in the "too hard" basket... :/</p><p>Needless to say, I don't use Amazon's services much at all any more unless required for job purposes. And I steer people away from AWS for the same reason too.
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 <p>Is this really true? If Gmail was replaced with a dozen competing services each with "only" 100M users each, would the total number of moderators be lower? How does the number of required human moderators per million users scale, and why?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070573&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>I agree: not true. The advantage of automation is you can do more for less which extends the reach in wealth and services available to the human race. Automation is a beautiful thing and gmail being too big to service with human support is not understanding that we'll never have enough intelligence power to police every square inch of existence + the net if we rely solely on human intelligence.<p>Problem is: can we cultivate machine learning intelligence to be as good as some of the best human arbiters?</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91TRVubKcEM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91TRVubKcEM</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=26071465&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Automation is a form of capital. In an economic system that has conditions for a runaway positive feedback loop of accumulation of capital, in the long term, it benefits primarily those who own the capital. Specifically, it allows them to collect more economic rent from it, and share less with the rest.<p>Taken to its logical conclusion, when everything is automated, the people who own the automation don't actually need the rest of the population at all - it becomes redundant. Of course, the "redundant" population might have different ideas about itself...
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 <p>I don't think anyone is proposing that moderation rely solely on humans. The question is about machine learning with human backup/appeals vs. Google's approach of machine learning with no appeals.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26071204&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Depends on how much of that wealth is captured and how it is distributed after it is captured.<p>If a huge amount of wealth is created and 90% of it is captured and the vast majority of it is distributed in share price/dividends then increasing inequality can really fuck up society even while GPD rises.
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 <p>You can't choose to stay small unless you're someone like clubhouse which still has a long waitlist for sign-ups, and even then they're trying to build their infrastructure wide enough to accompany everyone. Not offering service to all/99.9% of potential customers is effectively lost value and goes against shareholders' expectations.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's like saying a restaurant can't choose not to serve a billion people even though it only has enough capacity to seat and make food for 20: if you can't provide legitimate service for everyone, you need to not allow more people. The core problem here is that users keep signing up for Google services without being informed correctly ahead of time why that's idiotic, and the only fix for this is going to be regulatory: either Google needs to change how they handle banning people (there should be some law that if they accepted responsibility to store someone else's data that they have some minimum retention time for it letting you access it or something), come up with a working appeals process (and ensure that they have enough employees to handle the expected appeal load before either signing up new accounts or banning old ones), or they need to be forced to have a giant sticker on the box with a skull and crossbones on it which says that the moral equivalent of the surgeon general needs you to be informed of the serious risks that are associated with using this ridiculous service offering.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26071493&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.<p>Doesn't matter. If you're dealing with billions of accounts then you're earning billions of dollars. Just hire more people. Scale must never be an excuse for poor customer service.
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 <a href="vote?id=26073841&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>It depends on the unit economics.<p>Google has billions of accounts because it is FREE create them. Which could mean the cost of providing human support is actually too expensive on a per unit basis. The only way to rectify these economics is to charge for the account.</p><p>I pay for Google One to store more photos...however I have no clue if this improves my situation. Does the algorithm give me more slack for being a long, paid user? Do I get real customer support in the event I do get flagged? No clue.
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 <a href="vote?id=26068972&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; You can't even trust phone companies to do their job right and ensure the secure verification code is sent to the right phone! You provided some more secure ways for users to authenticate themselves,<p>For those that don't know, phone companies are easily susceptible to sim-swapping attacks which can make it easy for an attacker to intercept SMS 2fa: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016212">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016212</a></p><p>Edit: looks like OP changed their entire comment while I was replying.
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 <a href="vote?id=26072014&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>You can totally trust phone companies to "do their job right". You need to understand what their job is though.<p>The Telcos never signed up to being a "secure verification code provider". Almost a decade ago, the local Telco industry group told us all:</p><p>"SMS is not designed to be a secure communications channel and should not be used by banks for electronic funds transfer authentication,"</p><p><a href="https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telcos-declare-sms-unsafe-for-bank-transactions-322194">https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telcos-declare-sms-unsafe-for...</a></p><p>Any company that uses SMS for 2FA is offloading risk and security to an industry that never expected it, and explicitly seeks to not provide it.</p><p>A Telco _desperately_ wants to be able to get you back up and running (making calls and spending money) on a new phone using your existing number before you walk out of the shop. And even more, they want to be able to transfer you across as a customer from a competitor - and have your existing number work on their network.</p><p>"Sim Swapping" is a <i>valuable feature</i> for Telcos. They have significant negative incentives to make it difficult. They don't want to secure your PayPal account, and nobody (least of all PayPal) should expect them to do a good job of it, certainly not for free...
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 <p>Yeah sorry, I thought the original version was overly flowery, and the same point could be made more succintly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26074938&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Can you build any vetting process,<p>Yes, it's pretty simple. Create and enforce some consumer protection laws which require, for example, that any company larger than a certain size is required to establish support offices staffed by humans in every major town. And required to resolve every issue within X days either by fixing the problem or clearly documenting why not. If not, no arbitration allowed, so they are subject to lawsuits if the reason doesn't hold scrutiny.</p><p>Problem solved. Companies like goog, facebook et.al. can easily afford this and it'll stop this ridiculous behavior.</p><p>It also to some extent protects the companies. Spambots who create a million accounts can't replicate a million humans to show up at the support office, so it establishes a human:human relationship that's completely missing today.
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 <p>This would all be perfectly okay and understandable if the AI were the first line of defense and there was any meaningful way at all to contact support and escalate things <i>after</i> that filter. (I mean <i>besides</i> making headlines in all the gaming-news articles.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26068931&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; But 0.001% of billions or users is still millions of accounts...<p>Not that I disagree with your point, but even if we assume 50 billion accounts (6+ for every human on earth), 0.001% of that would still be 'just' 100k, not millions.
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 <a href="vote?id=26070839&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>Yes there is a lot of money riding on that, but that is the cost of doing business.<p>Why banks have heavy compliance costs? Doing proper AML and KYC costs money and society decided that it was critical enough to bear that cost even in light regulation countries.</p><p>A lot of the financial success of those companies is in part the result of not fully taking responsibility for the consequences of their business activity. Eventually they will, under social pressure that this post success represent, or by laws.
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 <a href="vote?id=26071401&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>At some point percentage is insufficient, but it's because it's a rate. Permillionage/DPM doesn't fix it. It's the number of people affected that matters, so if you have it at 99.9% and grow 10x, you ought to improve it to 99.99% to not become eviler. If you just stay at 99.9% when you grow 10x, you're harming 10x the people.<p>I'd use the total number of false positives as the proper measure.
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 <p>If a company has so many users that it can't hire enough employees to manually handle the false positives properly, it's too big to exist, and should be broken up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Why broken up vs users migrating to a competitive service? Seems like a very simple facet to compete on.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's hard for users to migrate to a competitive service when there's some form of lock-in, which is usually what happens in practice (often through other services offered by the same company).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is by far the most ridiculous reasoning I’ve seen for a company being too big. Because too many users get restricted from the service unintentionally then the provider is too big?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Some regions floated right to explanation and right to human review for automated processes. I don't know if any passed, but if they did, it would definitely mean the service has to take it into account.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>You have summed it up quite nicely, but I don't see why it's so ridiculous? If the social costs incurred by corporations past a certain size become unacceptable, why shouldn't we, as a society, limit their size? There's no natural right to form an LLC.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Can you please elaborate on bad actors absuing the appeals process? Is your point about how everyone will automatically appeal, making it difficult for genuine queries to receive the human attention they need? Or is there another vector of abuse you were thinking of?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070019&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>That's basically it.<p>If every action taken against an account by automation is appealed, then the automation becomes worthless.</p><p>In gaming forums that are run by the developer, such as the World of Warcraft or League of Legends forums, I have very frequently seen people whining and complaining that their accounts were banned for no reason until a GM or moderator finally pipes in and posts chat logs of the user spamming racial slurs or some other blatant violation of ToS.
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 <p>We see that on HN too, where people who have been banned/hellbanned with ample warning are often complaining that it's because "hackernews groupthink" but when you look back at their comment history they call someone some redpilly insult in every comment they've ever made on the website.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It’s even worse than that because the bad actors are doing this at scale and will have automation to auto-appeal while normal people will sometimes shrug and decide it’s not worth it. So your appeals queue likely contains a higher flow of bad actors than the distribution of FPs.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=26070962&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>It's interesting to me how Bloom Filters avoid the uncanny valley between probably correct and definitely correct. I don't know if this is a technological difference between problem domains or a purely ideology/mindset.<p>Dividing a problem by 10 should get notice. By 100 (eg, Bloom Filters) respect. By 1000, accolades. Dividing a problem by infinity should be recognized for what it is: a logic error, not an accomplishment.</p><p>Most times when I'm trying to learn someone else's process instead of dictating my own, I'm creating lists of situations where the outcomes are not good. When I have a 'class', I run it up the chain, with a counter-proposal of a different solution, which hopefully becomes the new policy. Usually, that new policy has a probationary period, and then it sticks. Unless it's unpopular, and then it gets stuck in permanent probation. I may have to formally justify my recommendation, repeatedly. In the meantime I have a lot of information queued up waiting for a tweak to the decision tree. We don't seem to be mimicking that model with automated systems, which I think is a huge mistake that is now verging on self-inflicted wound.</p><p>Perhaps stated another way, classifying a piece of data should result in many more actions than are visible to the customer, and only a few classifications should result in a fully automated action. The rest should be organizing the data in a way to expedite a human intervention, either by priority or bucket. I could have someone spend tuesday afternoons granting final dispensations on credit card fraud, and every morning looking at threats of legal action (priority and bucket).
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 <a href="vote?id=26071351&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D26061935"></a> </td><td><p>that's not a solution to a problem.<p>end users don't want to run their own spam and moderation filters, and they definitely do want them.
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  Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked ( twitter.com/demilogic )               
 2023 points by benhurmarcel on Feb 8, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 1174 comments                 
                  
                  
                  
 dang on Feb 8, 2021 | next [–]                 
                  
 Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it), so to see the rest of the comments you need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:               
                  
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935&p=2                 
                  
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935&p=3                 
                  
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935&p=4                 
                  
 (If you've already seen a bunch of these, I apologize for the annoying repetition.)                 
                  
                  
 nvarsj on Feb 8, 2021 | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.           
                  
 We see this again and again. The cynic in me sees Stadia as yet another internal promotion scheme, masquerading as a product.                
                  
 I doubt this will ever change. The internal momentum of the company culture will make it so. What does it mean for investors? Google has enough money they can just buy their way into markets indefinitely. It will probably keep them going, but I don't expect huge growth. I'd probably be putting my money into other stocks if I had to choose. I honestly don't think people would miss Google much if it was gone.           
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Stadia, from day one, has seemed like an engineering-oriented project. It's a cool tech that nobody asked for and not many people actually want (and has been atrociously packaged as an actual product). I can just hear the kickoff meeting:              
                  
 "We have some of the best cloud engineers in the world, we have one of the biggest fleets of data centers. Not a lot of companies could reasonably implement cloud gaming, but I bet we could!"               
                  
 That part is true! But then:                 
                  
 "Productization? Pricing? Market-fit? Customer service and messaging? Whatever, we've got good tech, it'll sell itself. We can figure all that other stuff out later, that's the easy part."               
                  
 ...cue the flop. It was always going to be this way.                 
                  
                  
 moksly on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Are you sure people don’t want it? I think it’s one of the biggest market potentials in gaming right now.                
                  
 I’m quickly approaching 40, and I would like nothing more to not have to own the windows desktop that I only use for one thing. To play blood bowl 2 (and eventually 3) a few times a week. If I could do that from a browser on my MacBook, you can bet I’d never own another desktop in this life.             
                  
 That’s anecdotal or course, but there’s quite a lot of us.                 
                  
                  
 nerfhammer on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 nvidia has a competing service that supports that title, and it honors your steam account instead of needing you to re-buy it                
                  
 https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/                 
                  
                  
 bogdan314 on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I used both. When time came to Play cyberpunk, I went for Stadia.                 
                  
 It runs a lot better (streaming quality, glitches, start-up times) are incredible. Using Stadia in general is a polished (yet basic) experience. In contrast Nvidia very much felt like a hack. Log-in in my steam account, seeing weird window glitches.              
                  
 I see a lot of comments negative on stadia here,based on bias rather then actual experience. Stadia is nothing short of tech star even with its downsides compare to the rest of the market.               
                  
                  
 glenneroo on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I can't speak about Nvidia, but we just hosted a ~25 person LAN party at work and decided to go with Stadia... never again. Some people couldn't even make an account because they didn't have a credit card (even though we planned to mostly play free titles). Literally every game needed 20-40 minutes before we finally got everyone in - we never pinpointed the root cause, but a combination of restarting Chrome (emptying cache), relogging into Stadia, rebooting PCs and re-hosting a match, we managed to play a few titles. In a couple cases, we just gave up trying to get more than a handful of people in the game. Some people couldn't ever get their keyboard or mouse working in some titles (myself included, one game in particular was fine for awhile, then suddenly my mouse stopped registering in-game - rebooting and having the host restart the server didn't help - googling my issue says I'm not alone).    
                  
 Some of these titles I've played multiplayer via Steam without any of the related issues, granted Steam/Stadia is an apples/oranges comparison.                
                  
 At the end I suggested we try Armagetron. 2.7MB download and runs on Mac/Win/Linux/Potatoes. I started up a private server and we were running a 16-player game without any issues in literally 5 minutes.               
                  
                  
 xyzzy_plugh on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah I don't see how nVidia doesn't dominate this market. Their product just makes way more sense.                
                  
 To even get on Stadia you have to port to their custom Linux distribution, which is a pretty huge ask for most games.                
                  
                  
 hnick on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Publishers specifically pulled out of Geforce Now because they didn't like the idea of people not having to buy the game again.                
                  
                  
 akiselev on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Unfortunately Stadia is the only one that supports 4K (I'm a casual user of Nvidia's service since it was in beta)                
                  
                  
 Agingcoder on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Does 4k matter? The way you state it makes it sound like it's a major issue (disclaimer: I've never seen a 4k game)                
                  
 This is an honest question, since I don't game much (witcher 3, death stranding and a few point and click) , and regular 1080 doesn't bother me, so I'm genuinely curious.               
                  
                  
 Duralias on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Would describe Stadia 4k to be inline with native 1080p, at least when playing stadia in a browser. Stadia 4k may look better using a chromecast ultra, but I haven't tried that.               
                  
 And It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrate, feel like we need some kind of standard, because bitrate means nothing to most people.               
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrate                
                  
 Yep. I see a good example of this when I watch gameplay videos on Youtube in the highest available 1080p bitrate, and regularly see results that look far worse than playing the game in 720p, maybe even 480p. For example, it's obviously very common to pan the camera through a high-detail scene, which is trivial for a GPU to do, but incredibly information dense for a video encoder. So anything with a lot of detail blurs (in a very ugly way, not like motion blur) when there's movement.          
                  
 And Youtube has the advantage that the video has as much time to record as Youtube will allow it, it doesn't need to be done with low-latency settings as Stadia does.               
                  
 Of course, cable TV is even worse, but ordinary consumers don't seem to have noticed or cared about that either.                
                  
                  
 Tijdreiziger on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 YouTube's bitrates are atrocious. I don't understand why they can't at least offer a higher bitrate to their paying Premium customers.                
                  
 > Of course, cable TV is even worse, but ordinary consumers don't seem to have noticed or cared about that either.                
                  
 According to Wikipedia, a DVB-C stream can be between 6-65 Mb/s [1], certainly higher than YouTube's 3-9 Mb/s (assuming 1080p video). The situation for resolutions above 1080p seems to be a bit better [2].               
                  
 [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-C                 
                  
 [2] https://www.androidauthority.com/how-much-data-does-youtube-...                 
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm not sure about Europe, but in the US it's very rare to see bitrates even a large fraction of that. (I don't see a minimum bitrate on the ATSC Wikipedia page, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it's often lower than 6 Mbps.) Worse still, in a bunch of places the cable companies still deliver MPEG-2 video, which is going to look pretty atrocious at anything other than an extremely high bitrate. It's a big disadvantage compared to Youtube. Plus a whole bunch of programs are in 60 fps, which need a higher bitrate anyway.         
                  
 I plugged in my cable box for the first time in months to watch the Super Bowl, and was shocked at how terrible the video was. I could see obvious artifacts without glasses on, and I can't even tell 720p from 1080p at that distance. Some of my relatives have those MPEG-2 channels, and I remember them being significantly worse.             
                  
 Not trying to say that cable TV can never be better than Youtube's quality, of course, just trying to give a general impression of my experience with various American cable companies.               
                  
                  
 Tijdreiziger on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Ah yes, I forgot that there are different standards depending on the country. To be quite honest, I haven't sat down and watched linear TV in years, but from what I can tell at relatives' homes the quality here is not bad.              
                  
 Actually, out of curiosity I just looked up the bitrates for my local cable company. The quality seems to differ a lot: on average between 3 Mb/s MPEG-2 [1] and 12 Mb/s MPEG-4 [2]. So I guess my previous statement isn't really accurate and it depends on the channel.              
                  
 That website appears to be quite interesting btw; it also tracks YouTube bitrates for live and non-live video and in different encodings! [3]                
                  
 [1] https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=C049&pid=19126&li...                 
                  
 [2] https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=C049&pid=19130&li...                 
                  
 [3] https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?lang=en&liste=2&live=...                 
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Nice I'll check that out.                 
                  
 12 Mbps MPEG-4 should be quite good, for the stations that support it.                 
                  
                  
 Ruthalas on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 At least with game streaming services, I suspect advertising resolution serves the double purpose of being understandable to most consumers, while specifically obfuscating bitrate, which is the sacrificed statistic.              
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It depends on the game. Anything that has a lot of text or small icons - e.g. many strategies - benefits from high DPI in the same way desktop apps do.               
                  
                  
 myko on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's also much more performant and user friendly than GeForce Now                 
                  
                  
 ryandrake on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The narrow "want to play games on my mac" problem could be solved if game developers chose to build the game cross-platform from the start and release a mac build. Many games are already cross-platform, as they run on both Windows and consoles. The fact that so many game companies don't even bother with a mac build shows they don't want to solve this for whatever reason (probably mac just not profitable enough).           
                  
 If a developer is not willing to lift a finger to port to mac (a small market, but one with a known size), why would they port to Stadia or some other unknown market?               
                  
                  
 wheybags on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Because macs are terrible platforms for games. They have been very low end for a long time (m1 notwithstanding), and they have been killing off opengl, the only cross platform rendering API (before vulkan, which they don't support). Also their insistence on breaking changes means your back catalog needs constant maintenance. That's normal for app developers, but not gamedev. Oh, and if you do make the port, they will be about 1% of your users. Or less. So, to summarize, mac support is expensive, difficult, and not profitable. Should we still do it? I tend to think you're better of spending your time on linux support.        
                  
                  
 shurane on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Maybe MacOS isn't a good push for gaming for either developers or Apple. I definitely think iOS is. The Apple Arcade Subscription plan seems to be part of that for gaming. I've seen a lot of people on the subway and even at work sometimes playing mobile games on their iOS device, from Call of Duty Mobile to racing games to tower defense.             
                  
 I imagine when Apple expands their desktop and laptop lineup to M1 chips, it's going to include many of the games that are available from their mobile catalog.               
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easy (and most of the smaller games that use those engines do release Mac builds); doing a Mac build from an in-house engine may be a ton of work               
                  
 But more importantly: Mac hardware usually isn't really equipped for high-end games. If you have a pro-tier machine you might do okay, but nobody buys Macs for gaming, at the very least. It's just too niche of a market to go through a lot of effort to support it              
                  
                  
 ryandrake on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easy                 
                  
 You'd think, but a lot of mainstream engine-based games that could "easily" have a mac port never get one, even an unofficial one offered as totally unsupported. Look at Among Us for example. Not by any stretch a high-end game. It runs on Windows, Android, iOS, a bunch of XBoxen, and probably other consoles. I bet the developer could spit out a working native macOS version with the push of a button, but so far hasn't.           
                  
 Kerbal Space Program is another example. When last I checked, they did have a native mac version, but it was hamstrung in some way--I think it was limited to 32-bit or something.               
                  
 I can't imagine these examples are actually a huge amount of effort to make happen. As a fan and programmer I'd be willing to do it for free.                
                  
                  
 simonh on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 KSP has been 64-bit on Mac from around the same time as Windows and is still fully supported.                
                  
 A lot of games did drop off the Mac when it moved to 64-bit only though.                 
                  
                  
 pjmlp on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Still has a bigger market share than Linux, with people that actually pay for games, and all major engines support Metal.                
                  
 Whereas GNU/Linux, even with the massive amount of games targeting Android, hardly gets to see them.                
                  
 Same applies to Stadia, which is mostly GNU/Linux + Vulkan, with Google sponsoring Unity and Unreal as well.                
                  
                  
 Applejinx on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Apple's moving to the M1 chip for desktop/laptop Macs. That's going to make the target look more like top-end Mac hardware… and the iPhone.                
                  
 The latter isn't a niche market, it's a 'not high-end' market. But that could evolve, I think.                
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think it's impossible that streamed games will find a market, but I think there are several hurdles that (unsurprisingly) weren't apparent to a company with no experience in the industry:               
                  
 1) PC gamers tend to revel in owning (building, customizing, optimizing) their hardware; not just because it lets them play the games they want to play, but even for its own sake. RGB arrays, overclocking, custom case builds. Streaming can't compete with that.              
                  
 2) "Casual" gamers already have powerful devices in their pockets with thousands and thousands of games available, including many free ones and many high-quality ones.               
                  
 3) Console gamers are presumably the target (?) market. But an Xbox Series S costs $299. The (absolute minimum) Stadia starter kit costs $99; you're already a third of the way there. And then there's the subscription fee. And then you still have to buy the games. Something I don't think Google realized is that over a console generation, the dominant cost quickly becomes the games themselves, not the hardware. If Stadia users still have to buy them at full-price - $60 a pop - that $200 you saved at the beginning quickly becomes a diminishing fraction. You just aren't saving that much, and in exchange, you get the constant risk that your whole library will simply be killed at any moment, as well as...       
                  
 4) The latency. The problem with latency is it's not a fully solvable issue, no matter how much hardware or money you throw at the problem. There's a physical lower bound on how long it takes electricity to get from your house to a data center and back. And then there's all the routing infrastructure run by your ISP, which a) is outside of Google or Microsoft or whoever's ability to improve, and b) is unlikely to be improved by the ISP because game streaming is basically the only usecase where bleeding-edge latency actually matters. And in terms of how much it matters: one frame at 60FPS translates to 16.7ms. Client-rendered multiplayer games don't have as much of an issue with higher latencies because of client-side prediction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_prediction     
                  
 Here's the only way I could see game streaming being successful:                 
                  
 An all-you-can-eat, Netflix-style buffet of big-budget games. Like Apple Arcade, except it has games like Call of Duty and Borderlands that you could normally only play on a console or a gaming PC. You pay a monthly fee, and you never have to buy or even download a game. Dedicated thin-client hardware is a waste; anybody who wants to buy hardware will just buy a console. Your target customers don't want that. Instead this would only be playable on existing platforms, primarily desktop/web/mobile, though possibly existing consoles as well.         
                  
 That would be a decent value-proposition for some people. Those playing really fast-paced games and/or sticklers for latency wouldn't go for it, some existing phone-gamers might, but mostly you would get people like your friend from college who just wants to play Borderlands with you but isn't really a "gamer" outside of that.             
                  
 Microsoft is the most clearly-positioned company to succeed at this, as far as I can tell. They have two decades of experience in the industry, they have cloud chops and datacenters, and they carry clout with publishers and even have in-house studios (because a subscription-only game buffet it going to be a tough sell when it comes to license-holders).            
                  
 And of course they've already started: Xbox Game Pass is a smallish version of the all-you-can-eat subscription, and they've been experimenting with cloud-hosted releases. You can even play Control on your Nintendo Switch via Microsoft's cloud. That's pretty cool.              
                  
 But I don't think this will ever make gaming PCs or even consoles obsolete, mainly because of the unsolvability of the latency issue. It will be good enough for some people.               
                  
 Oh and Stadia will die anyway, because Google doesn't understand any of the above                 
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yours is a thoughtful post and doesn't deserve a quick, dismissive response, so I want to hedge the following just by acknowledging that.                
                  
 I'd say your problems 1-3 can be summarized by saying you don't think there's a market for it. I don't think I agree. The prospective market for it is probably console gamers who want to play PC games that aren't ported to their console.              
                  
 Even CP2077 might be an example of this, because from what I've heard the performance is absolutely terrible on consoles, and if you haven't already spent heavily on an upgraded computer with a graphics card that's going to set you back $1K, you probably can't play it there either. So if you're the stereotypical console gamer, who doesn't care about perfect graphics and the lowest possible latencies, Stadia is going to sound like a pretty decent deal.           
                  
 And that's before you get to exclusives.                 
                  
                  
 notSupplied on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 - CP2077 could be viewed as a one time inter-generational fluke, where a project was designed with the ambition of PS5, then half-heartedly fitted into a PS4. Once people get their next gen consoles, this use case probably goes away. Can you imagine a lot more of these CP2077-like scenarios that justify being a Stadia user?             
                  
 - Stadia will be just as vulnerable to "exclusive content fragmentation" as consoles. Now that they've shuttered their internal studio, they will in fact, be constantly on the defensive in the war of exclusive content.              
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah, I was only using Cyberpunk as an example of how a console player might play a game on Stadia that was released on their console if it performed better. (Or even equivalently, since Stadia has other advantages like easy travel.) But I think the much bigger draw will be for games that are PC exclusives or PC/XBOX, for Playstation folks.            
                  
 I suppose it remains to be seen how successful Stadia will be at pull these titles to its platform. I think you're right to worry about fragmentation. If developers view Stadia as "just another platform" that they can just choose not to support when creating exclusives, it'll fail. If Stadia can get them to view it as a kind of drop-in that lets a much larger number of people (with, say, underpowered hardware) play their game, they'll be more likely to view it as a win.          
                  
 One other plausible market: people for whom the upfront cost of a platform is still too high. It's a lot easier for most parents to justify buying Cyberpunk for Stadia for their kid for Christmas than it is a brand new $500 console, or God forbid the several thousand dollar PC you'd need to play it.             
                  
                  
 buffington on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I hate doing this, but I feel like I need to pick at each of your described hurdles, because I think each of them make assumptions or assertions that don't hold up.               
                  
 1. You claim PC gamers do it for the hardware as much as the software. Let's assume the data backs that - it certainly seems like it's likely to be true. And I'm biased in wanting to believe it too, because I like to build and revel in the machines that run the games I own. What isn't true is that those same people, people like me, cannot also be attracted to things like Stadia.            
                  
 2. Services like Stadia do not replace the many games that people play on the many devices that already exist. It's not a "one or the other" thing. They allow those devices to play more games.               
                  
 The biggest flaw is in suggesting that casual gamers (a term which is flawed for many other reasons) wouldn't be a potential market for a thing like Stadi. Mobile game sales account for almost half of ALL game related sales. 48%, in fact. $76 billion in sales. A thing like Stadia means that people can play more games on their devices.             
                  
 And let me say, games on Stadia play incredibly well on my iPad that's a few generations old. That's very attractive. Being able to play PC quality games on my iPad when I travel is worth every penny. I'd even argue it's easier to play games on Stadia than it is to play natively installed games. With Stadia, there's no downloading of the game, no installing, not time wasted waiting for updates. You just turn it on, and it works.           
                  
 First, where you say "casual gamers", I think what you're trying to say is "people who play games on their mobile devices." You go on to describe the abilities that mobile devices have. While I won't dispute that, one thing I think you're missing is that services like Stadia make it even easier to play games on those devices that don't exist for those devices, or will at some future date, optimized to run on those mobile devices.           
                  
 I'll probably beat this horse to death, but to compare: I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my iPad through Stadia minutes after it was available. It took nearly a day before I could run it on my PC, and after the first several patches I just stopped bothering. Granted, the game is a beautiful mess, but the point is: it was effortless on the iPad, and has been ever since. Not only that, but I can switch to my iPhone, or to my PC and pick up right where I left off. If I do it quick enough, the game just unpaused when I jump to the new device. And I can travel and still play. There's no way my PC, with its UV reactive liquid cooling is going to travel with me.       
                  
 3. Stadia starter kit is optional. Stadia is free. Do you have a controller? Keyboard and mouse? A web browser? You're good. There is no required subscription fee. You buy the games, and they cost the same as console games. So yeah, if you have a device that can run modern browsers, you don't need to buy a console.             
                  
 4. I assume when you mention latency, you mean "input latency" - meaning, the time it takes for the game to react to your button press or mouse movement. There are indeed hard limits to how low input latency can be. The game cannot update its entire model and render it in 0ms. It has to make calculations based on your inputs, then show you what changed. But that's not the only constraint. Consider the entire picture: a target on the screen moves, and you need to shoot it. If you're good, it'll take you about 100ms to react. Most people can't react in less than 150ms. It takes 5-10ms to transmit your reaction over USB. It takes the simulation any number of milliseconds to process and tell the monitor to redraw itself. Let's assume the processing time of the game engine is 0ms. The best monitors will add 2ms to the clock.     
                  
 So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction.               
                  
 And that's on your PC. No networking.                 
                  
 What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30ms. To be fair, that's what I've seen on my pretty normal cable company internet connection over 5ghz Wifi. With most games, you'd never notice the extra time. Are you going to notice it as a pro gamer playing FPS competitively? Probably.             
                  
 Your assertion that Stadia will die is about the most right thing you've said. Even with a market, Google tends to kill things seemingly at random. What will help it die quicker is if Nvidia's service is able to outperform Stadia in terms of simplicity and streaming speeds.              
                  
 But saying streaming based gaming won't find a market reminds me a lot of what the cable companies and Blockbuster used to say about Netflix.                
                  
                  
 appletrotter on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction.               
                  
 People can perceive delays smaller than their reaction window. For argument I'll say it's 50ms is the perceivability barrier, since we seem to throwing numbers around here. I can get 50 or 60 ms lag on my wifi often, and I would say that I have a pretty good connection. So therefore, the input lag potential with stadia is significant. 60 > 50.            
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think the more important fact is that people can be affected by small amounts of latency, even if they can't react that quickly or perhaps even discern that latency is occurring.               
                  
 The obvious example here is a precision platformer like Celeste, but you can say the same (with less and less applicability) to other games, starting with FPS.               
                  
 In Celeste, there are a handful of frame-perfect inputs in the game. This means you have less than a 20 ms window to get your input in, or you're dead (the game's only failure state). How is this possible, if human reaction time is only ~100 ms at best? It's because there's a difference between reaction time and timing. Reaction time measures your time-to-react to an unpredictable stimulus. Timing is your reaction to a predictable stimulus. Most of the time in games you are reacting to a stimulus that is at least somewhat predictable.         
                  
 So with a little training you can reliably make that frame perfect jump. But if Stadia adds 60 ms of latency, that means your character is over 3 frames ahead of where you think she is. You're going to miss that jump a lot until you can reprogram your brain to account for the latency, as much as possible. And even then you'll probably find it harder. Throw in a little variability to the latency, so you think the character is 3 frames behind but she's actually 4, and you're doomed.          
                  
 Granted, not every game is a precision platformer, so there are diminishing returns for low latency in other types of game. But if you, say, enable cross-play between Stadia and non-Stadia in a shooter, the local players are probably going to have a huge advantage. Even making it work against an AI opponent would require some significant work to make the AI's reaction time keyed to Stadia's measurement of latency, not whatever you originally hard-coded into the game.          
                  
                  
 buffington on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You reacting to something is not the same as reacting + seeing the rendered frame.                 
                  
 There's an entire chain of things that contribute to latency, and network latency is only one part of that chain.                
                  
 From what I've experienced on a pretty normal, non-optimized wifi connection (meaning I just plugged a cheap TP Link router in and did nothing to its default settings), I don't notice the latency that Stadia contributes making any difference compared to whatever amount of latency I get on my capable PC.             
                  
 That's not to say network latency doesn't matter. It matters a lot to pro CS:GO players, for example, (who have reaction times in the 130-300ms range, for what it's worth). Those players are will to pay for high poll rate mice to shave off a few milliseconds from input latency, or build $5k+ machines stuff with insanely fast CPUs and GPUs, with $2k+ monitors with 1ms latency.            
                  
 But Stadia isn't for that kind of game play.                 
                  
 Like I said in another comment, the talk around streaming games is almost identical to people who scoffed at services like Netflix when they first started streaming. You had Laserdisc nerds freaking out about how the streaming would produce compression artifacts, and people like Mark Cuban saying that people were crazy to think streaming video was the way to go, (all while pitching his HD satellite service).           
                  
 Having used Stadia as a "normal" person might, I'm certain that in the not too distant future, streaming based gaming services will be as mainstream as Netflix is today. Despite whatever compromises it has to make.              
                  
                  
 FridgeSeal on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30ms                 
                  
 I can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low.                 
                  
 Latency on speed tests varies between 15 (off peak no load) and 100ms (normal).                 
                  
 There is no way that by the time that all adds up, stadia is going to be a better experience than local.                
                  
 My internet is also shared with other people, in a country with notoriously subpar internet (yay Australia), the closer we get to reality, the less appealing stadia becomes. The kind of game streaming I could get behind is the rainway/local streaming approach where I run the game on local hardware (pc/PS5) and stream to convenient device.             
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > I can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low.                 
                  
 OT, but I'm curious, what kind of router do you have? That seems really bad. I tested this on my laptop (over WiFi, in a very heavy traffic apartment building) and see the following:               
                  
 50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 49115ms                 
 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.751/1.436/5.000/0.812 ms                 
                  
 I don't say that to brag, I really think that's definitely expected for any LAN device.                
                  
                  
 FridgeSeal on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I’m on my phone at the moments, so I’ll paste proper numbers when I’m back, but when I tried it last week it was like 18/370/60/1478/etc ms. Bear in mind, this was In the same room as the router.               
                  
                  
 FridgeSeal on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Finally got a chance to test:                 
                  
 63 packets transmitted, 63 packets received, 0.0% packet loss                 
 round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.659/110.684/1805.961/305.145 ms                 
                  
                  
 bscphil on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's really dreadful, I'm sorry you even have to deal with that. Can you replace the router? Even the cheapest bottom of the barrel router from your local big box store should be able to get a response to you in under 5 ms pretty reliably. (I'm assuming your WiFi / access point is built in to your router.)             
                  
 What model of router is it? This really feels like a situation where something has to be broken, I can't imagine any router, no matter how cheap, has an expected ping rtt maxing out at around 2 seconds. Notably, your minimum rtt is under 2 ms, so it's definitely capable of getting a response to you faster than that, maybe it's just overloaded or something?            
                  
                  
 buffington on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I never said Stadia would be better than local when it comes to latency, though I wouldn't blame you for assuming that's what I meant. Latency will be increased.               
                  
 An argument I was trying to make is that for other reasons, and for a lot of games, Stadia is better than local when you take the entire experience into account. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of where the overall experience is subjectively better. My RTX 3070 based system renders the game and its bugs beautifully, far better than Stadia does. But is that $4500-worth of eye candy worth it compared to the $0.00-worth of totally acceptable Stadia? Lag-wise, I don't notice a difference.          
                  
 I prefer playing the game on Stadia now because it's just so simple. I can use a controller or mouse and keyboard with my iPad and play from anywhere in my house. And not just my house - I've played it over a LTE connections several times without issue.              
                  
 As far as latency goes - people tend to get hung up network latency when it's only a small part of the latency story. Granted, at 100ms, it becomes a bigger part of the story, but people either don't know about, or forget, that there's more:              
                  
 There's peripheral latency, "system" latency (which includes CPU, render queue, and GPU), then display latency for single player games.                
                  
 Stadia, or any streaming service, adds network latency. For me, with a pretty normal American internet connection provided by a craptastic provider (because it's the only choice I have), it works great.               
                  
 For what it's worth, I've also played with some of the "local" streaming tech. No joke, Stadia performs better than streaming using Steam's local streaming app, by a long shot. There's the iPad app (the name escapes me at the moment) that lets me stream my XBox to the iPad, and it's better, but still way worst than Stadia.             
                  
                  
 VRay on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 One quick nitpick: The latency in streaming isn't as bad as you'd think                 
                  
 Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games               
                  
 (This obviously doesn't apply to high-end play on twitch shooters or fighting games though, those are pretty much screwed when it comes to streaming)               
                  
                  
 georgeecollins on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >> Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games               
                  
 Source please?                  
                  
 I have produced / designed / managed a few AAA games in my life and none of them had a 200ms latency between when you pressed a button and something happened on screen. That delay would be horrible for a fighting game or a driving game. How are you even defining "something happening on screen"?             
                  
 Let's suppose you are right, that there is a longish latency between when your input is polled and when the game systems fully react. That happens to some extent in RTSs, because changes in the game state are synchronized. But in that case the delay isn't going to hide the network latency, it is going to be added on top of the network latency.            
                  
                  
 rdw on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Here's one site that attempts to catalog this: https://displaylag.com/video-game-input-lag-database/                
                  
 Found an article from a few years ago: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_respon...                
                  
 Not all games are that bad, especially these days. And your overall point is correct: adding even a little bit on top of that already horrendous latency is going to be noticeable by players.               
                  
                  
 sph on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Worst out of the 23 games listed in the first link has 8 frames of latency at 120 fps, which is about 66ms. Monitor input lag included.                
                  
 200ms, while possible, is far from "most AAA+ games", as OP stated.                 
                  
 Sure, there's people that play on lowest-end consoles, on a crappy LCD TV with game mode disabled, but let's not consider that the norm for all players/all AAA+ games, and I'm going to need hard sources showing whether those worst case environments get even close to triple digit latencies.             
                  
                  
 judge2020 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 They might be talking about engine delay (ie. frame times/framerate) but i've moreso seen delays of 100-150 milliseconds deemed acceptable by people playing console games on an old flat screen TV that doesn't have a low-latency mode available, and I haven't really experienced this on anything other than consoles since even cheap PC monitors tend to have <10ms display lag[0].            
                  
 0: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015WCV70W                 
                  
                  
 georgeecollins on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You probably know this 100ms = 10 FPS. What kind of display shows video at less than 10fps? Game engines aren't always synced to frame rates, particularly simulations. But a simulation that updates every 0.1s isn't great for fidelity.              
                  
 A 30 fps game could go through a complete loop, updating everything: object positions, inputs in 33ms. At 60 fps assuming everything is synced to frame rate that would 16 ms.               
                  
 I was asking for the commenter's source of information so I didn't have to guess what he or she meant. It's possible to make a game that doesn't respond a user's input in less than 200ms, but why would you? You don't need to be making a technical tour de force to respond in 16-33ms.             
                  
                  
 judge2020 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I was commenting on how the TV can add latency/'display lag', not that it only shows a frame every 100ms. TVs have gotten much better[0] but input lag can be high with cheap TVs sold 5-10 years ago.               
                  
 0: https://displaylag.com/best-low-input-lag-tvs-gaming-by-game...                 
                  
                  
 georgeecollins on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That makes more sense. I am sorry I misunderstood and thank you for explaining.                 
                  
                  
 Sohcahtoa82 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen                
                  
 Absolutely false, and I don't know where you got that from.                 
                  
 If there was a game that had that kind of latency between input and reaction, people would notice and the reviews would be horrible.                
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Wow, I didn't realize it was that high. I stand corrected.                 
                  
 I think most of the above still applies, but maybe expand "it'll be good enough for some people" to include some portion of average console-gamers (assuming the rest of the productization is done right, and assuming those console-gamers have fairly good internet)              
                  
 The thing is that, even there, if you're putting it on a TV you're likely not going to want to plug in your Macbook or whatever. Which means, if you don't already have a console, you're going to be buying dedicated hardware regardless. Which significantly cuts into the "savings"/"no-purchase" angle, and steepens the question of "what's the point of this?"            
                  
 One thought though: Microsoft could use this as a way to keep last-gen console owners engaged. At some future date when the Xbox Series Y or Z or whatever comes out, people with a Series S might still be able to play the latest games by streaming them. They're using dedicated hardware that plugs into a TV, but it's hardware they already bought which is essentially being repurposed.            
                  
 Edit: Another thing is that the subscription model and the streaming model don't have to go hand-in-hand. I think game subscriptions are absolutely the future, but I think there will always be a market for devices that download and run those subscribed games locally.              
                  
                  
 fredophile on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 At 30 fps a 200ms lag would be over 6 frames of delay between input and the action happening on screen. Can you point to any examples of AAA games that actually have this much input lag?               
                  
                  
 VRay on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Here: https://youtu.be/CWYTOOtplY8?t=115                 
                  
                  
 account42 on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games                
                  
 This is one of the worst parts of game Streaming - games potentially being designed around it, making them worse for everyone else.                
                  
                  
 TheJoYo on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You don't need to buy a Stadia controller to play Stadia.                 
                  
 It's free with an optional subscription for games and 4k.                 
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The confusing messaging around that question has been a big part of the problem                 
                  
 Regardless though, I think buying full-priced games that you don't actually own is the real non-starter. These aren't $0.99 songs on iTunes; these are $60 investments.               
                  
                  
 odessacubbage on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 i'd like to think even a middling engineer would be able to recognize an intractable infrastructure problem that is entirely out of their hands. stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as well. space age technology does not mean shit if your customers are still in the age of horse and buggy.           
                  
 terraria also highlights the utter absurdity of game streaming. it can and has been ported to practically every relevant device and costs less than a big mac. google invented a billion dollar laser to cook microwave popcorn.              
                  
                  
 sithadmin on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as well               
                  
 To add a layer of situational irony here: Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractable               
                  
                  
 myko on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractable                
                  
 This failure was more political in nature though, the technical solution is there                 
                  
                  
 JakeTheAndroid on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 And we arrive at the premise. They can build the tech, but they can't be bothered to navigate the social dynamics that make up the rest of the world.               
                  
                  
 sithadmin on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 While the local politics are certainly an issue, their quirky micro-trenching methodology was also clearly a failure                
                  
                  
 yyyk on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The problem with Stadia is that it's a platform geared for AAA games, but doesn't provide much value for them. It can provide good value for more casual games/gamers, but Google's ego means the service isn't geared for casuals.              
                  
 When I write Stadia doesn't provide much value for AAA games, we need to look at it from both the gamer and the dev side. For gamers, if money was no object, one is better off with either a decked-out PC (better performance) or a console (wider variety). Stadia's main advantage is potentially being cheaper - which is precisely the gaming crowd which doesn't attract AAA gamedev companies.            
                  
 For AAA developers, they need to port their game to a different API, then pay the Google tax, in order to appear on a small platform whose users are often drawn in by being cheap and are less likely to pay for your product.              
                  
 There's no technical advantage for AAA - now that Google has closed their studios, nobody will try to make features that are only possible in cloud gaming in Stadia. If Google couldn't, can you? What happens when you ran into a problem, can you handle Google "support"?              
                  
 Stadia could be good for casuals. Except it doesn't have any good discoverability features or even a search bar. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't need discoverability, but indies or anyone searching for them really do. Its payment model (direct 'purchase', no gamepass) is OK for AAA, but not as a good for casuals. And of course, one still needs to port the game which can be difficult and relatively expensive for indies (Luna is just a VM by comparison).           
                  
 Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model.               
                  
 So Stadia is geared for AAA games/gamers, but doesn't provide good features for AAA, and even Google itself couldn't manage to make cloud-gaming-only features. Stadia can be useful for casual gaming, but the platform just isn't geared for that, and Google is unlikely to change that. Likely result is cancellation within a few years.             
                  
                  
 ehvatum on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model.               
                  
 There are also many prestigious and lucrative engineering goals at Google that are totally untouchably intractable because money is involved. The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review. If an established app is deluged by negative reviews, take a look at what’s happening. It’s either become a Trojan horse or a victim of 3rd world scamware competition. The average review for an app does not go from 4.5 stars to 1.5 stars overnight without cause!         
                  
 Attempting to address this glaring deficiency leads to the following problem: the other engineers who rallied to solve it, in the past, are no longer with Google. Do you like your job? Find a technical problem with no downside, in that case!!!!!!              
                  
                  
 yyyk on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 >The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review.                
                  
 The last sentence is key: 'for human review'. Google feels humans are damage to be routed around. If there was a way to everything in ML they'd go for it, but if your solution requires human review it's a no-go.               
                  
                  
 jes5199 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 my friend at Google reported almost exactly that: it's an amazing technical achievement, really pushes the cutting edge of what's possible. And the sales and marketing have no idea how to do anything with it.               
                  
                  
 nathanyz on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Stadia works amazingly well which was actually surprising. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 4k with just a controller and Chromecast stick is frankly amazing.               
                  
 Consoles are great if you play enough, but I found that every time I could squeeze an hour here or there to play, the Xbox needed to update yet again for 20 minutes, and by then something else has come up and I am out.              
                  
 Stadia lets you jump in and out, no updates as far as I have seen, and just magically works.                
                  
 Disclaimer: I don't work for Google or any of the game studios and was actually skeptical they could solve the latency challenge.                
                  
                  
 brundolf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Slightly OT but you deal with the updates issue by leaving it running in rest mode all the time. When something needs updating the console will get a ping, download + install, and go back to sleep. Makes things much easier.              
                  
                  
 odessacubbage on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 they need an experience that sells the actual upsides of game streaming in the same way that mario 64 sold 3d movement and the analog stick. 'here's popular game except worse' will never be a winnable pitch. even casual users who don't know what latency means will instinctively recognize that all the games just feel kind of shitty to play. you need a tailor made experience where latency is a much more negligible factor.           
                  
                  
 abandonliberty on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Check out the stadia subreddit. It seems they've managed to connect with a pretty passionate group of innovators/early adopters.                
                  
 https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/                 
                  
                  
 tdeck on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 To be fair, that described Google Glass as well and look where that product went.                 
                  
                  
 Axsuul on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 How do you know not many people actually want it?                 
                  
                  
 msoad on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is not just Google. All other tech companies including Facebook are using the same system to promote workers. As a result:                
                  
 * Nobody is held accountable for the long term success of the product. Making little things work nice is not rewarded. Maintaining UX is defiantly not rewarded.               
                  
 * Rewarding process over product. That's why you see so many Google products shut down. It takes a few people from L7 to L8 to build it and rewards someone from L6 to L7 to wind it down. Every annual performance review in the process is all roses and rainbows!              
                  
                  
 rodgerd on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.           
                  
 This goes well beyond Stadia - Google has an air of institutional contempt for humans, especially humans who aren't inside Google. Dealing with humans who are struggling with getting bounced by "the algorithm" is something they simply aren't interested in.              
                  
                  
 ortusdux on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think that their higher tier promotion system is partly to blame, and could be easily fixed. As I understand it, at a certain management level, the most effective way to pad out your promotion packet is to launch a new product. These packets are judged by an anonymous review board. This board could change the culture overnight by updating the criteria to reward managers that grow products or retain paid customers. Heck, if they just updated the definition of a successful launch to include a year+ of operation & growth or even just a proper roadmap, we might start to see and end to the usual pattern.        
                  
                  
 m463 on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I wonder if it's the lack of a single founder?                 
                  
 Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk - founders at the top who owned it.                 
                  
 More directly, Gabe Newell and Valve.                 
                  
 It might be that google started with Page/Brin and co-ownership might have weakened that a bit, and now they are not to be found.                
                  
 Not that a single founder is a surefire recipe.                 
                  
                  
 ozim on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, "Paypal Mafia", For valve Mike Harrington would like to have a word with you.                
                  
 Bill, Steve, Elon, Gabe, were never alone masterminds and definitely not single founders because in companies they created there always was someone else who had shares.               
                  
                  
 jjav on Feb 9, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Sort of, but it's really a goog HR problem.                 
                  
 That you can only be promoted by creating new things (even if entirely useless) and not by maintaining and supporting existing things (that customers actually want) is an HR problem.               
                  
                  
 spondyl on Feb 10, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem.                
                  
 I can recommend reading In The Plex. Quite literally the founders wanted to invert the usual model and put engineers first. There were some anecdotes from those in roles like marketing and so on that they felt like second class citizens.              
                  
                  
 JacobSuperslav on Feb 9, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Quite ironic that it's an engineering company and stuff doesn't work how it's supposed to so often. I'm looking at you, Google Cloud :P                
                  
                  
 engineeringwoke on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Brilliant comment                  
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don't even exist.           
                  
 You could of course sue Google, but that's an extremely expensive and time-consuming option, rarely worth it for a mere consumer. Going to court certainly won't make your suspended account become unsuspended any quicker.              
                  
                  
 prepend on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You know it’s funny that lots of the basic functions of business with consumers (eg, ability to return items) were set and codified in the US as the Uniform Commercial Code [0] that was established in 1952. Before then it was wild and variable.              
                  
 What’s really interesting is that it seems like of hacker-like in how it was implemented. It was published as a guide and then states passed laws to implement.               
                  
 Reminds me of a de facto standard that is then implemented by vendors.                 
                  
 I suppose we could start up some form of Uniform Consumer Commercial Code (UC3) that set up practices that are good that could then be passed by states.               
                  
 I shudder to think through all the arguments about how it would specify some “don’t be evil on social cause X” that it almost smarts my conspiracy brain that the “corporations” started this trend to bikeshed/scissor statement society so they can’t make meaningful economic and commercial policy.             
                  
 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code                 
                  
                  
 Spooky23 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The problem with this sort of thing is that because it's interstate commerce, states usually do not have standing to regulate effectively.                
                  
 The Federal government struggles to implement new regulatory authority because of political challenges. Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!"), biased against marginalized minority or cultural groups ("My marginalized constituency of blind, alcoholic yak herders have a religious prohibition against reading contracts"), or a unfair mandate restraint of trade ("The Chamber of Meme Commerce believes that this rule will cost 10,000,000 jobs in the meme industry and kill puppies."), etc.        
                  
                  
 prepend on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This was addressed in the UCC and is pretty simple actually as each state implements laws to saw who has jurisdiction and how to handle.                
                  
 It also bypasses the federal government in that the code is established by some big council and implemented in (most) states.                
                  
 That’s why when I live in Missouri and buy something from a vendor in New York, they still have to accept returns, issue refunds, provide for basic warranties, etc. and if I have problems I can easily get remediation in state courts.              
                  
 There’s 50+ years of where this works ok. Not perfect and lots of room for improvement. But better than the current shitshow that exists like this article describes. If we had the minimum level of legal structure, it would be so helpful.              
                  
 Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”             
                  
 Google’s free (and even non-free) services are causing harm to people and aren’t being supported.                
                  
                  
 MockObject on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”             
                  
 Why does the UCC covers free knives, but not paid Google services?                 
                  
                  
 Spooky23 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Because Google One, for example, is a service governed by a contract which details performance expectations.                
                  
                  
 MockObject on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 So the UCC is only the default, which covers goods/services without their own custom contracts?                
                  
                  
 Spooky23 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 All products have a warranty of merchantability defined by UCC. Basically goods need to be average/expected quality.                
                  
 With services it’s a little different because there is no average unless the contract is missing performance terms. If you agree to a term of performance, then that is the obligation.               
                  
                  
 R0b0t1 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If it was sold to a resident in some state online currently that resident can sue in the local courts. The business is considered to operate in all states.               
                  
 The alternative is all suits under ~$75k(?) don't get heard because they don't meet the requirements for federal court, which obviously can't be right.               
                  
                  
 ISL on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I suspect that the major tech providers are so pervasive that the impacts of account-locking span all party lines.                
                  
                  
 thaumasiotes on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!")               
                  
 This is just an awful example. There is not a free speech right to pay for your own speech by committing crimes, and nobody claims or would claim that there is. Similarly, you don't see the argument made that vendors enjoy the constitutional right to sell fake pills. What spammers want to do, and what anti-spammers want to stop them from doing, is to advertise real pills, and yes, there are extensive free speech implications there.           
                  
                  
 jsmith45 on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The EU recently proposed The Digital Services Act, which is a DCMA like legislation (with both copyright infringement and other illegal content like CP as targets).               
                  
 Part of that draft law pretty clearly states that companies must have a proper appeal process for banned accounts. This would apply to "decisions taken by the online platform on the ground that the information provided by the recipients is illegal content or incompatible with its terms and conditions", which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans.            
                  
 They must provide details of what part of the Terms of Service they claim you violated: "where the decision is based on the alleged incompatibility of the information with the terms and conditions of the provider, a reference to the contractual ground relied on and explanations as to why the information is considered to be incompatible with that ground".            
                  
 If the internal appeals process fails, the consumer can take the company to online binding arbitration (with the consumer's choice of accredited arbitrators certified by the member state). The company always pays its own costs in the process, and must reimburse the user's costs if the company loses.             
                  
                  
 smartties on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans.                
                  
 Google avoid this EU restriction by suspending accounts/app indefinitely instead of banning them.                
                  
 You can see a Google employee explaining this here : https://github.com/moneytoo/Player/issues/37#issuecomment-76...                
                  
                  
 izacus on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Claiming that "an indefinite suspension" is just a type of temporary suspension and different from a ban will have you laughed out of any actual court.               
                  
                  
 pavon on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Agreed. We generally allow companies to refuse service for nearly any reason, and in most cases this is a good policy. However, there are exceptions to that rule. One extreme are utilities which as both monopolies and essential services are required to do business with nearly any paying customer, and have strict rules processes about shutting of service for lack of payment. Residential rentals are another example. They don't hold a monopoly, but are an essential service, and as such they can generally choose who to do business with (although not quite as freely as your average business), but have strict legal processes they have to follow regarding evictions.       
                  
 I think there are online business who are essential enough that some consumer protections are applicable. Very few reach the level of monopoly that utilities have in my mind, and even those it isn't clear to me that they are "natural" monopoly like utilities, and as such other antitrust approaches may be more beneficial.             
                  
 However, I think there are a number of competitive, yet essential services online that deserve a legal protections regarding service termination. Identity providers absolutely fall in that category IMO - it is unacceptable for example for Facebook to lock your account in a manner that prevents you from not only using their services but every other third-party service which you authenticate using "Logon with Facebook". I think email is another that rises to this level. At a minimum email providers should be required to forward mail for a fixed period of time after choosing to stop doing business with a customer.        
                  
                  
 saurik on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think there also needs to be a law that, once you have accepted responsibility for storing someone else's data, that you can't delete it "on a whim" without offering some minimum retention period ok your data. As an example: a storage facility is allowed to stop doing business with me, but they legally can't just destroy all my stuff on a moment's notice... we have laws for minimum retention periods.           
                  
                  
 zerd on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Also if you violate the storage facilities rules and they cancel the lease, they can't turn off the electricity at your house just because they happen to have the same parent company.               
                  
                  
 VLM on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The Kafka solution to this will be our terms of service prohibit single spacing after periods and you are in violation. Therefore we can terminate your account at any time of our choosing.               
                  
 Alternately we could prohibit posting in any language other than Latin and Klingon, or using the letter e, or accessing our services using any unapproved operating system (and our only approved OS is windows 3.11 with winsock drivers).              
                  
 Anyway the point is now the company can ban you for any reason at all. Being the wrong religion, voting for the wrong candidate, being the wrong race, etc.               
                  
                  
 ConceptJunkie on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Not just "can", but "will". And given how effectively these companies are using their size and power (and m-word) to crush the competition, it's long past time for some anti-trust action.               
                  
                  
 nvahalik on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies                
                  
 I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary.                
                  
 If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.                
                  
 They do this stuff because people _need_ them and they know that people won't just drop them en mass.                
                  
                  
 newswasboring on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.                 
                  
 Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.              
                  
                  
 vkou on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If you are equating a world without Facebook to a world without running water, you need to spend a week camping, where you leave your phone at home.                
                  
 You'll very quickly discover why they are not at all alike.                 
                  
                  
 newswasboring on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Oh if you think running water is important, try growing up in a desert. You will quickly realize still water is enough. WTF is this line of logic?                
                  
                  
 vkou on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 1. I'm not sure you understand what running water means. It's not water that flows down a river, it's water that comes from a tap. The whole point of running water is that a utility delivers it to your home, regardless of whether or not your town is in a rain forest, or the middle of a desert.             
                  
 2. You'll die in three days without water. You'll probably be healthier if you spent three days without Facebook.                
                  
 3. I can't collect water for myself where I live. I suppose I could walk down to the lake, and manually bring up a few buckets of water, but it won't be safe for me to drink. I suppose I can also go buy bottled water, at a ~million-percent markup. There is no economic alternative for me to get water, other than through the water pipes laid to my apartment, by my water utility. I am a completely captive customer for my utility. My water utility has monopoly control of special-purpose one-of-a-kind infrastructure that is used to deliver water to my apartment. That is why my utility is regulated.        
                  
 4. Unlike with my tap water, there are plenty of functioning alternatives to... Whatever it is that Facebook does for me. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, my life would be mildly disrupted for a week or two, and then would go on with little change.              
                  
 On the hierarchy of needs, we have air at the top, followed closely by water, shelter, and food, followed at some distance by electricity, and way down the street, that we can barely make out, by grabbing a pair of binoculars, we will see 'Facebook'.              
                  
 It's just not that important.                 
                  
                  
 nvahalik on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, but Google and Facebook are not public utilities, nor should they be.                 
                  
                  
 newswasboring on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Why not? The qualification being for public utility should be "is this basic infrastructure humans need to live now?". And the answer is yes. Facebook controls most of the big public speaking forums and google controls so much and in so many spaces that it would be foolish for me to even try listing.             
                  
 I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities.             
                  
 I don't see the impediment here.                 
                  
                  
 jsmith45 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities.             
                  
 Water/Sewage and Trash are typically run by the city/county government, although it is common for the actual work to be handled by a contracted company.               
                  
 Power, natural gas, phone, and most others is almost always a private company.                 
                  
                  
 timidger on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 No traditional utility company does what Google has routinely shown to do as in the original post though. There's still a bill to pay and expectations of reasonable service (I assume if I just left my tap on and drew as just electricity as I could I'd eventually get some phone calls and massive bills) that allows these companies to be profitable.            
                  
 Google isn't at the point it needs to be nationalized, but something needs to be done to limit the fallout that occurs when users are kicked off essential services with no recourse.               
                  
                  
 Emendo on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 In reality, there is no impediment to designating Google as a public utility other than the elected representatives making it so.                
                  
                  
 ryanbrunner on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.             
                  
                  
 geofft on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Antitrust regulation.                 
                  
 Seriously, the only reason Google is unaccountable is its scale. Otherwise "Google but with customer support" would be an obvious market opportunity. And the only reason losing your Google account is so impactful is that it controls everything from access to apps on your phone to your email to your calendar to being able to chat with friends. It's theoretically possible to vote with your wallet against Google, but far harder than against, say, Chick-fil-A, which means no boycott gets further than an HN comment.          
                  
 No startup can compete with Google for those services because Google can artificially offer them for free, and for very high quality, because it's all funded by their advertising business. (Not to mention that a startup would have to "do things that don't scale" and offer real customer support... which also costs money.)             
                  
 It's not a fair market at that point - you can't say Google is surviving because they offer the best value to customers, simply because the value is so disconnected from the service being offered. And in the other direction, potential customers like me who mostly avoid Google are still "paying" for it in that we're still seeing (and being tracked by) Google ads.            
                  
 Every incentive mechanism behind the underlying assumptions of a market-based economy - that companies that provide more value are more likely to succeed in the market - is completely broken when you allow trusts like Alphabet to exist.              
                  
                  
 zitterbewegung on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.                
                  
                  
 falcolas on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > You could self host your own email                 
                  
 You can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with).                
                  
 My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.                 
                  
                  
 FlownScepter on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it.                 
                  
 We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing just our email servers. They are a massive PITA.                
                  
                  
 ryandrake on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I have self-hosted E-mail for myself and my family for years, probably close to a decade now--I lost count. It's a learning curve at first but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch. Occasionally, like once every two years or so, I find my spam filter process crashed and failed to relaunch or something, causing delivery delays.            
                  
                  
 gorbachev on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 "...but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch"                 
                  
 ...until your upstream changes something.                 
                  
                  
 falcolas on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Or an opaque third party (i.e. a spam list) puts you on their lists.                 
                  
                  
 gowld on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 No, also people who host themselves and enjoy the hobby time and don't understand how the general public lives.                
                  
                  
 FlownScepter on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm one of those people, generally, but even I'm not signing up to host an email server. Screw that.                
                  
                  
 newswasboring on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That is a very, very limited scope for Google/Facebook. Almost to the point of me suspecting you are strawmanning it. In fact, google/facebook is so endemic to our infrastructure that you can literally delete you google account. Get it scrubbed from the internet, they will still track you. Identify you. And show you ads. If you try to block their services, some pages stop functioning. It is on the verge of impossible to escape them           
                  
                  
 whimsicalism on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 OK, you can lead your "resistance" to big tech your way.                 
                  
 Meanwhile, I'll be pushing my representative for regulatory action.                 
                  
                  
 thw0rted on Feb 15, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention.          
                  
 IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.                
                  
                  
 vonwoodson on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > drop them en mass                  
                  
 The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.              
                  
 And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.               
                  
                  
 pastacacioepepe on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.              
                  
 And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.               
                  
                  
 whimsicalism on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott.                
                  
 Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.               
                  
                  
 nvahalik on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible.                
                  
 There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc.               
                  
 Discoverability is really the only problem left.                 
                  
                  
 Negitivefrags on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You are on a site called hacker news. “Former teenage libertarian” is practically in the name.                
                  
                  
 anthony_r on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You're not seeing the other side of the coin - the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove. If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will) there will be far more spam going around the Internet.              
                  
 Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.                
                  
 (I am offering no solutions here, for I know none)                 
                  
                  
 khawkins on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think this is a convenient narrative for an abusive pattern of behavior by Google. The company is infamous for having non-existent customer service. It's not a matter of their AI having too many false positives, it's that when there is a false positive you have literally no recourse even if you're a well known business partner.             
                  
 Are we really going to believe that Google, one of the highest grossing companies in the world, doesn't have the money to provide even basic level customer service? If it were really a matter of not being able to afford it, certainly they could offer it for a fee. No, they're stubbornly refusing to address the issues, relying on this lie, and using their market dominance to avoid having to answer for it.           
                  
                  
 criley2 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Technically they do offer customer service if you pay them with their Google One product. I have phone numbers and human access very quickly, because I pay for it.               
                  
 Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.                
                  
                  
 oauea on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.                
                  
 Which they will do literally on a whim. Who are you going to call then?                 
                  
                  
 a_passable_dev on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Ghost busters                  
                  
                  
 Person5478 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I know HN doesn't like these types of comments, but I genuinely laughed.                 
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will)                 
                  
 It's not a request, it's a requirement. If your account is suspended, you deserve an explanation. You should get one without having to request it.                
                  
 I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.              
                  
                  
 daemin on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I heard on a podcast recently that a trading system needs to keep logs of why a particular trade was executed for several years just in case the authority wants it. So it isn't too much effort to build a similar report or log of behaviour to explain why someone was banned.              
                  
 Obviously this will also help the spammers who will use this information to get around the filters.                
                  
                  
 gibspaulding on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Complete speculation because I don't actually know how this works, but I wonder if the explanation would be something like this:                
                  
 "You've been banned because our black box ML algorithm says your usage patterns share similar traits to those of known spammers."                
                  
                  
 BlueTemplar on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Some government decisions are indirectly forbidden from using black box "algorithms" because they are obligated by law to explain (on demand) the steps that the algorithm took to reach its decision. Maybe something like this should also apply to some private companies ?              
                  
                  
 p410n3 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Thats kinda what the PayPal support told me when I asked why half of my in-store payments via Google Pay get rejected.                
                  
 Most were payments of about 2€ in the same store next to work.                 
                  
 Whatever I dont use it anymore                 
                  
                  
 daemin on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Podcast link: https://www.twoscomplement.org/ , I think it was the latest episode.                 
                  
                  
 AshamedCaptain on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 For the record, they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time, to avoid getting caught. Same as with anticheat software.               
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time                
                  
 We've heard this excuse countless times, but it's simply not acceptable. The foundation of our legal system is that it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person. How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?              
                  
                  
 PaulHoule on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This isnt criminal law. This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that (e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people out) but for the most part a business that doesnt want your business doesnt have to serve you, right or wrong.             
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > This isnt criminal law.                 
                  
 Not yet, but that's my whole point, it needs to be: It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.               
                  
 You can't really compare getting kicked out of a bar with losing access to your gmail. There are no "algorithms" automatically kicking innocent people out of bars. Getting kicked out of a bar is a direct human interaction, which is exactly what I'm demanding.              
                  
                  
 ethbr0 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The reason people are incensed about FAANGMP doing so is because, in their respective markets, they're monopolies.                
                  
 No one would care if Google banning a developer meant they could list their app through a non-Play app store with decent exposure, or a non-App Store at all.               
                  
 But that's not the reality we live in.                 
                  
 So it's more like if Walmart moved into my podunk town, put all the local shops out of business, and then banned me.                
                  
                  
 PaulHoule on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Hmmmm. I thought it was Apple that banned sideloading.                 
                  
 Maybe Google kicked this guy out for the same reason they fired off their own Stadia devs.                
                  
                  
 Mediterraneo10 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There is speculation that Google will ban sideloading in the near future, too. That is, it will extend its Advanced Protection model to mass-market Android. Then, sideloading will only be possible for that tiny minority of nerds like us who know how to use ADB and install an .apk over the command line.             
                  
                  
 badjeans on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Well, and Huawei users.                 
                  
                  
 ethbr0 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think the "but you can" rounding error alternate Android app stores and side-loading constitute a viable developer alternative. *                
                  
 * Except in China, in which case it's only true for their domestic Android market                 
                  
                  
 BlueTemplar on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's different for Huawei's app store ?                 
                  
                  
 Majromax on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out.                
                  
 Not exactly?                  
                  
 It's certainly not criminal law. Proof beyond reasonable doubt has no place here.                 
                  
 But it's also not exactly the relationship between a host and guest, where the guest has no rights save what the host grants. Website terms of service purport to be contracts, so there is a contractual rather than ex gratia basis for the relationship.              
                  
 So, begin interpreting website terms of service as contracts of adhesion, and read in a duty for website operators to enforce those terms fairly, with a reasonable basis (on the balance of probabilities) for harmful decisions.              
                  
 This isn't the current law, of course, but it's not hard to imagine the law reaching that place from here.                
                  
                  
 msh on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 But then they should be required to refund your purchases, fx in the app store or their movie store.                
                  
                  
 syshum on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >>e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people out                 
                  
 Well they can, just not for the sole reason of being black...                 
                  
 >>This isnt criminal law.                 
                  
 No it is Civil Tort law, but that does not mean your rights are completely removed, nor that principle does not apply                
                  
 >>This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that                
                  
 Absolutely, and those limits are normally set either by over riding civil / businessl law passed the government, or a contract entered into by 2 parties               
                  
 The problem with Google and many other online platforms is their ToS (their contract) is sooooooo one side that IMO it should be considered an unconscionable contract thus void and unenforeable.               
                  
 Also we have things like Truth in Advertising laws, many times these platforms Public messaging, and advertisement in no way match their terms of service               
                  
 I am fully in support of the right of a private business to choose who they want to do business with. I am not however in favor of allowing business to use marketing manipulation, false advertisement, and unconscionable contracts in the form of ClickWrapped Terms of Service to abuse the public             
                  
 the "mah private business" defense is a weak one, very weak, and it is telling that people defending the large companies with this defense often times do not support it in other contexts.               
                  
 Google has every right to choose who it does business with, but it need to make those choices in transparent, and public manner.                
                  
                  
 gabipurcaru on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 the legal system deals with a finite number of people; the internet enables that finite number of people to act as a potentially infinite number of entities, without a great way of disaggregating them into people.              
                  
 E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.               
                  
 This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users. So one way or another people who are real, legitimate and with good intentions somehow pay the cost of the harm that is being done on the internet. This is a hard problem.             
                  
 Source: am thinking/working on this sort of stuff; not representing my employer, my opinions are my own etc. etc.                
                  
                  
 Majromax on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users.               
                  
 A way to square this circle is to have rights engage at the point of payment.                 
                  
 A truly pseudonymous account with no monetization (going either way) has little intrinsic value, and less need for KYC-like identification.                
                  
 On the other hand, an account with some sort of payment history (either giving money in the case of purchases or receiving money in the case of developers/website hosts placing advertising) faces a higher standard. There's a reasonable probability of real economic harm if the account is nuked arbitrarily, and at the same time any money flow is open to theft or money laundering concerns, triggering moral if not legal KYC obligations.           
                  
 The latter should also help prevent the proliferation of straw bad actors, since providing payment imposes a direct cost, while the KYC rules open up the possibility of more direct action for flagrant breaches of contract / use of the platform for other abuses.              
                  
 The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.              
                  
                  
 gabipurcaru on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.              
                  
 Maybe. A few problems here:                 
                  
 1. payments come with privacy concerns, unless maybe you're talking about zero-knowledge-based blockchains, but we're a LONG way from such functionality being widespread               
                  
 2. $0.001/email is actually very reasonable for an attacker; they'd probably gladly pay even up to $1 or more, depending on their exact needs, especially if that comes with an elevated privileges account               
                  
 3. all of this is easily defeated by fanouts. E.g. if they sign up with bob@gmail.com and then are able to use bob+1@gmail.com, bob+2@gmail.com etc. to sign up for a different service, this defeats the purpose               
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.               
                  
 Again, it's not a "request".                 
                  
 If spam detection and account suspension can be automated, then suspension notifications can also be automated.                
                  
 I'm not sure I understand where the 10 million number is coming from. Are you suggesting that 1 spammer can create 10 million accounts on your system (which appears to be Facebook)?               
                  
 Regardless, no spammer has the time to get on the phone and personally dispute 10 million account suspensions — disputes which are unlikely to succeed if there is good evidence — so I'm not sure how the system grinds to a halt.              
                  
                  
 gabipurcaru on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?                
                  
 > Again, it's not a "request" [..] suspension notifications can also be automated.                 
                  
 Can you clarify what you mean by "protecting" them? I'm not sure suspension notifications qualify as meaningful protection                
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 This was specified in my original comment: "At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063313            
                  
 Except for the part where someone has to answer phone calls, it could be automated if the account suspension itself is automated.                
                  
 I'll also point out my later comment: "I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063399            
                  
 And to forestall any replies that providing information to suspended accounts would help the spammers, I've already responded to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063660               
                  
 Temporary account suspensions that you can quickly reverse on appeal are annoying but could be justified to fight abuse, as long as they don't happen too often. On the other hand, indefinite account suspensions that are impossible to reverse, such as the case of Andrew Spinks of Terraria, are simply indefensible, there's no justification whatsoever for that.            
                  
                  
 gabipurcaru on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.              
                  
 This is absolutely spot on, with the caveat that you do need to disaggregate from accounts to people, which is the hard problem. Having people call a phone number is definitely not going to work as a way of achieving this disaggregation. I'm pretty sure I could create a system to bring that call center to a halt with fairly minimal cost in less than a week of coding.            
                  
 As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.                
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.                
                  
 I think we may be talking about different things? I was just talking about a scaling problem of providing legal notifications of account suspensions and providing a means on getting them unsuspended. I wasn't talking about DoS attacks.              
                  
 Lots of companies have call centers, so I'm not sure what you're envisioning here, or what financial gain there would be for spammers to DoS the call center. After all, their accounts are already getting suspended by the algorithms, regardless of whether innocent consumers have any appeal to this, and DoSing the call center won't help spammers get their accounts unsuspended.            
                  
                  
 ethbr0 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Out of curiosity, what's current thinking (broad strokes) on methods to address this?                
                  
 My first guess would be third-party attestation of identity, with stored credential disposal on a short schedule? Essentially normal-user-verification-as-a-service?               
                  
                  
 throwaway19937 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Self-sovereign identities ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sovereign_identity ) are one attempt to address this issue.                
                  
                  
 gabipurcaru on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 privacy, online safety, no false positives                 
                  
 Pick two.                  
                  
 Different companies do different trade-offs. The optimal solution depends on how the internet community weighs each individual axis                
                  
                  
 PixyMisa on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Two would be amazing. One would be nice. Currently we get zero.                 
                  
                  
 Macha on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 When someone is in court on charges of child abuse, maybe we don't want them to know in case they (After serving their sentence) or their friends go for reprisals. Maybe the next child abuser might know their likely avenue of getting caught. Yet still we tell them the charges and evidence and give them a chance to defend themselves. Often in my country, given the damage such allegations could cause to both the victim and alleged (but not yet proven) perpetrator, we don't even reveal the identities of culprits until there's a guilty verdict.         
                  
 If we can extend that courtesy to people accused of child abuse, surely we should extend it to people accused of internet spam?                
                  
                  
 AlfeG on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I imagine if that happen in real courts. And You got jail without any info on why on how to evade - or You will behave properly on not go in jail                
                  
                  
 _flux on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Well it would still be better, because it's at least documented what kind of activity will lead into that.                
                  
                  
 kalleboo on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You don't have to tell them how you detected them but you can tell them what they did wrong. A lot of times when these cases come up there is nothing in the reason you got banned that would help you avoid the ban. It's purely to avoid any kind of accountability (if they say you got banned for a reason that is plainly not true because their algorithms suck)            
                  
                  
 donatj on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It would also give non-spammers a better understanding of why they were banned and teach them to be better humans. It’s this lack of empathy that’s leading to more and more anger online.               
                  
                  
 falcor84 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/810/                 
                  
                  
 rukshn on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think we give up on that when we agree to the rule                 
                  
 Google has the right to suspend, remove your account without prior notice                 
                  
 I'm sure there should be a clause like that in their TOS                 
                  
                  
 ballenf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is an age old problem in the criminal justice system. A solved problem.                 
                  
 After a lot of trials with various approaches, we settled on letting some criminals go free over convicting someone on weak evidence. Second we decided that trials should be open and evidence viewable by default.               
                  
 Finally you generally have the option to give some security to stay out of jail during trial.                
                  
 Closing a google account is a punishment worse than many criminal convictions. And will only get more important as we progress to an all digital existence.               
                  
                  
 mschuster91 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.                
                  
 Hire them directly instead of via labor farms, pay them an actual living wage, give them full health benefits, and hire enough of them to prevent overload.               
                  
                  
 _pmf_ on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove.                 
                  
 Maybe allowing single service providers to capture several billions of users is the problem here.                
                  
                  
 jeegsy on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Ding Ding Ding!!!                  
                  
                  
 paulsutter on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Perhaps the process should cost $100 or $500, so that actual spammers can’t use it                 
                  
 Maybe they really just need to offer a paid account option with real support, since that has much better incentives                
                  
                  
 tartoran on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes, refundable if the company ban proved in the wrong. Sounds like a great solution IMO                
                  
                  
 AlfeG on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 No need in charges. Strong person identification via Passport or Bank. Limit those request per identified person or throttle them.                
                  
                  
 wcoenen on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 There is a paid option: for $6/month you can use gmail with your own domain name. It's targeted at businesses but you can use it as an individual.                
                  
 https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html                 
                  
 It includes support, but I'm not sure if that helps in cases where google thinks you have abused the service. I just use it because I like having my own domain, and so that I don't lose access to my email if google locks me out. The idea is that I can update my domain's MTX records and use another email service.             
                  
                  
 sam_goody on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Support does not include if your account gets suspended or if you lose access.                 
                  
 We had a paid Google App account. One of our workers would only login from their computer. It died, and she tried to login from the new computer. It gave a unrecognized machine error, and we had to hire someone to resuscitate the old computer for her.              
                  
 I know of a company that had the entire companies' accounts suspended without warning because one user did something that violated their terms, but they could not figure out what. The company lost three months of revenue from it and I am not sure if it caused bankruptcy. No help at all from G.             
                  
                  
 KMag on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 About a year ago, I started migrating to a vanity domain, currently hosted at Google, for this reason. If I get locked out of Google, I lose my history, but at least I can move to another provider and avoid being locked out of my life for the indefinite future.              
                  
                  
 thw0rted on Feb 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Friendly reminder to anybody reading this with a Google account: it's not a perfect solution, but head over to Google Takeout and grab a dump of your account data while you're thinking of it. I did one last year, and at the same time reconfigured my phone camera roll to back up somewhere outside the Google ecosystem, so now all I'm missing is an up to date email mirror.            
                  
                  
 wcoenen on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Meta: my comment above is being downvoted significantly. I'm not sure what I did to offend. There was a remark about the need for a paid option, and I pointed out that it already exists. I have no agenda here and was just sharing what I know.              
                  
                  
 thw0rted on Feb 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I suspect it might be because the OP is about getting your account locked out, and several commenters have said that even paid accounts lose access to human support when they're locked out, so it's not actually a solution.              
                  
                  
 jlmb on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 But surely it’s possible to use methods other than what currently seems to be the first and only solution: “your account has been banned, bye”.                
                  
 For example, if an automated system thinks an account is sending spam, enforcing a (very low) outgoing email rate limit would be a much more reasonable first step.               
                  
                  
 Chris2048 on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 So just start charging for service, and keep a non-refundable deposit for spam/abuse.                
                  
 Let every abuser requests those explanations, if the decision doesn't change, the money is still kept, which funds that service.                
                  
                  
 fredgrott on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 no if the AI can be used to automate the banning it can be used to provide the electronic news email of the rule violated.                
                  
                  
 gambiting on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Well their main argument against it is that if you don't tell scammers which rule exactly they are breaking they can't improve until the app is approved. But of course that hits normal customers too. It's the equivalent of arresting random people on the street and not telling them why - surely, innocent people will just get their lawyer to free them.            
                  
                  
 bildung on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 aka due process                  
                  
                  
 syshum on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 So what is the proper Blackstone's ratio for you in these situation?                 
                  
 Is 1000 innocents ok to punish as long as 1 spam message is stopped?                 
                  
                  
 arendtio on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.                
                  
 It isn't the only solution to this problem. Not using their products is another one. However, in some sectors (e.g. smartphones) it is next to impossible to not use their products, especially because they are build on centralized schemes. But regulating those things is probably harder than a consumer rights bill. But the downside is probably, that a consumer rights bill would not just affect the few large corporations, but many smaller ones too.           
                  
                  
 Hamuko on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > You could of course sue Google                 
                  
 Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.                 
                  
                  
 Semaphor on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.                 
                  
 Which would be meaningless in the EU (I think. Possibly just Germany) as you can’t waive that right.                
                  
                  
 greatpatton on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.                
                  
                  
 vaduz on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.                
                  
 For consumers or businesses? Not being nitpicky here: I am not familiar with the French ruling, so I would genuinely want to know - as regulations tend to differ (businesses, even single sole trader ones, do not enjoy consumer protections). Not really relevant for the Terraria dev as it is his personal account that is banned, from the sound of it - but important.            
                  
                  
 greatpatton on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 As a consumer, every time the clause is not specifically negotiated, it is considered "abusive" and void (for businesses it may be different). If as a consumer you negotiate a contract with an arbitration clause it will be enforceable however if it is a generic clause in the terms& condition it will not.             
                  
                  
 himinlomax on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > For consumers or businesses?                 
                  
 For consumers. Businesses are considered to have both more (legal) resources to conduct deals as well as a need for more flexibility. However in this case this sounds like the account was personal, so even if it was used for business purposes, the deal was personal. In Europe (France here) typically the distinction is not in the use but in the contracting party.            
                  
 A business is registered with tax authorities and has an identifying number, if you contract a service without such a number you're doing so personally so for such purposes you're a consumer and bound by consumer laws. Indeed, all registration forms for services ask you for that number and business address. Services that don't want to / can't be subject to consumer protection laws or are not allowed to sell to private individuals require that number and verify it. Services that allow both individuals and businesses ask for it and may treat you differently based on it.         
                  
                  
 ohgodplsno on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Forced arbitration is against French law. Google cannot force you to go to a specific company for arbitration (that, conveniently enough, happens to always rule in their favor). It has to be explicitly negotiated between the two parties. This also holds true for companies. It has to be explicitly negotatied.             
                  
                  
 Semaphor on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think in Germany it would be legal for businesses. B2B contracts allow most things that are illegal in a B2C context.                
                  
                  
 KMag on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that U.S. courts have found that suing is a right that can't be waived by contract. Certainly an agreement to enter arbitration can be introduced as evidence against you in a a lawsuit, but any decent lawyer should be able to prevent an arbitration agreement from getting your lawsuit thrown out.             
                  
                  
 thgaway17 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You are 99.5% wrong. See Federal Arbitration Act and ATT v Concepcion.                 
                  
                  
 KMag on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Thanks. I stand corrected.                 
                  
                  
 CPLX on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 That's not an accurate description of current consumer arbitration precedent in the US.                
                  
                  
 maclured on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Its not fair when you have to get attention on twitter before getting issues like this resolved. Some of us don't use twitter for one thing                
                  
                  
 michaelbuckbee on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is in part what the GDPR mandates - that companies provide reasoning for how an automatic process works and also that there is a means to dispute that (Section 4 / Article 22) https://www.varonis.com/blog/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain...              
                  
                  
 conradfr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 But then ... https://twitter.com/Cleroth/status/1348036873885806596                 
                  
                  
 hertzrat on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I think we’re in a post consumer lawsuit era. Almost every terms of service on earth requires arbitration, or else absolves the vendor of any liability whatsoever               
                  
                  
 gowld on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Arbitration isn't so bad. It still costs the company every time they have to deal with a case. Mass/automated arbitration claims can turn the tables, and lawsuits can be filled to challenge the neutrality of arbitrators.              
                  
                  
 arrosenberg on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.                
                  
 Nope. That gives players like Google a platform to negotiate from now and in the future, and it won't curb abuses long term. These abuses are a symptom of economic concentration and a lack of competitive markets. The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.            
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.                
                  
 Why not both?                  
                  
 A consumer bill of rights and breaking up Google are not mutually exclusive. Consumer protection laws protect consumers from all companies big and small, present and future. Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".              
                  
 It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.               
                  
                  
 arrosenberg on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated. We have utility designations for instances where it makes sense, and even then you see customer abuses. Forcing companies to focus on competition and survival is the best way to make sure they treat their customers well. Abuses pop up when customers don't have the choice to take their business elsewhere.           
                  
 > Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".                 
                  
 The same regulator that has the power to break them up also has the power to prevent the next Google. Good pricing regulations have the power to prevent the next Google. These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately.              
                  
 > It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.               
                  
 That's probably because it wasn't successful in the classical sense. Geroge Bush won the 2000 election and settled the case before it went to judgment. If it had, and Microsoft had been forced to break up, we may not be in the current situation.              
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated.                
                  
 The Bill of Rights were written over 200 years ago and could really use a rewrite for modern times, but passing constitutional amendments is much more difficult than passing laws. Moreover, the issues involved in the Bill of Rights are much more contentious, whereas pretty much everyone is annoyed by Google's complete lack of customer service.            
                  
 I also find this statement to be somewhat at odds with your later statement: "These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately." How does your Bill of Rights analogy not also apply to your own argument about antitrust?              
                  
 I would say that consumer protection laws that can be applied in an ongoing, daily basis are better than antitrust laws, because antitrust enforcement is a monumental task that at best can take years to achieve, only comes into play when problems have already gotten out of hand, and may not have the desired results, as you mentioned. Better to try to prevent some of the problems from occurring in the first place, with laws that apply to all companies without exception, instead of trying to just go after a few of the current biggest troublemakers.         
                  
 And Google is far from the only company who pulls this crap, so at the very least we would need multiple successful antitrust actions.                
                  
 Right to repair is a similar issue. So, breaking up Google and Facebook might help somewhat with the account suspension issue, but then we also have to break up Apple. And John Deere! And other companies. Or... we could pass right to repair laws. Antitrust feels a lot like Whac-A-Mole to me. Not that antitrust is bad, but you knock down one BigCo, and another arises. Why not more directly address the abuses caused by the BigCos?           
                  
                  
 arrosenberg on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 The abuse is economic concentration, everything else is treating symptoms. Antitrust, price regulations, fair competition laws and the like are the remedy to that abuse. Obviously we would need to do more than one action - I'm talking about restructuring the economy. It's only whack-a-mole if you go one at a time. Knock-off a few big ones and the rest will settle to get the best deal possible.            
                  
 I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply, and we are certainly capable of putting a stop to these abuses and enforcing laws that create fair, competitive markets. I agree it's a longer term project, but it's the only one that will actually solve the issues. It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.            
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply                 
                  
 I don't believe we're impotent, which is why I'm suggesting new laws such as a consumer bill of rights and right to repair. I think that antitrust is actually too little too late in addressing problems. After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)             
                  
 > It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.                 
                  
 I think we disagree about which is the long term fix and which is the short term fix. I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.              
                  
                  
 arrosenberg on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)                
                  
 That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.                
                  
 > I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.               
                  
 Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.            
                  
 Further, how would you make it "permanent"? Constitutional amendments are a non-starter right now, and Congress can't pass laws that have 80%+ popular support. You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.              
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.                
                  
 It was merely a play on words, but the point was that antitrust only kicks in when significant market power is involved, some kind of restraint on competition, whereas other laws protect consumers from abuses by companies of all sizes, even the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies.             
                  
 > Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.            
                  
 Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.               
                  
 > Further, how would you make it "permanent"?                 
                  
 What do you mean? Laws are permanent by default, unless the legislators write an expiration date into the law.                
                  
 > You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.                 
                  
 Tell that to AT&T. ;-)                 
                  
                  
 arrosenberg on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.               
                  
 It's not strange if you look at historical priors. The US Government has frequently succeeded at regulation that involves rulemaking, investigation, and prosecuting abuses. The same government has failed to achieve its' goals any time it tried compliance based regulation. Sure, both are subject to regulatory capture, but I've only seen the one model succeed.            
                  
 I'm generally against these types of "consumer protection" movements explicitly because they target the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies. Consumer protection costs wind up driving those smaller businesses out and promote corporate concentration. Once you have that, the corporations are writing the rules, and the laws stop protecting customers (see: Boeing 737MAX).            
                  
 > Tell that to AT&T.                  
                  
 ATT, Verizon or T-Sprint? If they don't answer I can leave a messaging on their answering machine using free long distance, or send an email using a modem. Just a few things that resulted from that breakup...               
                  
 And we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution. Look at how much effort it took to undo that breakup, and they still haven't gotten back to the Ma Bell days.             
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution               
                  
 I think that kind of disproves your point, but maybe we should just stop there. :-)                 
                  
                  
 comeonseriously on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights"...                 
                  
 Maybe? But I worry that politicians will use that as a tool. Look what DeSantis is trying down here in Florida. He wants to fine "Big Tech" for banning politicians during an election. Personally, I'm tired of the lies and provocations and hate speech of some politicians and I don't think any company should be compelled to share those messages.            
                  
                  
 Yizahi on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 So those evil politicians will do what? Force corporations to indiscriminately ban arbitrary people without possibility of appeal? Oh, wait a minute...               
                  
                  
 MisterTea on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.                
                  
 Google is a private company who offers free internet services in exchange for your privacy being violated. They have no customer service because you are not a customer as customers pay. You have no rights on their platform because again, you are not a paying customer. And you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up. They don't owe you anything at that pont.            
                  
 So stop expecting "paying customer" treatment from a shady adware dealer who gives you "free" "integrated platform" stuff to get you hooked. That's an old drug dealer tactic anyway.               
                  
 Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that. Otherwise stop whining about the tyranny of "free" platforms such as google, twitter, facebook, etc.               
                  
 The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's to warn people of the rights and privacy hazards of free internet platforms.                
                  
                  
 _qulr on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 > Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that.                 
                  
 Andrew Spinks, the author of the linked tweet, was a business partner of Google's. That didn't save him.                
                  
                  
 MisterTea on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Partner is not a customer. They don't care about any human on their platform because their platform is not designed to care about humans, only exploit them.               
                  
                  
 paulryanrogers on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's ...                 
                  
 Should governments allow caller ID spoofing, spam bordering on harassment, or lazy oligopolies to be negligent?                
                  
 Governments should do whatever we agree they should. Both governments and companies serve the humans.                
                  
                  
 Sayrus on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 To be fair, even as a paying customer, you don't get much more "customer service".                 
                  
 The same also applies for Google Play Store where without a doubt you paid at least once and continue for every in-app purchase.                
                  
                  
 AceJohnny2 on Feb 8, 2021 | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.               
                  
 At that level, "percentage" is an insufficient measure. You want "permillionage", or maybe more colloquially "DPM" for "Defects Per Million" or even "DPB".               
                  
 You'll still get false positives though, so you provide an appeal process. But what's to prevent the bad actors from abusing the appeal process while leaving your more clueless legitimate users lost in the dust?               
                  
 (As the joke goes: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists" [1])                
                  
 Can you build any vetting process, and associated appeal process, that successfully keeps all the bad actors out, and doesn't exclude your good users? What about those on the edge? Or those that switch? Or those who are busy, or wary?              
                  
 There's a lot of money riding on that.                 
                  
 [1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...                 
                  
                  
 mooman219 on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I think this is a balancing act of risks, and I wanted to bring up what I believe to be a success story when it comes to handling suspensions: Microsoft.               
                  
 One thing I believe Microsoft gets right is that suspensions are isolated to the service whose TOS was violated. I.e. violating the hotmail TOS doesn't suspend you from their other services. I think this makes the impact of a false positive less catastrophic, while still removing actual problematic users from the service. This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.            
                  
                  
 AceJohnny2 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Yup, I agree this is the better solution. The monolithic "one account rules everything " approach just increases the user's vulnerability.                
                  
 It's largely what made Facebook's forcing usage of their account for Oculus users so ass-backwards.                
                  
                  
 lwansbrough on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.                 
                  
 It may be an artifact of Microsoft actually being regulated for monopolistic practices.                
                  
                  
 nl on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 There's nothing at all in the old DOJ settlement that imposes anything like this.                 
                  
                  
 Schiendelman on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That isn’t what they’re asserting.                 
                  
 I worked there for more than a decade. The settlement changed behavior - you thought about how to avoid future trust-like behavior.                
                  
                  
 aparsons on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If we did that at Microsoft when we were bringing Hotmail under the MS umbrella, DOJ would have ripped the company into 10 pieces                
                  
                  
 booi on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If you're implying that there's just no way to support their users then I'm going to disagree.                
                  
 At Google's scale and profitability, saying you can't build an appeals process that supports your paying users is just ridiculous. And at this point the collateral damage to Stadia's already tenuous reputation is going to be a lot more than paying someone to vet him manually.              
                  
                  
 whack on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Honestly, the answer is to charge people a fee, in order to appeal a ban. A fee that covers the cost of investigating the incident, making it revenue-neutral. This way, Google would have every incentive to investigate thoroughly all appeals, including repeated appeals by the same person.             
                  
 From the user's perspective, it's still a pretty good deal. There's a 99.999% chance that you get to use gmail/youtube/etc for free. And a 0.001% chance that you'll end up a statistic, and need to pay a nominal fee for an appeal.              
                  
 Unfortunately, I don't think the above will ever happen, because it would be a PR nightmare. "Google wants to charge you money, just to appeal a ban!" It's still better than the status quo, where people have almost no recourse when they are banned. But it still sounds way better in the media, if you just pretend as though these things never happen. Hence the status quo - use automated systems to cheaply get to a 99.999% success rate, and spend as little money as possible on the remaining 0.001%          
                  
                  
 lamontcg on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?                 
                  
 The answer is to force google to be open and more transparent through regulations and have to scale up to deal with it and eat into their profits.                
                  
 The assumption up front should not be that we need to care about protecting their profits.                
                  
                  
 stormcode on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Absurd but not new. Equifax was charging people to freeze their credit for a while after the breach, until public pressure mounted.                
                  
 They probably made a TON of money off of that, and off the credit protection services they offer directly or through subsidiaries.                
                  
                  
 himinlomax on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?                 
                  
 It need not be, as long as the fee is less than the cost. It could be symbolic (say $1). But the problem is that it would be seen as a revenue generator whether it is or not.               
                  
                  
 marsokod on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 They don't even have to keep the fee of the query is legitimate. They can reimburse it or keep it in the user's wallet when they consider that this was either a false positive or a honest mistake. The cost would be minimal but would deter a lot of people trying to game the system.             
                  
                  
 fgonzag on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I completely agree.                  
                  
 And if companies don't want to do it, that should be easy to regulate though. Requiring a human centric appeal process even if it has a fee, and prohibiting blanket account bans (if you get banned on gmail it doesn't affect your android and play store accounts, for example)              
                  
 There are other provisions that I consider important like not being able to reuse email addresses and requiring the forwarding of email for at least 6 months after any account termination (getting banned from your email address can have disastrous consequences)              
                  
                  
 ehsankia on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Google One, which costs 2$ a month, as far as I can tell provides you with some level of support, which is definitely more than zero.                
                  
                  
 mippenhappen on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Do you even have access to your Google One support if your Google account is banned?                 
                  
                  
 ruph123 on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The problem with unjustified bans due to some algorithm is also: These cases might not even be a close calls like: “oh yeah this person did something that is in the grey area of what our policies state. I will ban him but he might interpret things differently.”              
                  
 No if you enforce your policies strictly by (machine learning) algorithms it could just be a matter of misinterpreting a different language, slang, irony or something else. Which makes these bans even more infuriating.              
                  
                  
 esja on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 The lesson here is: you are too big. If you were smaller, you could manage these issues. But you choose to be big instead.                
                  
                  
 ldiracdelta on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Counter-example - Amazon. You can reach someone at Amazon and they are ginormous too.                
                  
                  
 justinclift on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Counter-counter example, even if you do reach someone at Amazon they're not necessarily going to do anything useful.                
                  
 I've had a problem with my Amazon account for years now, after Amazon billed me (on my seller account) for something they shouldn't have.                
                  
 After I complained, they agreed to refund it. Except the refund never arrived.                 
                  
 Asked many times over the years "WTF?", and someone always promises to look into it after agreeing they can see the problem.                
                  
 Never to be heard from again. Same pattern has happened every single time (many times). Obviously, something about it puts it in the "too hard" basket... :/               
                  
 Needless to say, I don't use Amazon's services much at all any more unless required for job purposes. And I steer people away from AWS for the same reason too.               
                  
                  
 bloomark on Feb 10, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Have you ever tried escalating? You can do that at Amazon, but not with Google.                 
                  
                  
 justinclift on Feb 11, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Not sure. Last time I tried was prob 2-3 years ago, and I've effectively given up now.                
                  
                  
 wmf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Is this really true? If Gmail was replaced with a dozen competing services each with "only" 100M users each, would the total number of moderators be lower? How does the number of required human moderators per million users scale, and why?              
                  
                  
 BingoAhoy on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 I agree: not true. The advantage of automation is you can do more for less which extends the reach in wealth and services available to the human race. Automation is a beautiful thing and gmail being too big to service with human support is not understanding that we'll never have enough intelligence power to police every square inch of existence + the net if we rely solely on human intelligence.            
                  
 Problem is: can we cultivate machine learning intelligence to be as good as some of the best human arbiters?                
                  
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91TRVubKcEM                 
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Automation is a form of capital. In an economic system that has conditions for a runaway positive feedback loop of accumulation of capital, in the long term, it benefits primarily those who own the capital. Specifically, it allows them to collect more economic rent from it, and share less with the rest.             
                  
 Taken to its logical conclusion, when everything is automated, the people who own the automation don't actually need the rest of the population at all - it becomes redundant. Of course, the "redundant" population might have different ideas about itself...              
                  
                  
 wmf on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 I don't think anyone is proposing that moderation rely solely on humans. The question is about machine learning with human backup/appeals vs. Google's approach of machine learning with no appeals.               
                  
                  
 X6S1x6Okd1st on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Depends on how much of that wealth is captured and how it is distributed after it is captured.                
                  
 If a huge amount of wealth is created and 90% of it is captured and the vast majority of it is distributed in share price/dividends then increasing inequality can really fuck up society even while GPD rises.               
                  
                  
 WalterBright on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 But you'll have the option of switching to one of those other companies.                 
                  
                  
 judge2020 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You can't choose to stay small unless you're someone like clubhouse which still has a long waitlist for sign-ups, and even then they're trying to build their infrastructure wide enough to accompany everyone. Not offering service to all/99.9% of potential customers is effectively lost value and goes against shareholders' expectations.             
                  
                  
 saurik on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's like saying a restaurant can't choose not to serve a billion people even though it only has enough capacity to seat and make food for 20: if you can't provide legitimate service for everyone, you need to not allow more people. The core problem here is that users keep signing up for Google services without being informed correctly ahead of time why that's idiotic, and the only fix for this is going to be regulatory: either Google needs to change how they handle banning people (there should be some law that if they accepted responsibility to store someone else's data that they have some minimum retention time for it letting you access it or something), come up with a working appeals process (and ensure that they have enough employees to handle the expected appeal load before either signing up new accounts or banning old ones), or they need to be forced to have a giant sticker on the box with a skull and crossbones on it which says that the moral equivalent of the surgeon general needs you to be informed of the serious risks that are associated with using this ridiculous service offering.
                  
                  
 majormajor on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Then lets regulate size if the market is going to push companies towards inhumane choices.                
                  
                  
 dgudkov on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 >If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.               
                  
 Doesn't matter. If you're dealing with billions of accounts then you're earning billions of dollars. Just hire more people. Scale must never be an excuse for poor customer service.               
                  
                  
 notSupplied on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It depends on the unit economics.                 
                  
 Google has billions of accounts because it is FREE create them. Which could mean the cost of providing human support is actually too expensive on a per unit basis. The only way to rectify these economics is to charge for the account.              
                  
 I pay for Google One to store more photos...however I have no clue if this improves my situation. Does the algorithm give me more slack for being a long, paid user? Do I get real customer support in the event I do get flagged? No clue.              
                  
                  
 judge2020 on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > You can't even trust phone companies to do their job right and ensure the secure verification code is sent to the right phone! You provided some more secure ways for users to authenticate themselves,               
                  
 For those that don't know, phone companies are easily susceptible to sim-swapping attacks which can make it easy for an attacker to intercept SMS 2fa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016212               
                  
 Edit: looks like OP changed their entire comment while I was replying.                 
                  
                  
 bigiain on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 You can totally trust phone companies to "do their job right". You need to understand what their job is though.                
                  
 The Telcos never signed up to being a "secure verification code provider". Almost a decade ago, the local Telco industry group told us all:                
                  
 "SMS is not designed to be a secure communications channel and should not be used by banks for electronic funds transfer authentication,"                
                  
 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telcos-declare-sms-unsafe-for...                 
                  
 Any company that uses SMS for 2FA is offloading risk and security to an industry that never expected it, and explicitly seeks to not provide it.                
                  
 A Telco _desperately_ wants to be able to get you back up and running (making calls and spending money) on a new phone using your existing number before you walk out of the shop. And even more, they want to be able to transfer you across as a customer from a competitor - and have your existing number work on their network.             
                  
 "Sim Swapping" is a valuable feature for Telcos. They have significant negative incentives to make it difficult. They don't want to secure your PayPal account, and nobody (least of all PayPal) should expect them to do a good job of it, certainly not for free...              
                  
                  
 AceJohnny2 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yeah sorry, I thought the original version was overly flowery, and the same point could be made more succintly.                
                  
                  
 jjav on Feb 9, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > Can you build any vetting process,                 
                  
 Yes, it's pretty simple. Create and enforce some consumer protection laws which require, for example, that any company larger than a certain size is required to establish support offices staffed by humans in every major town. And required to resolve every issue within X days either by fixing the problem or clearly documenting why not. If not, no arbitration allowed, so they are subject to lawsuits if the reason doesn't hold scrutiny.           
                  
 Problem solved. Companies like goog, facebook et.al. can easily afford this and it'll stop this ridiculous behavior.                
                  
 It also to some extent protects the companies. Spambots who create a million accounts can't replicate a million humans to show up at the support office, so it establishes a human:human relationship that's completely missing today.              
                  
                  
 fennecfoxen on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This would all be perfectly okay and understandable if the AI were the first line of defense and there was any meaningful way at all to contact support and escalate things after that filter. (I mean besides making headlines in all the gaming-news articles.)              
                  
                  
 orlp on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 > But 0.001% of billions or users is still millions of accounts...                 
                  
 Not that I disagree with your point, but even if we assume 50 billion accounts (6+ for every human on earth), 0.001% of that would still be 'just' 100k, not millions.               
                  
                  
 AceJohnny2 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Oops, quite right. I multiplied by 0.001 when it should've been 0.00001 (because percent ) >_<                
                  
 Fixed                  
                  
                  
 xalava on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes there is a lot of money riding on that, but that is the cost of doing business.                 
                  
 Why banks have heavy compliance costs? Doing proper AML and KYC costs money and society decided that it was critical enough to bear that cost even in light regulation countries.               
                  
 A lot of the financial success of those companies is in part the result of not fully taking responsibility for the consequences of their business activity. Eventually they will, under social pressure that this post success represent, or by laws.              
                  
                  
 6gvONxR4sf7o on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 At some point percentage is insufficient, but it's because it's a rate. Permillionage/DPM doesn't fix it. It's the number of people affected that matters, so if you have it at 99.9% and grow 10x, you ought to improve it to 99.99% to not become eviler. If you just stay at 99.9% when you grow 10x, you're harming 10x the people.             
                  
 I'd use the total number of false positives as the proper measure.                 
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 If a company has so many users that it can't hire enough employees to manually handle the false positives properly, it's too big to exist, and should be broken up.               
                  
                  
 d0gbread on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Why broken up vs users migrating to a competitive service? Seems like a very simple facet to compete on.                
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It's hard for users to migrate to a competitive service when there's some form of lock-in, which is usually what happens in practice (often through other services offered by the same company).               
                  
                  
 eggbert12 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 This is by far the most ridiculous reasoning I’ve seen for a company being too big. Because too many users get restricted from the service unintentionally then the provider is too big?               
                  
                  
 hnick on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 Some regions floated right to explanation and right to human review for automated processes. I don't know if any passed, but if they did, it would definitely mean the service has to take it into account.               
                  
                  
 int_19h on Feb 9, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 You have summed it up quite nicely, but I don't see why it's so ridiculous? If the social costs incurred by corporations past a certain size become unacceptable, why shouldn't we, as a society, limit their size? There's no natural right to form an LLC.              
                  
                  
 seankimdesign on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Can you please elaborate on bad actors absuing the appeals process? Is your point about how everyone will automatically appeal, making it difficult for genuine queries to receive the human attention they need? Or is there another vector of abuse you were thinking of?              
                  
                  
 Sohcahtoa82 on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 That's basically it.                  
                  
 If every action taken against an account by automation is appealed, then the automation becomes worthless.                
                  
 In gaming forums that are run by the developer, such as the World of Warcraft or League of Legends forums, I have very frequently seen people whining and complaining that their accounts were banned for no reason until a GM or moderator finally pipes in and posts chat logs of the user spamming racial slurs or some other blatant violation of ToS.            
                  
                  
 InitialLastName on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 We see that on HN too, where people who have been banned/hellbanned with ample warning are often complaining that it's because "hackernews groupthink" but when you look back at their comment history they call someone some redpilly insult in every comment they've ever made on the website.             
                  
                  
 the_only_law on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 It’s even better when they claim shady moderator censorship for user flags.                 
                  
                  
 wilde on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It’s even worse than that because the bad actors are doing this at scale and will have automation to auto-appeal while normal people will sometimes shrug and decide it’s not worth it. So your appeals queue likely contains a higher flow of bad actors than the distribution of FPs.             
                  
                  
 hinkley on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 It's interesting to me how Bloom Filters avoid the uncanny valley between probably correct and definitely correct. I don't know if this is a technological difference between problem domains or a purely ideology/mindset.              
                  
 Dividing a problem by 10 should get notice. By 100 (eg, Bloom Filters) respect. By 1000, accolades. Dividing a problem by infinity should be recognized for what it is: a logic error, not an accomplishment.               
                  
 Most times when I'm trying to learn someone else's process instead of dictating my own, I'm creating lists of situations where the outcomes are not good. When I have a 'class', I run it up the chain, with a counter-proposal of a different solution, which hopefully becomes the new policy. Usually, that new policy has a probationary period, and then it sticks. Unless it's unpopular, and then it gets stuck in permanent probation. I may have to formally justify my recommendation, repeatedly. In the meantime I have a lot of information queued up waiting for a tweak to the decision tree. We don't seem to be mimicking that model with automated systems, which I think is a huge mistake that is now verging on self-inflicted wound.      
                  
 Perhaps stated another way, classifying a piece of data should result in many more actions than are visible to the customer, and only a few classifications should result in a fully automated action. The rest should be organizing the data in a way to expedite a human intervention, either by priority or bucket. I could have someone spend tuesday afternoons granting final dispensations on credit card fraud, and every morning looking at threats of legal action (priority and bucket).          
                  
                  
 dustingetz on Feb 8, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]                 
                  
 Yes; decentralization                 
                  
                  
 richardwhiuk on Feb 8, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]                 
                  
 that's not a solution to a problem.                 
                  
 end users don't want to run their own spam and moderation filters, and they definitely do want them.                
                  
                  
                  
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I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.We see this again and again. The cynic in me sees Stadia as yet another internal promotion scheme, masquerading as a product. I doubt this will ever change. The internal momentum of the company culture will make it so. What does it mean for investors? Google has enough money they can just buy their way into markets indefinitely. It will probably keep them going, but I don't expect huge growth. I'd probably be putting my money into other stocks if I had to choose. I honestly don't think people would miss Google much if it was gone.
    
    
        
     Stadia, from day one, has seemed like an engineering-oriented project. It's a cool tech that nobody asked for and not many people actually want (and has been atrociously packaged as an actual product). I can just hear the kickoff meeting:"We have some of the best cloud engineers in the world, we have one of the biggest fleets of data centers. Not a lot of companies could reasonably implement cloud gaming, but I bet we could!" That part is true! But then: "Productization? Pricing? Market-fit? Customer service and messaging? Whatever, we've got good tech, it'll sell itself. We can figure all that other stuff out later, that's the easy part." ...cue the flop. It was always going to be this way.
    
    
        
     Are you sure people don’t want it? I think it’s one of the biggest market potentials in gaming right now.I’m quickly approaching 40, and I would like nothing more to not have to own the windows desktop that I only use for one thing. To play blood bowl 2 (and eventually 3) a few times a week. If I could do that from a browser on my MacBook, you can bet I’d never own another desktop in this life. That’s anecdotal or course, but there’s quite a lot of us.
    
    
    
        
     I used both. When time came to Play cyberpunk, I went for Stadia.It runs a lot better (streaming quality, glitches, start-up times) are incredible. 
Using Stadia in general is a polished (yet basic) experience. 
In contrast Nvidia very much felt like a hack. Log-in in my steam account, seeing weird window glitches. I see a lot of comments negative on stadia here,based on bias rather then actual experience. 
Stadia is nothing short of tech star even with its downsides compare to the rest of the market.
    
    
        
     I can't speak about Nvidia, but we just hosted a ~25 person LAN party at work and decided to go with Stadia... never again. Some people couldn't even make an account because they didn't have a credit card (even though we planned to mostly play free titles). Literally every game needed 20-40 minutes before we finally got everyone in - we never pinpointed the root cause, but a combination of restarting Chrome (emptying cache), relogging into Stadia, rebooting PCs and re-hosting a match, we managed to play a few titles. In a couple cases, we just gave up trying to get more than a handful of people in the game. Some people couldn't ever get their keyboard or mouse working in some titles (myself included, one game in particular was fine for awhile, then suddenly my mouse stopped registering in-game - rebooting and having the host restart the server didn't help - googling my issue says I'm not alone).Some of these titles I've played multiplayer via Steam without any of the related issues, granted Steam/Stadia is an apples/oranges comparison. At the end I suggested we try Armagetron. 2.7MB download and runs on Mac/Win/Linux/Potatoes. I started up a private server and we were running a 16-player game without any issues in literally 5 minutes.
    
    
        
     Yeah I don't see how nVidia doesn't dominate this market. Their product just makes way more sense.To even get on Stadia you have to port to their custom Linux distribution, which is a pretty huge ask for most games.
    
    
        
      
 Publishers specifically pulled out of Geforce Now because they didn't like the idea of people not having to buy the game again.   
    
        
      
 Unfortunately Stadia is the only one that supports 4K (I'm a casual user of Nvidia's service since it was in beta)   
    
        
     Does 4k matter? The way you state it makes it sound like it's a major issue (disclaimer: I've never seen a 4k game)This is an honest question, since I don't game much (witcher 3, death stranding and a few point and click) , and regular 1080 doesn't bother me, so I'm genuinely curious.
    
    
        
     Would describe Stadia 4k to be inline with native 1080p, at least when playing stadia in a browser. Stadia 4k may look better using a chromecast ultra, but I haven't tried that.And It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrate, feel like we need some kind of standard, because bitrate means nothing to most people.
    
    
        
     &gt; It is weird how resolutions are the focus in streaming when the most important thing is bitrateYep. I see a good example of this when I watch gameplay videos on Youtube in the highest available 1080p bitrate, and regularly see results that look far worse than playing the game in 720p, maybe even 480p. For example, it's obviously very common to pan the camera through a high-detail scene, which is trivial for a GPU to do, but incredibly information dense for a video encoder. So anything with a lot of detail blurs (in a very ugly way, not like motion blur) when there's movement. And Youtube has the advantage that the video has as much time to record as Youtube will allow it, it doesn't need to be done with low-latency settings as Stadia does. Of course, cable TV is even worse, but ordinary consumers don't seem to have noticed or cared about that either.
    
    
    
        
     I'm not sure about Europe, but in the US it's very rare to see bitrates even a large fraction of that. (I don't see a minimum bitrate on the ATSC Wikipedia page, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it's often lower than 6 Mbps.) Worse still, in a bunch of places the cable companies still deliver MPEG-2 video, which is going to look pretty atrocious at anything other than an extremely high bitrate. It's a big disadvantage compared to Youtube. Plus a whole bunch of programs are in 60 fps, which need a higher bitrate anyway.I plugged in my cable box for the first time in months to watch the Super Bowl, and was shocked at how terrible the video was. I could see obvious artifacts without glasses on, and I can't even tell 720p from 1080p at that distance. Some of my relatives have those MPEG-2 channels, and I remember them being significantly worse. Not trying to say that cable TV can never be better than Youtube's quality, of course, just trying to give a general impression of my experience with various American cable companies.
    
    
    
        
     Nice I'll check that out.12 Mbps MPEG-4 should be quite good, for the stations that support it.
    
    
        
      
 At least with game streaming services, I suspect advertising resolution serves the double purpose of being understandable to most consumers, while specifically obfuscating bitrate, which is the sacrificed statistic.   
    
        
      
 It depends on the game. Anything that has a lot of text or small icons - e.g. many strategies - benefits from high DPI in the same way desktop apps do.   
    
    
        
     The narrow "want to play games on my mac" problem could be solved if game developers chose to build the game cross-platform from the start and release a mac build. Many games are already cross-platform, as they run on both Windows and consoles. The fact that so many game companies don't even bother with a mac build shows they don't want to solve this for whatever reason (probably mac just not profitable enough).If a developer is not willing to lift a finger to port to mac (a small market, but one with a known size), why would they port to Stadia or some other unknown market?
    
    
        
      
 Because macs are terrible platforms for games. They have been very low end for a long time (m1 notwithstanding), and they have been killing off opengl, the only cross platform rendering API (before vulkan, which they don't support). Also their insistence on breaking changes means your back catalog needs constant maintenance. That's normal for app developers, but not gamedev. Oh, and if you do make the port, they will be about 1% of your users. Or less. So, to summarize, mac support is expensive, difficult, and not profitable. Should we still do it? I tend to think you're better of spending your time on linux support.   
    
        
     Maybe MacOS isn't a good push for gaming for either developers or Apple. I definitely think iOS is. The Apple Arcade Subscription plan seems to be part of that for gaming. I've seen a lot of people on the subway and even at work sometimes playing mobile games on their iOS device, from Call of Duty Mobile to racing games to tower defense.I imagine when Apple expands their desktop and laptop lineup to M1 chips, it's going to include many of the games that are available from their mobile catalog.
    
    
        
     Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easy (and most of the smaller games that use those engines do release Mac builds); doing a Mac build from an in-house engine may be a ton of workBut more importantly: Mac hardware usually isn't really equipped for high-end games. If you have a pro-tier machine you might do okay, but nobody buys Macs for gaming, at the very least. It's just too niche of a market to go through a lot of effort to support it
    
    
        
     &gt; Doing a Mac build from Unreal or Unity is generally easyYou'd think, but a lot of mainstream engine-based games that could "easily" have a mac port never get one, even an unofficial one offered as totally unsupported. Look at Among Us for example. Not by any stretch a high-end game. It runs on Windows, Android, iOS, a bunch of XBoxen, and probably other consoles. I bet the developer could spit out a working native macOS version with the push of a button, but so far hasn't.  Kerbal Space Program is another example. When last I checked, they did have a native mac version, but it was hamstrung in some way--I think it was limited to 32-bit or something. I can't imagine these examples are actually a huge amount of effort to make happen. As a fan and programmer I'd be willing to do it for free.
    
    
        
     KSP has been 64-bit on Mac from around the same time as Windows and is still fully supported.A lot of games did drop off the Mac when it moved to 64-bit only though.
    
    
        
     Still has a bigger market share than Linux, with people that actually pay for games, and all major engines support Metal.Whereas GNU/Linux, even with the massive amount of games targeting Android, hardly gets to see them. Same applies to Stadia, which is mostly GNU/Linux + Vulkan, with Google sponsoring Unity and Unreal as well.
    
    
        
     Apple's moving to the M1 chip for desktop/laptop Macs. That's going to make the target look more like top-end Mac hardware… and the iPhone.The latter isn't a niche market, it's a 'not high-end' market. But that could evolve, I think.
    
    
        
     I don't think it's impossible that streamed games will find a market, but I think there are several hurdles that (unsurprisingly) weren't apparent to a company with no experience in the industry:1) PC gamers tend to revel in owning (building, customizing, optimizing) their hardware; not just because it lets them play the games they want to play, but even for its own sake. RGB arrays, overclocking, custom case builds. Streaming can't compete with that. 2) "Casual" gamers already have powerful devices in their pockets with thousands and thousands of games available, including many free ones and many high-quality ones. 3) Console gamers are presumably the target (?) market. But an Xbox Series S costs $299. The (absolute minimum) Stadia starter kit costs $99; you're already a third of the way there. And then there's the subscription fee. And then you still have to buy the games. Something I don't think Google realized is that over a console generation, the dominant cost quickly becomes the games themselves, not the hardware. If Stadia users still have to buy them at full-price - $60 a pop - that $200 you saved at the beginning quickly becomes a diminishing fraction. You just aren't saving that much, and in exchange, you get the constant risk that your whole library will simply be killed at any moment, as well as... 4) The latency. The problem with latency is it's not a fully solvable issue, no matter how much hardware or money you throw at the problem. There's a physical lower bound on how long it takes electricity to get from your house to a data center and back. And then there's all the routing infrastructure run by your ISP, which a) is outside of Google or Microsoft or whoever's ability to improve, and b) is unlikely to be improved by the ISP because game streaming is basically the only usecase where bleeding-edge latency actually matters. And in terms of how much it matters: one frame at 60FPS translates to 16.7ms. Client-rendered multiplayer games don't have as much of an issue with higher latencies because of client-side prediction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client-side_prediction  Here's the only way I could see game streaming being successful: An all-you-can-eat, Netflix-style buffet of big-budget games. Like Apple Arcade, except it has games like Call of Duty and Borderlands that you could normally only play on a console or a gaming PC. You pay a monthly fee, and you never have to buy or even download a game. Dedicated thin-client hardware is a waste; anybody who wants to buy hardware will just buy a console. Your target customers don't want that. Instead this would only be playable on existing platforms, primarily desktop/web/mobile, though possibly existing consoles as well. That would be a decent value-proposition for some people. Those playing really fast-paced games and/or sticklers for latency wouldn't go for it, some existing phone-gamers might, but mostly you would get people like your friend from college who just wants to play Borderlands with you but isn't really a "gamer" outside of that. Microsoft is the most clearly-positioned company to succeed at this, as far as I can tell. They have two decades of experience in the industry, they have cloud chops and datacenters, and they carry clout with publishers and even have in-house studios (because a subscription-only game buffet it going to be a tough sell when it comes to license-holders). And of course they've already started: Xbox Game Pass is a smallish version of the all-you-can-eat subscription, and they've been experimenting with cloud-hosted releases. You can even play Control on your Nintendo Switch via Microsoft's cloud. That's pretty cool. But I don't think this will ever make gaming PCs or even consoles obsolete, mainly because of the unsolvability of the latency issue. It will be good enough for some people. Oh and Stadia will die anyway, because Google doesn't understand any of the above
    
    
        
     Yours is a thoughtful post and doesn't deserve a quick, dismissive response, so I want to hedge the following just by acknowledging that.I'd say your problems 1-3 can be summarized by saying you don't think there's a market for it. I don't think I agree. The prospective market for it is probably console gamers who want to play PC games that aren't ported to their console. Even CP2077 might be an example of this, because from what I've heard the performance is absolutely terrible on consoles, and if you haven't already spent heavily on an upgraded computer with a graphics card that's going to set you back $1K, you probably can't play it there either. So if you're the stereotypical console gamer, who doesn't care about perfect graphics and the lowest possible latencies, Stadia is going to sound like a pretty decent deal. And that's before you get to exclusives.
    
    
        
     - CP2077 could be viewed as a one time inter-generational fluke, where a project was designed with the ambition of PS5, then half-heartedly fitted into a PS4. Once people get their next gen consoles, this use case probably goes away. Can you imagine a lot more of these CP2077-like scenarios that justify being a Stadia user?- Stadia will be just as vulnerable to "exclusive content fragmentation" as consoles. Now that they've shuttered their internal studio, they will in fact, be constantly on the defensive in the war of exclusive content.
    
    
        
     Yeah, I was only using Cyberpunk as an example of how a console player might play a game on Stadia that was released on their console if it performed better. (Or even equivalently, since Stadia has other advantages like easy travel.) But I think the much bigger draw will be for games that are PC exclusives or PC/XBOX, for Playstation folks.I suppose it remains to be seen how successful Stadia will be at pull these titles to its platform. I think you're right to worry about fragmentation. If developers view Stadia as "just another platform" that they can just choose not to support when creating exclusives, it'll fail. If Stadia can get them to view it as a kind of drop-in that lets a much larger number of people (with, say, underpowered hardware) play their game, they'll be more likely to view it as a win. One other plausible market: people for whom the upfront cost of a platform is still too high. It's a lot easier for most parents to justify buying Cyberpunk for Stadia for their kid for Christmas than it is a brand new $500 console, or God forbid the several thousand dollar PC you'd need to play it.
    
    
        
     I hate doing this, but I feel like I need to pick at each of your described hurdles, because I think each of them make assumptions or assertions that don't hold up.1. You claim PC gamers do it for the hardware as much as the software. Let's assume the data backs that - it certainly seems like it's likely to be true. And I'm biased in wanting to believe it too, because I like to build and revel in the machines that run the games I own. What isn't true is that those same people, people like me, cannot also be attracted to things like Stadia. 2. Services like Stadia do not replace the many games that people play on the many devices that already exist. It's not a "one or the other" thing. They allow those devices to play more games. The biggest flaw is in suggesting that casual gamers (a term which is flawed for many other reasons) wouldn't be a potential market for a thing like Stadi. Mobile game sales account for almost half of ALL game related sales. 48%, in fact. $76 billion in sales. A thing like Stadia means that people can play more games on their devices. And let me say, games on Stadia play incredibly well on my iPad that's a few generations old. That's very attractive. Being able to play PC quality games on my iPad when I travel is worth every penny. I'd even argue it's easier to play games on Stadia than it is to play natively installed games. With Stadia, there's no downloading of the game, no installing, not time wasted waiting for updates. You just turn it on, and it works. First, where you say "casual gamers", I think what you're trying to say is "people who play games on their mobile devices." You go on to describe the abilities that mobile devices have. While I won't dispute that, one thing I think you're missing is that services like Stadia make it even easier to play games on those devices that don't exist for those devices, or will at some future date, optimized to run on those mobile devices. I'll probably beat this horse to death, but to compare: I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my iPad through Stadia minutes after it was available. It took nearly a day before I could run it on my PC, and after the first several patches I just stopped bothering. Granted, the game is a beautiful mess, but the point is: it was effortless on the iPad, and has been ever since. Not only that, but I can switch to my iPhone, or to my PC and pick up right where I left off. If I do it quick enough, the game just unpaused when I jump to the new device. And I can travel and still play. There's no way my PC, with its UV reactive liquid cooling is going to travel with me. 3. Stadia starter kit is optional. Stadia is free. Do you have a controller? Keyboard and mouse? A web browser? You're good. There is no required subscription fee. You buy the games, and they cost the same as console games. So yeah, if you have a device that can run modern browsers, you don't need to buy a console. 4. I assume when you mention latency, you mean "input latency" - meaning, the time it takes for the game to react to your button press or mouse movement. There are indeed hard limits to how low input latency can be. The game cannot update its entire model and render it in 0ms. It has to make calculations based on your inputs, then show you what changed. But that's not the only constraint. Consider the entire picture: a target on the screen moves, and you need to shoot it. If you're good, it'll take you about 100ms to react. Most people can't react in less than 150ms. It takes 5-10ms to transmit your reaction over USB. It takes the simulation any number of milliseconds to process and tell the monitor to redraw itself. Let's assume the processing time of the game engine is 0ms. The best monitors will add 2ms to the clock. So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction. And that's on your PC. No networking. What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30ms. To be fair, that's what I've seen on my pretty normal cable company internet connection over 5ghz Wifi. With most games, you'd never notice the extra time. Are you going to notice it as a pro gamer playing FPS competitively? Probably. Your assertion that Stadia will die is about the most right thing you've said. Even with a market, Google tends to kill things seemingly at random. What will help it die quicker is if Nvidia's service is able to outperform Stadia in terms of simplicity and streaming speeds. But saying streaming based gaming won't find a market reminds me a lot of what the cable companies and Blockbuster used to say about Netflix.
    
    
        
     &gt;So, from your human reaction to the resulting frame, at best, it takes from 107ms to react to something on screen and see the results of your reaction.People can perceive delays smaller than their reaction window. For argument I'll say it's 50ms is the perceivability barrier, since we seem to throwing numbers around here. I can get 50 or 60 ms lag on my wifi often, and I would say that I have a pretty good connection. So therefore, the input lag potential with stadia is significant. 60 &gt; 50.
    
    
        
     I think the more important fact is that people can be affected by small amounts of latency, even if they can't react that quickly or perhaps even discern that latency is occurring.The obvious example here is a precision platformer like Celeste, but you can say the same (with less and less applicability) to other games, starting with FPS. In Celeste, there are a handful of frame-perfect inputs in the game. This means you have less than a 20 ms window to get your input in, or you're dead (the game's only failure state). How is this possible, if human reaction time is only ~100 ms at best? It's because there's a difference between reaction time and timing. Reaction time measures your time-to-react to an unpredictable stimulus. Timing is your reaction to a predictable stimulus. Most of the time in games you are reacting to a stimulus that is at least somewhat predictable. So with a little training you can reliably make that frame perfect jump. But if Stadia adds 60 ms of latency, that means your character is over 3 frames ahead of where you think she is. You're going to miss that jump a lot until you can reprogram your brain to account for the latency, as much as possible. And even then you'll probably find it harder. Throw in a little variability to the latency, so you think the character is 3 frames behind but she's actually 4, and you're doomed. Granted, not every game is a precision platformer, so there are diminishing returns for low latency in other types of game. But if you, say, enable cross-play between Stadia and non-Stadia in a shooter, the local players are probably going to have a huge advantage. Even making it work against an AI opponent would require some significant work to make the AI's reaction time keyed to Stadia's measurement of latency, not whatever you originally hard-coded into the game.
    
    
        
     You reacting to something is not the same as reacting + seeing the rendered frame.There's an entire chain of things that contribute to latency, and network latency is only one part of that chain. From what I've experienced on a pretty normal, non-optimized wifi connection (meaning I just plugged a cheap TP Link router in and did nothing to its default settings), I don't notice the latency that Stadia contributes making any difference compared to whatever amount of latency I get on my capable PC. That's not to say network latency doesn't matter. It matters a lot to pro CS:GO players, for example, (who have reaction times in the 130-300ms range, for what it's worth). Those players are will to pay for high poll rate mice to shave off a few milliseconds from input latency, or build $5k+ machines stuff with insanely fast CPUs and GPUs, with $2k+ monitors with 1ms latency. But Stadia isn't for that kind of game play. Like I said in another comment, the talk around streaming games is almost identical to people who scoffed at services like Netflix when they first started streaming. You had Laserdisc nerds freaking out about how the streaming would produce compression artifacts, and people like Mark Cuban saying that people were crazy to think streaming video was the way to go, (all while pitching his HD satellite service). Having used Stadia as a "normal" person might, I'm certain that in the not too distant future, streaming based gaming services will be as mainstream as Netflix is today. Despite whatever compromises it has to make.
    
    
        
     &gt; What does Stadia add? On a good connection, it'll add 20-30msI can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low. Latency on speed tests varies between 15 (off peak no load) and 100ms (normal). There is no way that by the time that all adds up, stadia is going to be a better experience than local. My internet is also shared with other people, in a country with notoriously subpar internet (yay Australia), the closer we get to reality, the less appealing stadia becomes. The kind of game streaming I could get behind is the rainway/local streaming approach where I run the game on local hardware (pc/PS5) and stream to convenient device.
    
    
        
      
 &gt; I can’t ping my router and get consistent latency that low.OT, but I'm curious, what kind of router do you have? That seems really bad. I tested this on my laptop (over WiFi, in a very heavy traffic apartment building) and see the following:   50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 49115ms
 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.751/1.436/5.000/0.812 ms
 
I don't say that to brag, I really think that's definitely expected for any LAN device.   
    
        
      
 I’m on my phone at the moments, so I’ll paste proper numbers when I’m back, but when I tried it last week it was like 18/370/60/1478/etc ms. Bear in mind, this was In the same room as the router.   
    
        
      
 Finally got a chance to test:  63 packets transmitted, 63 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
 round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.659/110.684/1805.961/305.145 ms     
    
        
     That's really dreadful, I'm sorry you even have to deal with that. Can you replace the router? Even the cheapest bottom of the barrel router from your local big box store should be able to get a response to you in under 5 ms pretty reliably. (I'm assuming your WiFi / access point is built in to your router.)What model of router is it? This really feels like a situation where something has to be broken, I can't imagine any router, no matter how cheap, has an expected ping rtt maxing out at around 2 seconds. Notably, your minimum rtt is under 2 ms, so it's definitely capable of getting a response to you faster than that, maybe it's just overloaded or something?
    
    
        
     I never said Stadia would be better than local when it comes to latency, though I wouldn't blame you for assuming that's what I meant. Latency will be increased.An argument I was trying to make is that for other reasons, and for a lot of games, Stadia is better than local when you take the entire experience into account. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of where the overall experience is subjectively better. My RTX 3070 based system renders the game and its bugs beautifully, far better than Stadia does. But is that $4500-worth of eye candy worth it compared to the $0.00-worth of totally acceptable Stadia? Lag-wise, I don't notice a difference. I prefer playing the game on Stadia now because it's just so simple. I can use a controller or mouse and keyboard with my iPad and play from anywhere in my house. And not just my house - I've played it over a LTE connections several times without issue. As far as latency goes - people tend to get hung up network latency when it's only a small part of the latency story. Granted, at 100ms, it becomes a bigger part of the story, but people either don't know about, or forget, that there's more: There's peripheral latency, "system" latency (which includes CPU, render queue, and GPU), then display latency for single player games. Stadia, or any streaming service, adds network latency. For me, with a pretty normal American internet connection provided by a craptastic provider (because it's the only choice I have), it works great. For what it's worth, I've also played with some of the "local" streaming tech. No joke, Stadia performs better than streaming using Steam's local streaming app, by a long shot. There's the iPad app (the name escapes me at the moment) that lets me stream my XBox to the iPad, and it's better, but still way worst than Stadia.
    
    
        
     One quick nitpick: The latency in streaming isn't as bad as you'd thinkMost AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games (This obviously doesn't apply to high-end play on twitch shooters or fighting games though, those are pretty much screwed when it comes to streaming)
    
    
        
     &gt;&gt; Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of gamesSource please? I have produced / designed / managed a few AAA games in my life and none of them had a 200ms latency between when you pressed a button and something happened on screen. That delay would be horrible for a fighting game or a driving game. How are you even defining "something happening on screen"? Let's suppose you are right, that there is a longish latency between when your input is polled and when the game systems fully react. That happens to some extent in RTSs, because changes in the game state are synchronized. But in that case the delay isn't going to hide the network latency, it is going to be added on top of the network latency.
    
    
    
        
     Worst out of the 23 games listed in the first link has 8 frames of latency at 120 fps, which is about 66ms. Monitor input lag included.200ms, while possible, is far from "most AAA+ games", as OP stated. Sure, there's people that play on lowest-end consoles, on a crappy LCD TV with game mode disabled, but let's not consider that the norm for all players/all AAA+ games, and I'm going to need hard sources showing whether those worst case environments get even close to triple digit latencies.
    
    
        
     They might be talking about engine delay (ie. frame times/framerate) but i've moreso seen delays of 100-150 milliseconds deemed acceptable by people playing console games on an old flat screen TV that doesn't have a low-latency mode available, and I haven't really experienced this on anything other than consoles since even cheap PC monitors tend to have &lt;10ms display lag[0].0: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015WCV70W
    
    
        
     You probably know this 100ms = 10 FPS. What kind of display shows video at less than 10fps? Game engines aren't always synced to frame rates, particularly simulations. But a simulation that updates every 0.1s isn't great for fidelity.A 30 fps game could go through a complete loop, updating everything: object positions, inputs in 33ms. At 60 fps assuming everything is synced to frame rate that would 16 ms. I was asking for the commenter's source of information so I didn't have to guess what he or she meant. It's possible to make a game that doesn't respond a user's input in less than 200ms, but why would you? You don't need to be making a technical tour de force to respond in 16-33ms.
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screenAbsolutely false, and I don't know where you got that from. If there was a game that had that kind of latency between input and reaction, people would notice and the reviews would be horrible.
    
    
        
     Wow, I didn't realize it was that high. I stand corrected.I think most of the above still applies, but maybe expand "it'll be good enough for some people" to include some portion of average console-gamers (assuming the rest of the productization is done right, and assuming those console-gamers have fairly good internet) The thing is that, even there, if you're putting it on a TV you're likely not going to want to plug in your Macbook or whatever. Which means, if you don't already have a console, you're going to be buying dedicated hardware regardless. Which significantly cuts into the "savings"/"no-purchase" angle, and steepens the question of "what's the point of this?" One thought though: Microsoft could use this as a way to keep last-gen console owners engaged. At some future date when the Xbox Series Y or Z or whatever comes out, people with a Series S might still be able to play the latest games by streaming them. They're using dedicated hardware that plugs into a TV, but it's hardware they already bought which is essentially being repurposed. Edit: Another thing is that the subscription model and the streaming model don't have to go hand-in-hand. I think game subscriptions are absolutely the future, but I think there will always be a market for devices that download and run those subscribed games locally.
    
    
        
      
 At 30 fps a 200ms lag would be over 6 frames of delay between input and the action happening on screen. Can you point to any examples of AAA games that actually have this much input lag?   
    
    
        
     &gt; So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of gamesThis is one of the worst parts of game Streaming - games potentially being designed around it, making them worse for everyone else.
    
    
        
     You don't need to buy a Stadia controller to play Stadia.It's free with an optional subscription for games and 4k.
    
    
        
     The confusing messaging around that question has been a big part of the problemRegardless though, I think buying full-priced games that you don't actually own is the real non-starter. These aren't $0.99 songs on iTunes; these are $60 investments.
    
    
        
     i'd like to think even a middling engineer would be able to recognize an intractable infrastructure problem that is entirely out of their hands. stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as well. space age technology does not mean shit if your customers are still in the age of horse and buggy.terraria also highlights the utter absurdity of game streaming. it can and has been ported to practically every relevant device and costs less than a big mac. google invented a billion dollar laser to cook microwave popcorn.
    
    
        
     &gt;stadia can have perfect tech and the best customer service in the world and it simply will not matter until you effectively create your own nationwide isp as wellTo add a layer of situational irony here: Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractable
    
    
        
     &gt; Google already tried to solve the last-mile delivery infrastructure problem and unsurprisingly appears to have found it intractableThis failure was more political in nature though, the technical solution is there
    
    
        
      
 And we arrive at the premise. They can build the tech, but they can't be bothered to navigate the social dynamics that make up the rest of the world.   
    
        
      
 While the local politics are certainly an issue, their quirky micro-trenching methodology was also clearly a failure   
    
        
     The problem with Stadia is that it's a platform geared for AAA games, but doesn't provide much value for them. It can provide good value for more casual games/gamers, but Google's ego means the service isn't geared for casuals.When I write Stadia doesn't provide much value for AAA games, we need to look at it from both the gamer and the dev side. For gamers, if money was no object, one is better off with either a decked-out PC (better performance) or a console (wider variety). Stadia's main advantage is potentially being cheaper - which is precisely the gaming crowd which doesn't attract AAA gamedev companies. For AAA developers, they need to port their game to a different API, then pay the Google tax, in order to appear on a small platform whose users are often drawn in by being cheap and are less likely to pay for your product. There's no technical advantage for AAA - now that Google has closed their studios, nobody will try to make features that are only possible in cloud gaming in Stadia. If Google couldn't, can you? What happens when you ran into a problem, can you handle Google "support"? Stadia could be good for casuals. Except it doesn't have any good discoverability features or even a search bar. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't need discoverability, but indies or anyone searching for them really do. Its payment model (direct 'purchase', no gamepass) is OK for AAA, but not as a good for casuals. And of course, one still needs to port the game which can be difficult and relatively expensive for indies (Luna is just a VM by comparison). Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model. So Stadia is geared for AAA games/gamers, but doesn't provide good features for AAA, and even Google itself couldn't manage to make cloud-gaming-only features. Stadia can be useful for casual gaming, but the platform just isn't geared for that, and Google is unlikely to change that. Likely result is cancellation within a few years.
    
    
        
     &gt; Google could make Stadia better for casuals, but that means doing something less prestigious, no Google engineer will go for that, and they obviously don't understand the business model.There are also many prestigious and lucrative engineering goals at Google that are totally untouchably intractable because money is involved. The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review. If an established app is deluged by negative reviews, take a look at what’s happening. It’s either become a Trojan horse or a victim of 3rd world scamware competition. The average review for an app does not go from 4.5 stars to 1.5 stars overnight without cause! Attempting to address this glaring deficiency leads to the following problem: the other engineers who rallied to solve it, in the past, are no longer with Google. Do you like your job? Find a technical problem with no downside, in that case!!!!!!
    
    
        
     &gt;The Google Play store offers countless examples where graph algorithms and ML could identify the worst behavior for human review.The last sentence is key: 'for human review'. Google feels humans are damage to be routed around. If there was a way to everything in ML they'd go for it, but if your solution requires human review it's a no-go.
    
    
        
      
 my friend at Google reported almost exactly that: it's an amazing technical achievement, really pushes the cutting edge of what's possible. And the sales and marketing have no idea how to do anything with it.   
    
        
     Stadia works amazingly well which was actually surprising. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 4k with just a controller and Chromecast stick is frankly amazing.Consoles are great if you play enough, but I found that every time I could squeeze an hour here or there to play, the Xbox needed to update yet again for 20 minutes, and by then something else has come up and I am out. Stadia lets you jump in and out, no updates as far as I have seen, and just magically works. Disclaimer: I don't work for Google or any of the game studios and was actually skeptical they could solve the latency challenge.
    
    
        
      
 Slightly OT but you deal with the updates issue by leaving it running in rest mode all the time. When something needs updating the console will get a ping, download + install, and go back to sleep. Makes things much easier.   
    
        
      
 they need an experience that sells the actual upsides of game streaming in the same way that mario 64 sold 3d movement and the analog stick. 
'here's popular game except worse' will never be a winnable pitch. even casual users who don't know what latency means will instinctively recognize that all the games just feel kind of shitty to play. you need a tailor made experience where latency is a much more negligible factor.   
    
    
        
      
 To be fair, that described Google Glass as well and look where that product went.   
    
    
        
     This is not just Google. All other tech companies including Facebook are using the same system to promote workers. As a result:* Nobody is held accountable for the long term success of the product. Making little things work nice is not rewarded. Maintaining UX is defiantly not rewarded. * Rewarding process over product. That's why you see so many Google products shut down. It takes a few people from L7 to L8 to build it and rewards someone from L6 to L7 to wind it down. Every annual performance review in the process is all roses and rainbows!
    
    
        
     &gt; I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.This goes well beyond Stadia - Google has an air of institutional contempt for humans, especially humans who aren't inside Google. Dealing with humans who are struggling with getting bounced by "the algorithm" is something they simply aren't interested in.
    
    
        
      
 I think that their higher tier promotion system is partly to blame, and could be easily fixed. As I understand it, at a certain management level, the most effective way to pad out your promotion packet is to launch a new product. These packets are judged by an anonymous review board. This board could change the culture overnight by updating the criteria to reward managers that grow products or retain paid customers. Heck, if they just updated the definition of a successful launch to include a year+ of operation &amp; growth or even just a proper roadmap, we might start to see and end to the usual pattern.   
    
        
     I wonder if it's the lack of a single founder?Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk - founders at the top who owned it. More directly, Gabe Newell and Valve. It might be that google started with Page/Brin and co-ownership might have weakened that a bit, and now they are not to be found. Not that a single founder is a surefire recipe.
    
    
        
     Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, "Paypal Mafia", For valve Mike Harrington would like to have a word with you.Bill, Steve, Elon, Gabe, were never alone masterminds and definitely not single founders because in companies they created there always was someone else who had shares.
    
    
        
     Sort of, but it's really a goog HR problem.That you can only be promoted by creating new things (even if entirely useless) and not by maintaining and supporting existing things (that customers actually want) is an HR problem.
    
    
        
     &gt; I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem.I can recommend reading In The Plex. Quite literally the founders wanted to invert the usual model and put engineers first. There were some anecdotes from those in roles like marketing and so on that they felt like second class citizens.
    
    
        
      
 Quite ironic that it's an engineering company and stuff doesn't work how it's supposed to so often. I'm looking at you, Google Cloud :P   
    
    
        
     It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don't even exist.You could of course sue Google, but that's an extremely expensive and time-consuming option, rarely worth it for a mere consumer. Going to court certainly won't make your suspended account become unsuspended any quicker.
    
    
        
     You know it’s funny that lots of the basic functions of business with consumers (eg, ability to return items) were set and codified in the US as the Uniform Commercial Code [0] that was established in 1952. Before then it was wild and variable.What’s really interesting is that it seems like of hacker-like in how it was implemented. It was published as a guide and then states passed laws to implement. Reminds me of a de facto standard that is then implemented by vendors. I suppose we could start up some form of Uniform Consumer Commercial Code (UC3) that set up practices that are good that could then be passed by states. I shudder to think through all the arguments about how it would specify some “don’t be evil on social cause X” that it almost smarts my conspiracy brain that the “corporations” started this trend to bikeshed/scissor statement society so they can’t make meaningful economic and commercial policy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code
    
    
        
     The problem with this sort of thing is that because it's interstate commerce, states usually do not have standing to regulate effectively.The Federal government struggles to implement new regulatory authority because of political challenges. Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!"), biased against marginalized minority or cultural groups ("My marginalized constituency of blind, alcoholic yak herders have a religious prohibition against reading contracts"), or a unfair mandate restraint of trade ("The Chamber of Meme Commerce believes that this rule will cost 10,000,000 jobs in the meme industry and kill puppies."), etc.
    
    
        
     This was addressed in the UCC and is pretty simple actually as each state implements laws to saw who has jurisdiction and how to handle.It also bypasses the federal government in that the code is established by some big council and implemented in (most) states. That’s why when I live in Missouri and buy something from a vendor in New York, they still have to accept returns, issue refunds, provide for basic warranties, etc. and if I have problems I can easily get remediation in state courts. There’s 50+ years of where this works ok. Not perfect and lots of room for improvement. But better than the current shitshow that exists like this article describes. If we had the minimum level of legal structure, it would be so helpful. Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.” Google’s free (and even non-free) services are causing harm to people and aren’t being supported.
    
    
        
     &gt; Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”Why does the UCC covers free knives, but not paid Google services?
    
    
        
      
 Because Google One, for example, is a service governed by a contract which details performance expectations.   
    
    
        
     All products have a warranty of merchantability defined by UCC. Basically goods need to be average/expected quality.With services it’s a little different because there is no average unless the contract is missing performance terms. If you agree to a term of performance, then that is the obligation.
    
    
        
     If it was sold to a resident in some state online currently that resident can sue in the local courts. The business is considered to operate in all states.The alternative is all suits under ~$75k(?) don't get heard because they don't meet the requirements for federal court, which obviously can't be right.
    
    
        
      
 I suspect that the major tech providers are so pervasive that the impacts of account-locking span all party lines.   
    
        
     &gt; Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!")This is just an awful example. There is not a free speech right to pay for your own speech by committing crimes, and nobody claims or would claim that there is. Similarly, you don't see the argument made that vendors enjoy the constitutional right to sell fake pills. What spammers want to do, and what anti-spammers want to stop them from doing, is to advertise real pills, and yes, there are extensive free speech implications there.
    
    
        
     The EU recently proposed The Digital Services Act, which is a DCMA like legislation (with both copyright infringement and other illegal content like CP as targets).Part of that draft law pretty clearly states that companies must have a proper appeal process for banned accounts. This would apply to "decisions taken by the online platform on the ground that the information provided by the recipients is illegal content or incompatible with its terms and conditions", which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans. They must provide details of what part of the Terms of Service they claim you violated: "where the decision is based on the alleged incompatibility of the information with the terms and conditions of the provider, a reference to the contractual ground relied on and explanations as to why the information is considered to be incompatible with that ground". If the internal appeals process fails, the consumer can take the company to online binding arbitration (with the consumer's choice of accredited arbitrators certified by the member state). The company always pays its own costs in the process, and must reimburse the user's costs if the company loses.
    
    
    
        
      
 Claiming that "an indefinite suspension" is just a type of temporary suspension and different from a ban will have you laughed out of any actual court.   
    
        
     Agreed. We generally allow companies to refuse service for nearly any reason, and in most cases this is a good policy. However, there are exceptions to that rule. One extreme are utilities which as both monopolies and essential services are required to do business with nearly any paying customer, and have strict rules processes about shutting of service for lack of payment. Residential rentals are another example. They don't hold a monopoly, but are an essential service, and as such they can generally choose who to do business with (although not quite as freely as your average business), but have strict legal processes they have to follow regarding evictions.I think there are online business who are essential enough that some consumer protections are applicable. Very few reach the level of monopoly that utilities have in my mind, and even those it isn't clear to me that they are "natural" monopoly like utilities, and as such other antitrust approaches may be more beneficial. However, I think there are a number of competitive, yet essential services online that deserve a legal protections regarding service termination. Identity providers absolutely fall in that category IMO - it is unacceptable for example for Facebook to lock your account in a manner that prevents you from not only using their services but every other third-party service which you authenticate using "Logon with Facebook". I think email is another that rises to this level. At a minimum email providers should be required to forward mail for a fixed period of time after choosing to stop doing business with a customer.
    
    
        
      
 I think there also needs to be a law that, once you have accepted responsibility for storing someone else's data, that you can't delete it "on a whim" without offering some minimum retention period ok your data. As an example: a storage facility is allowed to stop doing business with me, but they legally can't just destroy all my stuff on a moment's notice... we have laws for minimum retention periods.   
    
        
      
 Also if you violate the storage facilities rules and they cancel the lease, they can't turn off the electricity at your house just because they happen to have the same parent company.   
    
        
     The Kafka solution to this will be our terms of service prohibit single spacing after periods and you are in violation. Therefore we can terminate your account at any time of our choosing.Alternately we could prohibit posting in any language other than Latin and Klingon, or using the letter e, or accessing our services using any unapproved operating system (and our only approved OS is windows 3.11 with winsock drivers). Anyway the point is now the company can ban you for any reason at all. Being the wrong religion, voting for the wrong candidate, being the wrong race, etc.
    
    
        
      
 Not just "can", but "will". And given how effectively these companies are using their size and power (and m-word) to crush the competition, it's long past time for some anti-trust action.   
    
        
     &gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companiesI get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary. If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. They do this stuff because people _need_ them and they know that people won't just drop them en mass.
    
    
        
     &gt; It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.
    
    
        
     If you are equating a world without Facebook to a world without running water, you need to spend a week camping, where you leave your phone at home.You'll very quickly discover why they are not at all alike.
    
    
        
      
 Oh if you think running water is important, try growing up in a desert. You will quickly realize still water is enough. WTF is this line of logic?   
    
        
     1. I'm not sure you understand what running water means. It's not water that flows down a river, it's water that comes from a tap. The whole point of running water is that a utility delivers it to your home, regardless of whether or not your town is in a rain forest, or the middle of a desert.2. You'll die in three days without water. You'll probably be healthier if you spent three days without Facebook. 3. I can't collect water for myself where I live. I suppose I could walk down to the lake, and manually bring up a few buckets of water, but it won't be safe for me to drink. I suppose I can also go buy bottled water, at a ~million-percent markup. There is no economic alternative for me to get water, other than through the water pipes laid to my apartment, by my water utility. I am a completely captive customer for my utility. My water utility has monopoly control of special-purpose one-of-a-kind infrastructure that is used to deliver water to my apartment. That is why my utility is regulated. 4. Unlike with my tap water, there are plenty of functioning alternatives to... Whatever it is that Facebook does for me. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, my life would be mildly disrupted for a week or two, and then would go on with little change. On the hierarchy of needs, we have air at the top, followed closely by water, shelter, and food, followed at some distance by electricity, and way down the street, that we can barely make out, by grabbing a pair of binoculars, we will see 'Facebook'. It's just not that important.
    
    
    
        
     Why not? The qualification being for public utility should be "is this basic infrastructure humans need to live now?". And the answer is yes. Facebook controls most of the big public speaking forums and google controls so much and in so many spaces that it would be foolish for me to even try listing.I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities. I don't see the impediment here.
    
    
        
     &gt; I hope in america public utilities are not only controlled by the government. Because where I am from public utilities can be publicly or privately controlled. As long as they are all playing by the same rules many private companies have made lots of money providing public utilities.Water/Sewage and Trash are typically run by the city/county government, although it is common for the actual work to be handled by a contracted company. Power, natural gas, phone, and most others is almost always a private company.
    
    
        
     No traditional utility company does what Google has routinely shown to do as in the original post though. There's still a bill to pay and expectations of reasonable service (I assume if I just left my tap on and drew as just electricity as I could I'd eventually get some phone calls and massive bills) that allows these companies to be profitable.Google isn't at the point it needs to be nationalized, but something needs to be done to limit the fallout that occurs when users are kicked off essential services with no recourse.
    
    
        
      
 In reality, there is no impediment to designating Google as a public utility other than the elected representatives making it so.   
    
        
      
 What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.   
    
        
     Antitrust regulation.Seriously, the only reason Google is unaccountable is its scale. Otherwise "Google but with customer support" would be an obvious market opportunity. And the only reason losing your Google account is so impactful is that it controls everything from access to apps on your phone to your email to your calendar to being able to chat with friends. It's theoretically possible to vote with your wallet against Google, but far harder than against, say, Chick-fil-A, which means no boycott gets further than an HN comment. No startup can compete with Google for those services because Google can artificially offer them for free, and for very high quality, because it's all funded by their advertising business. (Not to mention that a startup would have to "do things that don't scale" and offer real customer support... which also costs money.) It's not a fair market at that point - you can't say Google is surviving because they offer the best value to customers, simply because the value is so disconnected from the service being offered. And in the other direction, potential customers like me who mostly avoid Google are still "paying" for it in that we're still seeing (and being tracked by) Google ads. Every incentive mechanism behind the underlying assumptions of a market-based economy - that companies that provide more value are more likely to succeed in the market - is completely broken when you allow trusts like Alphabet to exist.
    
    
        
      
 Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.   
    
        
     &gt; You could self host your own emailYou can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with). My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.
    
    
        
     The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it.We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing just our email servers. They are a massive PITA.
    
    
        
      
 I have self-hosted E-mail for myself and my family for years, probably close to a decade now--I lost count. It's a learning curve at first but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch. Occasionally, like once every two years or so, I find my spam filter process crashed and failed to relaunch or something, causing delivery delays.   
    
        
     "...but once it's dialed in and working, there's really nothing to touch"...until your upstream changes something.
    
    
    
        
      
 No, also people who host themselves and enjoy the hobby time and don't understand how the general public lives.   
    
    
        
      
 That is a very, very limited scope for Google/Facebook. Almost to the point of me suspecting you are strawmanning it. In fact, google/facebook is so endemic to our infrastructure that you can literally delete you google account. Get it scrubbed from the internet, they will still track you. Identify you. And show you ads. If you try to block their services, some pages stop functioning. It is on the verge of impossible to escape them   
    
        
     OK, you can lead your "resistance" to big tech your way.Meanwhile, I'll be pushing my representative for regulatory action.
    
    
        
     The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention.IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.
    
    
        
     &gt; drop them en massThe libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.
    
    
        
     &gt; The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.
    
    
        
     Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott.Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.
    
    
        
     If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible.There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc. Discoverability is really the only problem left.
    
    
    
        
     You're not seeing the other side of the coin - the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove. If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will) there will be far more spam going around the Internet.Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health. (I am offering no solutions here, for I know none)
    
    
        
     I think this is a convenient narrative for an abusive pattern of behavior by Google. The company is infamous for having non-existent customer service. It's not a matter of their AI having too many false positives, it's that when there is a false positive you have literally no recourse even if you're a well known business partner.Are we really going to believe that Google, one of the highest grossing companies in the world, doesn't have the money to provide even basic level customer service? If it were really a matter of not being able to afford it, certainly they could offer it for a fee. No, they're stubbornly refusing to address the issues, relying on this lie, and using their market dominance to avoid having to answer for it.
    
    
        
     Technically they do offer customer service if you pay them with their Google One product. I have phone numbers and human access very quickly, because I pay for it.Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.
    
    
        
     &gt; Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.Which they will do literally on a whim. Who are you going to call then?
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will)It's not a request, it's a requirement. If your account is suspended, you deserve an explanation. You should get one without having to request it. I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.
    
    
        
     I heard on a podcast recently that a trading system needs to keep logs of why a particular trade was executed for several years just in case the authority wants it. So it isn't too much effort to build a similar report or log of behaviour to explain why someone was banned.Obviously this will also help the spammers who will use this information to get around the filters.
    
    
        
     Complete speculation because I don't actually know how this works, but I wonder if the explanation would be something like this:"You've been banned because our black box ML algorithm says your usage patterns share similar traits to those of known spammers."
    
    
        
      
 Some government decisions are indirectly forbidden from using black box "algorithms" because they are obligated by law to explain (on demand) the steps that the algorithm took to reach its decision. Maybe something like this should also apply to some private companies ?   
    
        
     Thats kinda what the PayPal support told me when I asked why half of my in-store payments via Google Pay get rejected.Most were payments of about 2€ in the same store next to work. Whatever I dont use it anymore
    
    
    
        
      
 For the record, they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time, to avoid getting caught. Same as with anticheat software.   
    
        
     &gt; they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next timeWe've heard this excuse countless times, but it's simply not acceptable. The foundation of our legal system is that it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person. How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?
    
    
        
      
 This isnt criminal law. This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that (e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people out) but for the most part a business that doesnt want your business doesnt have to serve you, right or wrong.   
    
        
     &gt; This isnt criminal law.Not yet, but that's my whole point, it needs to be: It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. You can't really compare getting kicked out of a bar with losing access to your gmail. There are no "algorithms" automatically kicking innocent people out of bars. Getting kicked out of a bar is a direct human interaction, which is exactly what I'm demanding.
    
    
        
     The reason people are incensed about FAANGMP doing so is because, in their respective markets, they're monopolies.No one would care if Google banning a developer meant they could list their app through a non-Play app store with decent exposure, or a non-App Store at all. But that's not the reality we live in. So it's more like if Walmart moved into my podunk town, put all the local shops out of business, and then banned me.
    
    
        
     Hmmmm. I thought it was Apple that banned sideloading.Maybe Google kicked this guy out for the same reason they fired off their own Stadia devs.
    
    
        
      
 There is speculation that Google will ban sideloading in the near future, too. That is, it will extend its Advanced Protection model to mass-market Android. Then, sideloading will only be possible for that tiny minority of nerds like us who know how to use ADB and install an .apk over the command line.   
    
    
        
     I don't think the "but you can" rounding error alternate Android app stores and side-loading constitute a viable developer alternative. ** Except in China, in which case it's only true for their domestic Android market
    
    
    
        
     &gt; This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out.Not exactly? It's certainly not criminal law. Proof beyond reasonable doubt has no place here. But it's also not exactly the relationship between a host and guest, where the guest has no rights save what the host grants. Website terms of service purport to be contracts, so there is a contractual rather than ex gratia basis for the relationship. So, begin interpreting website terms of service as contracts of adhesion, and read in a duty for website operators to enforce those terms fairly, with a reasonable basis (on the balance of probabilities) for harmful decisions. This isn't the current law, of course, but it's not hard to imagine the law reaching that place from here.
    
    
        
      
 But then they should be required to refund your purchases, fx in the app store or their movie store.   
    
        
     &gt;&gt;e.g. a restaurant can't kick black people outWell they can, just not for the sole reason of being black... &gt;&gt;This isnt criminal law. No it is Civil Tort law, but that does not mean your rights are completely removed, nor that principle does not apply &gt;&gt;This is the right a private property owner (say the owner of a bar) has to kick you out. There are some limits on that Absolutely, and those limits are normally set either by over riding civil / businessl law passed the government, or a contract entered into by 2 parties The problem with Google and many other online platforms is their ToS (their contract) is sooooooo one side that IMO it should be considered an unconscionable contract thus void and unenforeable. Also we have things like Truth in Advertising laws, many times these platforms Public messaging, and advertisement in no way match their terms of service I am fully in support of the right of a private business to choose who they want to do business with. I am not however in favor of allowing business to use marketing manipulation, false advertisement, and unconscionable contracts in the form of ClickWrapped Terms of Service to abuse the public the "mah private business" defense is a weak one, very weak, and it is telling that people defending the large companies with this defense often times do not support it in other contexts. Google has every right to choose who it does business with, but it need to make those choices in transparent, and public manner.
    
    
        
     the legal system deals with a finite number of people; the internet enables that finite number of people to act as a potentially infinite number of entities, without a great way of disaggregating them into people.E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt. This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users. So one way or another people who are real, legitimate and with good intentions somehow pay the cost of the harm that is being done on the internet. This is a hard problem. Source: am thinking/working on this sort of stuff; not representing my employer, my opinions are my own etc. etc.
    
    
        
     &gt; This is the reason behind a push for more KYC-like verification on these platforms (e.g. asking for IDs). But this comes at a huge privacy cost for legitimate users.A way to square this circle is to have rights engage at the point of payment. A truly pseudonymous account with no monetization (going either way) has little intrinsic value, and less need for KYC-like identification. On the other hand, an account with some sort of payment history (either giving money in the case of purchases or receiving money in the case of developers/website hosts placing advertising) faces a higher standard. There's a reasonable probability of real economic harm if the account is nuked arbitrarily, and at the same time any money flow is open to theft or money laundering concerns, triggering moral if not legal KYC obligations. The latter should also help prevent the proliferation of straw bad actors, since providing payment imposes a direct cost, while the KYC rules open up the possibility of more direct action for flagrant breaches of contract / use of the platform for other abuses. The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.
    
    
        
     &gt; The "spammer" can only pretend to be 10 million different people because e-mail is free. Paying a tenth of a penny per e-mail has been one of those long-standing impossible anti-spam measures, but walled gardens can implement something like this at their whim.Maybe. A few problems here: 1. payments come with privacy concerns, unless maybe you're talking about zero-knowledge-based blockchains, but we're a LONG way from such functionality being widespread 2. $0.001/email is actually very reasonable for an attacker; they'd probably gladly pay even up to $1 or more, depending on their exact needs, especially if that comes with an elevated privileges account 3. all of this is easily defeated by fanouts. E.g. if they sign up with bob@gmail.com and then are able to use bob+1@gmail.com, bob+2@gmail.com etc. to sign up for a different service, this defeats the purpose
    
    
        
     &gt; E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.Again, it's not a "request". If spam detection and account suspension can be automated, then suspension notifications can also be automated. I'm not sure I understand where the 10 million number is coming from. Are you suggesting that 1 spammer can create 10 million accounts on your system (which appears to be Facebook)? Regardless, no spammer has the time to get on the phone and personally dispute 10 million account suspensions — disputes which are unlikely to succeed if there is good evidence — so I'm not sure how the system grinds to a halt.
    
    
        
     &gt; How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?&gt; Again, it's not a "request" [..] suspension notifications can also be automated. Can you clarify what you mean by "protecting" them? I'm not sure suspension notifications qualify as meaningful protection
    
    
        
     This was specified in my original comment: "At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063313 Except for the part where someone has to answer phone calls, it could be automated if the account suspension itself is automated. I'll also point out my later comment: "I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063399  And to forestall any replies that providing information to suspended accounts would help the spammers, I've already responded to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063660  Temporary account suspensions that you can quickly reverse on appeal are annoying but could be justified to fight abuse, as long as they don't happen too often. On the other hand, indefinite account suspensions that are impossible to reverse, such as the case of Andrew Spinks of Terraria, are simply indefensible, there's no justification whatsoever for that.
    
    
        
     &gt; I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.This is absolutely spot on, with the caveat that you do need to disaggregate from accounts to people, which is the hard problem. Having people call a phone number is definitely not going to work as a way of achieving this disaggregation. I'm pretty sure I could create a system to bring that call center to a halt with fairly minimal cost in less than a week of coding. As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.
    
    
        
     &gt; As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.I think we may be talking about different things? I was just talking about a scaling problem of providing legal notifications of account suspensions and providing a means on getting them unsuspended. I wasn't talking about DoS attacks. Lots of companies have call centers, so I'm not sure what you're envisioning here, or what financial gain there would be for spammers to DoS the call center. After all, their accounts are already getting suspended by the algorithms, regardless of whether innocent consumers have any appeal to this, and DoSing the call center won't help spammers get their accounts unsuspended.
    
    
        
     Out of curiosity, what's current thinking (broad strokes) on methods to address this?My first guess would be third-party attestation of identity, with stored credential disposal on a short schedule? Essentially normal-user-verification-as-a-service?
    
    
    
        
     privacy, online safety, no false positivesPick two. Different companies do different trade-offs. The optimal solution depends on how the internet community weighs each individual axis
    
    
    
        
     When someone is in court on charges of child abuse, maybe we don't want them to know in case they (After serving their sentence) or their friends go for reprisals. Maybe the next child abuser might know their likely avenue of getting caught. Yet still we tell them the charges and evidence and give them a chance to defend themselves. Often in my country, given the damage such allegations could cause to both the victim and alleged (but not yet proven) perpetrator, we don't even reveal the identities of culprits until there's a guilty verdict.If we can extend that courtesy to people accused of child abuse, surely we should extend it to people accused of internet spam?
    
    
        
      
 I imagine if that happen in real courts. And You got jail without any info on why on how to evade - or You will behave properly on not go in jail   
    
        
      
 Well it would still be better, because it's at least documented what kind of activity will lead into that.   
    
        
      
 You don't have to tell them how you detected them but you can tell them what they did wrong. A lot of times when these cases come up there is nothing in the reason you got banned that would help you avoid the ban. It's purely to avoid any kind of accountability (if they say you got banned for a reason that is plainly not true because their algorithms suck)   
    
        
      
 It would also give non-spammers a better understanding of why they were banned and teach them to be better humans. It’s this lack of empathy that’s leading to more and more anger online.   
    
    
        
     I think we give up on that when we agree to the ruleGoogle has the right to suspend, remove your account without prior notice I'm sure there should be a clause like that in their TOS
    
    
        
     This is an age old problem in the criminal justice system. A solved problem.After a lot of trials with various approaches, we settled on letting some criminals go free over convicting someone on weak evidence. Second we decided that trials should be open and evidence viewable by default. Finally you generally have the option to give some security to stay out of jail during trial. Closing a google account is a punishment worse than many criminal convictions. And will only get more important as we progress to an all digital existence.
    
    
        
     &gt; Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.Hire them directly instead of via labor farms, pay them an actual living wage, give them full health benefits, and hire enough of them to prevent overload.
    
    
        
     &gt; the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove.Maybe allowing single service providers to capture several billions of users is the problem here.
    
    
    
        
     Perhaps the process should cost $100 or $500, so that actual spammers can’t use itMaybe they really just need to offer a paid account option with real support, since that has much better incentives
    
    
    
        
      
 No need in charges.
Strong person identification via Passport or Bank. Limit those request per identified person or throttle them.   
    
        
     There is a paid option: for $6/month you can use gmail with your own domain name. It's targeted at businesses but you can use it as an individual. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html  It includes support, but I'm not sure if that helps in cases where google thinks you have abused the service. I just use it because I like having my own domain, and so that I don't lose access to my email if google locks me out. The idea is that I can update my domain's MTX records and use another email service.
    
    
        
     Support does not include if your account gets suspended or if you lose access.We had a paid Google App account. One of our workers would only login from their computer. It died, and she tried to login from the new computer. It gave a unrecognized machine error, and we had to hire someone to resuscitate the old computer for her. I know of a company that had the entire companies' accounts suspended without warning because one user did something that violated their terms, but they could not figure out what. The company lost three months of revenue from it and I am not sure if it caused bankruptcy. No help at all from G.
    
    
        
      
 About a year ago, I started migrating to a vanity domain, currently hosted at Google, for this reason. If I get locked out of Google, I lose my history, but at least I can move to another provider and avoid being locked out of my life for the indefinite future.   
    
        
      
 Friendly reminder to anybody reading this with a Google account: it's not a perfect solution, but head over to Google Takeout and grab a dump of your account data while you're thinking of it. I did one last year, and at the same time reconfigured my phone camera roll to back up somewhere outside the Google ecosystem, so now all I'm missing is an up to date email mirror.   
    
        
      
 Meta: my comment above is being downvoted significantly. I'm not sure what I did to offend. There was a remark about the need for a paid option, and I pointed out that it already exists. I have no agenda here and was just sharing what I know.   
    
        
      
 I suspect it might be because the OP is about getting your account locked out, and several commenters have said that even paid accounts lose access to human support when they're locked out, so it's not actually a solution.   
    
        
     But surely it’s possible to use methods other than what currently seems to be the first and only solution: “your account has been banned, bye”.For example, if an automated system thinks an account is sending spam, enforcing a (very low) outgoing email rate limit would be a much more reasonable first step.
    
    
        
     So just start charging for service, and keep a non-refundable deposit for spam/abuse.Let every abuser requests those explanations, if the decision doesn't change, the money is still kept, which funds that service.
    
    
        
      
 no if the AI can be used to automate the banning it can be used to provide the electronic news email of the rule violated.   
    
        
      
 Well their main argument against it is that if you don't tell scammers which rule exactly they are breaking they can't improve until the app is approved. But of course that hits normal customers too. It's the equivalent of arresting random people on the street and not telling them why - surely, innocent people will just get their lawyer to free them.   
    
    
        
     So what is the proper Blackstone's ratio for you in these situation?Is 1000 innocents ok to punish as long as 1 spam message is stopped?
    
    
        
     &gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.It isn't the only solution to this problem. Not using their products is another one. However, in some sectors (e.g. smartphones) it is next to impossible to not use their products, especially because they are build on centralized schemes. But regulating those things is probably harder than a consumer rights bill. But the downside is probably, that a consumer rights bill would not just affect the few large corporations, but many smaller ones too.
    
    
        
     &gt;You could of course sue Google Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.
    
    
        
     &gt; Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.Which would be meaningless in the EU (I think. Possibly just Germany) as you can’t waive that right.
    
    
        
      
 It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.   
    
        
     &gt; It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.For consumers or businesses? Not being nitpicky here: I am not familiar with the French ruling, so I would genuinely want to know - as regulations tend to differ (businesses, even single sole trader ones, do not enjoy consumer protections). Not really relevant for the Terraria dev as it is his personal account that is banned, from the sound of it - but important.
    
    
        
      
 As a consumer, every time the clause is not specifically negotiated, it is considered "abusive" and void (for businesses it may be different). If as a consumer you negotiate a contract with an arbitration clause it will be enforceable however if it is a generic clause in the terms&amp; condition it will not.   
    
        
     &gt; For consumers or businesses?For consumers. Businesses are considered to have both more (legal) resources to conduct deals as well as a need for more flexibility. However in this case this sounds like the account was personal, so even if it was used for business purposes, the deal was personal. In Europe (France here) typically the distinction is not in the use but in the contracting party. A business is registered with tax authorities and has an identifying number, if you contract a service without such a number you're doing so personally so for such purposes you're a consumer and bound by consumer laws. Indeed, all registration forms for services ask you for that number and business address. Services that don't want to / can't be subject to consumer protection laws or are not allowed to sell to private individuals require that number and verify it. Services that allow both individuals and businesses ask for it and may treat you differently based on it.
    
    
        
      
 Forced arbitration is against French law. Google cannot force you to go to a specific company for arbitration (that, conveniently enough, happens to always rule in their favor). It has to be explicitly negotiated between the two parties. This also holds true for companies. It has to be explicitly negotatied.   
    
        
      
 I think in Germany it would be legal for businesses. B2B contracts allow most things that are illegal in a B2C context.   
    
        
      
 I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that U.S. courts have found that suing is a right that can't be waived by contract. Certainly an agreement to enter arbitration can be introduced as evidence against you in a a lawsuit, but any decent lawyer should be able to prevent an arbitration agreement from getting your lawsuit thrown out.   
    
    
    
        
      
 That's not an accurate description of current consumer arbitration precedent in the US.   
    
        
      
 Its not fair when you have to get attention on twitter before getting issues like this resolved. Some of us don't use twitter for one thing   
    
    
    
        
      
 I think we’re in a post consumer lawsuit era. Almost every terms of service on earth requires arbitration, or else absolves the vendor of any liability whatsoever   
    
        
      
 Arbitration isn't so bad. It still costs the company every time they have to deal with a case.
Mass/automated arbitration claims can turn the tables, and lawsuits can be filled to challenge the neutrality of arbitrators.   
    
        
     &gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.Nope. That gives players like Google a platform to negotiate from now and in the future, and it won't curb abuses long term. These abuses are a symptom of economic concentration and a lack of competitive markets. The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.
    
    
        
     &gt; The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.Why not both? A consumer bill of rights and breaking up Google are not mutually exclusive. Consumer protection laws protect consumers from all companies big and small, present and future. Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google". It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.
    
    
        
     It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated. We have utility designations for instances where it makes sense, and even then you see customer abuses. Forcing companies to focus on competition and survival is the best way to make sure they treat their customers well. Abuses pop up when customers don't have the choice to take their business elsewhere.&gt; Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google". The same regulator that has the power to break them up also has the power to prevent the next Google. Good pricing regulations have the power to prevent the next Google. These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately. &gt; It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising. That's probably because it wasn't successful in the classical sense. Geroge Bush won the 2000 election and settled the case before it went to judgment. If it had, and Microsoft had been forced to break up, we may not be in the current situation.
    
    
        
     &gt; It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated.The Bill of Rights were written over 200 years ago and could really use a rewrite for modern times, but passing constitutional amendments is much more difficult than passing laws. Moreover, the issues involved in the Bill of Rights are much more contentious, whereas pretty much everyone is annoyed by Google's complete lack of customer service. I also find this statement to be somewhat at odds with your later statement: "These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately." How does your Bill of Rights analogy not also apply to your own argument about antitrust? I would say that consumer protection laws that can be applied in an ongoing, daily basis are better than antitrust laws, because antitrust enforcement is a monumental task that at best can take years to achieve, only comes into play when problems have already gotten out of hand, and may not have the desired results, as you mentioned. Better to try to prevent some of the problems from occurring in the first place, with laws that apply to all companies without exception, instead of trying to just go after a few of the current biggest troublemakers. And Google is far from the only company who pulls this crap, so at the very least we would need multiple successful antitrust actions. Right to repair is a similar issue. So, breaking up Google and Facebook might help somewhat with the account suspension issue, but then we also have to break up Apple. And John Deere! And other companies. Or... we could pass right to repair laws. Antitrust feels a lot like Whac-A-Mole to me. Not that antitrust is bad, but you knock down one BigCo, and another arises. Why not more directly address the abuses caused by the BigCos?
    
    
        
     The abuse is economic concentration, everything else is treating symptoms. Antitrust, price regulations, fair competition laws and the like are the remedy to that abuse. Obviously we would need to do more than one action - I'm talking about restructuring the economy. It's only whack-a-mole if you go one at a time. Knock-off a few big ones and the rest will settle to get the best deal possible.I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply, and we are certainly capable of putting a stop to these abuses and enforcing laws that create fair, competitive markets. I agree it's a longer term project, but it's the only one that will actually solve the issues. It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.
    
    
        
     &gt; I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would implyI don't believe we're impotent, which is why I'm suggesting new laws such as a consumer bill of rights and right to repair. I think that antitrust is actually too little too late in addressing problems. After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-) &gt; It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes. I think we disagree about which is the long term fix and which is the short term fix. I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.
    
    
        
     &gt; After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant. &gt; I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix. Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result. Further, how would you make it "permanent"? Constitutional amendments are a non-starter right now, and Congress can't pass laws that have 80%+ popular support. You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.
    
    
        
     &gt; That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.It was merely a play on words, but the point was that antitrust only kicks in when significant market power is involved, some kind of restraint on competition, whereas other laws protect consumers from abuses by companies of all sizes, even the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies. &gt; Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result. Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust. &gt; Further, how would you make it "permanent"? What do you mean? Laws are permanent by default, unless the legislators write an expiration date into the law. &gt; You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act. Tell that to AT&amp;T. ;-)
    
    
        
     &gt; Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.It's not strange if you look at historical priors. The US Government has frequently succeeded at regulation that involves rulemaking, investigation, and prosecuting abuses. The same government has failed to achieve its' goals any time it tried compliance based regulation. Sure, both are subject to regulatory capture, but I've only seen the one model succeed. I'm generally against these types of "consumer protection" movements explicitly because they target the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies. Consumer protection costs wind up driving those smaller businesses out and promote corporate concentration. Once you have that, the corporations are writing the rules, and the laws stop protecting customers (see: Boeing 737MAX). &gt; Tell that to AT&amp;T. ATT, Verizon or T-Sprint? If they don't answer I can leave a messaging on their answering machine using free long distance, or send an email using a modem. Just a few things that resulted from that breakup... And we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution. Look at how much effort it took to undo that breakup, and they still haven't gotten back to the Ma Bell days.
    
    
        
     &gt; we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solutionI think that kind of disproves your point, but maybe we should just stop there. :-)
    
    
        
     &gt;It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights"...Maybe? But I worry that politicians will use that as a tool. Look what DeSantis is trying down here in Florida. He wants to fine "Big Tech" for banning politicians during an election. Personally, I'm tired of the lies and provocations and hate speech of some politicians and I don't think any company should be compelled to share those messages.
    
    
        
      
 So those evil politicians will do what? Force corporations to indiscriminately ban arbitrary people without possibility of appeal? Oh, wait a minute...   
    
        
     &gt; It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.Google is a private company who offers free internet services in exchange for your privacy being violated. They have no customer service because you are not a customer as customers pay. You have no rights on their platform because again, you are not a paying customer. And you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up. They don't owe you anything at that pont. So stop expecting "paying customer" treatment from a shady adware dealer who gives you "free" "integrated platform" stuff to get you hooked. That's an old drug dealer tactic anyway. Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that. Otherwise stop whining about the tyranny of "free" platforms such as google, twitter, facebook, etc. The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's to warn people of the rights and privacy hazards of free internet platforms.
    
    
        
     &gt; Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that.Andrew Spinks, the author of the linked tweet, was a business partner of Google's. That didn't save him.
    
    
        
      
 Partner is not a customer. They don't care about any human on their platform because their platform is not designed to care about humans, only exploit them.   
    
        
     &gt; The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's ...Should governments allow caller ID spoofing, spam bordering on harassment, or lazy oligopolies to be negligent? Governments should do whatever we agree they should. Both governments and companies serve the humans.
    
    
        
     To be fair, even as a paying customer, you don't get much more "customer service".The same also applies for Google Play Store where without a doubt you paid at least once and continue for every in-app purchase.
    
    
        
     If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.At that level, "percentage" is an insufficient measure. You want "permillionage", or maybe more colloquially "DPM" for "Defects Per Million" or even "DPB". You'll still get false positives though, so you provide an appeal process. But what's to prevent the bad actors from abusing the appeal process while leaving your more clueless legitimate users lost in the dust? (As the joke goes: "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists" [1]) Can you build any vetting process, and associated appeal process, that successfully keeps all the bad actors out, and doesn't exclude your good users? What about those on the edge? Or those that switch? Or those who are busy, or wary? There's a lot of money riding on that. [1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...
    
    
        
     I think this is a balancing act of risks, and I wanted to bring up what I believe to be a success story when it comes to handling suspensions: Microsoft.One thing I believe Microsoft gets right is that suspensions are isolated to the service whose TOS was violated. I.e. violating the hotmail TOS doesn't suspend you from their other services. I think this makes the impact of a false positive less catastrophic, while still removing actual problematic users from the service. This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.
    
    
        
     Yup, I agree this is the better solution. The monolithic "one account rules everything" approach just increases the user's vulnerability.It's largely what made Facebook's forcing usage of their account for Oculus users so ass-backwards.
    
    
        
     &gt; This may be an artifact of how teams work together at Microsoft.It may be an artifact of Microsoft actually being regulated for monopolistic practices.
    
    
        
      
 There's nothing at all in the old DOJ settlement that imposes anything like this.   
    
        
     That isn’t what they’re asserting.I worked there for more than a decade. The settlement changed behavior - you thought about how to avoid future trust-like behavior.
    
    
        
      
 If we did that at Microsoft when we were bringing Hotmail under the MS umbrella, DOJ would have ripped the company into 10 pieces   
    
        
     If you're implying that there's just no way to support their users then I'm going to disagree.At Google's scale and profitability, saying you can't build an appeals process that supports your paying users is just ridiculous. And at this point the collateral damage to Stadia's already tenuous reputation is going to be a lot more than paying someone to vet him manually.
    
    
        
     Honestly, the answer is to charge people a fee, in order to appeal a ban. A fee that covers the cost of investigating the incident, making it revenue-neutral. This way, Google would have every incentive to investigate thoroughly all appeals, including repeated appeals by the same person.From the user's perspective, it's still a pretty good deal. There's a 99.999% chance that you get to use gmail/youtube/etc for free. And a 0.001% chance that you'll end up a statistic, and need to pay a nominal fee for an appeal. Unfortunately, I don't think the above will ever happen, because it would be a PR nightmare. "Google wants to charge you money, just to appeal a ban!" It's still better than the status quo, where people have almost no recourse when they are banned. But it still sounds way better in the media, if you just pretend as though these things never happen. Hence the status quo - use automated systems to cheaply get to a 99.999% success rate, and spend as little money as possible on the remaining 0.001%
    
    
        
     So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?The answer is to force google to be open and more transparent through regulations and have to scale up to deal with it and eat into their profits. The assumption up front should not be that we need to care about protecting their profits.
    
    
        
     Absurd but not new. Equifax was charging people to freeze their credit for a while after the breach, until public pressure mounted.They probably made a TON of money off of that, and off the credit protection services they offer directly or through subsidiaries.
    
    
        
     &gt; So now banning people incorrectly is a revenue generator?It need not be, as long as the fee is less than the cost. It could be symbolic (say $1). But the problem is that it would be seen as a revenue generator whether it is or not.
    
    
        
      
 They don't even have to keep the fee of the query is legitimate. They can reimburse it or keep it in the user's wallet when they consider that this was either a false positive or a honest mistake. The cost would be minimal but would deter a lot of people trying to game the system.   
    
        
     I completely agree.And if companies don't want to do it, that should be easy to regulate though. Requiring a human centric appeal process even if it has a fee, and prohibiting blanket account bans (if you get banned on gmail it doesn't affect your android and play store accounts, for example) There are other provisions that I consider important like not being able to reuse email addresses and requiring the forwarding of email for at least 6 months after any account termination (getting banned from your email address can have disastrous consequences)
    
    
        
      
 Google One, which costs 2$ a month, as far as I can tell provides you with some level of support, which is definitely more than zero.   
    
    
        
     The problem with unjustified bans due to some algorithm is also: These cases might not even be a close calls like: “oh yeah this person did something that is in the grey area of what our policies state. I will ban him but he might interpret things differently.”No if you enforce your policies strictly by (machine learning) algorithms it could just be a matter of misinterpreting a different language, slang, irony or something else. Which makes these bans even more infuriating.
    
    
        
      
 The lesson here is: you are too big. If you were smaller, you could manage these issues. But you choose to be big instead.   
    
    
        
     Counter-counter example, even if you do reach someone at Amazon they're not necessarily going to do anything useful.I've had a problem with my Amazon account for years now, after Amazon billed me (on my seller account) for something they shouldn't have. After I complained, they agreed to refund it. Except the refund never arrived. Asked many times over the years "WTF?", and someone always promises to look into it after agreeing they can see the problem.  Never to be heard from again. Same pattern has happened every single time (many times). Obviously, something about it puts it in the "too hard" basket... :/ Needless to say, I don't use Amazon's services much at all any more unless required for job purposes. And I steer people away from AWS for the same reason too.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Is this really true? If Gmail was replaced with a dozen competing services each with "only" 100M users each, would the total number of moderators be lower? How does the number of required human moderators per million users scale, and why?   
    
        
     I agree: not true. The advantage of automation is you can do more for less which extends the reach in wealth and services available to the human race. Automation is a beautiful thing and gmail being too big to service with human support is not understanding that we'll never have enough intelligence power to police every square inch of existence + the net if we rely solely on human intelligence.Problem is: can we cultivate machine learning intelligence to be as good as some of the best human arbiters?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91TRVubKcEM
    
    
        
     Automation is a form of capital. In an economic system that has conditions for a runaway positive feedback loop of accumulation of capital, in the long term, it benefits primarily those who own the capital. Specifically, it allows them to collect more economic rent from it, and share less with the rest.Taken to its logical conclusion, when everything is automated, the people who own the automation don't actually need the rest of the population at all - it becomes redundant. Of course, the "redundant" population might have different ideas about itself...
    
    
        
      
 I don't think anyone is proposing that moderation rely solely on humans. The question is about machine learning with human backup/appeals vs. Google's approach of machine learning with no appeals.   
    
        
     Depends on how much of that wealth is captured and how it is distributed after it is captured.If a huge amount of wealth is created and 90% of it is captured and the vast majority of it is distributed in share price/dividends then increasing inequality can really fuck up society even while GPD rises.
    
    
    
        
      
 You can't choose to stay small unless you're someone like clubhouse which still has a long waitlist for sign-ups, and even then they're trying to build their infrastructure wide enough to accompany everyone. Not offering service to all/99.9% of potential customers is effectively lost value and goes against shareholders' expectations.   
    
        
      
 That's like saying a restaurant can't choose not to serve a billion people even though it only has enough capacity to seat and make food for 20: if you can't provide legitimate service for everyone, you need to not allow more people. The core problem here is that users keep signing up for Google services without being informed correctly ahead of time why that's idiotic, and the only fix for this is going to be regulatory: either Google needs to change how they handle banning people (there should be some law that if they accepted responsibility to store someone else's data that they have some minimum retention time for it letting you access it or something), come up with a working appeals process (and ensure that they have enough employees to handle the expected appeal load before either signing up new accounts or banning old ones), or they need to be forced to have a giant sticker on the box with a skull and crossbones on it which says that the moral equivalent of the surgeon general needs you to be informed of the serious risks that are associated with using this ridiculous service offering.   
    
    
        
     &gt;If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives.Doesn't matter. If you're dealing with billions of accounts then you're earning billions of dollars. Just hire more people. Scale must never be an excuse for poor customer service.
    
    
        
     It depends on the unit economics.Google has billions of accounts because it is FREE create them. Which could mean the cost of providing human support is actually too expensive on a per unit basis. The only way to rectify these economics is to charge for the account. I pay for Google One to store more photos...however I have no clue if this improves my situation. Does the algorithm give me more slack for being a long, paid user? Do I get real customer support in the event I do get flagged? No clue.
    
    
        
     &gt; You can't even trust phone companies to do their job right and ensure the secure verification code is sent to the right phone! You provided some more secure ways for users to authenticate themselves,For those that don't know, phone companies are easily susceptible to sim-swapping attacks which can make it easy for an attacker to intercept SMS 2fa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016212  Edit: looks like OP changed their entire comment while I was replying.
    
    
        
     You can totally trust phone companies to "do their job right". You need to understand what their job is though.The Telcos never signed up to being a "secure verification code provider". Almost a decade ago, the local Telco industry group told us all: "SMS is not designed to be a secure communications channel and should not be used by banks for electronic funds transfer authentication,"  https://www.itnews.com.au/news/telcos-declare-sms-unsafe-for...  Any company that uses SMS for 2FA is offloading risk and security to an industry that never expected it, and explicitly seeks to not provide it. A Telco _desperately_ wants to be able to get you back up and running (making calls and spending money) on a new phone using your existing number before you walk out of the shop. And even more, they want to be able to transfer you across as a customer from a competitor - and have your existing number work on their network. "Sim Swapping" is a valuable feature for Telcos. They have significant negative incentives to make it difficult. They don't want to secure your PayPal account, and nobody (least of all PayPal) should expect them to do a good job of it, certainly not for free...
    
    
        
      
 Yeah sorry, I thought the original version was overly flowery, and the same point could be made more succintly.   
    
        
     &gt; Can you build any vetting process,Yes, it's pretty simple. Create and enforce some consumer protection laws which require, for example, that any company larger than a certain size is required to establish support offices staffed by humans in every major town. And required to resolve every issue within X days either by fixing the problem or clearly documenting why not. If not, no arbitration allowed, so they are subject to lawsuits if the reason doesn't hold scrutiny. Problem solved. Companies like goog, facebook et.al. can easily afford this and it'll stop this ridiculous behavior. It also to some extent protects the companies. Spambots who create a million accounts can't replicate a million humans to show up at the support office, so it establishes a human:human relationship that's completely missing today.
    
    
        
      
 This would all be perfectly okay and understandable if the AI were the first line of defense and there was any meaningful way at all to contact support and escalate things after that filter. (I mean besides making headlines in all the gaming-news articles.)   
    
        
     &gt; But 0.001% of billions or users is still millions of accounts...Not that I disagree with your point, but even if we assume 50 billion accounts (6+ for every human on earth), 0.001% of that would still be 'just' 100k, not millions.
    
    
    
        
     Yes there is a lot of money riding on that, but that is the cost of doing business.Why banks have heavy compliance costs? Doing proper AML and KYC costs money and society decided that it was critical enough to bear that cost even in light regulation countries. A lot of the financial success of those companies is in part the result of not fully taking responsibility for the consequences of their business activity. Eventually they will, under social pressure that this post success represent, or by laws.
    
    
        
     At some point percentage is insufficient, but it's because it's a rate. Permillionage/DPM doesn't fix it. It's the number of people affected that matters, so if you have it at 99.9% and grow 10x, you ought to improve it to 99.99% to not become eviler. If you just stay at 99.9% when you grow 10x, you're harming 10x the people.I'd use the total number of false positives as the proper measure.
    
    
        
      
 If a company has so many users that it can't hire enough employees to manually handle the false positives properly, it's too big to exist, and should be broken up.   
    
        
      
 Why broken up vs users migrating to a competitive service? Seems like a very simple facet to compete on.   
    
        
      
 It's hard for users to migrate to a competitive service when there's some form of lock-in, which is usually what happens in practice (often through other services offered by the same company).   
    
        
      
 This is by far the most ridiculous reasoning I’ve seen for a company being too big. Because too many users get restricted from the service unintentionally then the provider is too big?   
    
        
      
 Some regions floated right to explanation and right to human review for automated processes. I don't know if any passed, but if they did, it would definitely mean the service has to take it into account.   
    
        
      
 You have summed it up quite nicely, but I don't see why it's so ridiculous? If the social costs incurred by corporations past a certain size become unacceptable, why shouldn't we, as a society, limit their size? There's no natural right to form an LLC.   
    
        
      
 Can you please elaborate on bad actors absuing the appeals process? Is your point about how everyone will automatically appeal, making it difficult for genuine queries to receive the human attention they need? Or is there another vector of abuse you were thinking of?   
    
        
     That's basically it.If every action taken against an account by automation is appealed, then the automation becomes worthless. In gaming forums that are run by the developer, such as the World of Warcraft or League of Legends forums, I have very frequently seen people whining and complaining that their accounts were banned for no reason until a GM or moderator finally pipes in and posts chat logs of the user spamming racial slurs or some other blatant violation of ToS.
    
    
        
      
 We see that on HN too, where people who have been banned/hellbanned with ample warning are often complaining that it's because "hackernews groupthink" but when you look back at their comment history they call someone some redpilly insult in every comment they've ever made on the website.   
    
    
        
      
 It’s even worse than that because the bad actors are doing this at scale and will have automation to auto-appeal while normal people will sometimes shrug and decide it’s not worth it. So your appeals queue likely contains a higher flow of bad actors than the distribution of FPs.   
    
        
     It's interesting to me how Bloom Filters avoid the uncanny valley between probably correct and definitely correct. I don't know if this is a technological difference between problem domains or a purely ideology/mindset.Dividing a problem by 10 should get notice. By 100 (eg, Bloom Filters) respect. By 1000, accolades. Dividing a problem by infinity should be recognized for what it is: a logic error, not an accomplishment. Most times when I'm trying to learn someone else's process instead of dictating my own, I'm creating lists of situations where the outcomes are not good. When I have a 'class', I run it up the chain, with a counter-proposal of a different solution, which hopefully becomes the new policy. Usually, that new policy has a probationary period, and then it sticks. Unless it's unpopular, and then it gets stuck in permanent probation. I may have to formally justify my recommendation, repeatedly. In the meantime I have a lot of information queued up waiting for a tweak to the decision tree. We don't seem to be mimicking that model with automated systems, which I think is a huge mistake that is now verging on self-inflicted wound. Perhaps stated another way, classifying a piece of data should result in many more actions than are visible to the customer, and only a few classifications should result in a fully automated action. The rest should be organizing the data in a way to expedite a human intervention, either by priority or bucket. I could have someone spend tuesday afternoons granting final dispensations on credit card fraud, and every morning looking at threats of legal action (priority and bucket).
    
    
    
        
     that's not a solution to a problem.end users don't want to run their own spam and moderation filters, and they definitely do want them.
Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029
Farewell, Google Maps
2018-07-19
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 <a href="vote?id=17570353&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For example we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted."<p>I think this is one of the most important points in the article - the way they handle these pricing changes destroys trust in Google's other business offerings. How can people use Google products and services as a core piece of their infrastructure when they're willing to bump their prices &gt;10x with only a few months of notice? That could literally be a business-ending event, depending on how core that service is to the business.</p><p>In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. Fortunately, their last (sudden) price bump seems to have allowed the creation of some good alternatives.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570461&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than:<p>* shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service</p><p>* changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it</p><p>* moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client</p><p>A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.</p><p>When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.
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 <a href="vote?id=17572589&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.<p>It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable. They raise prices rapidly to see how many people jump ship, and when your revenue begins to decline you've gone a bit too far.</p><p>Of course, they've done it very quickly, so they've likely not allowed enough time for the competition to step in or all their customers to abandon your now-expensive product.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573648&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable.<p>Is the marginal cost of serving extra users really a big part of Google's costs? Bandwidth is cheap; I would have expected that building and updating the map data was the expensive part.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574004&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>After all, they've long done away with the tile servers of the past and the giant render farms to make the millions of tiles at 20 different zoom levels to cover the earth. Now it's in browser rendered vector graphics.<p>Unless the vector information is getting much more expensive (shouldn't be, they own Waze and GMaps mobile products to make their own maps from user data), the cost of running GMaps should be going down on a per user bases, not up.
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 <p>I'm not concerned about bandwidth costs. I'm concerned about support costs. People who use an API have an annoying habit of calling and submitting support tickets for that API.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573842&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.<p>See this is the important thing. Sustainable. People and companies use these free services that take quite a bit of work to maintain and then when the company decides it needs to stop hemorrhaging money they start charging, often a fairly modest fee, and people lose their damn minds "ermagerd, you're evil, I need this, you can't expect me to pay!". The simple fact that adding a price, or increasing the price, creates such an outrage is indicative, more oft than not, that it is a fair move because the service or good has obvious value to the user.</p><p>People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up".</p><p>&gt;When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.</p><p>I've been a Project Fi user for 2 and a half years now. This has been my worry every, single, day. Especially since they still owe me like 800$ in statement credits ha.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574039&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up".<p>For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices &gt;10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing.</p><p>Most people I know who stream (ok all people I know) get way more value out of streaming than cable. What is your line on fair pricing for streaming compared to cable, as the service has obvious value to the user?</p><p>I don't think anyone, here of all places, would suggest a product requiring engineers and infrastructure be free for commercial use and that the company shouldn't recoup costs.</p><p>The good news is, like streaming services, there is competition and pricing will work itself out in the market (assuming no collusion :P)
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 <a href="vote?id=17574434&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices &gt;10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing.<p>Netflix raised their prices what they felt they needed to. Google raised their prices what they felt they needed to.</p><p>If people don't like it they're more than welcome to go to the competition... which in both cases generally has inferior product.</p><p>It looks like this specific change almost entirely inconveniences businesses and not private individuals. They're allowing 28k FREE requests a month which is still beyond generous. That's enough for a small entity to develop a service or product around the service and not only get it working but develop a decent alpha, or extremely modest beta, base of users. Then, just like other businesses, you get to put on your big boy pants and accept the cost of doing business.</p><p>Does the power company hand out free power?</p><p>Does the water company hand out free water?</p><p>Does the phone company let you have free calls?</p><p>No. So Google is still allowing a more than fair FREE level of commercial usage and now want to actually monetize their product. If it's adding value to your business, paying the new rates is a cost of doing business. Build it into your pricing, adjust your budget. This is the real world, not Narnia.</p><p>I imagine in the most common cases the application is effectively advertising "here are our locations, come to one" and by the point of showing the map you should have already removed a significant number of non-conversions making it VERY fair pricing.</p><p>In instances where you are using it to actually build a product around, it's still likely orders of magnitude cheaper than buying, and maintaining, map data yourself. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if one year's cost is only a few percent of what it would cost you to initially buy all of the data and develop software for navigating and hosting it.</p><p>People allow free, and cheap, things to make them feel entitled. It's easy to do, it really is, but it's something people need to be more mindful of before freaking out.</p><p>All I read in that blog post is "HOW DARE GOOGLE! They want us to pay for a service we use! Pity us! Shame Google for wanting to not operate at a loss! How dare they! How. Dare. They!"
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 <a href="vote?id=17574659&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Your analogies make no sense.<p>We’re talking of Google Maps <i>the platform</i> and its B2B offering whereas Netflix, cable and phone companies are services for consumers with fixed and reasonable consumer-level monthly subscriptions.</p><p>If you haven’t built an app on top of Google Maps, then you pretty much have no idea how much it costs and have zero valuable input you can give.</p><p>Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this <i>bait and switch</i>. They did it before with App Engine as well, first fooling early adopters in order to gather popularity and then raising prices enough that it made plenty of startups to move off the platform.</p><p>Along with other blunders in their products, it makes one wonder how anyone can trust any of their offerings long term.</p><p>Too bad the US has lost its anti-trust teeth btw, because what Google is doing is to subsidize its offerings until they get popular, effectively using their monopoly to gain popularity in other markets, thus hurting their competition unfairly.
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 <a href="vote?id=17575112&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this bait and switch.<p>It isn't a bait and switch. It's introductory pricing. They attracted developers and businesses to a product people essentially weren't using, they let people work with it at or near a loss and now that they have a customer base they are trying to make it profitable.</p><p>Yes, they'll lose some of their users that want a free ride. They'll also retain many users that will happily pay under the new pricing scheme because they recognize the value add and find it to be a worthy business expense.</p><p>It's no different than companies like MailChimp offering free-for-so-many-subscriber pricing and then requiring you to pay once you reach a threshold they've determined makes you a billable customer. Or a company like Evernote allowing you to save so much data (what a map tile is) and use so many devices a month for free before requiring you to subscribe at one of the paid tiers. Or a company like Pushbullet allowing you to mirror so many SMS messages a month before charging.</p><p>If you can't easily handle the pricing change, then you are probably wasting your time using it in the first place and need to discontinue using maps anyway or reassess your own business model.
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 <a href="vote?id=17576355&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.<p>And there is absolutely no similarity between your MailChimp example and what Google has done in this case. The customer didn't complain about costs rising as the number of users starts to exceed an existing threshold.</p><p>That said, I wouldn't be so quick to call for the regulator. All businesses have a responsibility to select suppliers carefully and manage their dependency on any one of them. It appears to me that the value of contracts has been forgotten.
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 <a href="vote?id=17578372&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.<p>Yet they spend the entire post whining about it.
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 <a href="vote?id=17579283&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>The post that I have read complains about an extreme and sudden change in Google's pricing structure and then goes on to compare alternatives for most of post, all of which are non-free.<p>They also say "Of course, we always knew that as we grew larger, there would be cost to using Google Maps."
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 <a href="vote?id=17571199&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.<p>This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.
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 <p>The simple existence of competitors in a market segment is not proof that there is no monopoly. We wouldn't say for example that there are realistic copetitors in the web search space or in the desktop OS space - maps is similar to both of these sitations.
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 <p>The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>look how good it went for Microsoft's competitors trying to build a Win32-compatible OS....</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This argument is symmetric, it implies all other map providers (who are competitors of google maps and of each other) also have no competitors.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Sure, typically yes. It's not necessary - interoperable APIs exist, and for underdogs they're even attractive as a selling point - but market leaders tend not to play by those rules.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Jacking up the price so far that it becomes prohibitive to actually use, on short notice, isn't much different from shutting it down, is it? In both cases you suddenly can't use the service anymore.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571002&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, <i>they weren't ever profitable</i>.<p>I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes.</p><p>As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?
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 <p>The problem isn’t that Google wants to charge for a service. The issue is that they offered it for years for free or below cost effectively price gouging any competition. Now, with no alternatives they jack up the price. Classic monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573472&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>When I was a teenage I was told that thats how drug dealers operated - get you hooked on something for free, then ramp up the price once you are hooked.<p>Never heard of any drug dealer that did that in my adult life, but I do see a lot of large corporations using that business model.
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 <p>I'm always so confused by this. I switched to Feedly the day Reader went away. It was just as good then and is better now. I subscribe to way more stuff now than I did then. I've never understood how this "killed the entire medium".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573795&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I use RSS daily, but I am very much anomaly among my friends. For most people I know RSS just withered and died and got replaced by Facebook or whatever asocial media they are on.<p>I ended up rolling my own server (in scheme using sxml) and writing some minimal clients for it (tui, Emacs and web). It is running on a raspberry pi 2 and is currently using about 5mb of memory (the guile runtime is a large chunk of that) and has been down once since I started it 5 years ago (power outage).</p><p>Reader was to me the absolute best example of the good old web. Since then it seems like the web became insane with the idea of reinventing UI, which was then forced down our throats for both web and desktop, ruining two paradigms that worked just fine.</p><p>I am old,I know.
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 <a href="vote?id=17575821&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Sure, yeah, using RSS is rare, but it always was, and nothing was going to keep the vast majority of people from using Facebook and Twitter instead.<p>I don't understand why you rolled your own server. Feedly works great. If you did it because it's a fun project, that's awesome! But it certainly isn't necessary if your goal is just to subscribe to RSS feeds.
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 <a href="vote?id=17582057&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Back then the only alternatives were either commercial with shitty data policies or TTRSS which scared me away as it back then was probably the most hostile open source project on GitHub.<p>So I rolled my own. I will probably port it to use SQL so I can do easy searching when my kids move out :)
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 <p>If we're doing anecdata when Reader was killed off I tried Feedly, didn't like it, stopped consuming via RSS. I've recently tried Newsblur but honestly I never check the thing despite having it on every device I can. I don't think RSS is a thing for me anymore outside of technically podcasts</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Same here. I miss it but I haven't been satisfied with the options I tried (anyway Google long ago killed my list of feeds).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Nothing stops promoted content being injected by the feed reader. Feedly does it on their free plans.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google+ only existed in the first place because of the thing that was killing the medium and its one hundred and forty character-limited cousin.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>As I look at the big list of RSS feeds I found this very thread in, I can't help but imagine that news of it's death is a tad exaggerated.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Well, there's that too, but people complaining about Google's decision r.e. Reader don't like being reminded that there are dozens of alternatives.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Uh... the linked article compared 8 different competitors on various metrics. There are reasonable ways to disagree with Google's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571892&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I’d disagree a bit. There are competitors but the quality and the service is not on the same level. Google have made it hard to compete so that they stay in the leadership position. More importantly google maps “owns” more market share than all of them combined so it is kinda a monopoly.<p>I might not have explained my point well but I do think you get what I’m saying.
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 <p>If players with the resources of Apple and Microsoft are lagging here, it's not because Google "made it hard", it's because it's a hard problem. Yet they are competing, and that's a good thing. Google is just better. And you want it for free. And thus we get back to the cry-me-a-river bit.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Companies with deep pockets trying and failing to gain a meaningful share in a market is <i>more</i> proof of a monopoly or other anti-competitive behavior, not less.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>"Dumping" i.e. Putting out a product below cost to eliminate competitors is one of the fundamental forms of anticompetitive behaviour. All of Googles "free" products seem to fit the definition - they would not profitable standalone without Google's dominance in other markets and companies only operating in a single market cannot compete.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They are failing to provide comparable service, and thus failing to get meaningful share. I heard Apple maps is recently ok, but a couple of years ago when I tried it, it was still bad. Google has about 10 times more info than Apple or bing per building I look up (though, surprisingly, OSM is 90% of the way there for me).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Or is it because being in a #1 market position with a (until now) free price tag attracted thousands of volunteers submitting content and corrections for free?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573984&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS, FreeDOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux (Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Slackware, Mandrake, ...), Amithlon, MorphOS, Haiku, QNX, OS/2, Novell NetWare, PalmOS, ...<p>There are reasonable ways to disagree with Microsoft's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly.</p><p>Your comment completely disregarded the possibility that there's a dominant market position. Which there is. It is hard to compete with free. Ask e.g. TomTom or Microsoft.
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 <p>mapbox is totally a reasonable alternative, and in a lot of cases you can build something quickly with leaflet that gives you everything you need.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The article said nothing about making it free, it said that the costs, which were previously in line with competitors, increased by very, very large amounts without any perceived increase in value. Then they looked at options which were commercial offerings which cost dramatically less. They are paying for the service, it's not subsidized or free. It's like you didn't read any of the article.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I have been doing a lot of Local Guide work, photos, verifying, etc. in a rural area. Will be switching to OSM. This was the last straw.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I'm doing the same. Been a local guide aswell. And if you are not based in the US, you never got ANY benefit from Google for that effort. I did it for the society. And now Google is earning 10x more with it...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17572283&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>One could say the same about Google's cry-me-a-river response to the EU's decision on Android:<p>"If Google needs to engage in anticompetitive behavior to keep Android profitable/viable, then <i>they weren't ever profitable</i>."
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 <a href="vote?id=17572458&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.<p>If startups need a giant subsidized operating system for free or else they weren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.</p><p>Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?</p><p>&gt;As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?</p><p>Yeah, Google has vacuumed up incredible amounts of mapping data from users and has now jacked up the prices with the lead this gave them. OSM (or something similar) is the way to share the cost. Google just abused their goodwill and used their other power positions to discourage open source. Whining about Google while moving elsewhere is entirely appropriate.
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 <a href="vote?id=17572539&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?<p>What? Your counter-counterpoint doesn't make sense at. Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. If your business can't recoup the cost of an os per employee then yeah...maybe it's not a worthwhile venture.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573001&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows.<p>On the desktop side of things that only happens because of Linux, otherwise (if guys like Ballmer would have had their way at the end of the '90s - early 2000s) those startups would now be paying hundreds of dollars per Windows license per each machine (and maybe more depending on the number of cores? the sky would have been the limit, the same as Oracle did in their field). And not to mention the server side of things, I'm pretty sure the costs for server OS licenses would have been prohibitive for the vast majority of startups without the alternative free OS solutions.
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 <p>We pay a lot more than that for MSDN licenses (which includes the OS if it's only used for development).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17572599&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.<p>I mean, kind of, but on the other hand, think about all the companies whose costs are subsidized by having public roads.
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 <p>Yup and in the UK because freight is all on tax payer paid roads private rail has become incredibly expensive for normal people travelling.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573168&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>It is not about free. It is about being more expensive than before. We live in the economy, where small companies operate at such a thin margin (even if they're profitable), that such an increase in cost often kills any hope for profitability, especially with the economies of scale. Would you prefer to fire one developer from the team, or stop using Google Maps?<p>I am not saying that mapping should be free, but such price bumps should be communicated better to allow paying customers prepare for changes and alternative scenarios.</p><p>And again, just another reminder, that whenever choosing a provider for anything related to your core business - think of an exit plan!
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 <p>Here we go again with the "No subscription fees means you have the right to like what we give you" argument. Haven't we beaten the "nothing is actually free" horse into the ground by now? There is the matter of the vast amounts of data Google collects from people, and the other intangible costs you incur from the lack of alternative products due to the high barrier to entry (hard to compete with 'free'), and of course the risks that come with the lack of incentive on the vendor's part to maintain good will with the end user (this thread is case in point).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573234&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I completely disagree. You can find Google's pricing tactic aggressive, but it made me think about the entitlement there.<p>They complain that Maps at new prices would be more than the cost of their infrastructure, when actually their entire startup revolves around this data, and 5k to be able to use an amazing piece of high tech software that is ahead of the competition is..peanuts.</p><p>No matter what other business interests and strategies Google follows, there is no right to using such valuable tech for less than the monthly salary of an engineer. I find this incredible entitled.
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 <a href="vote?id=17572519&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>If a startup needs a giant system of subsidized roads for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.<p>You see where this argument leads to?
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 <p>No, although of course there is the point that a lot of Google's mapping data was subsidized with tax money by virtue of using the various geodata sources the U.S makes available for free to build on.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573900&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Anyone can use those, so why are people complaining?<p>Google does a whole lot more, and can charge whatever they want for it. OSM provides usable solutions the vast majority of users; i’ve Moved to OSM a couple of years ago in everything for privacy reasons and except for the occasional Waze route or verifications, get nothing from google that I can’t get from OSM.
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 <p>No, the roads are subsidized by those who pay for them. There is a right to use them for business purposes, unlike private map services.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized transport infrastructure/global telecomunications network/permissive government/low-cost computer hardware/solid legal system or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573887&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Re: "When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim."<p>Spot on. I would that if a site / application is hitting Maps' paid tier they can (somehow) monitize that traffic and cover the cost.</p><p>But monitization can't help you if / when they pull the plug.</p><p>p.s. I sometimes wonder how often Google looks at Slack and regrets mothballing Wave.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570887&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings.</i><p>There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is also useful.</p><p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348</a> "Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement"</p><p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571343&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Almost every conversation I've had with someone working at a startup in this city inevitably turns to the "so, are you worried Google will simply start offering your service for free?"<p>I remember like 3 or 4 years ago having this conversation at a hackathon with a bunch of "Machine Learning" / "Sentiment Analysis" APIs present... <i>right</i> as google started offering both for free on their cloud platform.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573710&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>This is funny:<p>Paul Graham, September 2001:</p><p>&gt; "And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft.”</p><p>Google is today's Microsoft :)
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 <p>Which most likely meant the startup was a feature or a product, not a company with a viable business model.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It is free for consumers, not for organizations. Gmail for consumers doesn't have a business model by itself, but it fits into Google's larger business model.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space. It's just that they first use their infinite pocket money to kill off all the competition, then switch to making money.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17577457&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space.<p>Wrong, maybe that "space" (feature or product) goes well with Google's business model, but wouldn't support a viable business mode by itself.
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 <p>Being bought/aquihired by Google/others seems to be a business model several companies aim for.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The pricing change is understandably very frustrating for users of Google Maps who are affected, but it seems like a big win to me for everyone in the mapping market. Google is trading away a monopoly position (and related regulatory risk) in exchange for increased revenue so it's a win for them. It's a win for other mappers because now they can compete on price. It's a win for users because they are getting more choice.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17572524&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.<p>I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.
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 <a href="vote?id=17572863&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.<p>There's a great deal of competition and that generally results in a race to the bottom. The market leader just removed themselves from the market and the best way to capitalize is stay low and build your userbase.</p><p>We won't see price changes by any of these companies. They all want to be #1.
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 <p>When you have a service that’s ten times cheaper than the best service, people start to raise eyebrows. They perceive it to be much worse. It isn’t always true, but it’s not uncommon either. I doubt companies are going to race to the bottom.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>In the context of a business building a service around it, a mapping service is not a consumer product. Superficial perception only go so far until it is debunked by careful scrutiny. I would certainly hope that a startup deciding to build a service relying on a map provider would test, and measure quantitatively how good the service is before choosing to build their business on top of it...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Google Maps API is not a consumer product, which is where you might have an argument there. A good engineer identifies their use-case and checks out the major players to determine what's a good fit. Once that determination is made, pricing is pretty much all that matters.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573163&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also. </i><p>I'm not sure what you mean with "free"/"open". The OSM licence has a share-alike part if you merge your own map data with OSM data. If you just have a map and put points on it, it'd be fine.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574518&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>It's not free as in you are not allowed to use OSM tiling servers for commercial purposes. "OpenStreetMap’s own servers are run entirely on donated resources. They have strictly limited capacity. [...] OpenStreetMap data is free for everyone to use. Our tile servers are not." [1]. They've even banned some sites for abusing their servers, e.g., FastPokeMap in 2016 [2]. But there is a very clear way of switching to OSM and serving your own map tiles with any styling you want [3]. I personally think that startups like these should go for these options since their user base is concentrated in one region.<p>[1] <a href="https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/">https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/</a>
[2] <a href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/chef/pull/78">https://github.com/openstreetmap/chef/pull/78</a>
[3] <a href="https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/">https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=17592297&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Well if you don't like the OSM.org tile usage policy, they'll give you a full refund.<p>OSM.org doesn't prohibit commericial usage, per se. But if you're running a business, you shouldn't rely on volunteers from another project which you're not paying for.
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 <p>This. Services are invited to take a slurp of data and use it as they wish, and contribute back of they make changes. It's not uncommon for a service of a certain size to become a contributor. But there's no requirement: if all they use it for is lookups and tiles, go ahead, "fill yer boots".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570717&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings.<p>ianal and all that, but isn't somewhere antitrust- or monopoly- adjacent?</p><p>I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570785&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until the competitors are dead, is typically known as "predatory pricing", which is illegal. IIRC, Standard Oil was a big user of that playbook.<p>I don't know if this qualifies, and I don't know how much appetite there is for prosecuting Google for offering useful things for free. I don't think they've had much of a history of jacking up prices after killing off a market, until relatively recently. Interesting question, though.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571608&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Isn't this done all the time by Google though? They offer so many services for free, such as the consumer version of Google Maps, or YouTube (in the early days before ads)?<p>Not to mention Internet.org from Facebook, TOM's (free) shoes in Africa.
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 <p>It does sound a lot like it, but I don't know if there's some other element you have to do to make it engaging in predatory pricing, or if there's just been no will to prosecute them yet. The FTC seems like it's been relatively lax on antitrust recently, so I could believe it's just the latter. Or maybe it's just the remnants of the free pass that governments gave the early internet, and we'll start seeing more.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570834&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p><i>I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.</i><p>This is what drug dealers do.</p><p>It was also the plot of the James Bond film <i>Live and Let Die</i>.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571400&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Are you saying drug dealers go around giving their product for free until no competition or we are hooked?<p>I don't really think that happens at all. If so where are they?
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 <a href="vote?id=17577445&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I doubt anyone is driving out competition with free product, but using free product to hook a new client is definitely a thing that happens.<p>That's not too say that there's guys on street corners offering free drugs to random passersby. Rather there's lots of dealers who just deal to aquaintances, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, etc. In that case they can spread a few hundred dollars worth of product around to non-users within their social network in hopes of picking up another client or two, who will end up generating reliable profit for a long time.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571301&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>i think uber at least (not that i want to defend anything they do) is different, because they don’t have low rates to smother their competition; they have low introductory rates to attract riders and drivers to the service<p>unsure if that’s also predatory pricing? seems different to me
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 <p>Just because they have a nice PR-friendly story to tell doesn't make the pricing any less predatory. The point of predatory pricing is to attract people to the service, to shut down competition.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571368&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; they don’t have low rates to smother their competition<p>Whether their competition is Lyft, Taxis, or public transportation, their subsidized pricing is a big factor to their customers.
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 <p>Walmart practically did this but with a little twist back in the days. They opened multiple extra stores within a very small geographical area. Some stores were actually losing money but it didn't matter to them because they used it to completely destroy all competitors in that area and forced them to close up their shops. Once everybody is gone, Walmart has accomplished their mission and then proceeded to shut down the extra stores as well.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570489&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Is there something like Amazon or Google shopping with a list of prices for all products through time? Kind of like the Wayback Machine (archive.org) but for products.<p>Maybe having a searchable historical database of everything imaginable and their prices would keep companies honest and prevent price gouging.
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 <p>In Japan there is a site called kakaku.com which maintains graphs for historical prices. We used it to great effect when buying a combo washer and dryer.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>That's a really neat idea! Maybe include alerting and the ability to "follow" services you use to monitor their prices?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I find a good site like every few years, but they always disappear. My guess is there is more (some) money in B2B.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571426&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Google did something similar with Stackdriver logging, where they went from a generous free tier to an insanely expensive $.50/Gb in roughly 2-3 months.<p>Very annoying. Especially because by default every GCP service logs a bunch of crap to Stackdriver.</p><p>Our log cost was going to be as high as our compute cost.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571878&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>They've got easy to use exclusions that eliminate the cost if you don't want the logs (and can be pretty picky about what to exclude, even to the point of doing percentage exclusions) and they announced it in advance and pushed the date back a few times.<p>My issue is with devs that write software that spits out a couple of gigs an hour and refuse to trim it down or exclude things.
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 <a href="vote?id=17577262&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Why you cannot trust this model 101: because it's practitioners understand the value of the labor/product, 
capitalize on the OSS ideal and then push it to the unsuspecting.<p>I don't know how many bait and switch 
episodes from google I need to see but by 2008 I 
was done with them -- for the first time. 
Ad-nauseam.</p><p>If you boycotted and didn't use Google they would wither and die and stop being something to worry about: for immediate google specific free offerings that are sucker bait.
Also for self aggrandizing standards/inclusions and buying 
the overt talent. But whatever. The HN community is full of dupes and buy ins, culture whores and fifth columnists. True belief in OSS died when everyone else took it and got rich.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573866&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Re: "...is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor..."<p>I was under the impression the trust for Google evaporated a long time ago. Sure, alternatives can be few at times. But anyone committed to and in bed with Google has to be sleeping with one eye open.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571042&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p><i>In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick.</i><p>Ah, the classic Oracle trick. Good to see the tradition is alive.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571638&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick<p>It seems like they haven't learned anything at all. Sure it was google that shafted them in this case, but the problem isn't google, it's that their business is entirely dependent on a third party who has the power to do this. They rejected the option that would have prevented this from happening in the future with another company.</p><p>Oracle probably has a sales team on the way to their offices now.
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 <p>If you are relying on other services that heavily, it sounds like you didn't have such a great business to start with</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Having interacted with the Google Maps sales team, I would imagine these posts are a result of these companies hopping on a sales call expecting something ‘google’-like and are surprised that the Oracle sales team is on the call. The value extraction mentality was a bit surprising compared to the image the rest of google presents.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Remember when Google once said “Don’t be evil” as their motto? Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil. But on the other hand, I think it is necessary, because at the end of the day Google is still a company that needs to make money and most importantly compete with each other, I’m really disappointed at Google to abuse their trust to hurt others.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573115&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p><i>Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil</i><p>What do you mean it's <i>evil</i>? People call Google evil for so many things that are hardly evil at all, that the word has lost its meaning in the context of Google. For example I honestly cannot tell if you're calling them evil for increasing Maps pricing (thereby hurting maps-consuming startups) or for previously asking a low price (thereby hurting startups that offer maps).
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 <p>On the other hand, if you are a business making real money, these price changes are no big deal. This happens all the time. Where some people see a sob story, I see a competitor getting stamped out.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570769&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening, and had tiles for our region built the next night after tuning some CartoCSS for our needs.<p>We already have our own aerial tiles, built off the free NAIP imagery, and I just went through rebuilding the 2017 NAIP tiles last week to make them higher quality and fix some seam issues.</p><p>This combination is pretty good and lets us take control of our map tile destiny.</p><p>References I used in setting things up:</p><p><a href="https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-tiles-docker">https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-tiles-docker</a>
<a href="https://switch2osm.org/">https://switch2osm.org/</a>
<a href="https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-ubuntu/">https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-ubu...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570858&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map <i>if you have the resources</i>. Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource intensive.<p>I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from here <a href="https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-16-04-2-lts/">https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-16-04...</a> (yes they are for Ubuntu but you'll get the idea) and everything works great. Even if you don't really need it, I recommend trying it to understand how it works; it has some very intuitive ideas.</p><p>Beyond the tile server I am also proposing GeoServer (<a href="http://geoserver.org/">http://geoserver.org</a>) for hosting the geo points on the maps (it can integrate with PostGIS and various other datasources and output the geo points in various different formats). You can then use Leaflet (<a href="https://leafletjs.com/">https://leafletjs.com</a>) to actually display the map and points!
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 <a href="vote?id=17571011&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1].<p>The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles), you can either write a small server or use theirs.</p><p>I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster.</p><p>[1] <a href="https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/">https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571190&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>That's correct — I'd forgotten that, as my project has the open data use license.<p>However, as an example, the one-time $40 for Colorado is likely to be much cheaper than generating them yourself, and is probably adequate if you don't need to keep up to date.
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 <p>We are looking at moving to Vector tiles after the deployment of openstreetmap raster tiles is completed. We need to look at the performance closely though because on some devices it was slower with Vector tiles. I think we still want to go that direction we just have to quantify some of the performance.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17574858&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>You can render raster on the fly from a vector based tileserver, and optionally use vector maps for clients where it makes sense (mobile for example).<p>I've been running a large OSM raster rendering stack for a while, for the whole planet. Moving on to a vector based stack right now, which is what you should do if you are starting today. The reason being the server, with vector tiles pre-rendered, can very quickly render raster tiles on the fly. It's fast enough that for most cases, there is no need to cache them. Once I get the new stack fully burned in, we'll swap our raster rendering stack out for the new vector stuff and do raster on the fly. I <i>might</i> cache the rasters depending on throughput, but from what I can tell it should be basically a non-issue.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574389&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>The difference between raster tiles and vector tiles is that in raster tiles the rendering (conversion to actual images) is done on your server (either when each tile is loaded for the first time or you may initialize a bunch of zoom levels for your area yourself; this may take hours to days depending on your area size) while for vector tiles you just send the descriptions/shapes and the inages are created on the client side. It is expected that the client performance won't be as good as with raster tiles and slow clients like mobile phones will struggle while trying to render the images.<p>One interesting idea would be to have both raster and vector tiles; then in your client side code you could detect if the client is a mobile device or a desktop pc (I am not sure if you can detect more things about how speedy the device would be) and serve the corresponding tileset (ie the vector tileset if the device is desktop or the raster one if it is mobile). This way you will definitely decrease the load on your server and most clients won't have performance problems!</p><p>In any case, the clients will get faster as the time passes so after some years vector tiles would probably be the norm because they have the huge advantage that it is very easy to style them on-the-fly in any way you like (while, to style raster images you need to re-create them all from scratch).
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 <a href="vote?id=17576828&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I am using more or less the instructions from switch2osm <a href="https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04-lts/">https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04...</a> however for a Centos 7 server (we use Centos in my organization).<p>This results in having a tile server that generates &amp; serves raster tiles using:</p><p>* carto to generate a proper stylesheet</p><p>* mapnik to create the tiles</p><p>* apache with the mod_tile module to serve the tiles</p><p>* renderd to be used as a bridge between apache/mod_tile and mapnik</p><p>* Postgres/PostGIS as a database to host the data</p><p>The actual data is an OpenStreetMap pbf file downloaded from <a href="http://download.geofabrik.de/">http://download.geofabrik.de/</a> which is inserted to the database through osm2pgsql.</p><p>The above are used for the raster tile server only.</p><p>In addition to this, I am using geoserver (<a href="http://geoserver.org/">http://geoserver.org/</a>) which is a Java web app (runs in tomcat) that is used to view/edit and (mainly) serve geospatial data. What I usually do is that when I need to display a new shape (shp) file I use shp2pgsql to insert it to a table in my PostGIS database (using something like this shp2pgsql -s SRID SHAPEFILE.shp SCHEMA.TABLE | psql -h HOST -d DATABASE -U USER) also another good tool is ogr2ogr which can convert between various formats (it also supports kml, for example ogr2ogr -f "PGDump" koko.sql test.kml).</p><p>After the shp file is inserted to the database, I can create a datasource for this dataset from GeoServer and publish this dataset to the web (i.e the dataset will have a URL of the form <a href="http://1.2.3.4:8080/geoserver/Dataset/wms);">http://1.2.3.4:8080/geoserver/Dataset/wms);</a> it can then be consumed by client applications (in javascipt) using leaflet or openlayers. Notice that GeoServer can easily publish various file formats for example an SHP directly (you don't need to insert it to the PostGIS; this is something I do for better control of my datasources).</p><p>PostGIS is the component that supports the vector tiles (<a href="http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/extensions/vectortiles/index.html">http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/extensions/vectorti...</a>) so I want to integrate it the OpenStreetMap data that is hosted in my PostGIS (which is used for the raster tiles); I haven't found the time yet though.</p><p>I think it's a great setup and it works great for the needs of the organization I work for; actually, I like it so much that I want (for a long time) to write a rather comprehensive tutorial on how to set ip up along with some notes on how to do various PostGIS things but I don't know when (and if) I'll find the time for something so large :/
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 <a href="vote?id=17571213&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>My apologies, I'm out-of-date with the commercial offerings of OpenMapTiles — I work on an open data project, eligible for OpenMapTiles' free license which has old (currently one year old) tiles.<p>With a commercial license, the tiles are from 2 July.</p><p>I assume the commercial tiles are a few days behind as it's just not worth most people's effort to stay up-to-the-hour — different map services can offer that, this company is making easy self-hosted map tile packages.</p><p>The free license is presumably using older data to encourage an upgrade.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570906&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Tile generation wasn't <i>THAT</i> bad. We only cover Colorado and Wyoming, and generating the tiles for those at the zoom levels 5-18 takes around 7 hours to pre-render (using "render_list_geo.pl"). The end result is around 25GB of rendered meta-tiles.<p>Much better than the NAIP aerial imagery, which takes around 3TB for the source data, 280GB for the resulting tiles, and around a full day to generate.
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 <p>Yes it wasn't bad for a single area (we cover only Greece and it was quick and easy for such a small country). However I couldn't imagine of the resources needed to cover the whole world!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Would it be possible to put Free map tiles in something like DAT or IPFS, to share the load? Kind of like Peertube, but for maps.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17574082&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>If you use vector tiles, and render them client side you could do this. For raster tiles, where you're storing images, there are too many images to do this practically.<p>And then you need to think of how to do data updates. OSM updates minutely.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574405&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Data updates are not required for many applications. You probably don't want to be google maps! For example I haven't updated the OSM data for more than a year and I don't think that there are any problems with the data being stale. It all depends on the application of course.<p>One major advantage of <i>not</i> updating your data very often is that the tile-images won't need to be re-generated thus you save a lot of (CPU intensive) resources! I think that another commenter mentioned that he generated the tiles in a CPU intensive system and then just off-loaded the images to not-so-fast system for serving.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573239&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>You can also prerender the tiles on a powerful machine and host them on a cheap instance (assuming you don't need very large regions). A while ago I created an OSM server (<a href="https://github.com/seemk/TileSweep">https://github.com/seemk/TileSweep</a>) to do this for me, you can select regions you want to render via a polygon and you get a SQLite database of the tiles. It can also run as an alternative for mod_tile + renderd.<p>I rendered all of Estonia from zoom levels 0 to 18 (~16.5M tiles) which is around 20GB and host the tiles on a cheap DigitalOcean instance.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574131&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>* How is the workflow for updating OSM data with this project?<p>* What is the recommended procedure for backup + restore?</p><p>I find a lot of projects in this space make you go through an manual copy-paste setup process like if it was a one-time thing - it is not - updating OSM data is a crucial part in this process and should be part of it.
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 <a href="vote?id=17574238&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I haven't investigated updating of data using anything clever. I know the database load script can write out a list of tiles that need to be rerendered, which can be fed into the renderd process. Renderd has multiple priority channel so bulk renders are a lower priority than user views, so a live system can update the tilecache without much easier impact.<p>I haven't investigated it because we are probably moving to Vector tiles over the next month or two, and we don't need up to the minute map updates. On one of our sites, we have been rendering navteq tiles and we only get updates for those quarterly. It was only our public site that we were using Google Maps for.</p><p>Backup and restore we are just doing via normal backup programs. The tilecache is stored in meta tiles, which is a d duplicated set of 64 tiles in a single file. So we are only dealing with about a million files in a directory structure totaling 25 gigabytes.</p><p>If we needed to restore or update our tiles, we would probably just spin up a new box and rerun ansible to deploy it. I have it all encoded Within a Playbook.
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 <a href="vote?id=17573729&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>I was wondering too why they skipped OpenStreetMap so quickly.<p>Living in Germany, I find the map quality of OSM much better than Google Maps. Sure, it lacks the integration with the other Google services like a good search and live traffic, but speaking about the pure map quality, Google is lacking a lot of detail here.
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 <a href="vote?id=17575141&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>From the article (emphasis added):<p>"Which maps should we investigate deeper?</p><p>Some options we could reject quickly for various reasons. <i>OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites.</i> Apple Maps, even though we wouldn't mind having Apple logo on our site somewhere, was just released as beta and requires Apple developer account to test properly."
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 <p>The OpenStreetMap.org website doesn't ban commerical sites (per se). The volunteer sysadmins who manage the donated hardware that runs the OpenStreetMap.org website don't offer any SLA and reserve the right to ban people/apps which put too much load on it. If you don't like it, they're prepared to give you a full refund.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I read that, but compared to the effort they put into analysing the whole issue, at least an estimate about the cost involved in hosting their own server would be a good decision.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It seems like they rejected OSM because they couldn't directly use the OSM site to serve tiles, but would instead need to host their own infrastructure for it. I understand that, but for us we decided to go ahead and own it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think if the maps service is part of your core product, it is good considering a self hosted solution. Yes, it costs time you want to save as a startup, but at least you control your own product and can manage your cost directly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thanks for the docker image pointers; just what I was looking form. What kind of traffic volume can you handle on what size VM's?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>We found some references saying that each box could probably handle around 10,000 map tiles per second. Our full tileset is under 30GB, so it is easily cached. One of our machines can generate Tiles at a rate of 2,500/sec, another is 1,300.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Oh wow, that's a faster tile generation rate than I was expecting. What are the specs on the machines/VMs you're using to get those rates?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They are both virtual machines, 32GB and 32 CPUs for the 1,300/sec and 20CPUs for the 2,500/sec. The 32 cores are on a host machine with two "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4108 CPU @ 1.80GHz", the 20 cores are "Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 v2 @ 3.50GHz". You know, 7,001.21 bogomips (TM). :-)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>How does Mapbox stack up against what you've built? Does Mapbox provide any advantages or is are the two not very comparable? How difficult would it be to spin up a Mapbox competitor?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17570948&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>How does Mapbox stack up against what we've built? Well, they have way more people working on the problem, so there's going to be more support and more eyes on the problem. I didn't directly compare map tiles, that was a couple other people on my team. We decided to try moving forward with our own OSM-based tiles, so the conclusion I've come to is that it compares favorably.<p>How difficult would it be to build a competitor to Mapbox? Well, if all you care about are map tiles, it's no big deal. If you want to build a business around it, that's always work. You're going to need to build the tiles, have infrastructure to serve it, monitoring, staff to manage it, billing and charging infrastructure, etc...
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 <p>Mapbox also offers geocoding and navigation, which are quite a bit more difficult than just setting up a server that can host OSM tiles. Obviously, if all you need are maps, that's fine. But if you need maps with search, which I suspect most people do, rolling your own is tougher (though projects like pelias are pretty good).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I set up a pelias system a while ago but it never got any traction. We have another geocoder already set up using Experian QAS data, I think we've had that set up for a decade or more, so that isn't one of our concerns. Good point though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thank you very much, may I ask two questions:<pre><code> * what is the workflow to update the OSM data?
 * what is your recommendation for a good geocoder?</code></pre></p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Uh, while I upvote OSM comments a lot because I often think they are good comments, blindly upvoting based on positive mentions of OSM does not contribute to the conversation...</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17571206&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p><i>I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.</i><p>This is the platform Maps.me is based on, correct? I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.</p><p>I too want Google/Apple maps alternatives to succeed, but my limited trial so far has not been promising.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571553&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.<p>You might try looking at OsmAnd. It too uses OpenStreetMap data, but it does allow you to add some amount of missing data as well (see <a href="https://osmand.net/features?id=osm-editing-plugin">https://osmand.net/features?id=osm-editing-plugin</a>).</p><p>This, of course, is part of the advantage of OpenStreetMap, you notice something missing, you add it, and now it is no longer missing.
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 <p>And one can of course also add data to OpenStreetMaps via a browser. I've been trying to add any businesses I've found missing.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573175&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.</i><p>That's strange. I just checked Maps.me on Android, and if you open the hamburger menu there's an "add a place to the map" option.
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 <p>&gt;there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.
Unless Maps.Me use their own database for business listings, you just edit the map directly from openstreetmap.org or one of the many fat client map editors that are out there.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don’t think that’s true. Items added on the OSM page appear on maps.me, and items added on maps.me appear on OSM.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17573132&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>You can add things to OSM using the Maps Android app; open the hamburger menu, choose "Add a place to the map".<p>Maps is based on Maps.me.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570654&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>It's as much as a 28x increase in price. For Street View imagery, the cost has gone from $0.5 per 1000 views to $14 / 1000. Unlike with maps, Street View lacks a real alternative.<p>I'm seeing my own costs, for a site which I run on my own, rise from $1,500 / month to around $30,000 / month.</p><p>Their rationale is essentially that they did not want commercial users abusing their free tier. Before this change, they had been reaching out to such entities individually, offering their 'premium plan' service.</p><p>The pricing for the (old) premium plan was remarkably similar to the new pricing which now applies to everyone.</p><p>This pricing change has ended the era of Google Maps mashups / hobby projects.
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 <a href="vote?id=17572920&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>If you read the original article, it gives you the impression that it's tiles only. But as you point out it's a lot of different parts of the Maps service going up by usually an order of magnitude at least.<p>I run a geocoding service for Australia specifically (<a href="https://geocodeplus.com.au/">https://geocodeplus.com.au</a>) and a lot of people I talk to are completely unaware that they're going to see a x10 change in what their forward/reverse geocoding is going to cost them.
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 <a href="vote?id=17571817&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>If they were concerned about abuse from free tiers, there's much better ways to handle it than this. It's Google we're talking about.<p>Also, it's a lame excuse because this affects paid users such as yourself who have nothing to do with the abuse.</p><p>In Google's defense, a hobby project wouldn't need 750k requests a month. At that point it's more than a hobby. But, the 28k limit is low.
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 <a href="vote?id=17570772&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>You're right about the Street View feature that is currently a true key diferenciator that has not a lot of competition in terms of availability and coverage.<p>Though, Mapillary is quite interesting but their pricing model is not really comparable to Google's one: <a href="https://www.mapillary.com/pricing">https://www.mapillary.com/pricing</a>
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 <p>I think there is a different reason for charging for StreetView. The need to make their money back and quick. Self driving cars will have cameras that will give reasonable results for a lot of use cases (maybe not 360 but who cares). It is also a potential combo monetization strategy for the autonomous vendor.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The issue isn't what google allows/prohibits, its that any new autonomous vehicle company could quickly amass a similar data set to street view and nullify googles 10 plus year investment driving non autonomous cars around to capture street view images.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>It's not as simple as capturing the imagery. The backend processing for Google maps is astonishing. It will take years to get to the smoothness that is Google Streetview.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think the comment you replied to was saying that StreetView will soon be commodotized, so they need to make the money back now.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Please contact the US Department of Justice and let them know about how the price increase is affecting you in regards to Street View. They seemed to buy into my reasoning that Google has effectively made sure that they won't have any Street View competition by artificially keeping prices low for years. The more people that complain, the sooner the DOJ will probably take action. For European users I recommend complaining to your regulators as well, especially using Street View as your main complaint since there's no real alternatives.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17572878&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good. There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies didn't want to take.<p>Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as the market leader. That's not predatory.
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 <p>Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google. Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing competitors is a direct result of that history.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17575392&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>Microsoft has made HUGE investments into Bing and yet Google was always superior and Microsoft isn't exactly rolling in money with Bing.<p>There are several competitors, the issue at hand is they have an inferior product. If your argument held any water, literally everyone would use TMobile because they are so much cheaper. Reality is, a products quality matters and Google Maps were both more cost effective AND a better product.
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 <p>Just because there are competitors in a field does not mean that one company does not hold a monopoly. There were other oil companies in existence when standard oil was broken up.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I never said it did. The argument was that there was no competition. There is competition, it's just weak for some aspects of Google Maps. And the argument here seems to be that Google isn't allowed to start charging for a product because they didn't before, which is silly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=17576108&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;They seemed to buy into my reasoning<p>We're going to need a bit more detail from an account that clearly has an agenda.
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 <a href="vote?id=17577492&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D17570029"></a> </td><td><p>When it comes to Google I just have a lot of issues with the company and didn't have my real login handy when an article about them came up a few days ago. From big issues, like hiring Eric Schmidt and frequent attempts at anti-competitive behavior, to small ones, like prudish censoring of search results and weird customer service (including a six-month delay in getting a response to a simple request for a Maps enterprise quote), I could really just go on and on with the variety of reasons why I don't like Google. I've seen firsthand, at multiple Google locations, an odd attitude that must have permeated from the top. The only people that seemed to be different were a few acquihires who exuded a combination of resignation and pragmatism about their situation.<p>Edit: If you meant that you wanted more detail about my antitrust complaint, I contacted them via the antitrust email address. They took a while to call back, but not as long as Google took to get me that Maps quote...
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  Farewell, Google Maps ( inderapotheke.de )           
 1747 points by ScottWRobinson on July 19, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 527 comments           
             
             
             
 ericd on July 19, 2018 | next [–]            
             
 "Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For example we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted."     
             
 I think this is one of the most important points in the article - the way they handle these pricing changes destroys trust in Google's other business offerings. How can people use Google products and services as a core piece of their infrastructure when they're willing to bump their prices >10x with only a few months of notice? That could literally be a business-ending event, depending on how core that service is to the business.      
             
 In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. Fortunately, their last (sudden) price bump seems to have allowed the creation of some good alternatives.        
             
             
 wwweston on July 19, 2018 | parent | next [–]            
             
 While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than:         
             
 * shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service           
             
 * changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it         
             
 * moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client           
             
 A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.         
             
 When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.           
             
             
 da_chicken on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.         
             
 It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable. They raise prices rapidly to see how many people jump ship, and when your revenue begins to decline you've gone a bit too far.        
             
 Of course, they've done it very quickly, so they've likely not allowed enough time for the competition to step in or all their customers to abandon your now-expensive product.          
             
             
 dmurray on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable.          
             
 Is the marginal cost of serving extra users really a big part of Google's costs? Bandwidth is cheap; I would have expected that building and updating the map data was the expensive part.          
             
             
 twistedpair on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 After all, they've long done away with the tile servers of the past and the giant render farms to make the millions of tiles at 20 different zoom levels to cover the earth. Now it's in browser rendered vector graphics.         
             
 Unless the vector information is getting much more expensive (shouldn't be, they own Waze and GMaps mobile products to make their own maps from user data), the cost of running GMaps should be going down on a per user bases, not up.         
             
             
 g-b-r on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Maybe they expect a big increase in the cost of imagery acquisition (from what I was able to glean they had a deal for a certain fixed price for a certain period, which might be coming to an end - https://spacenews.com/planet-confirms-google-stake-as-terra-... ).        
             
             
 quirkot on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Cost doesn't set price. Value sets price            
             
             
 da_chicken on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I'm not concerned about bandwidth costs. I'm concerned about support costs. People who use an API have an annoying habit of calling and submitting support tickets for that API.          
             
             
 ryanmercer on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 >A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.         
             
 See this is the important thing. Sustainable. People and companies use these free services that take quite a bit of work to maintain and then when the company decides it needs to stop hemorrhaging money they start charging, often a fairly modest fee, and people lose their damn minds "ermagerd, you're evil, I need this, you can't expect me to pay!". The simple fact that adding a price, or increasing the price, creates such an outrage is indicative, more oft than not, that it is a fair move because the service or good has obvious value to the user.    
             
 People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up".          
             
 >When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.           
             
 I've been a Project Fi user for 2 and a half years now. This has been my worry every, single, day. Especially since they still owe me like 800$ in statement credits ha.          
             
             
 chrisan on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up".          
             
 For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices >10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing.          
             
 Most people I know who stream (ok all people I know) get way more value out of streaming than cable. What is your line on fair pricing for streaming compared to cable, as the service has obvious value to the user?         
             
 I don't think anyone, here of all places, would suggest a product requiring engineers and infrastructure be free for commercial use and that the company shouldn't recoup costs.          
             
 The good news is, like streaming services, there is competition and pricing will work itself out in the market (assuming no collusion :P)          
             
             
 ryanmercer on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 >For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices >10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing.          
             
 Netflix raised their prices what they felt they needed to. Google raised their prices what they felt they needed to.           
             
 If people don't like it they're more than welcome to go to the competition... which in both cases generally has inferior product.          
             
 It looks like this specific change almost entirely inconveniences businesses and not private individuals. They're allowing 28k FREE requests a month which is still beyond generous. That's enough for a small entity to develop a service or product around the service and not only get it working but develop a decent alpha, or extremely modest beta, base of users. Then, just like other businesses, you get to put on your big boy pants and accept the cost of doing business.     
             
 Does the power company hand out free power?            
             
 Does the water company hand out free water?            
             
 Does the phone company let you have free calls?            
             
 No. So Google is still allowing a more than fair FREE level of commercial usage and now want to actually monetize their product. If it's adding value to your business, paying the new rates is a cost of doing business. Build it into your pricing, adjust your budget. This is the real world, not Narnia.        
             
 I imagine in the most common cases the application is effectively advertising "here are our locations, come to one" and by the point of showing the map you should have already removed a significant number of non-conversions making it VERY fair pricing.         
             
 In instances where you are using it to actually build a product around, it's still likely orders of magnitude cheaper than buying, and maintaining, map data yourself. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if one year's cost is only a few percent of what it would cost you to initially buy all of the data and develop software for navigating and hosting it.       
             
 People allow free, and cheap, things to make them feel entitled. It's easy to do, it really is, but it's something people need to be more mindful of before freaking out.          
             
 All I read in that blog post is "HOW DARE GOOGLE! They want us to pay for a service we use! Pity us! Shame Google for wanting to not operate at a loss! How dare they! How. Dare. They!"          
             
             
 bad_user on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Your analogies make no sense.            
             
 We’re talking of Google Maps the platform and its B2B offering whereas Netflix, cable and phone companies are services for consumers with fixed and reasonable consumer-level monthly subscriptions.         
             
 If you haven’t built an app on top of Google Maps, then you pretty much have no idea how much it costs and have zero valuable input you can give.          
             
 Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this bait and switch. They did it before with App Engine as well, first fooling early adopters in order to gather popularity and then raising prices enough that it made plenty of startups to move off the platform.        
             
 Along with other blunders in their products, it makes one wonder how anyone can trust any of their offerings long term.           
             
 Too bad the US has lost its anti-trust teeth btw, because what Google is doing is to subsidize its offerings until they get popular, effectively using their monopoly to gain popularity in other markets, thus hurting their competition unfairly.         
             
             
 ryanmercer on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 >Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this bait and switch.           
             
 It isn't a bait and switch. It's introductory pricing. They attracted developers and businesses to a product people essentially weren't using, they let people work with it at or near a loss and now that they have a customer base they are trying to make it profitable.        
             
 Yes, they'll lose some of their users that want a free ride. They'll also retain many users that will happily pay under the new pricing scheme because they recognize the value add and find it to be a worthy business expense.         
             
 It's no different than companies like MailChimp offering free-for-so-many-subscriber pricing and then requiring you to pay once you reach a threshold they've determined makes you a billable customer. Or a company like Evernote allowing you to save so much data (what a map tile is) and use so many devices a month for free before requiring you to subscribe at one of the paid tiers. Or a company like Pushbullet allowing you to mirror so many SMS messages a month before charging.     
             
 If you can't easily handle the pricing change, then you are probably wasting your time using it in the first place and need to discontinue using maps anyway or reassess your own business model.         
             
             
 fauigerzigerk on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.          
             
 And there is absolutely no similarity between your MailChimp example and what Google has done in this case. The customer didn't complain about costs rising as the number of users starts to exceed an existing threshold.         
             
 That said, I wouldn't be so quick to call for the regulator. All businesses have a responsibility to select suppliers carefully and manage their dependency on any one of them. It appears to me that the value of contracts has been forgotten.         
             
             
 ryanmercer on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 >You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.          
             
 Yet they spend the entire post whining about it.            
             
             
 fauigerzigerk on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The post that I have read complains about an extreme and sudden change in Google's pricing structure and then goes on to compare alternatives for most of post, all of which are non-free.          
             
 They also say "Of course, we always knew that as we grew larger, there would be cost to using Google Maps."           
             
             
 taurath on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.         
             
 This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.        
             
             
 tomnipotent on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Did you to read the article which mentions all the competitors that are available?           
             
             
 RugnirViking on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The simple existence of competitors in a market segment is not proof that there is no monopoly. We wouldn't say for example that there are realistic copetitors in the web search space or in the desktop OS space - maps is similar to both of these sitations. (Now I realise that some people like to argue the toss about whether search and desktop OS are monopolies and to that I have no comment)      
             
             
 prirun on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's helpful to think about market share per "competitor", not number of competitors:           
             
 "However, from a regulatory view, monopoly power exists when a single firm controls 25% or more of a particular market. For example, De Beers is known to have a monopoly in the diamond industry."         
             
 https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/monopoly-market-structu...            
             
             
 wolco on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The search space has bing and to a lesser extent duckduckgo            
             
             
 callalex on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.          
             
             
 emn13 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.        
             
             
 thecrazyone on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 A good competitor can make a drop in replacement possible by aligning their api with that of google's           
             
             
 ddalex on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 look how good it went for Microsoft's competitors trying to build a Win32-compatible OS....           
             
             
 namibj on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Look what Linus and Stallman made to replace UNIX.            
             
             
 Digit-Al on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 What? Like WINE you mean? ;-)            
             
             
 pliny on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 This argument is symmetric, it implies all other map providers (who are competitors of google maps and of each other) also have no competitors.          
             
             
 emn13 on July 22, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Sure, typically yes. It's not necessary - interoperable APIs exist, and for underdogs they're even attractive as a selling point - but market leaders tend not to play by those rules.          
             
             
 amelius on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 This is why Google's generic services should be commoditized as quickly as possible.           
             
             
 thecrazyone on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I agree, but is it _that_ easy? Not like no one has tried            
             
             
 lallysingh on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Which ones aren't?            
             
             
 draw_down on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Jacking up the price so far that it becomes prohibitive to actually use, on short notice, isn't much different from shutting it down, is it? In both cases you suddenly can't use the service anymore.         
             
             
 tobltobs on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Thought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.           
             
             
 ajross on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [52 more]            
             
 Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable .          
             
 I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes.        
             
 As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?          
             
             
 laGrenouille on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The problem isn’t that Google wants to charge for a service. The issue is that they offered it for years for free or below cost effectively price gouging any competition. Now, with no alternatives they jack up the price. Classic monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour.        
             
             
 collyw on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 When I was a teenage I was told that thats how drug dealers operated - get you hooked on something for free, then ramp up the price once you are hooked.          
             
 Never heard of any drug dealer that did that in my adult life, but I do see a lot of large corporations using that business model.          
             
             
 emodendroket on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Essentially the Google Reader effect, right? Where killing their offering basically killed the entire medium.           
             
             
 sanderjd on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I'm always so confused by this. I switched to Feedly the day Reader went away. It was just as good then and is better now. I subscribe to way more stuff now than I did then. I've never understood how this "killed the entire medium".         
             
             
 bjoli on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I use RSS daily, but I am very much anomaly among my friends. For most people I know RSS just withered and died and got replaced by Facebook or whatever asocial media they are on.          
             
 I ended up rolling my own server (in scheme using sxml) and writing some minimal clients for it (tui, Emacs and web). It is running on a raspberry pi 2 and is currently using about 5mb of memory (the guile runtime is a large chunk of that) and has been down once since I started it 5 years ago (power outage).        
             
 Reader was to me the absolute best example of the good old web. Since then it seems like the web became insane with the idea of reinventing UI, which was then forced down our throats for both web and desktop, ruining two paradigms that worked just fine.         
             
 I am old,I know.            
             
             
 sanderjd on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Sure, yeah, using RSS is rare, but it always was, and nothing was going to keep the vast majority of people from using Facebook and Twitter instead.          
             
 I don't understand why you rolled your own server. Feedly works great. If you did it because it's a fun project, that's awesome! But it certainly isn't necessary if your goal is just to subscribe to RSS feeds.         
             
             
 bjoli on July 21, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Back then the only alternatives were either commercial with shitty data policies or TTRSS which scared me away as it back then was probably the most hostile open source project on GitHub.          
             
 So I rolled my own. I will probably port it to use SQL so I can do easy searching when my kids move out :)           
             
             
 corobo on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If we're doing anecdata when Reader was killed off I tried Feedly, didn't like it, stopped consuming via RSS. I've recently tried Newsblur but honestly I never check the thing despite having it on every device I can. I don't think RSS is a thing for me anymore outside of technically podcasts        
             
             
 emodendroket on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Same here. I miss it but I haven't been satisfied with the options I tried (anyway Google long ago killed my list of feeds).           
             
             
 asfasgasg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You've got the causality reversed here. The medium was dying, so the Reader product was killed.           
             
             
 parrellel on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 You mean Google+ needed promotion so the Reader product was killed.           
             
             
 emodendroket on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In the first place they'd rather you used something other than RSS so they can inject promoted content into it.           
             
             
 rlac16 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Nothing stops promoted content being injected by the feed reader. Feedly does it on their free plans.           
             
             
 asfasgasg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Google+ only existed in the first place because of the thing that was killing the medium and its one hundred and forty character-limited cousin.          
             
             
 parrellel on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 As I look at the big list of RSS feeds I found this very thread in, I can't help but imagine that news of it's death is a tad exaggerated.          
             
             
 asfasgasg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Well, there's that too, but people complaining about Google's decision r.e. Reader don't like being reminded that there are dozens of alternatives.          
             
             
 ajross on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Uh... the linked article compared 8 different competitors on various metrics. There are reasonable ways to disagree with Google's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly.         
             
             
 martimarkov on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I’d disagree a bit. There are competitors but the quality and the service is not on the same level. Google have made it hard to compete so that they stay in the leadership position. More importantly google maps “owns” more market share than all of them combined so it is kinda a monopoly.        
             
 I might not have explained my point well but I do think you get what I’m saying.           
             
             
 ajross on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 If players with the resources of Apple and Microsoft are lagging here, it's not because Google "made it hard", it's because it's a hard problem. Yet they are competing, and that's a good thing. Google is just better. And you want it for free. And thus we get back to the cry-me-a-river bit.        
             
             
 hueving on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Companies with deep pockets trying and failing to gain a meaningful share in a market is more proof of a monopoly or other anti-competitive behavior, not less.          
             
             
 freeone3000 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Could you point to this supposed behavior? Price and quality are, in themselves, not anticompetitive.           
             
             
 duncanawoods on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 "Dumping" i.e. Putting out a product below cost to eliminate competitors is one of the fundamental forms of anticompetitive behaviour. All of Googles "free" products seem to fit the definition - they would not profitable standalone without Google's dominance in other markets and companies only operating in a single market cannot compete.       
             
             
 beagle3 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 They are failing to provide comparable service, and thus failing to get meaningful share. I heard Apple maps is recently ok, but a couple of years ago when I tried it, it was still bad. Google has about 10 times more info than Apple or bing per building I look up (though, surprisingly, OSM is 90% of the way there for me).       
             
             
 0x0 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Or is it because being in a #1 market position with a (until now) free price tag attracted thousands of volunteers submitting content and corrections for free?          
             
             
 pbhjpbhj on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I've probably spent a few hours correcting Google Maps (and a couple of days on OSM).           
             
             
 vezycash on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Maps quality like search engine probably increases with the number of users.           
             
             
 RugnirViking on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Thats a ridiculous argument. There were competitors to standard oil too.           
             
             
 Fnoord on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS, FreeDOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux (Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Slackware, Mandrake, ...), Amithlon, MorphOS, Haiku, QNX, OS/2, Novell NetWare, PalmOS, ...         
             
 There are reasonable ways to disagree with Microsoft's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly.          
             
 Your comment completely disregarded the possibility that there's a dominant market position. Which there is. It is hard to compete with free. Ask e.g. TomTom or Microsoft.          
             
             
 bryanrasmussen on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 mapbox is totally a reasonable alternative, and in a lot of cases you can build something quickly with leaflet that gives you everything you need.          
             
             
 cannonedhamster on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 The article said nothing about making it free, it said that the costs, which were previously in line with competitors, increased by very, very large amounts without any perceived increase in value. Then they looked at options which were commercial offerings which cost dramatically less. They are paying for the service, it's not subsidized or free. It's like you didn't read any of the article.      
             
             
 alextheparrot on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 They were in the free tier, so they were not paying. They even have a nice graph that shows it.           
             
             
 FireBeyond on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Sounds like a great opportunity for their competitors, then!            
             
             
 beauzero on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I have been doing a lot of Local Guide work, photos, verifying, etc. in a rural area. Will be switching to OSM. This was the last straw.          
             
             
 Berunto on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I'm doing the same. Been a local guide aswell. And if you are not based in the US, you never got ANY benefit from Google for that effort. I did it for the society. And now Google is earning 10x more with it...         
             
             
 ballenf on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 One could say the same about Google's cry-me-a-river response to the EU's decision on Android:           
             
 "If Google needs to engage in anticompetitive behavior to keep Android profitable/viable, then they weren't ever profitable."           
             
             
 hueving on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 >Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.          
             
 If startups need a giant subsidized operating system for free or else they weren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.           
             
 Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?            
             
 >As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?          
             
 Yeah, Google has vacuumed up incredible amounts of mapping data from users and has now jacked up the prices with the lead this gave them. OSM (or something similar) is the way to share the cost. Google just abused their goodwill and used their other power positions to discourage open source. Whining about Google while moving elsewhere is entirely appropriate.       
             
             
 jayd16 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 >Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?            
             
 What? Your counter-counterpoint doesn't make sense at. Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. If your business can't recoup the cost of an os per employee then yeah...maybe it's not a worthwhile venture.         
             
             
 paganel on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows.           
             
 On the desktop side of things that only happens because of Linux, otherwise (if guys like Ballmer would have had their way at the end of the '90s - early 2000s) those startups would now be paying hundreds of dollars per Windows license per each machine (and maybe more depending on the number of cores? the sky would have been the limit, the same as Oracle did in their field). And not to mention the server side of things, I'm pretty sure the costs for server OS licenses would have been prohibitive for the vast majority of startups without the alternative free OS solutions.   
             
             
 lagadu on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 We pay a lot more than that for MSDN licenses (which includes the OS if it's only used for development).           
             
             
 da_chicken on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.          
             
 I mean, kind of, but on the other hand, think about all the companies whose costs are subsidized by having public roads.           
             
             
 Ultimatt on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yup and in the UK because freight is all on tax payer paid roads private rail has become incredibly expensive for normal people travelling.          
             
             
 arsenico on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It is not about free. It is about being more expensive than before. We live in the economy, where small companies operate at such a thin margin (even if they're profitable), that such an increase in cost often kills any hope for profitability, especially with the economies of scale. Would you prefer to fire one developer from the team, or stop using Google Maps?       
             
 I am not saying that mapping should be free, but such price bumps should be communicated better to allow paying customers prepare for changes and alternative scenarios.          
             
 And again, just another reminder, that whenever choosing a provider for anything related to your core business - think of an exit plan!          
             
             
 Nuzzerino on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Here we go again with the "No subscription fees means you have the right to like what we give you" argument. Haven't we beaten the "nothing is actually free" horse into the ground by now? There is the matter of the vast amounts of data Google collects from people, and the other intangible costs you incur from the lack of alternative products due to the high barrier to entry (hard to compete with 'free'), and of course the risks that come with the lack of incentive on the vendor's part to maintain good will with the end user (this thread is case in point).    
             
             
 naturalgradient on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I completely disagree. You can find Google's pricing tactic aggressive, but it made me think about the entitlement there.           
             
 They complain that Maps at new prices would be more than the cost of their infrastructure, when actually their entire startup revolves around this data, and 5k to be able to use an amazing piece of high tech software that is ahead of the competition is..peanuts.        
             
 No matter what other business interests and strategies Google follows, there is no right to using such valuable tech for less than the monthly salary of an engineer. I find this incredible entitled.         
             
             
 _Codemonkeyism on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 If a startup needs a giant system of subsidized roads for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.           
             
 You see where this argument leads to?            
             
             
 adrianN on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Is Google infrastructure now? Should we fund Google with tax money? Nationalize it?           
             
             
 bryanrasmussen on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 No, although of course there is the point that a lot of Google's mapping data was subsidized with tax money by virtue of using the various geodata sources the U.S makes available for free to build on.         
             
             
 beagle3 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Anyone can use those, so why are people complaining?            
             
 Google does a whole lot more, and can charge whatever they want for it. OSM provides usable solutions the vast majority of users; i’ve Moved to OSM a couple of years ago in everything for privacy reasons and except for the occasional Waze route or verifications, get nothing from google that I can’t get from OSM.        
             
             
 colordrops on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 No, the roads are subsidized by those who pay for them. There is a right to use them for business purposes, unlike private map services.          
             
             
 _Codemonkeyism on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In most countries startups don't pay for taxes and therefore are not contributing to roads.           
             
             
 RugnirViking on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized transport infrastructure/global telecomunications network/permissive government/low-cost computer hardware/solid legal system or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.         
             
             
 chiefalchemist on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 Re: "When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim."          
             
 Spot on. I would that if a site / application is hitting Maps' paid tier they can (somehow) monitize that traffic and cover the cost.          
             
 But monitization can't help you if / when they pull the plug.            
             
 p.s. I sometimes wonder how often Google looks at Slack and regrets mothballing Wave.           
             
             
 C7H8N4O2 on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings.          
             
 There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is also useful.         
             
 [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348 "Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement"           
             
 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492            
             
             
 komali2 on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Almost every conversation I've had with someone working at a startup in this city inevitably turns to the "so, are you worried Google will simply start offering your service for free?"          
             
 I remember like 3 or 4 years ago having this conversation at a hackathon with a bunch of "Machine Learning" / "Sentiment Analysis" APIs present... right as google started offering both for free on their cloud platform.         
             
             
 oblio on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 This is funny:            
             
 Paul Graham, September 2001:            
             
 > "And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft.”           
             
 Google is today's Microsoft :)            
             
             
 _jgvg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Which most likely meant the startup was a feature or a product, not a company with a viable business model.           
             
             
 hueving on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Gmail is free. Does that mean email service is not a product? Why does fastmail exist?           
             
             
 Tom4hawk on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Because there are people (like me) who value their privacy/data.            
             
             
 _jgvg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It is free for consumers, not for organizations. Gmail for consumers doesn't have a business model by itself, but it fits into Google's larger business model.          
             
             
 Scarblac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space. It's just that they first use their infinite pocket money to kill off all the competition, then switch to making money.         
             
             
 _jgvg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space.           
             
 Wrong, maybe that "space" (feature or product) goes well with Google's business model, but wouldn't support a viable business mode by itself.          
             
             
 imron on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Being bought/aquihired by Google/others seems to be a business model several companies aim for.           
             
             
 _jgvg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 That's not a business model for the company. But it is for the investors.           
             
             
 sullyj3 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 A lot of the time they have enough in house talent to not need to           
             
             
 imron on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 That doesn't stop other companies seeing it as a viable business model.           
             
             
 _jgvg on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Ha, that was me! Thanks for the bump!            
             
             
 apatters on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The pricing change is understandably very frustrating for users of Google Maps who are affected, but it seems like a big win to me for everyone in the mapping market. Google is trading away a monopoly position (and related regulatory risk) in exchange for increased revenue so it's a win for them. It's a win for other mappers because now they can compete on price. It's a win for users because they are getting more choice.      
             
             
 rurban on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.          
             
 I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.         
             
             
 jhall1468 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.          
             
 There's a great deal of competition and that generally results in a race to the bottom. The market leader just removed themselves from the market and the best way to capitalize is stay low and build your userbase.         
             
 We won't see price changes by any of these companies. They all want to be #1.           
             
             
 jehlakj on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 When you have a service that’s ten times cheaper than the best service, people start to raise eyebrows. They perceive it to be much worse. It isn’t always true, but it’s not uncommon either. I doubt companies are going to race to the bottom.         
             
             
 Xixi on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 In the context of a business building a service around it, a mapping service is not a consumer product. Superficial perception only go so far until it is debunked by careful scrutiny. I would certainly hope that a startup deciding to build a service relying on a map provider would test, and measure quantitatively how good the service is before choosing to build their business on top of it...      
             
             
 jhall1468 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Google Maps API is not a consumer product, which is where you might have an argument there. A good engineer identifies their use-case and checks out the major players to determine what's a good fit. Once that determination is made, pricing is pretty much all that matters.        
             
             
 rmc on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.         
             
 I'm not sure what you mean with "free"/"open". The OSM licence has a share-alike part if you merge your own map data with OSM data. If you just have a map and put points on it, it'd be fine.          
             
             
 zmk_ on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's not free as in you are not allowed to use OSM tiling servers for commercial purposes. "OpenStreetMap’s own servers are run entirely on donated resources. They have strictly limited capacity. [...] OpenStreetMap data is free for everyone to use. Our tile servers are not." [1]. They've even banned some sites for abusing their servers, e.g., FastPokeMap in 2016 [2]. But there is a very clear way of switching to OSM and serving your own map tiles with any styling you want [3]. I personally think that startups like these should go for these options since their user base is concentrated in one region.   
             
 [1] https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ [2] https://github.com/openstreetmap/chef/pull/78 [3] https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/          
             
             
 rmc on July 23, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Well if you don't like the OSM.org tile usage policy, they'll give you a full refund.           
             
 OSM.org doesn't prohibit commericial usage, per se. But if you're running a business, you shouldn't rely on volunteers from another project which you're not paying for.          
             
             
 andygates on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 This. Services are invited to take a slurp of data and use it as they wish, and contribute back of they make changes. It's not uncommon for a service of a certain size to become a contributor. But there's no requirement: if all they use it for is lookups and tiles, go ahead, "fill yer boots".        
             
             
 6cd6beb on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 >In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings.          
             
 ianal and all that, but isn't somewhere antitrust- or monopoly- adjacent?           
             
 I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.        
             
             
 ericd on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until the competitors are dead, is typically known as "predatory pricing", which is illegal. IIRC, Standard Oil was a big user of that playbook.        
             
 I don't know if this qualifies, and I don't know how much appetite there is for prosecuting Google for offering useful things for free. I don't think they've had much of a history of jacking up prices after killing off a market, until relatively recently. Interesting question, though.        
             
             
 chrischen on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Isn't this done all the time by Google though? They offer so many services for free, such as the consumer version of Google Maps, or YouTube (in the early days before ads)?          
             
 Not to mention Internet.org from Facebook, TOM's (free) shoes in Africa.           
             
             
 ericd on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It does sound a lot like it, but I don't know if there's some other element you have to do to make it engaging in predatory pricing, or if there's just been no will to prosecute them yet. The FTC seems like it's been relatively lax on antitrust recently, so I could believe it's just the latter. Or maybe it's just the remnants of the free pass that governments gave the early internet, and we'll start seeing more.      
             
             
 skybrian on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 What do you think about startups that give away webviews for free?           
             
             
 reaperducer on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.        
             
 This is what drug dealers do.            
             
 It was also the plot of the James Bond film Live and Let Die.            
             
             
 dalore on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Are you saying drug dealers go around giving their product for free until no competition or we are hooked?           
             
 I don't really think that happens at all. If so where are they?            
             
             
 bryondowd on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I doubt anyone is driving out competition with free product, but using free product to hook a new client is definitely a thing that happens.          
             
 That's not too say that there's guys on street corners offering free drugs to random passersby. Rather there's lots of dealers who just deal to aquaintances, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, etc. In that case they can spread a few hundred dollars worth of product around to non-users within their social network in hopes of picking up another client or two, who will end up generating reliable profit for a long time.      
             
             
 asadlionpk on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Don't Uber and Amazon do that already?            
             
             
 rickycook on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 i think uber at least (not that i want to defend anything they do) is different, because they don’t have low rates to smother their competition; they have low introductory rates to attract riders and drivers to the service         
             
 unsure if that’s also predatory pricing? seems different to me            
             
             
 richardhod on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Just because they have a nice PR-friendly story to tell doesn't make the pricing any less predatory. The point of predatory pricing is to attract people to the service, to shut down competition.         
             
             
 smileysteve on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > they don’t have low rates to smother their competition            
             
 Whether their competition is Lyft, Taxis, or public transportation, their subsidized pricing is a big factor to their customers.           
             
             
 neospice on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 And WalMart.            
             
             
 everybodyknows on July 21, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 Yes. Web search: "Amazon diapers.com".            
             
             
 m0rphy99 on July 21, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Walmart practically did this but with a little twist back in the days. They opened multiple extra stores within a very small geographical area. Some stores were actually losing money but it didn't matter to them because they used it to completely destroy all competitors in that area and forced them to close up their shops. Once everybody is gone, Walmart has accomplished their mission and then proceeded to shut down the extra stores as well.      
             
             
 zackmorris on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Is there something like Amazon or Google shopping with a list of prices for all products through time? Kind of like the Wayback Machine (archive.org) but for products.          
             
 Maybe having a searchable historical database of everything imaginable and their prices would keep companies honest and prevent price gouging.          
             
             
 rmorey on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 This exists for Amazon products: camelcamelcamel.com            
             
             
 ryneandal on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Something like a PaaS Price zombie https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360262 ?           
             
             
 Danieru on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 In Japan there is a site called kakaku.com which maintains graphs for historical prices. We used it to great effect when buying a combo washer and dryer.          
             
             
 dchuk on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 That's a really neat idea! Maybe include alerting and the ability to "follow" services you use to monitor their prices?           
             
             
 lloydde on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I find a good site like every few years, but they always disappear. My guess is there is more (some) money in B2B.           
             
             
 jiveturkey on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 camelcamelcamel (.com)            
             
             
 foobarbazetc on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Google did something similar with Stackdriver logging, where they went from a generous free tier to an insanely expensive $.50/Gb in roughly 2-3 months.          
             
 Very annoying. Especially because by default every GCP service logs a bunch of crap to Stackdriver.           
             
 Our log cost was going to be as high as our compute cost.            
             
             
 Vendan on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 They've got easy to use exclusions that eliminate the cost if you don't want the logs (and can be pretty picky about what to exclude, even to the point of doing percentage exclusions) and they announced it in advance and pushed the date back a few times.         
             
 My issue is with devs that write software that spits out a couple of gigs an hour and refuse to trim it down or exclude things.           
             
             
 twistedpair on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Diane Greene must be trying to build a profitable operation.            
             
             
 amorousf00p on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Why you cannot trust this model 101: because it's practitioners understand the value of the labor/product, capitalize on the OSS ideal and then push it to the unsuspecting.          
             
 I don't know how many bait and switch episodes from google I need to see but by 2008 I was done with them -- for the first time. Ad-nauseam.          
             
 If you boycotted and didn't use Google they would wither and die and stop being something to worry about: for immediate google specific free offerings that are sucker bait. Also for self aggrandizing standards/inclusions and buying the overt talent. But whatever. The HN community is full of dupes and buy ins, culture whores and fifth columnists. True belief in OSS died when everyone else took it and got rich.      
             
             
 chiefalchemist on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Re: "...is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor..."           
             
 I was under the impression the trust for Google evaporated a long time ago. Sure, alternatives can be few at times. But anyone committed to and in bed with Google has to be sleeping with one eye open.         
             
             
 bassman9000 on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick.          
             
 Ah, the classic Oracle trick. Good to see the tradition is alive.           
             
             
 flukus on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick          
             
 It seems like they haven't learned anything at all. Sure it was google that shafted them in this case, but the problem isn't google, it's that their business is entirely dependent on a third party who has the power to do this. They rejected the option that would have prevented this from happening in the future with another company.       
             
 Oracle probably has a sales team on the way to their offices now.           
             
             
 hoffs on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If you are relying on other services that heavily, it sounds like you didn't have such a great business to start with           
             
             
 Dannymetconan on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The only alternative would be to develop everything in house and to purchase and run your own servers.           
             
             
 unreal37 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Google was subsidizing their startup. Makes sense that they have to pay at least something.           
             
             
 PDoyle on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Ever worked at a startup?            
             
             
 mnutt on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Having interacted with the Google Maps sales team, I would imagine these posts are a result of these companies hopping on a sales call expecting something ‘google’-like and are surprised that the Oracle sales team is on the call. The value extraction mentality was a bit surprising compared to the image the rest of google presents.       
             
             
 stevefan1999 on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Remember when Google once said “Don’t be evil” as their motto? Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil. But on the other hand, I think it is necessary, because at the end of the day Google is still a company that needs to make money and most importantly compete with each other, I’m really disappointed at Google to abuse their trust to hurt others.       
             
             
 cbolton on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil            
             
 What do you mean it's evil? People call Google evil for so many things that are hardly evil at all, that the word has lost its meaning in the context of Google. For example I honestly cannot tell if you're calling them evil for increasing Maps pricing (thereby hurting maps-consuming startups) or for previously asking a low price (thereby hurting startups that offer maps).       
             
             
 fdsak on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Probably for not showing consistency :)            
             
             
 Zooper on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 That motto was removed some years ago: people using to too much to call them out.           
             
             
 matte_black on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 On the other hand, if you are a business making real money, these price changes are no big deal. This happens all the time. Where some people see a sob story, I see a competitor getting stamped out.         
             
             
 linsomniac on July 19, 2018 | prev | next [–]            
             
 I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening, and had tiles for our region built the next night after tuning some CartoCSS for our needs.     
             
 We already have our own aerial tiles, built off the free NAIP imagery, and I just went through rebuilding the 2017 NAIP tiles last week to make them higher quality and fix some seam issues.          
             
 This combination is pretty good and lets us take control of our map tile destiny.           
             
 References I used in setting things up:            
             
 https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-tiles-docker https://switch2osm.org/ https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-ubu...          
             
             
 spapas82 on July 19, 2018 | parent | next [–]            
             
 I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map if you have the resources . Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource intensive.        
             
 I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from here https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-16-04... (yes they are for Ubuntu but you'll get the idea) and everything works great. Even if you don't really need it, I recommend trying it to understand how it works; it has some very intuitive ideas.       
             
 Beyond the tile server I am also proposing GeoServer (http://geoserver.org) for hosting the geo points on the maps (it can integrate with PostGIS and various other datasources and output the geo points in various different formats). You can then use Leaflet (https://leafletjs.com) to actually display the map and points!       
             
             
 MattBlissett on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1].          
             
 The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles), you can either write a small server or use theirs.           
             
 I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster.          
             
 [1] https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/            
             
             
 wpdev_63 on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's not comparable to OSM tiles as it's paid for licencing for commercial use.           
             
             
 MattBlissett on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 That's correct — I'd forgotten that, as my project has the open data use license.           
             
 However, as an example, the one-time $40 for Colorado is likely to be much cheaper than generating them yourself, and is probably adequate if you don't need to keep up to date.          
             
             
 spapas82 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Vector tiles is interesting and they are actually supported by GeoServer http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/extensions/vectorti... . However I wasn't able yet to integrate them to my GeoServer installation.         
             
 Has anybody else been able to try this?            
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 We are looking at moving to Vector tiles after the deployment of openstreetmap raster tiles is completed. We need to look at the performance closely though because on some devices it was slower with Vector tiles. I think we still want to go that direction we just have to quantify some of the performance.        
             
             
 cullenking on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 You can render raster on the fly from a vector based tileserver, and optionally use vector maps for clients where it makes sense (mobile for example).          
             
 I've been running a large OSM raster rendering stack for a while, for the whole planet. Moving on to a vector based stack right now, which is what you should do if you are starting today. The reason being the server, with vector tiles pre-rendered, can very quickly render raster tiles on the fly. It's fast enough that for most cases, there is no need to cache them. Once I get the new stack fully burned in, we'll swap our raster rendering stack out for the new vector stuff and do raster on the fly. I might cache the rasters depending on throughput, but from what I can tell it should be basically a non-issue.   
             
             
 spapas82 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The difference between raster tiles and vector tiles is that in raster tiles the rendering (conversion to actual images) is done on your server (either when each tile is loaded for the first time or you may initialize a bunch of zoom levels for your area yourself; this may take hours to days depending on your area size) while for vector tiles you just send the descriptions/shapes and the inages are created on the client side. It is expected that the client performance won't be as good as with raster tiles and slow clients like mobile phones will struggle while trying to render the images.   
             
 One interesting idea would be to have both raster and vector tiles; then in your client side code you could detect if the client is a mobile device or a desktop pc (I am not sure if you can detect more things about how speedy the device would be) and serve the corresponding tileset (ie the vector tileset if the device is desktop or the raster one if it is mobile). This way you will definitely decrease the load on your server and most clients won't have performance problems!     
             
 In any case, the clients will get faster as the time passes so after some years vector tiles would probably be the norm because they have the huge advantage that it is very easy to style them on-the-fly in any way you like (while, to style raster images you need to re-create them all from scratch).        
             
             
 coderesearch on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 which tileserver are you using?            
             
 would it be possible to learn more about your setup?            
             
 Thanks!            
             
             
 spapas82 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I am using more or less the instructions from switch2osm https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04... however for a Centos 7 server (we use Centos in my organization).          
             
 This results in having a tile server that generates & serves raster tiles using:           
             
 * carto to generate a proper stylesheet            
             
 * mapnik to create the tiles            
             
 * apache with the mod_tile module to serve the tiles            
             
 * renderd to be used as a bridge between apache/mod_tile and mapnik           
             
 * Postgres/PostGIS as a database to host the data            
             
 The actual data is an OpenStreetMap pbf file downloaded from http://download.geofabrik.de/ which is inserted to the database through osm2pgsql.          
             
 The above are used for the raster tile server only.            
             
 In addition to this, I am using geoserver (http://geoserver.org/) which is a Java web app (runs in tomcat) that is used to view/edit and (mainly) serve geospatial data. What I usually do is that when I need to display a new shape (shp) file I use shp2pgsql to insert it to a table in my PostGIS database (using something like this shp2pgsql -s SRID SHAPEFILE.shp SCHEMA.TABLE | psql -h HOST -d DATABASE -U USER) also another good tool is ogr2ogr which can convert between various formats (it also supports kml, for example ogr2ogr -f "PGDump" koko.sql test.kml).    
             
 After the shp file is inserted to the database, I can create a datasource for this dataset from GeoServer and publish this dataset to the web (i.e the dataset will have a URL of the form http://1.2.3.4:8080/geoserver/Dataset/wms); it can then be consumed by client applications (in javascipt) using leaflet or openlayers. Notice that GeoServer can easily publish various file formats for example an SHP directly (you don't need to insert it to the PostGIS; this is something I do for better control of my datasources).    
             
 PostGIS is the component that supports the vector tiles (http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/extensions/vectorti...) so I want to integrate it the OpenStreetMap data that is hosted in my PostGIS (which is used for the raster tiles); I haven't found the time yet though.        
             
 I think it's a great setup and it works great for the needs of the organization I work for; actually, I like it so much that I want (for a long time) to write a rather comprehensive tutorial on how to set ip up along with some notes on how to do various PostGIS things but I don't know when (and if) I'll find the time for something so large :/       
             
             
 voxadam on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You mention being "a few months behind", what is the reason for this lag?           
             
             
 MattBlissett on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 My apologies, I'm out-of-date with the commercial offerings of OpenMapTiles — I work on an open data project, eligible for OpenMapTiles' free license which has old (currently one year old) tiles.         
             
 With a commercial license, the tiles are from 2 July.            
             
 I assume the commercial tiles are a few days behind as it's just not worth most people's effort to stay up-to-the-hour — different map services can offer that, this company is making easy self-hosted map tile packages.         
             
 The free license is presumably using older data to encourage an upgrade.           
             
             
 linsomniac on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Tile generation wasn't THAT bad. We only cover Colorado and Wyoming, and generating the tiles for those at the zoom levels 5-18 takes around 7 hours to pre-render (using "render_list_geo.pl"). The end result is around 25GB of rendered meta-tiles.         
             
 Much better than the NAIP aerial imagery, which takes around 3TB for the source data, 280GB for the resulting tiles, and around a full day to generate.          
             
             
 spapas82 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Yes it wasn't bad for a single area (we cover only Greece and it was quick and easy for such a small country). However I couldn't imagine of the resources needed to cover the whole world!          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Oh, and we are using the mapbox.js viewer rather than leaflet.            
             
             
 vinnieman232 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Mapbox.js is a leaflet extension to make it easier to use Leaflet with Mapbox services. So you're using both!           
             
             
 grey_earthling on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]           
             
 Would it be possible to put Free map tiles in something like DAT or IPFS, to share the load? Kind of like Peertube, but for maps.          
             
             
 diggan on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 For sure, substack did this with peermaps + IPFS, check it out: https://peermaps.github.io/           
             
 Source: https://github.com/peermaps/peermaps            
             
 Also writeup about the architecture: https://github.com/digidem/osm-p2p-db/blob/master/doc/archit...           
             
             
 rmc on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If you use vector tiles, and render them client side you could do this. For raster tiles, where you're storing images, there are too many images to do this practically.          
             
 And then you need to think of how to do data updates. OSM updates minutely.           
             
             
 spapas82 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Data updates are not required for many applications. You probably don't want to be google maps! For example I haven't updated the OSM data for more than a year and I don't think that there are any problems with the data being stale. It all depends on the application of course.        
             
 One major advantage of not updating your data very often is that the tile-images won't need to be re-generated thus you save a lot of (CPU intensive) resources! I think that another commenter mentioned that he generated the tiles in a CPU intensive system and then just off-loaded the images to not-so-fast system for serving.       
             
             
 lxtx on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You can also prerender the tiles on a powerful machine and host them on a cheap instance (assuming you don't need very large regions). A while ago I created an OSM server ( https://github.com/seemk/TileSweep ) to do this for me, you can select regions you want to render via a polygon and you get a SQLite database of the tiles. It can also run as an alternative for mod_tile + renderd.      
             
 I rendered all of Estonia from zoom levels 0 to 18 (~16.5M tiles) which is around 20GB and host the tiles on a cheap DigitalOcean instance.          
             
             
 coderesearch on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 * How is the workflow for updating OSM data with this project?            
             
 * What is the recommended procedure for backup + restore?            
             
 I find a lot of projects in this space make you go through an manual copy-paste setup process like if it was a one-time thing - it is not - updating OSM data is a crucial part in this process and should be part of it.         
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I haven't investigated updating of data using anything clever. I know the database load script can write out a list of tiles that need to be rerendered, which can be fed into the renderd process. Renderd has multiple priority channel so bulk renders are a lower priority than user views, so a live system can update the tilecache without much easier impact.       
             
 I haven't investigated it because we are probably moving to Vector tiles over the next month or two, and we don't need up to the minute map updates. On one of our sites, we have been rendering navteq tiles and we only get updates for those quarterly. It was only our public site that we were using Google Maps for.        
             
 Backup and restore we are just doing via normal backup programs. The tilecache is stored in meta tiles, which is a d duplicated set of 64 tiles in a single file. So we are only dealing with about a million files in a directory structure totaling 25 gigabytes.        
             
 If we needed to restore or update our tiles, we would probably just spin up a new box and rerun ansible to deploy it. I have it all encoded Within a Playbook.          
             
             
 arendtio on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I was wondering too why they skipped OpenStreetMap so quickly.            
             
 Living in Germany, I find the map quality of OSM much better than Google Maps. Sure, it lacks the integration with the other Google services like a good search and live traffic, but speaking about the pure map quality, Google is lacking a lot of detail here.        
             
             
 Qub3d on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 From the article (emphasis added):            
             
 "Which maps should we investigate deeper?            
             
 Some options we could reject quickly for various reasons. OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites. Apple Maps, even though we wouldn't mind having Apple logo on our site somewhere, was just released as beta and requires Apple developer account to test properly."        
             
             
 rmc on July 23, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The OpenStreetMap.org website doesn't ban commerical sites (per se). The volunteer sysadmins who manage the donated hardware that runs the OpenStreetMap.org website don't offer any SLA and reserve the right to ban people/apps which put too much load on it. If you don't like it, they're prepared to give you a full refund.       
             
             
 arendtio on July 21, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I read that, but compared to the effort they put into analysing the whole issue, at least an estimate about the cost involved in hosting their own server would be a good decision.          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 It seems like they rejected OSM because they couldn't directly use the OSM site to serve tiles, but would instead need to host their own infrastructure for it. I understand that, but for us we decided to go ahead and own it.         
             
             
 arendtio on July 21, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I think if the maps service is part of your core product, it is good considering a self hosted solution. Yes, it costs time you want to save as a startup, but at least you control your own product and can manage your cost directly.         
             
             
 bonsai80 on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Thanks for the docker image pointers; just what I was looking form. What kind of traffic volume can you handle on what size VM's?          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 We found some references saying that each box could probably handle around 10,000 map tiles per second. Our full tileset is under 30GB, so it is easily cached. One of our machines can generate Tiles at a rate of 2,500/sec, another is 1,300.         
             
             
 bonsai80 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Oh wow, that's a faster tile generation rate than I was expecting. What are the specs on the machines/VMs you're using to get those rates?          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 They are both virtual machines, 32GB and 32 CPUs for the 1,300/sec and 20CPUs for the 2,500/sec. The 32 cores are on a host machine with two "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4108 CPU @ 1.80GHz", the 20 cores are "Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 v2 @ 3.50GHz". You know, 7,001.21 bogomips (TM). :-)        
             
             
 kirbypineapple on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 How does Mapbox stack up against what you've built? Does Mapbox provide any advantages or is are the two not very comparable? How difficult would it be to spin up a Mapbox competitor?          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 How does Mapbox stack up against what we've built? Well, they have way more people working on the problem, so there's going to be more support and more eyes on the problem. I didn't directly compare map tiles, that was a couple other people on my team. We decided to try moving forward with our own OSM-based tiles, so the conclusion I've come to is that it compares favorably.       
             
 How difficult would it be to build a competitor to Mapbox? Well, if all you care about are map tiles, it's no big deal. If you want to build a business around it, that's always work. You're going to need to build the tiles, have infrastructure to serve it, monitoring, staff to manage it, billing and charging infrastructure, etc...       
             
             
 kevincennis on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Mapbox also offers geocoding and navigation, which are quite a bit more difficult than just setting up a server that can host OSM tiles. Obviously, if all you need are maps, that's fine. But if you need maps with search, which I suspect most people do, rolling your own is tougher (though projects like pelias are pretty good).       
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I set up a pelias system a while ago but it never got any traction. We have another geocoder already set up using Experian QAS data, I think we've had that set up for a decade or more, so that isn't one of our concerns. Good point though.         
             
             
 coderesearch on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Thank you very much, may I ask two questions:            
             
 * what is the workflow to update the OSM data?            
 * what is your recommendation for a good geocoder?            
             
             
 Bedon292 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Updating is easy, the tooling built around OSM takes care of all of it.           
             
 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim is an OK geocoder, definitely worth trying out at least. Though the pay services will definitely be better.          
             
             
 linsomniac on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I answered your questions where you asked it elsewhere in this thread.           
             
             
 Zaskoda on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [10 more]            
             
 I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.           
             
             
 lucb1e on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Uh, while I upvote OSM comments a lot because I often think they are good comments, blindly upvoting based on positive mentions of OSM does not contribute to the conversation...          
             
             
 jseliger on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love.           
             
 This is the platform Maps.me is based on, correct? I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.        
             
 I too want Google/Apple maps alternatives to succeed, but my limited trial so far has not been promising.           
             
             
 pwg on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 > I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.         
             
 You might try looking at OsmAnd. It too uses OpenStreetMap data, but it does allow you to add some amount of missing data as well (see https://osmand.net/features?id=osm-editing-plugin).          
             
 This, of course, is part of the advantage of OpenStreetMap, you notice something missing, you add it, and now it is no longer missing.          
             
             
 _emacsomancer_ on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 And one can of course also add data to OpenStreetMaps via a browser. I've been trying to add any businesses I've found missing.           
             
             
 rmc on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 > In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.           
             
 That's strange. I just checked Maps.me on Android, and if you open the hamburger menu there's an "add a place to the map" option.          
             
             
 Brakenshire on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Same on iOS.            
             
             
 mmel on July 19, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 >there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations. Unless Maps.Me use their own database for business listings, you just edit the map directly from openstreetmap.org or one of the many fat client map editors that are out there.         
             
             
 Brakenshire on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I don’t think that’s true. Items added on the OSM page appear on maps.me, and items added on maps.me appear on OSM.           
             
             
 kwhitefoot on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You can add things to OSM using the Maps Android app; open the hamburger menu, choose "Add a place to the map".           
             
 Maps is based on Maps.me.            
             
             
 kirchhoff on July 19, 2018 | prev | next [–]            
             
 It's as much as a 28x increase in price. For Street View imagery, the cost has gone from $0.5 per 1000 views to $14 / 1000. Unlike with maps, Street View lacks a real alternative.          
             
 I'm seeing my own costs, for a site which I run on my own, rise from $1,500 / month to around $30,000 / month.           
             
 Their rationale is essentially that they did not want commercial users abusing their free tier. Before this change, they had been reaching out to such entities individually, offering their 'premium plan' service.         
             
 The pricing for the (old) premium plan was remarkably similar to the new pricing which now applies to everyone.           
             
 This pricing change has ended the era of Google Maps mashups / hobby projects.           
             
             
 magicbuzz on July 20, 2018 | parent | next [–]            
             
 If you read the original article, it gives you the impression that it's tiles only. But as you point out it's a lot of different parts of the Maps service going up by usually an order of magnitude at least.         
             
 I run a geocoding service for Australia specifically (https://geocodeplus.com.au) and a lot of people I talk to are completely unaware that they're going to see a x10 change in what their forward/reverse geocoding is going to cost them.         
             
             
 TheKarateKid on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 If they were concerned about abuse from free tiers, there's much better ways to handle it than this. It's Google we're talking about.          
             
 Also, it's a lame excuse because this affects paid users such as yourself who have nothing to do with the abuse.           
             
 In Google's defense, a hobby project wouldn't need 750k requests a month. At that point it's more than a hobby. But, the 28k limit is low.          
             
             
 nicoboo on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 You're right about the Street View feature that is currently a true key diferenciator that has not a lot of competition in terms of availability and coverage.          
             
 Though, Mapillary is quite interesting but their pricing model is not really comparable to Google's one: https://www.mapillary.com/pricing          
             
             
 snarf21 on July 19, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I think there is a different reason for charging for StreetView. The need to make their money back and quick. Self driving cars will have cameras that will give reasonable results for a lot of use cases (maybe not 360 but who cares). It is also a potential combo monetization strategy for the autonomous vendor.        
             
             
 CodeWriter23 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The standard license prohibits use in autonomous vehicles. Para 2.e https://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html           
             
             
 stirlo on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 The issue isn't what google allows/prohibits, its that any new autonomous vehicle company could quickly amass a similar data set to street view and nullify googles 10 plus year investment driving non autonomous cars around to capture street view images.         
             
             
 bob_theslob646 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 It's not as simple as capturing the imagery. The backend processing for Google maps is astonishing. It will take years to get to the smoothness that is Google Streetview.          
             
             
 matwood on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 I think the comment you replied to was saying that StreetView will soon be commodotized, so they need to make the money back now.          
             
             
 google_censors on July 20, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Please contact the US Department of Justice and let them know about how the price increase is affecting you in regards to Street View. They seemed to buy into my reasoning that Google has effectively made sure that they won't have any Street View competition by artificially keeping prices low for years. The more people that complain, the sooner the DOJ will probably take action. For European users I recommend complaining to your regulators as well, especially using Street View as your main complaint since there's no real alternatives.    
             
             
 jhall1468 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good. There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies didn't want to take.          
             
 Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as the market leader. That's not predatory.           
             
             
 dantheman0207 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google. Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing competitors is a direct result of that history.        
             
             
 jhall1468 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 Microsoft has made HUGE investments into Bing and yet Google was always superior and Microsoft isn't exactly rolling in money with Bing.          
             
 There are several competitors, the issue at hand is they have an inferior product. If your argument held any water, literally everyone would use TMobile because they are so much cheaper. Reality is, a products quality matters and Google Maps were both more cost effective AND a better product.        
             
             
 aeorgnoieang on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 So you're upset that Google hasn't been charging a lot more all along?           
             
             
 RugnirViking on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 Just because there are competitors in a field does not mean that one company does not hold a monopoly. There were other oil companies in existence when standard oil was broken up.          
             
             
 jhall1468 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 I never said it did. The argument was that there was no competition. There is competition, it's just weak for some aspects of Google Maps. And the argument here seems to be that Google isn't allowed to start charging for a product because they didn't before, which is silly.        
             
             
 casefields on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 The link to make a complain would be the antitrust division here: https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations           
             
             
 nova22033 on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]            
             
 >They seemed to buy into my reasoning            
             
 We're going to need a bit more detail from an account that clearly has an agenda.           
             
             
 google_censors on July 20, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]            
             
 When it comes to Google I just have a lot of issues with the company and didn't have my real login handy when an article about them came up a few days ago. From big issues, like hiring Eric Schmidt and frequent attempts at anti-competitive behavior, to small ones, like prudish censoring of search results and weird customer service (including a six-month delay in getting a response to a simple request for a Maps enterprise quote), I could really just go on and on with the variety of reasons why I don't like Google. I've seen firsthand, at multiple Google locations, an odd attitude that must have permeated from the top. The only people that seemed to be different were a few acquihires who exuded a combination of resignation and pragmatism about their situation.
             
 Edit: If you meant that you wanted more detail about my antitrust complaint, I contacted them via the antitrust email address. They took a while to call back, but not as long as Google took to get me that Maps quote...         
             
             
             
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"Sudden change of policy by Google, which is directed specifically at startups (as smaller web sites should largely remain below even the new lower thresholds), is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor. In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. For example we would be wary on taking free Google Analytics for granted."I think this is one of the most important points in the article - the way they handle these pricing changes destroys trust in Google's other business offerings. How can people use Google products and services as a core piece of their infrastructure when they're willing to bump their prices &gt;10x with only a few months of notice? That could literally be a business-ending event, depending on how core that service is to the business. In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. Fortunately, their last (sudden) price bump seems to have allowed the creation of some good alternatives.
    
    
        
     While I've experienced the frustration of having a formerly free service develop paid tiers (and policies that put me in those tiers), of all the changes a software service can make, this is the one that frustrates me the least, or at any rate less than:* shutting down the service entirely because the user base never grew into customers who actually valued the service * changing your terms of service to forbid an activity that was previously allowed, because someone discovered a use that messed up the price points and the service owners would rather forbid that than offer a reasonable price point allowing it * moving to opaquely metered service potentially with apparently arbitrary levels of financial exposure to the client A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service. When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim.
    
    
        
     &gt; A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable. They raise prices rapidly to see how many people jump ship, and when your revenue begins to decline you've gone a bit too far. Of course, they've done it very quickly, so they've likely not allowed enough time for the competition to step in or all their customers to abandon your now-expensive product.
    
    
        
     &gt; It tells me they're trying to minimize the number of users (which reduces their costs) by raising the price while still making it profitable.Is the marginal cost of serving extra users really a big part of Google's costs? Bandwidth is cheap; I would have expected that building and updating the map data was the expensive part.
    
    
        
     After all, they've long done away with the tile servers of the past and the giant render farms to make the millions of tiles at 20 different zoom levels to cover the earth. Now it's in browser rendered vector graphics.Unless the vector information is getting much more expensive (shouldn't be, they own Waze and GMaps mobile products to make their own maps from user data), the cost of running GMaps should be going down on a per user bases, not up.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 I'm not concerned about bandwidth costs. I'm concerned about support costs. People who use an API have an annoying habit of calling and submitting support tickets for that API.   
    
        
     &gt;A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.See this is the important thing. Sustainable. People and companies use these free services that take quite a bit of work to maintain and then when the company decides it needs to stop hemorrhaging money they start charging, often a fairly modest fee, and people lose their damn minds "ermagerd, you're evil, I need this, you can't expect me to pay!". The simple fact that adding a price, or increasing the price, creates such an outrage is indicative, more oft than not, that it is a fair move because the service or good has obvious value to the user. People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up". &gt;When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim. I've been a Project Fi user for 2 and a half years now. This has been my worry every, single, day. Especially since they still owe me like 800$ in statement credits ha.
    
    
        
     &gt; People lost their damn minds when Netflix increased prices a year or two ago and I'm like "erm, I get way more value out of this than cable and it's a tenth the price, shut up".For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices &gt;10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing. Most people I know who stream (ok all people I know) get way more value out of streaming than cable. What is your line on fair pricing for streaming compared to cable, as the service has obvious value to the user? I don't think anyone, here of all places, would suggest a product requiring engineers and infrastructure be free for commercial use and that the company shouldn't recoup costs. The good news is, like streaming services, there is competition and pricing will work itself out in the market (assuming no collusion :P)
    
    
        
     &gt;For your analogy to work you would need to say you are content with Netflix raising their prices &gt;10x (no longer a 10th of cable) because that is what Google just did with their pricing.Netflix raised their prices what they felt they needed to. Google raised their prices what they felt they needed to. If people don't like it they're more than welcome to go to the competition... which in both cases generally has inferior product. It looks like this specific change almost entirely inconveniences businesses and not private individuals. They're allowing 28k FREE requests a month which is still beyond generous. That's enough for a small entity to develop a service or product around the service and not only get it working but develop a decent alpha, or extremely modest beta, base of users. Then, just like other businesses, you get to put on your big boy pants and accept the cost of doing business. Does the power company hand out free power? Does the water company hand out free water? Does the phone company let you have free calls? No. So Google is still allowing a more than fair FREE level of commercial usage and now want to actually monetize their product. If it's adding value to your business, paying the new rates is a cost of doing business. Build it into your pricing, adjust your budget. This is the real world, not Narnia. I imagine in the most common cases the application is effectively advertising "here are our locations, come to one" and by the point of showing the map you should have already removed a significant number of non-conversions making it VERY fair pricing. In instances where you are using it to actually build a product around, it's still likely orders of magnitude cheaper than buying, and maintaining, map data yourself. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if one year's cost is only a few percent of what it would cost you to initially buy all of the data and develop software for navigating and hosting it. People allow free, and cheap, things to make them feel entitled. It's easy to do, it really is, but it's something people need to be more mindful of before freaking out. All I read in that blog post is "HOW DARE GOOGLE! They want us to pay for a service we use! Pity us! Shame Google for wanting to not operate at a loss! How dare they! How. Dare. They!"
    
    
        
     Your analogies make no sense.We’re talking of Google Maps the platform and its B2B offering whereas Netflix, cable and phone companies are services for consumers with fixed and reasonable consumer-level monthly subscriptions. If you haven’t built an app on top of Google Maps, then you pretty much have no idea how much it costs and have zero valuable input you can give. Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this bait and switch. They did it before with App Engine as well, first fooling early adopters in order to gather popularity and then raising prices enough that it made plenty of startups to move off the platform. Along with other blunders in their products, it makes one wonder how anyone can trust any of their offerings long term. Too bad the US has lost its anti-trust teeth btw, because what Google is doing is to subsidize its offerings until they get popular, effectively using their monopoly to gain popularity in other markets, thus hurting their competition unfairly.
    
    
        
     &gt;Also, this isn’t the first time Google is doing this bait and switch.It isn't a bait and switch. It's introductory pricing. They attracted developers and businesses to a product people essentially weren't using, they let people work with it at or near a loss and now that they have a customer base they are trying to make it profitable. Yes, they'll lose some of their users that want a free ride. They'll also retain many users that will happily pay under the new pricing scheme because they recognize the value add and find it to be a worthy business expense. It's no different than companies like MailChimp offering free-for-so-many-subscriber pricing and then requiring you to pay once you reach a threshold they've determined makes you a billable customer. Or a company like Evernote allowing you to save so much data (what a map tile is) and use so many devices a month for free before requiring you to subscribe at one of the paid tiers. Or a company like Pushbullet allowing you to mirror so many SMS messages a month before charging. If you can't easily handle the pricing change, then you are probably wasting your time using it in the first place and need to discontinue using maps anyway or reassess your own business model.
    
    
        
     You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.And there is absolutely no similarity between your MailChimp example and what Google has done in this case. The customer didn't complain about costs rising as the number of users starts to exceed an existing threshold. That said, I wouldn't be so quick to call for the regulator. All businesses have a responsibility to select suppliers carefully and manage their dependency on any one of them. It appears to me that the value of contracts has been forgotten.
    
    
        
     &gt;You seem to have read an entirely different story. The customer Google is losing here is clearly willing to pay, not expecting a free ride.Yet they spend the entire post whining about it.
    
    
        
     The post that I have read complains about an extreme and sudden change in Google's pricing structure and then goes on to compare alternatives for most of post, all of which are non-free.They also say "Of course, we always knew that as we grew larger, there would be cost to using Google Maps."
    
    
        
     &gt; A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.
    
    
    
        
      
 The simple existence of competitors in a market segment is not proof that there is no monopoly. We wouldn't say for example that there are realistic copetitors in the web search space or in the desktop OS space - maps is similar to both of these sitations.
(Now I realise that some people like to argue the toss about whether search and desktop OS are monopolies and to that I have no comment)   
    
    
    
        
      
 The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.   
    
        
      
 Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.   
    
    
        
      
 look how good it went for Microsoft's competitors trying to build a Win32-compatible OS....   
    
    
    
        
      
 This argument is symmetric, it implies all other map providers (who are competitors of google maps and of each other) also have no competitors.   
    
        
      
 Sure, typically yes. It's not necessary - interoperable APIs exist, and for underdogs they're even attractive as a selling point - but market leaders tend not to play by those rules.   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Jacking up the price so far that it becomes prohibitive to actually use, on short notice, isn't much different from shutting it down, is it? In both cases you suddenly can't use the service anymore.   
    
        
      
 Thought the same, there are not many use cases which will be still profitable after this price increase.   
    
        
     Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.I mean, there's a real cry-me-a-river aspect here. No one has a Google-granted fundamental right to mapping. It's a free product Google released to drive traffic to their own offerings, and which they happen to make available for free for a lot of purposes. As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no?
    
    
        
      
 The problem isn’t that Google wants to charge for a service. The issue is that they offered it for years for free or below cost effectively price gouging any competition. Now, with no alternatives they jack up the price. Classic monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour.   
    
        
     When I was a teenage I was told that thats how drug dealers operated - get you hooked on something for free, then ramp up the price once you are hooked.Never heard of any drug dealer that did that in my adult life, but I do see a lot of large corporations using that business model.
    
    
    
        
      
 I'm always so confused by this. I switched to Feedly the day Reader went away. It was just as good then and is better now. I subscribe to way more stuff now than I did then. I've never understood how this "killed the entire medium".   
    
        
     I use RSS daily, but I am very much anomaly among my friends. For most people I know RSS just withered and died and got replaced by Facebook or whatever asocial media they are on.I ended up rolling my own server (in scheme using sxml) and writing some minimal clients for it (tui, Emacs and web). It is running on a raspberry pi 2 and is currently using about 5mb of memory (the guile runtime is a large chunk of that) and has been down once since I started it 5 years ago (power outage). Reader was to me the absolute best example of the good old web. Since then it seems like the web became insane with the idea of reinventing UI, which was then forced down our throats for both web and desktop, ruining two paradigms that worked just fine. I am old,I know.
    
    
        
     Sure, yeah, using RSS is rare, but it always was, and nothing was going to keep the vast majority of people from using Facebook and Twitter instead.I don't understand why you rolled your own server. Feedly works great. If you did it because it's a fun project, that's awesome! But it certainly isn't necessary if your goal is just to subscribe to RSS feeds.
    
    
        
     Back then the only alternatives were either commercial with shitty data policies or TTRSS which scared me away as it back then was probably the most hostile open source project on GitHub.So I rolled my own. I will probably port it to use SQL so I can do easy searching when my kids move out :)
    
    
        
      
 If we're doing anecdata when Reader was killed off I tried Feedly, didn't like it, stopped consuming via RSS. I've recently tried Newsblur but honestly I never check the thing despite having it on every device I can. I don't think RSS is a thing for me anymore outside of technically podcasts   
    
        
      
 Same here. I miss it but I haven't been satisfied with the options I tried (anyway Google long ago killed my list of feeds).   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Nothing stops promoted content being injected by the feed reader. Feedly does it on their free plans.   
    
        
      
 Google+ only existed in the first place because of the thing that was killing the medium and its one hundred and forty character-limited cousin.   
    
        
      
 As I look at the big list of RSS feeds I found this very thread in, I can't help but imagine that news of it's death is a tad exaggerated.   
    
        
      
 Well, there's that too, but people complaining about Google's decision r.e. Reader don't like being reminded that there are dozens of alternatives.   
    
        
      
 Uh... the linked article compared 8 different competitors on various metrics. There are reasonable ways to disagree with Google's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly.   
    
        
     I’d disagree a bit. There are competitors but the quality and the service is not on the same level. Google have made it hard to compete so that they stay in the leadership position. More importantly google maps “owns” more market share than all of them combined so it is kinda a monopoly.I might not have explained my point well but I do think you get what I’m saying.
    
    
        
      
 If players with the resources of Apple and Microsoft are lagging here, it's not because Google "made it hard", it's because it's a hard problem. Yet they are competing, and that's a good thing. Google is just better. And you want it for free. And thus we get back to the cry-me-a-river bit.   
    
        
      
 Companies with deep pockets trying and failing to gain a meaningful share in a market is more proof of a monopoly or other anti-competitive behavior, not less.   
    
    
        
      
 "Dumping" i.e. Putting out a product below cost to eliminate competitors is one of the fundamental forms of anticompetitive behaviour. All of Googles "free" products seem to fit the definition - they would not profitable standalone without Google's dominance in other markets and companies only operating in a single market cannot compete.   
    
        
      
 They are failing to provide comparable service, and thus failing to get meaningful share. I heard Apple maps is recently ok, but a couple of years ago when I tried it, it was still bad. Google has about 10 times more info than Apple or bing per building I look up (though, surprisingly, OSM is 90% of the way there for me).   
    
        
      
 Or is it because being in a #1 market position with a (until now) free price tag attracted thousands of volunteers submitting content and corrections for free?   
    
    
    
    
        
     MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS, FreeDOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux (Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Slackware, Mandrake, ...), Amithlon, MorphOS, Haiku, QNX, OS/2, Novell NetWare, PalmOS, ...There are reasonable ways to disagree with Microsoft's policy here, but "no alternatives" and "monopolistic" are just laughably silly. Your comment completely disregarded the possibility that there's a dominant market position. Which there is. It is hard to compete with free. Ask e.g. TomTom or Microsoft.
    
    
        
      
 mapbox is totally a reasonable alternative, and in a lot of cases you can build something quickly with leaflet that gives you everything you need.   
    
        
      
 The article said nothing about making it free, it said that the costs, which were previously in line with competitors, increased by very, very large amounts without any perceived increase in value. Then they looked at options which were commercial offerings which cost dramatically less. They are paying for the service, it's not subsidized or free. It's like you didn't read any of the article.   
    
    
    
        
      
 I have been doing a lot of Local Guide work, photos, verifying, etc. in a rural area. Will be switching to OSM. This was the last straw.   
    
        
      
 I'm doing the same. Been a local guide aswell. And if you are not based in the US, you never got ANY benefit from Google for that effort. I did it for the society. And now Google is earning 10x more with it...   
    
        
     One could say the same about Google's cry-me-a-river response to the EU's decision on Android:"If Google needs to engage in anticompetitive behavior to keep Android profitable/viable, then they weren't ever profitable."
    
    
        
     &gt;Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.If startups need a giant subsidized operating system for free or else they weren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable. Do you see how ridiculous that argument is? &gt;As it turns out, yeah, there's a lot of value we as a society can derive from low cost pervasive mapping. So let's find a way to share the cost and not just whine about Google, no? Yeah, Google has vacuumed up incredible amounts of mapping data from users and has now jacked up the prices with the lead this gave them. OSM (or something similar) is the way to share the cost. Google just abused their goodwill and used their other power positions to discourage open source. Whining about Google while moving elsewhere is entirely appropriate.
    
    
        
     &gt;Do you see how ridiculous that argument is?What? Your counter-counterpoint doesn't make sense at. Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows. If your business can't recoup the cost of an os per employee then yeah...maybe it's not a worthwhile venture.
    
    
        
     &gt; Lots of startups can afford the per seat cost of OSX or Windows.On the desktop side of things that only happens because of Linux, otherwise (if guys like Ballmer would have had their way at the end of the '90s - early 2000s) those startups would now be paying hundreds of dollars per Windows license per each machine (and maybe more depending on the number of cores? the sky would have been the limit, the same as Oracle did in their field). And not to mention the server side of things, I'm pretty sure the costs for server OS licenses would have been prohibitive for the vast majority of startups without the alternative free OS solutions.
    
    
        
      
 We pay a lot more than that for MSDN licenses (which includes the OS if it's only used for development).   
    
        
     &gt; Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized mapping product for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.I mean, kind of, but on the other hand, think about all the companies whose costs are subsidized by having public roads.
    
    
        
      
 Yup and in the UK because freight is all on tax payer paid roads private rail has become incredibly expensive for normal people travelling.   
    
        
     It is not about free. It is about being more expensive than before. We live in the economy, where small companies operate at such a thin margin (even if they're profitable), that such an increase in cost often kills any hope for profitability, especially with the economies of scale. Would you prefer to fire one developer from the team, or stop using Google Maps?I am not saying that mapping should be free, but such price bumps should be communicated better to allow paying customers prepare for changes and alternative scenarios. And again, just another reminder, that whenever choosing a provider for anything related to your core business - think of an exit plan!
    
    
        
      
 Here we go again with the "No subscription fees means you have the right to like what we give you" argument. Haven't we beaten the "nothing is actually free" horse into the ground by now? There is the matter of the vast amounts of data Google collects from people, and the other intangible costs you incur from the lack of alternative products due to the high barrier to entry (hard to compete with 'free'), and of course the risks that come with the lack of incentive on the vendor's part to maintain good will with the end user (this thread is case in point).   
    
        
     I completely disagree. You can find Google's pricing tactic aggressive, but it made me think about the entitlement there.They complain that Maps at new prices would be more than the cost of their infrastructure, when actually their entire startup revolves around this data, and 5k to be able to use an amazing piece of high tech software that is ahead of the competition is..peanuts. No matter what other business interests and strategies Google follows, there is no right to using such valuable tech for less than the monthly salary of an engineer. I find this incredible entitled.
    
    
        
     If a startup needs a giant system of subsidized roads for free or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.You see where this argument leads to?
    
    
    
        
      
 No, although of course there is the point that a lot of Google's mapping data was subsidized with tax money by virtue of using the various geodata sources the U.S makes available for free to build on.   
    
        
     Anyone can use those, so why are people complaining?Google does a whole lot more, and can charge whatever they want for it. OSM provides usable solutions the vast majority of users; i’ve Moved to OSM a couple of years ago in everything for privacy reasons and except for the occasional Waze route or verifications, get nothing from google that I can’t get from OSM.
    
    
        
      
 No, the roads are subsidized by those who pay for them. There is a right to use them for business purposes, unlike private map services.   
    
    
        
      
 Counterpoint: if these startups need a giant subsidized transport infrastructure/global telecomunications network/permissive government/low-cost computer hardware/solid legal system or else they aren't profitable, they weren't ever profitable.   
    
        
     Re: "When it comes to Google, I'm more worried that they might just arbitrarily mothball something on a management roadmap whim."Spot on. I would that if a site / application is hitting Maps' paid tier they can (somehow) monitize that traffic and cover the cost. But monitization can't help you if / when they pull the plug. p.s. I sometimes wonder how often Google looks at Slack and regrets mothballing Wave.
    
    
        
     &gt; In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings. There was a related discussion[0] on HN a few weeks ago that I found enlightening. Commentator ucaetano's phrasing of the strategy was "create a desert of profitability around you". The discussion of moats vs deserts found here [1] is also useful. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348 "Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement" [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048492
    
    
        
     Almost every conversation I've had with someone working at a startup in this city inevitably turns to the "so, are you worried Google will simply start offering your service for free?"I remember like 3 or 4 years ago having this conversation at a hackathon with a bunch of "Machine Learning" / "Sentiment Analysis" APIs present... right as google started offering both for free on their cloud platform.
    
    
        
     This is funny:Paul Graham, September 2001: &gt; "And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft.” Google is today's Microsoft :)
    
    
        
      
 Which most likely meant the startup was a feature or a product, not a company with a viable business model.   
    
    
    
        
      
 It is free for consumers, not for organizations. Gmail for consumers doesn't have a business model by itself, but it fits into Google's larger business model.   
    
        
      
 If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space. It's just that they first use their infinite pocket money to kill off all the competition, then switch to making money.   
    
        
     &gt; If it wasn't a viable business model, Google wouldn't move into the space.Wrong, maybe that "space" (feature or product) goes well with Google's business model, but wouldn't support a viable business mode by itself.
    
    
        
      
 Being bought/aquihired by Google/others seems to be a business model several companies aim for.   
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 The pricing change is understandably very frustrating for users of Google Maps who are affected, but it seems like a big win to me for everyone in the mapping market. Google is trading away a monopoly position (and related regulatory risk) in exchange for increased revenue so it's a win for them. It's a win for other mappers because now they can compete on price. It's a win for users because they are getting more choice.   
    
        
     But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.
    
    
        
     &gt; But the other mapping services will very soon adjust their prices also. It makes no sense to be 10x cheaper than Google when 2x cheaper does the same.There's a great deal of competition and that generally results in a race to the bottom. The market leader just removed themselves from the market and the best way to capitalize is stay low and build your userbase. We won't see price changes by any of these companies. They all want to be #1.
    
    
        
      
 When you have a service that’s ten times cheaper than the best service, people start to raise eyebrows. They perceive it to be much worse. It isn’t always true, but it’s not uncommon either. I doubt companies are going to race to the bottom.   
    
        
      
 In the context of a business building a service around it, a mapping service is not a consumer product. Superficial perception only go so far until it is debunked by careful scrutiny. I would certainly hope that a startup deciding to build a service relying on a map provider would test, and measure quantitatively how good the service is before choosing to build their business on top of it...   
    
        
      
 Google Maps API is not a consumer product, which is where you might have an argument there. A good engineer identifies their use-case and checks out the major players to determine what's a good fit. Once that determination is made, pricing is pretty much all that matters.   
    
        
     &gt; I still have to understand openstreetmap mapping solutions. It's named open, not free, so I guess providing your own server with osm data would work. Only with FreeStreetMap the data would be infected also.  I'm not sure what you mean with "free"/"open". The OSM licence has a share-alike part if you merge your own map data with OSM data. If you just have a map and put points on it, it'd be fine.
    
    
        
     It's not free as in you are not allowed to use OSM tiling servers for commercial purposes. "OpenStreetMap’s own servers are run entirely on donated resources. They have strictly limited capacity. [...] OpenStreetMap data is free for everyone to use. Our tile servers are not." [1]. They've even banned some sites for abusing their servers, e.g., FastPokeMap in 2016 [2]. But there is a very clear way of switching to OSM and serving your own map tiles with any styling you want [3]. I personally think that startups like these should go for these options since their user base is concentrated in one region.[1] https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/
[2] https://github.com/openstreetmap/chef/pull/78
[3] https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/
    
    
        
     Well if you don't like the OSM.org tile usage policy, they'll give you a full refund.OSM.org doesn't prohibit commericial usage, per se. But if you're running a business, you shouldn't rely on volunteers from another project which you're not paying for.
    
    
        
      
 This. Services are invited to take a slurp of data and use it as they wish, and contribute back of they make changes. It's not uncommon for a service of a certain size to become a contributor. But there's no requirement: if all they use it for is lookups and tiles, go ahead, "fill yer boots".   
    
        
     &gt;In the case of maps, there weren't many great alternatives for a long time, due to Google sucking all the oxygen/profit potential out of the field with their excellent free offerings.ianal and all that, but isn't somewhere antitrust- or monopoly- adjacent? I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal.
    
    
        
     IANAL either, but yeah, the practice you're describing, using revenues from other parts of a business to subsidize the areas it wants to compete hard in until the competitors are dead, is typically known as "predatory pricing", which is illegal. IIRC, Standard Oil was a big user of that playbook.I don't know if this qualifies, and I don't know how much appetite there is for prosecuting Google for offering useful things for free. I don't think they've had much of a history of jacking up prices after killing off a market, until relatively recently. Interesting question, though.
    
    
        
     Isn't this done all the time by Google though? They offer so many services for free, such as the consumer version of Google Maps, or YouTube (in the early days before ads)?Not to mention Internet.org from Facebook, TOM's (free) shoes in Africa.
    
    
        
      
 It does sound a lot like it, but I don't know if there's some other element you have to do to make it engaging in predatory pricing, or if there's just been no will to prosecute them yet. The FTC seems like it's been relatively lax on antitrust recently, so I could believe it's just the latter. Or maybe it's just the remnants of the free pass that governments gave the early internet, and we'll start seeing more.   
    
    
        
      I know if walmart moved into a new city and started giving away hardware for free, then waited until all the local hardware stores had been shut down for 10 months, and then jacked up their prices to 100 times what they used to be before going free, that'd be pretty illegal. This is what drug dealers do. It was also the plot of the James Bond film Live and Let Die.
    
    
        
     Are you saying drug dealers go around giving their product for free until no competition or we are hooked?I don't really think that happens at all. If so where are they?
    
    
        
     I doubt anyone is driving out competition with free product, but using free product to hook a new client is definitely a thing that happens.That's not too say that there's guys on street corners offering free drugs to random passersby. Rather there's lots of dealers who just deal to aquaintances, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, etc. In that case they can spread a few hundred dollars worth of product around to non-users within their social network in hopes of picking up another client or two, who will end up generating reliable profit for a long time.
    
    
    
        
     i think uber at least (not that i want to defend anything they do) is different, because they don’t have low rates to smother their competition; they have low introductory rates to attract riders and drivers to the serviceunsure if that’s also predatory pricing? seems different to me
    
    
        
      
 Just because they have a nice PR-friendly story to tell doesn't make the pricing any less predatory. The point of predatory pricing is to attract people to the service, to shut down competition.   
    
        
     &gt; they don’t have low rates to smother their competitionWhether their competition is Lyft, Taxis, or public transportation, their subsidized pricing is a big factor to their customers.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Walmart practically did this but with a little twist back in the days. They opened multiple extra stores within a very small geographical area. Some stores were actually losing money but it didn't matter to them because they used it to completely destroy all competitors in that area and forced them to close up their shops. Once everybody is gone, Walmart has accomplished their mission and then proceeded to shut down the extra stores as well.   
    
        
     Is there something like Amazon or Google shopping with a list of prices for all products through time? Kind of like the Wayback Machine (archive.org) but for products.Maybe having a searchable historical database of everything imaginable and their prices would keep companies honest and prevent price gouging.
    
    
    
    
        
      
 In Japan there is a site called kakaku.com which maintains graphs for historical prices. We used it to great effect when buying a combo washer and dryer.   
    
        
      
 That's a really neat idea! Maybe include alerting and the ability to "follow" services you use to monitor their prices?   
    
        
      
 I find a good site like every few years, but they always disappear. My guess is there is more (some) money in B2B.   
    
    
        
     Google did something similar with Stackdriver logging, where they went from a generous free tier to an insanely expensive $.50/Gb in roughly 2-3 months.Very annoying. Especially because by default every GCP service logs a bunch of crap to Stackdriver. Our log cost was going to be as high as our compute cost.
    
    
        
     They've got easy to use exclusions that eliminate the cost if you don't want the logs (and can be pretty picky about what to exclude, even to the point of doing percentage exclusions) and they announced it in advance and pushed the date back a few times.My issue is with devs that write software that spits out a couple of gigs an hour and refuse to trim it down or exclude things.
    
    
    
        
     Why you cannot trust this model 101: because it's practitioners understand the value of the labor/product, 
capitalize on the OSS ideal and then push it to the unsuspecting.I don't know how many bait and switch 
episodes from google I need to see but by 2008 I 
was done with them -- for the first time. 
Ad-nauseam. If you boycotted and didn't use Google they would wither and die and stop being something to worry about: for immediate google specific free offerings that are sucker bait.
Also for self aggrandizing standards/inclusions and buying 
the overt talent. But whatever. The HN community is full of dupes and buy ins, culture whores and fifth columnists. True belief in OSS died when everyone else took it and got rich.
    
    
        
     Re: "...is surely an unpleasant surprise for us and does not create much trust in Google as a vendor..."I was under the impression the trust for Google evaporated a long time ago. Sure, alternatives can be few at times. But anyone committed to and in bed with Google has to be sleeping with one eye open.
    
    
        
      In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trick. Ah, the classic Oracle trick. Good to see the tradition is alive.
    
    
        
     &gt; In the future we would therefore keep our distance from Google Cloud and avoid deep integration with any Google services on which it can pull a similar trickIt seems like they haven't learned anything at all. Sure it was google that shafted them in this case, but the problem isn't google, it's that their business is entirely dependent on a third party who has the power to do this. They rejected the option that would have prevented this from happening in the future with another company. Oracle probably has a sales team on the way to their offices now.
    
    
        
      
 If you are relying on other services that heavily, it sounds like you didn't have such a great business to start with   
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Having interacted with the Google Maps sales team, I would imagine these posts are a result of these companies hopping on a sales call expecting something ‘google’-like and are surprised that the Oracle sales team is on the call. The value extraction mentality was a bit surprising compared to the image the rest of google presents.   
    
        
      
 Remember when Google once said “Don’t be evil” as their motto? Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil. But on the other hand, I think it is necessary, because at the end of the day Google is still a company that needs to make money and most importantly compete with each other, I’m really disappointed at Google to abuse their trust to hurt others.   
    
        
      Well what Google did at this instance and on nowadays is evil What do you mean it's evil? People call Google evil for so many things that are hardly evil at all, that the word has lost its meaning in the context of Google. For example I honestly cannot tell if you're calling them evil for increasing Maps pricing (thereby hurting maps-consuming startups) or for previously asking a low price (thereby hurting startups that offer maps).
    
    
    
    
        
      
 On the other hand, if you are a business making real money, these price changes are no big deal. This happens all the time. Where some people see a sob story, I see a competitor getting stamped out.   
    
        
     I'm just finishing spinning up OpenStreetMap servers in EC2 as one of the last stages of our testing, and they look great. We almost went with Mapbox, which is probably a pretty good alternative. But as part of that move I decided to try OSM tiles and I had them up and running in an afternoon via a docker image, created an Ansible role for deploying virtual machines that evening, and had tiles for our region built the next night after tuning some CartoCSS for our needs.We already have our own aerial tiles, built off the free NAIP imagery, and I just went through rebuilding the 2017 NAIP tiles last week to make them higher quality and fix some seam issues. This combination is pretty good and lets us take control of our map tile destiny. References I used in setting things up:  https://github.com/zavpyj/osm-tiles-docker
https://switch2osm.org/
https://ircama.github.io/osm-carto-tutorials/tile-server-ubu...
    
    
        
     I totally recommend hosting your own tile-server using open street map if you have the resources. Creating your own tile-server is not as difficult as it may sound however it is really resource intensive, especially if you want to cover large areas. For a single EU country it shouldn't be that resource intensive.I have set it up on a Centos 7 server using more or less the instructions from here https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-16-04... (yes they are for Ubuntu but you'll get the idea) and everything works great. Even if you don't really need it, I recommend trying it to understand how it works; it has some very intuitive ideas. Beyond the tile server I am also proposing GeoServer (http://geoserver.org) for hosting the geo points on the maps (it can integrate with PostGIS and various other datasources and output the geo points in various different formats). You can then use Leaflet (https://leafletjs.com) to actually display the map and points!
    
    
        
     The fastest way, if you don't have resources and don't mind being up to a few months behind, is to use OpenMapTiles vector tiles [1].The download is an SQLite database with a standard-ish structure (MBTiles), you can either write a small server or use theirs. I needed vector tiles in other projections — WGS84 equirectangualar, an Arctic one, and an Antarctic one. Generating those took many hours on a cluster. [1] https://openmaptiles.com/downloads/planet/
    
    
    
        
     That's correct — I'd forgotten that, as my project has the open data use license.However, as an example, the one-time $40 for Colorado is likely to be much cheaper than generating them yourself, and is probably adequate if you don't need to keep up to date.
    
    
    
        
      
 We are looking at moving to Vector tiles after the deployment of openstreetmap raster tiles is completed. We need to look at the performance closely though because on some devices it was slower with Vector tiles. I think we still want to go that direction we just have to quantify some of the performance.   
    
        
     You can render raster on the fly from a vector based tileserver, and optionally use vector maps for clients where it makes sense (mobile for example).I've been running a large OSM raster rendering stack for a while, for the whole planet. Moving on to a vector based stack right now, which is what you should do if you are starting today. The reason being the server, with vector tiles pre-rendered, can very quickly render raster tiles on the fly. It's fast enough that for most cases, there is no need to cache them. Once I get the new stack fully burned in, we'll swap our raster rendering stack out for the new vector stuff and do raster on the fly. I might cache the rasters depending on throughput, but from what I can tell it should be basically a non-issue.
    
    
        
     The difference between raster tiles and vector tiles is that in raster tiles the rendering (conversion to actual images) is done on your server (either when each tile is loaded for the first time or you may initialize a bunch of zoom levels for your area yourself; this may take hours to days depending on your area size) while for vector tiles you just send the descriptions/shapes and the inages are created on the client side. It is expected that the client performance won't be as good as with raster tiles and slow clients like mobile phones will struggle while trying to render the images.One interesting idea would be to have both raster and vector tiles; then in your client side code you could detect if the client is a mobile device or a desktop pc (I am not sure if you can detect more things about how speedy the device would be) and serve the corresponding tileset (ie the vector tileset if the device is desktop or the raster one if it is mobile). This way you will definitely decrease the load on your server and most clients won't have performance problems! In any case, the clients will get faster as the time passes so after some years vector tiles would probably be the norm because they have the huge advantage that it is very easy to style them on-the-fly in any way you like (while, to style raster images you need to re-create them all from scratch).
    
    
    
        
     I am using more or less the instructions from switch2osm https://switch2osm.org/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04... however for a Centos 7 server (we use Centos in my organization).This results in having a tile server that generates &amp; serves raster tiles using: * carto to generate a proper stylesheet * mapnik to create the tiles * apache with the mod_tile module to serve the tiles * renderd to be used as a bridge between apache/mod_tile and mapnik * Postgres/PostGIS as a database to host the data The actual data is an OpenStreetMap pbf file downloaded from http://download.geofabrik.de/ which is inserted to the database through osm2pgsql. The above are used for the raster tile server only. In addition to this, I am using geoserver (http://geoserver.org/) which is a Java web app (runs in tomcat) that is used to view/edit and (mainly) serve geospatial data. What I usually do is that when I need to display a new shape (shp) file I use shp2pgsql to insert it to a table in my PostGIS database (using something like this shp2pgsql -s SRID SHAPEFILE.shp SCHEMA.TABLE | psql -h HOST -d DATABASE -U USER) also another good tool is ogr2ogr which can convert between various formats (it also supports kml, for example ogr2ogr -f "PGDump" koko.sql test.kml). After the shp file is inserted to the database, I can create a datasource for this dataset from GeoServer and publish this dataset to the web (i.e the dataset will have a URL of the form http://1.2.3.4:8080/geoserver/Dataset/wms); it can then be consumed by client applications (in javascipt) using leaflet or openlayers. Notice that GeoServer can easily publish various file formats for example an SHP directly (you don't need to insert it to the PostGIS; this is something I do for better control of my datasources). PostGIS is the component that supports the vector tiles (http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/extensions/vectorti...) so I want to integrate it the OpenStreetMap data that is hosted in my PostGIS (which is used for the raster tiles); I haven't found the time yet though. I think it's a great setup and it works great for the needs of the organization I work for; actually, I like it so much that I want (for a long time) to write a rather comprehensive tutorial on how to set ip up along with some notes on how to do various PostGIS things but I don't know when (and if) I'll find the time for something so large :/
    
    
    
        
     My apologies, I'm out-of-date with the commercial offerings of OpenMapTiles — I work on an open data project, eligible for OpenMapTiles' free license which has old (currently one year old) tiles.With a commercial license, the tiles are from 2 July. I assume the commercial tiles are a few days behind as it's just not worth most people's effort to stay up-to-the-hour — different map services can offer that, this company is making easy self-hosted map tile packages. The free license is presumably using older data to encourage an upgrade.
    
    
        
     Tile generation wasn't THAT bad. We only cover Colorado and Wyoming, and generating the tiles for those at the zoom levels 5-18 takes around 7 hours to pre-render (using "render_list_geo.pl"). The end result is around 25GB of rendered meta-tiles.Much better than the NAIP aerial imagery, which takes around 3TB for the source data, 280GB for the resulting tiles, and around a full day to generate.
    
    
        
      
 Yes it wasn't bad for a single area (we cover only Greece and it was quick and easy for such a small country). However I couldn't imagine of the resources needed to cover the whole world!   
    
    
    
        
      
 Would it be possible to put Free map tiles in something like DAT or IPFS, to share the load? Kind of like Peertube, but for maps.   
    
    
        
     If you use vector tiles, and render them client side you could do this. For raster tiles, where you're storing images, there are too many images to do this practically.And then you need to think of how to do data updates. OSM updates minutely.
    
    
        
     Data updates are not required for many applications. You probably don't want to be google maps! For example I haven't updated the OSM data for more than a year and I don't think that there are any problems with the data being stale. It all depends on the application of course.One major advantage of not updating your data very often is that the tile-images won't need to be re-generated thus you save a lot of (CPU intensive) resources! I think that another commenter mentioned that he generated the tiles in a CPU intensive system and then just off-loaded the images to not-so-fast system for serving.
    
    
        
     You can also prerender the tiles on a powerful machine and host them on a cheap instance (assuming you don't need very large regions). A while ago I created an OSM server (https://github.com/seemk/TileSweep) to do this for me, you can select regions you want to render via a polygon and you get a SQLite database of the tiles. It can also run as an alternative for mod_tile + renderd.I rendered all of Estonia from zoom levels 0 to 18 (~16.5M tiles) which is around 20GB and host the tiles on a cheap DigitalOcean instance.
    
    
        
     * How is the workflow for updating OSM data with this project?* What is the recommended procedure for backup + restore? I find a lot of projects in this space make you go through an manual copy-paste setup process like if it was a one-time thing - it is not - updating OSM data is a crucial part in this process and should be part of it.
    
    
        
     I haven't investigated updating of data using anything clever. I know the database load script can write out a list of tiles that need to be rerendered, which can be fed into the renderd process. Renderd has multiple priority channel so bulk renders are a lower priority than user views, so a live system can update the tilecache without much easier impact.I haven't investigated it because we are probably moving to Vector tiles over the next month or two, and we don't need up to the minute map updates. On one of our sites, we have been rendering navteq tiles and we only get updates for those quarterly. It was only our public site that we were using Google Maps for. Backup and restore we are just doing via normal backup programs. The tilecache is stored in meta tiles, which is a d duplicated set of 64 tiles in a single file. So we are only dealing with about a million files in a directory structure totaling 25 gigabytes. If we needed to restore or update our tiles, we would probably just spin up a new box and rerun ansible to deploy it. I have it all encoded Within a Playbook.
    
    
        
     I was wondering too why they skipped OpenStreetMap so quickly.Living in Germany, I find the map quality of OSM much better than Google Maps. Sure, it lacks the integration with the other Google services like a good search and live traffic, but speaking about the pure map quality, Google is lacking a lot of detail here.
    
    
        
     From the article (emphasis added):"Which maps should we investigate deeper? Some options we could reject quickly for various reasons. OpenStreetMap is not supposed to be directly used by commercial sites. Apple Maps, even though we wouldn't mind having Apple logo on our site somewhere, was just released as beta and requires Apple developer account to test properly."
    
    
        
      
 The OpenStreetMap.org website doesn't ban commerical sites (per se). The volunteer sysadmins who manage the donated hardware that runs the OpenStreetMap.org website don't offer any SLA and reserve the right to ban people/apps which put too much load on it. If you don't like it, they're prepared to give you a full refund.   
    
        
      
 I read that, but compared to the effort they put into analysing the whole issue, at least an estimate about the cost involved in hosting their own server would be a good decision.   
    
        
      
 It seems like they rejected OSM because they couldn't directly use the OSM site to serve tiles, but would instead need to host their own infrastructure for it. I understand that, but for us we decided to go ahead and own it.   
    
        
      
 I think if the maps service is part of your core product, it is good considering a self hosted solution. Yes, it costs time you want to save as a startup, but at least you control your own product and can manage your cost directly.   
    
        
      
 Thanks for the docker image pointers; just what I was looking form. What kind of traffic volume can you handle on what size VM's?   
    
        
      
 We found some references saying that each box could probably handle around 10,000 map tiles per second. Our full tileset is under 30GB, so it is easily cached. One of our machines can generate Tiles at a rate of 2,500/sec, another is 1,300.   
    
        
      
 Oh wow, that's a faster tile generation rate than I was expecting. What are the specs on the machines/VMs you're using to get those rates?   
    
        
      
 They are both virtual machines, 32GB and 32 CPUs for the 1,300/sec and 20CPUs for the 2,500/sec. The 32 cores are on a host machine with two "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4108 CPU @ 1.80GHz", the 20 cores are "Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 v2 @ 3.50GHz". You know, 7,001.21 bogomips (TM). :-)   
    
        
      
 How does Mapbox stack up against what you've built? Does Mapbox provide any advantages or is are the two not very comparable? How difficult would it be to spin up a Mapbox competitor?   
    
        
     How does Mapbox stack up against what we've built? Well, they have way more people working on the problem, so there's going to be more support and more eyes on the problem. I didn't directly compare map tiles, that was a couple other people on my team. We decided to try moving forward with our own OSM-based tiles, so the conclusion I've come to is that it compares favorably.How difficult would it be to build a competitor to Mapbox? Well, if all you care about are map tiles, it's no big deal. If you want to build a business around it, that's always work. You're going to need to build the tiles, have infrastructure to serve it, monitoring, staff to manage it, billing and charging infrastructure, etc...
    
    
        
      
 Mapbox also offers geocoding and navigation, which are quite a bit more difficult than just setting up a server that can host OSM tiles. Obviously, if all you need are maps, that's fine. But if you need maps with search, which I suspect most people do, rolling your own is tougher (though projects like pelias are pretty good).   
    
        
      
 I set up a pelias system a while ago but it never got any traction. We have another geocoder already set up using Experian QAS data, I think we've had that set up for a decade or more, so that isn't one of our concerns. Good point though.   
    
        
      
 Thank you very much, may I ask two questions:  * what is the workflow to update the OSM data?
 * what is your recommendation for a good geocoder?     
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Uh, while I upvote OSM comments a lot because I often think they are good comments, blindly upvoting based on positive mentions of OSM does not contribute to the conversation...   
    
        
      I only came to the comments to upvote whoever mentioned OpenStreetMaps. It needs our love. This is the platform Maps.me is based on, correct? I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations. I too want Google/Apple maps alternatives to succeed, but my limited trial so far has not been promising.
    
    
        
     &gt; I ask because I downloaded Maps.me the other day, after reading HN, and have found it to be missing most businesses that I've attempted to search for. In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.You might try looking at OsmAnd. It too uses OpenStreetMap data, but it does allow you to add some amount of missing data as well (see https://osmand.net/features?id=osm-editing-plugin). This, of course, is part of the advantage of OpenStreetMap, you notice something missing, you add it, and now it is no longer missing.
    
    
        
      
 And one can of course also add data to OpenStreetMaps via a browser. I've been trying to add any businesses I've found missing.   
    
        
     &gt; In addition, there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations. That's strange. I just checked Maps.me on Android, and if you open the hamburger menu there's an "add a place to the map" option.
    
    
    
        
      
 &gt;there seems to be no obvious way to suggest missing destinations.
Unless Maps.Me use their own database for business listings, you just edit the map directly from openstreetmap.org or one of the many fat client map editors that are out there.   
    
        
      
 I don’t think that’s true. Items added on the OSM page appear on maps.me, and items added on maps.me appear on OSM.   
    
        
     You can add things to OSM using the Maps Android app; open the hamburger menu, choose "Add a place to the map".Maps is based on Maps.me.
    
    
        
     It's as much as a 28x increase in price. For Street View imagery, the cost has gone from $0.5 per 1000 views to $14 / 1000. Unlike with maps, Street View lacks a real alternative.I'm seeing my own costs, for a site which I run on my own, rise from $1,500 / month to around $30,000 / month. Their rationale is essentially that they did not want commercial users abusing their free tier. Before this change, they had been reaching out to such entities individually, offering their 'premium plan' service. The pricing for the (old) premium plan was remarkably similar to the new pricing which now applies to everyone. This pricing change has ended the era of Google Maps mashups / hobby projects.
    
    
        
     If you read the original article, it gives you the impression that it's tiles only. But as you point out it's a lot of different parts of the Maps service going up by usually an order of magnitude at least.I run a geocoding service for Australia specifically (https://geocodeplus.com.au) and a lot of people I talk to are completely unaware that they're going to see a x10 change in what their forward/reverse geocoding is going to cost them.
    
    
        
     If they were concerned about abuse from free tiers, there's much better ways to handle it than this. It's Google we're talking about.Also, it's a lame excuse because this affects paid users such as yourself who have nothing to do with the abuse. In Google's defense, a hobby project wouldn't need 750k requests a month. At that point it's more than a hobby. But, the 28k limit is low.
    
    
        
     You're right about the Street View feature that is currently a true key diferenciator that has not a lot of competition in terms of availability and coverage.Though, Mapillary is quite interesting but their pricing model is not really comparable to Google's one: https://www.mapillary.com/pricing
    
    
        
      
 I think there is a different reason for charging for StreetView. The need to make their money back and quick. Self driving cars will have cameras that will give reasonable results for a lot of use cases (maybe not 360 but who cares). It is also a potential combo monetization strategy for the autonomous vendor.   
    
    
        
      
 The issue isn't what google allows/prohibits, its that any new autonomous vehicle company could quickly amass a similar data set to street view and nullify googles 10 plus year investment driving non autonomous cars around to capture street view images.   
    
        
      
 It's not as simple as capturing the imagery. The backend processing for Google maps is astonishing. It will take years to get to the smoothness that is Google Streetview.   
    
        
      
 I think the comment you replied to was saying that StreetView will soon be commodotized, so they need to make the money back now.   
    
        
      
 Please contact the US Department of Justice and let them know about how the price increase is affecting you in regards to Street View. They seemed to buy into my reasoning that Google has effectively made sure that they won't have any Street View competition by artificially keeping prices low for years. The more people that complain, the sooner the DOJ will probably take action. For European users I recommend complaining to your regulators as well, especially using Street View as your main complaint since there's no real alternatives.   
    
        
     Bing Streetside and OpenStreetCam are a thing. They just aren't very good. There's a huge up-front investment for street view images that other companies didn't want to take.Microsoft invested in it, released a product and the product wasn't as good as the market leader. That's not predatory.
    
    
        
      
 Other companies didn’t want to make that huge investment BECAUSE of Google. Google offered the same service for free, which meant they had no recourse for recouping that investment. Now that has changed, and the lack of standing competitors is a direct result of that history.   
    
        
     Microsoft has made HUGE investments into Bing and yet Google was always superior and Microsoft isn't exactly rolling in money with Bing.There are several competitors, the issue at hand is they have an inferior product. If your argument held any water, literally everyone would use TMobile because they are so much cheaper. Reality is, a products quality matters and Google Maps were both more cost effective AND a better product.
    
    
    
        
      
 Just because there are competitors in a field does not mean that one company does not hold a monopoly. There were other oil companies in existence when standard oil was broken up.   
    
        
      
 I never said it did. The argument was that there was no competition. There is competition, it's just weak for some aspects of Google Maps. And the argument here seems to be that Google isn't allowed to start charging for a product because they didn't before, which is silly.   
    
    
        
     &gt;They seemed to buy into my reasoningWe're going to need a bit more detail from an account that clearly has an agenda.
    
    
        
     When it comes to Google I just have a lot of issues with the company and didn't have my real login handy when an article about them came up a few days ago. From big issues, like hiring Eric Schmidt and frequent attempts at anti-competitive behavior, to small ones, like prudish censoring of search results and weird customer service (including a six-month delay in getting a response to a simple request for a Maps enterprise quote), I could really just go on and on with the variety of reasons why I don't like Google. I've seen firsthand, at multiple Google locations, an odd attitude that must have permeated from the top. The only people that seemed to be different were a few acquihires who exuded a combination of resignation and pragmatism about their situation.Edit: If you meant that you wanted more detail about my antitrust complaint, I contacted them via the antitrust email address. They took a while to call back, but not as long as Google took to get me that Maps quote...
Farewell, Google Maps
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542830
We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
2018-11-27
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 <a href="vote?id=18543229&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it comes to business.<p>Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea as a "service center" for municipalities that purchased MRAP combat vehicles for their police departments. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP</a></p><p>We all, especially the veterans I work with, hated this idea. MRAP's are for combat, not police work, and have a dangerous propensity to roll over in city streets or escalate already violent situations. 14 of us sent a signed letter to the owner and senior management detailing our major concerns and heard nothing back for about a month. Then out of the blue we got a call for a meeting with 3-4 very senior managers at a local irish bar.</p><p>They paid for dinner and tried to explain how the business would be extremely lucrative. we would all see major bonuses, we could hire more workers, and grow the business faster than just large truck repair. It took 3 very emotional hours, but we eventually talked down a handful of people from making a very wrong decision.</p><p>for a week after, we were all sort of stunned that it actually worked at all. Tire cages meant for MRAP tires were cut up and turned into random parts holders, or as new hangers for air lines...one even replaced our mailbox post.
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 <a href="vote?id=18543418&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>You deserve massive credit for striking a blow against this madness. A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.<p>I say that fully realizing that not everyone is in the financial position where they can risk a fight with their employer. You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.
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 <a href="vote?id=18544273&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.<p>I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our civilization is facing might be greatly improved.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546995&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548537&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.<p>The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations. They don't need a <i>contract</i> at all.</p><p>What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through direct democracy. It does <i>nothing</i> unless the employer is doing something bad wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the employer concedes or they strike.</p><p>Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.
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 <a href="vote?id=18548894&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; They can afford to pay more<p>Which is why they already do pay more than other industries.</p><p>The best argument you have against that is the anti-poaching shenanigans they've engaged in -- but that's already illegal, so the answer there is a courtroom rather than a union.
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 <p>No, it really isn't. The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern, and be willing to risk their reputation. With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18549864&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern<p>How is that different with a union?</p><p>&gt; and be willing to risk their reputation</p><p>Class action suit or submit evidence confidentially to the attorney general.</p><p>&gt; With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.</p><p>If Apple won't hire Google employees then the Google employees can retaliate against Apple by not working for them?
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 <a href="vote?id=18548598&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; they're compensated fine already.<p>I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.</p><p>Yes, having a higher salary would be ridiculous in a lot of these cases, but we should moderate that through legislation that benefits the most people - not by a public company further lining the coffers of its owners.</p><p>Apple and Google particularly have a lot of cash just lying around, and that cash is the result of the employee's efforts, and they deserve it. I think if we think their salaries are too high in that case, we need to talk about better taxation systems.
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 <a href="vote?id=18548743&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.<p>They have massive cash reverses because the tax laws have encouraged that rather than paying it to shareholders as dividends. And that level of return is necessary because of the nature of the industry -- you have to spend millions of dollars trying to create the next tech giant before you know whether you've succeeded or not, and most of the time you haven't. The returns to success have to be enough to overcome the high failure rate.</p><p>Most of the employees aren't taking the same level of risk. If you work for a company for five years taking home a six figure salary and that company fails, you don't have to give back your salary and in a few months you're working for another company making the same amount of money.</p><p>If you think you can do better on your own, risking your own time and money instead of taking outside investment, go right ahead -- but then shouldn't it be you who gets more of the reward if you succeed rather than the people you hire in after you're already an established success?
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 <a href="vote?id=18549489&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.<p>It feels like what you're saying is that the risk of failing in a startup is massive enough for a founder that they deserve literally billions of dollars.</p><p>Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? Are you saying that because a founder may go bankrupt they are entitled to thousands of times more money? Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? Could you help me understand what makes you think that?
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 <a href="vote?id=18549828&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.<p>Of course, because the level of risk is different. $100,000 guaranteed is worth more than a &lt;50% chance at $200,000, much less a &lt;1% chance. A very high reward is inherently necessary to offset the very low probability of major success, otherwise people aren't going to do it.</p><p>&gt; Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee?</p><p>The less than one in a thousand chance of making that much.</p><p>&gt; Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee?</p><p>There are many ways to turn a thousand dollars into a 0.1% chance at a million dollars. Then 99.9% of the time you lose the thousand dollars -- and it's your time/money, not the bank's. Nobody is going to give you an unsecured loan to gamble with.</p><p>But if you bet on your own horse at 1000:1 odds and win, how are you not entitled to the proceeds?
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 <p>I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18558394&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?<p>The amount they mutually agree upon. The employee wouldn't agree to work indefinitely for no pay.</p><p>The high compensation of successful founders is actually one of the things keeping salaries <i>up</i>, because any of the salaried employees has the option to quit and found their own company. The existing company has to pay well enough to compete with that -- because if what they're paying wasn't actually competitive with that alternative given the relative risk between them, why would anybody accept the salary?
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 <p>That'd be all very reasonable if we lived in a world where Apple and Google weren't colluding to keep wages down.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>So you both think people are being paid reasonably and that Google and Apple are colluding with one another.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18570522&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>1) The collusion has presumably stopped now that they're caught.<p>2) It is possible for both to be true at the same time, because the industry is much larger than Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe. Even if they didn't compete with each other, they still have to outbid Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. -- and pay enough to prevent the workers leaving to found their own companies. It's not unreasonable to expect that the effect on wages was marginal even when it was occurring.
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 <p>You're having to make a lot of presumptions to have to believe these employees are being paid fairly.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees. Employees compete with each other for salaries. Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices.
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 <a href="vote?id=18557246&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees.<p>Incorrect, that value is only sustained and increased by the efforts of company workers.</p><p>&gt; Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices.</p><p>Incorrect. Companies that don't have significant oversight in the form of government regulation or strong unions tend to collude to keep salaries low - which is exactly what has happened in the valley, and has meant that these companies have gigantic cash reserves that they aren't leveraging to hire the best talent.</p><p>&gt; By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable.</p><p>No, I'm merely saying that the differences and risks suffered by investors and founders versus regular salaried employees are not a justification for the sometimes ridiculous difference between the compensation of the two.
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 <a href="vote?id=18553135&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>If tech workers form a union, I'm sure it will look very different to the industrial worker's unions of the 20th century. And so it should, the needs of today are very different. The thing is, apart from the remaining unions from that time, most unions already look very different to that model so this is not really a good argument against unionising.<p>The other thing you aren't taking into account is the fact that this boom in the tech industry isn't guaranteed to continue forever. There will come a time, maybe pretty soon, where tech workers will become as precarious as those steel workers and autoworkers eventually became. Big tech companies are already putting a lot of effort and resources into educating the next generation of programmers to provide a more competitive labour market and drive down salaries. There's already talk of a coming recession, where I'm sure the belts will be tightened and people will be laid off. When we have a union, we will be more protected from the inevitable exploitation in such scenarios.</p><p>The temporarily embarassed unicorn founders among us need to realise that we are the creators of all the value in these companies and, collectively, we have the power to influence their direction and impact on society. We can help secure not only our own rights as workers but also have the power to change society at large and secure better standards of living for all workers (or non-workers). That's why these recent actions by Google employees have been so important. They can set a precedent for how other companies and even states can safely act in future, without fearing repercussions from their most valuable resource - the workers.
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 <p>How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues? How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548870&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues?<p>The technology needed to let people submit proposals and let other people vote on them is on the level what individuals do over a weekend as adjunct to a side project.</p><p>&gt; How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?</p><p>Why do you need to force them to? By definition the majority will already agree, and then many in the minority would participate out of solidarity because that's the whole point of joining a union to begin with. You don't need 100.0%, a large majority is quite sufficient in general. And anything that actually required 100.0% is already lost, because then they could pay off the cheapest defector or contract it out.
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 <a href="vote?id=18557570&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.<p>And your picture of humam behavior is all too rose-colored glasses if it's having all members of a minority vote just go along out of solidarity when it's non-binding. I've seen unions vote on issues, and it's often contentious with emotions running high on all sides. If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have. Sometimes they try to anyway.
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 <a href="vote?id=18558430&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.<p>This is a major problem for country-level populations. For corporations it typically comes pre-solved by the corporation itself, because each employee would have a company email address or Active Directory account etc. that could be used for authentication. (In theory the corporation could illegally tamper with the results that way, but the tampering would be immediately obvious to the person whose vote was changed.)</p><p>&gt; If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have.</p><p>Because they're using the union for the wrong stuff. A lot of the votes would be for things like accepting a policy that gives raises to only senior people. No doubt the junior people being screwed over by that policy would strenuously object when they're the 49%, especially when being in the union deprives them of the opportunity to negotiate something else as an individual.</p><p>But how many Google employees have that kind of personal stake in a question like whether to censor search results in China?
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 <a href="vote?id=18547405&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Unions are rarely formed unless conditions are particularly bad. One upon a time in this country, the national guard with machine guns might have been called out to clear a strike/protest. Most people are very happy being ignorant of their surroundings or influence of.<p>The most I've ever done is threaten to quit if a project for the RIAA was accepted by my employer when I was invited into the pre-pitch meeting. It just depends on a specific case.
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 <p>I'm part of a very privileged workforce and our situation, while not great, was a lot better than the average worker. We still managed to form a union. It can be done.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548799&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I wish more people knew that workers fought and died for those rights.<p>Its one thing to say maybe you'll quit, or skip your pay check for change, its another to actually put your life on the line for what you know is right.
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 <a href="vote?id=18548900&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Since China is known for its countless human rights violations, Are these Google employees also going to...<p>1. Give up their Chinese-Manufactured iPhones/Android Phones? Tablets? Laptops and workstations??</p><p>2. Give up watching movies/shows on their Chinese-manufactured TVs??</p><p>3. Stop wearing Chinese-made iwatches/fitbits/etc.??</p><p>4. Boycott silicon valley startups that have accepted chinese investments?</p><p>5. Boycott every product by US/Foreign company (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, GE, Disney, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, etc.) doing business in China?
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 <p>There's a difference between boycotting products made in China and protesting against building technologies that enable dictatorial regimes. They do not deserve to be conflated.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>They're not "enabling" a dictatorial regime, they're just following the laws of a foreign government. Making a censored search engine isn't "supporting" the government, it's just abiding by it.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18552672&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>A censored search engine is a direct instrument of oppression.<p>Contracting to build a censored search engine is the moral equivalent of contracting to build a barbed wire fence around a concentration camp.</p><p>You're being an active participant that directly assists in making that oppression happen by building tools required for the actual act of oppression, as opposed to building something that merely done in the same country.
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 <p>"You're not allowed to do anything good ever if you're not already a maximally good person. That would make you a hypocrite, which is way worse than someone who doesn't do anything to help in the first place."</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I don't understand the context in which you're posting this quote. pompousprick's argument was that we <i>shouldn't</i> morally prosecute these companies as supporting dictatorships just because they do business in China.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Bargaining power. (Organized) working humans have it...but it will erode as robots and algorithms take on more and more work. An argument for striking while the iron is hot. (No pun intended.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18549319&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Historically, whenever there's advancement in technology. Powers that control the current will get challenged, and so far, it has been for the better for the majority.<p>We've gone a long way from being serfs who have almost no rights, even the right to read and write.. to citizens who can communicate via the internet.</p><p>Advancement in technology will/have make current powers obsolete. Robots and algorithms have been taking more work since the stone age.</p><p>Better tools, means more surplus, means more time to think critically, more time to comment over the internet, or read books.</p><p>The only problem is that we probably won't see any observable improvement in one lifetime. It is however, also very possible that the incumbent powers put an end to our civilization. Hopefully enough people like these Google employees, Snowden, Assange will be there to stop fascism.
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 <a href="vote?id=18553231&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I think technology has allowed power to become more and more concentrated. Never before has one state had the power to annihilate entire cities, or land entire armies worth of troops at any point on earth within 24 hours. Never before have large and powerful organisations and governments had the capability to read every word that every person sends to each other and track their every motion around the city with cameras.<p>Yes there is more surplus, but where is that going? People in developed societies are working more hours now than they were 100 years ago. Wealth inequality has risen to higher levels than ever existed in modern society. I wish it gave me more time to read books...</p><p>We definitely need to be more engaged in resisting these dangerous tendencies, particularly with recent political developments. I think organised tech workers have immense power. If Google employees could formalise their current actions and then even unite with other groups across other companies, they would be a force to be reckoned with.
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 <a href="vote?id=18554237&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Corruption is a bottom up process.<p>It only works if everyone goes along.</p><p>Be brave and stand up for yourself, what do you have to lose?
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 <a href="vote?id=18544844&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Agreed. But this many Google employees acting collectively, including some very senior and long-tenured Googlers, meet that additional condition.<p>(Disclosure: having worked at Google I know some names on that list personally, and respect them greatly. I haven't worked at Google since early 2015.)
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 <p>It's been a long time since my statistics and econometrics courses, but one conclusion that's definitely unwarranted would be to assume that the rest disagree with the signatories. People who speak up on an issue will always be a small fraction of the larger population of people who share the same opinion.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546848&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.<p>If that were true, then their silence can definitely not be construed as any kind of tacit agreement, or even disinterest.</p><p>How many Chinese citizens (or people otherwise susceptible to this purported pressure) work at Google?</p><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543164">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543164</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548840&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.<p>Even as an American with no family in China, I'd be <i>slightly</i> worried that putting my name on such a list might prevent me from getting a visa to visit the PRC. They've shown a willingness to factor politics into visa decisions:</p><p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b1bd2aec-e333-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c1ad">https://www.ft.com/content/b1bd2aec-e333-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c...</a></p><p>That guy didn't even express a stance, like these Google employees have, he just happened to be the acting leader of the club when a speaker the PRC opposed was scheduled to give a talk.
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 <p>While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548857&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.<p>That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't see why the USG would want to sanction them, especially since this letter has nothing to do with the USG.</p><p>If they're discouraged from signing due to their US visa status, the mechanism that makes more sense is that they fear Google could fire them and it would take them longer than 60 days to line up another job that could sponsor them.
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 <p>What is the risk, that their status would be changed in response to their involvement? If so, would there be an officially articulated basis?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18549465&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>They can get fired. If they're still an H-1B, that basically requires them to leave the country immediately.<p>There's a short grace period in practice (usually, and this isn't official) if you have another job all lined up that is ready to sponsor you. But if you were an H-1B applying for a green card via your employer, this basically resets your position in line, unless you're in late stages of the process. And keep in mind that the wait is measured in years for many countries (e.g. for India, &gt;9 years right now unless you're in the "exceptional" category).
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 <a href="vote?id=18546406&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>It would be really interesting stat to know how well heeled the 139 are vs the 88k who can afford to financially bacjk up their principles...<p>Out of the 88k how many dont care, how many cant afford to care, how many are looking to profit off not caring.
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 <p>There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out. Don't know the accuracy of that, but I've taken it to heart and have been willing to be one of the first to speak out on multiple occasions at multiple jobs. Sometimes things change for the better. Sometimes things don't change, and I force a change by leaving. If nobody speaks up, then the status quo wins.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548816&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out.<p>I've heard this before. I'm not sure if it's a statistic or just a saying. What's the standard formulation?
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 <p>I could see it being considered both. I've also heard it applied to congress critters and senators. For every person that contacts them, they equate it to equaling a certain percentage of the people they represent. I've heard the weight of a phone call vs hand written letter vs email are different, but that was some time ago. It makes sense that when a small number/percentage of the people make contact out of a group in the thousands that some sort of statistical method would be used. These representatives <i>should</i> pay more attention the people as that is who puts them in their job. It doesn't really apply to corporations as they will just replace the squeaky wheels even if it's not the best thing to do morally/socially. They only care about this quarter's earnings. It's the rare company that will fix the squeak rather than replacing it, and they should be highlighted when it happens.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545827&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Yet 1 person in that company could kill it in 3 seconds even if this didn't happen. That's 1 in 88K.<p>My wife and I once went around and petitioned all 100 people that lived in a condo complex for a specific issue. About 80 people signed. We didn't even need to present the signature sheet - the one hold out on the board we had to convince had caved after learning about the efforts - not knowing the percentage of signers (only we had the number).
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 <p>I'm more thinking from the side of all the other employees who either don't care, or have different perspetives on how well the Chinese government might or might not be doing with their tactics. I find the public internet form, especially sites like HN don't promote as much discussion from all angles as we think. I'm sure that anyone from Google who spoke up for moving into China would absolutely be skewered on here. Yet, I know they exist.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The activation energy to mobilize people is incredibly high, especially on issues that don't directly effect them. And even then it's still huge. People will always debate exactly why, but it does mean that the vast majority of people will remain mostly politically inert.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I think I covered ableness in the second paragraph. For a large and growing number of people in the US, taking on that fight could easily mean homelessness. I don't hardly consider them able on grounds of self preservation.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Damn, good for y'all for sticking to your values. How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18543510&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?<p>Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.
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 <a href="vote?id=18544865&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Google is well aware of the spyware that the Chinese govt is using to oppress it's ethnic minorities, but they don't lift a finger to thwart it. They don't blacklist the app that the government requires Muslims in Xinjiang to have on their phones at all time[1]. They could easily blacklist it.<p>How far is Google willing to go to be friends with China? Mass detainment and ethnic cleansing are well within the realm of possibility, especially in the likely event of an economic crisis.</p><p>Will Google help sniff out their Anne Franks? Imagine trying to operate an underground railroad against the full force of Google. There are so many ways that machine learning and modern private surveillance can determine things like if there are extra uncounted people living in an area.</p><p>If Beijing did decide to solve the Uyghur problem, would Google cover for them and purge search queries?</p><p>No, this is not at all hyperbolic or reaching. American corporations did business with our enemies right up until they were forced to stop during WWII. American machines have been used to commit horrific atrocities. And read Chinese history. Read about what China has done as recently as a few decades ago.</p><p>I'm glad to see Google employees taking a break from their virtue pageantry to actually take a stand on something that matters, finally.</p><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other">https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548427&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Here is a thought for you:<p>If Google actually were to do anything to help they Anne Franks of China, do you think they would announce it to the world to debate on HN, or do you think they would do it in secret?
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 <p>Perhaps. But "Maybe Google is just pretending to be evil" does not give me much comfort. Especially as I have friends who are ethnic minorities in SE Asia.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545249&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>this 100%. The business made a business decision : either veteran, that is, most valuable assets get mad and all sort of problems affecting productivty/quality happen or, a few not-yet-realized business opportunities disappears.<p>That was very pragmatic. Both sides wins.
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 <a href="vote?id=18543748&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; <i>Pretty bold</i><p>It's interesting you would label this as such.</p><p>In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer?</p><p>If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else.</p><p>In the year 2018 I would hope it's very much <i>not</i> bold to do so.
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 <p>Publicly calling out your employer is bold anywhere. Perhaps less so in countries like the US where that sort of speech is protected, and in sectors like tech where the speakers are likely to be well-off and not fungible, but doing this sort of thing publicly <i>always</i> puts you at risk of losing your job (for "unrelated performance reasons") and of being quietly blacklisted by future employers (for "poor culture fit" or any other easy excuse).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545857&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer?<p>Free speech only applies to the government though? Your employer is still free to fire you.</p><p>Sure you won't be put in jail but for most people losing their job still certainly affects their livelihood.
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 <p>Corporations are explicitly tyrannies. Check out <i>Corporate Confidential</i> for a flavor of what a typical corporate employee could expect for signing a letter like this.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>This is a problem that my employer faces. We have a strong concept of corporate responsibility, and plenty of opportunity for employee pushback, but we repeatedly see our decisions simply subverted by competitors who don't have any sense of morals and just go where the money is. It becomes a nasty tradeoff where you think about building/doing things that don't feel good, just to maintain a position to have a positive influence on _other_ areas, where a competitor might simply act without morals everywhere. It's not fun to think about these things in a market with bad incentives.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546968&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Wait, because your competitors will maintain MRAPs “they have no sense of morals”?<p>Your morals are your own? Why do you insist on imposing them on others?
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 <a href="vote?id=18551974&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I get what you mean and it's a case by case basis, if people didn't try and push any morals we would all live in vacuums where all we have is the law to tell us what is _right_.<p>A lot of people have no problem with their countries governments manufacturing and/or selling arms to dictatorships that inflict harm on innocents and supply extremists e.g. UK-Saudi arms trading. As far as some are concerned the UK is just doing what another country may do instead.
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 <a href="vote?id=18547384&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Because that's the only way to solve moral co-ordination problems?<p>If you leave a morally odious contract on the table (lets say it's cutting up human babies for baby veal) knowing your competitors will take the project, enrich themselves, expand, and develop the capacity to engage in larger, even more odious business, then what's the proper course of action?</p><p>Do you cut up babies because fuck morals? Or do you try to get no one to cut up babies? What if you have imperfect information and aren't certain if your competition would do it? What if they have imperfect information about your intentions and decide to take the deal purely on that basis?</p><p>Should be straightforward to recognize how corrosive this cycle gets.</p><p>EDIT: some people seem to be upset with the baby example. Just exchange that with anything you find clearly morally unacceptable. Like selling reverse mortgages to elderly people with limited capacity, or signing people up for ponzi schemes or adding intentionally addictive additives to a harmful consumable product, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=18547325&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I mean, all I'm trying to say is that most companies are subject to the competition pressure in their market regardless of internal employees' morals, and it becomes hard to justify "standing up for your beliefs" in a business sense that isn't just "shut down the business or change industries," if there are inherent moral issues in the current industry.<p>When I say "have no sense of morals," I'm talking about competitors who were acquired by large PE firms a decade or more ago and do not have any internal discussions about the morals of what their employees are building/maintaining. They operate entirely by asking what clients want and then trying to build what they can of those requests.</p><p>I'm mostly talking about incentives and market pressures, not "imposing morals on others" or other such emotional nonsense that you are reading into here.
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 <p>If that one employer made it public that they chose not to deal with MRAP repair, I would wholly choose to do business with them and spread the word that they have are a responsible corporate citizen like wildfire.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>And you'd have half your city boycott it because they refuse to support the boys in blue.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Great story dude. We can't pretend more people don't think like this. People working in and around corporations can make a difference by talking about it with other people. Thanks for sharing!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Great story - random question --- but how did you find out about HN? (I'm just asking because you implied you don't work in software, etc.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thank you for standing up for what's right... :) If only more individuals &amp; businesses stood up against militarism in our communities!</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18552816&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>The key here is you acted together. Individuals acting alone have very little bargaining power. But once employees start acting together with a single purpose their power gets very difficult to ignore.<p>Whether people believe unions are a good idea or not, the key is to organize into something that allows people to work together and find common ground to address common problems.
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 <p>Well done buddy, it's great to hear about people taking a principled stand, especially when money's involved.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548179&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>It's not just about the equipment the police force use, it's also about the training. Given military equipment, the police force will also get military training matching the equipment they get. Military knowledge and tactics should not be used used to police a civilian population.<p>Thank you for standing up to this.
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 <p>Thank you. We literally need more people exactly like you in this world. The militarization of the police force is something that started with George W., continued unabated with Obama, and will probably be accelerated under Trump, and it is anti-democracy in my opinion.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Thank you for sharing this; the world needs many more people who actually live and act on their ethical boundaries.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18547570&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Wow! So basically, someone managed to risk police offier lives with their ill thought out plan and people on HN are applauding them?<p>What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?
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 <a href="vote?id=18547730&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?<p>The Army?
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 <a href="vote?id=18548113&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I wonder how this policy would interact with something like the Posse Comitatus Act.<p>Would it effectively require applying the label "terrorist" or "national security threat" to any criminal who shows they are prepared to use lethal force against a law enforcement officer?
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 <a href="vote?id=18549221&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, life isn't "Die Hard", if someone is using "high caliber armor piercing guns" against the local PD, then classifying them as "domestic terrorists" and calling in specialists to deal with them seems appropriate to me.<p>Police have to deal with enough crap that they shouldn't be expected to handle paramilitary situations as well, is what I'm saying.</p><p>As a counterexample, remember the "Bundy standoff"? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff</a> That's the kind of situation where the Posse Comitatus Act means you don't send in the Army. However, if they had shot a bunch of people I'm sure they would have had to face at least the National Guard, eh?
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 <p>I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let the recruiter know this because I believe it's important that they know. I'm curious if anyone else on HN has had similar experiences.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18544204&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.<p>While I think the average developer has a more negative opinion of Google these days, for years they have been considered one of the best places to work in the world.</p><p>I know if I told my parents, for instance, I had done what you did, they probably would've called me an idiot. :P They just know Google is one of the biggest tech companies in the world, they don't see a lot of their especially recent practices as bad.</p><p>To say 'no, thank you, I'd rather not as I don't agree with the company's practices' indicates a kind of moral standing I wish more people would confidently have. It shows you're taking a personal stand against what you believe to be corruption, and that's awesome.</p><p>Rock on!
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 <a href="vote?id=18544910&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.<p>While it is a nice enough gesture, let's not kid ourselves that this was some difficult selfless act on the part of the OP. Apologies to the OP if I have misinterpreted their earlier post but:</p><p>&gt; I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me</p><p>This statement often becomes true by virtue of having a reasonable computer science qualification and living in the Bay Area - eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email. Actually converting an outreach from a recruiter to you know, an actual concrete job offer at Google, is another matter entirely.</p><p>If declining recruiters is the new (very low!) bar for high minded civic engagement, I'm accidentally a grizzled activist on the front line.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545281&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>You don't just have to live in the Bay Area to get those emails, at the very least anywhere in the US you will get them.<p>Source: have never lived in the Bay Area. Have a large number of those emails in my gmail.
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 <p>I live outside the US and have also received recruiter emails for Google offices throughout the EU.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>People knowing about OP’s decision, was those in his social circle, makes a profound difference if compounded by others.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546132&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt;eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email.<p>This. I have said 'no, thanks' to FAANG in the last 3 months because my life is in a bit of a flux right now. It was a bit more than a simple 'no, thanks' in case of Facebook, but that's a story for another thread :)
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 <p>OTOH, AMZN and MSFT have never even hesitated to accommodate the Chinese govt's demands. Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances? (I don't work there.)</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545017&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Dont forget AAPL! (who hesitated, but ended up capitulating on the iCloud front).<p>I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545668&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; who hesitated<p>Source? I was not aware there was any hesitation or even disagreement from Apple's side. Is there an Apple statement saying they disagree w/ Chinese government requests similar to the statements saying they disagree w/ US government requests? In their absence, is it safe to assume they agree since they have shown that when they disagree they make public statements?
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 <a href="vote?id=18545638&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances?<p>If you wanted to do software work for a company that didn't kowtow to Chinese government demands, chances are 99% of jobs are available to you. Does that mean they could if they would? Unknown, and since regimes change with frequency you can't rely on stated principles, only actions.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546428&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Would you still work for Amazon? Microsoft? Apple? Facebook?<p>Because they are actually <i>in</i> China and give concessions to the government.
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 <a href="vote?id=18547290&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>The idea that a foreign corporation has a duty to break Chinese law with regards to web filtering is very problematic, if that's what you mean by "give concessions to the government". How far should such a corporation go with breaking the law, is tax evasion against the Chinese state morally acceptable, since those taxes might be used for oppression?<p>We should recognize here a very thin line between respecting the Chinese law and actively collaborating to subvert human rights - because the law is defined by an authoritarian regime with a long history of human right abuses.</p><p>That being said, surely you cannot change Chinese law from outside China, and if respecting it's current iteration is not in itself an unacceptable violation of human rights, it stands to reason that expanding in China at least forces the government to stick to it's own laws under the threat of a public exit and protest if unlawful pressures are made. It puts ethical companies in a position where they can nudge the Chinese towards ethical behavior - or at least very publicly denounce unethical demands.
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 <p>You can't change Chinese law from inside China either. The only winning move is not to play.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Are there any legal restrictions on what the Chinese government can ask websites to censor? I am not aware of any, so I don't see where there would be an opportunity to protest.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I believe it's already established that operating in China means responding to all censorship requests. Nonetheless, there are still many things an ethical company could refuse: access to the private searches and information of an individual without a due legal process, collecting sensitive information altogether knowing that it's fair game for the state, knowingly alter or influence results to promote official narratives and propaganda, knowingly use or profit from the proceeds of labor camps, underage or other forms of work exploitation; and many, many more, which are surely not positively codified in any Chinese law, yet are widespread.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18548060&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think it's fair to try and nitpick people's ethical decisions like this.<p>Imagine yes, this person would work for Amazon even though they're in China too. Does that make them not working for Google because they're in China a bad choice? I don't think so.</p><p>Are we really prepared to tear everyone down who isn't absolute in their morality?
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 <a href="vote?id=18548093&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>A moral inconsistency is not a nitpick when it's the entire industry.<p>Their logic makes Google a better employer than Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and any other tech company <i>currently operating</i> in China. Saying they spurned Google because the company was <i>considering</i> going to China is disengenious, since the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.
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 <a href="vote?id=18549466&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Saying they spurned Google...the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.<p>There is life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble. If you refuse to work at Google, it doesn't mean that you're then obligated to work at Amazon or Microsoft, etc.
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 <a href="vote?id=18553517&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.<p>If we're looking at it in that lens, then GP's problem isn't with Google, but with large tech companies in general because that's the industry standard.
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 <a href="vote?id=18557967&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.<p>The life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble isn't just "small-town software shop[s]." There's a lot more diversity than that, and to conceive of the industry in that way is too parochial.
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 <a href="vote?id=18567294&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>How many of those companies can be considered substitute employers to Google? That offer the same level of compensation?<p>That is what an economic substitute is. SMB tech companies typically don't compare.
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 <p>You're saying his moral position is invalid because he doesn't apply it consistently, and <i>that</i> is not true, and also possibly harmful.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>I said the moral position is <i>disingenuous</i> because it is both inconsistent and opposite to what he is describing, when considering all things related.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>But each "related" decision is different, and there is no accurate generalization, by the very nature of what a generalization is.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>There's a big difference between operating a business in China in general, and operating a business that necessarily involves implementing their surveillance infrastructure.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18550267&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I honestly have no idea. Last I heard, Bing is blocked in China, which I assume means that there are things that come in its search result that Chinese government doesn't like.<p>But Dragonfly [ostensibly] went well beyond just censoring results, in that it implemented specific tools like linking search requests with phone numbers identifying people who made those requests. That's straight-up aiding and abetting oppressing <i>people</i> - political opposition, for example, or even unorganized dissenters. I can't believe we are even seriously talking about whether this is okay or not.
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 <a href="vote?id=18551816&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>bing.com redirects to a Chinese version of Bing, which prioritises Chinese sites.<p>I have no basis for saying this beyond not knowing how they could do this otherwise, but I would assume that they must censor results to exist there. I don't know if they go further, such as you describe Dragonfly plans to do.
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 <p>I sympathize with your position, especially regarding Taiwan, but I wonder if your early rejection was as effective as employees rebelling? One need not take the most effective route, but given the size of Google, when I was in a similar position to yours I justified it by saying if I got an offer, I'd make it very clear I'd want nothing to do with the censorship work for the exact reason you listed.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18544313&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Both are good. I'm sure Google carefully tracks why candidates decline jobs at Google, and if enough of them say "I can't work with you because you're doing specific evil thing X," then it becomes more and more worth it not to do X.<p>Similarly, if internal morale is in decline and reports come back saying that it's because of X, that also has a real (and quite possibly quantifiable) cost.
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 <p>Do you think that recruiters spend time forwarding your response to someone at Google who actually cares? I usually decline jobs/projects outright, but I wonder if I shouldn't waste some time on interviews before telling the company why I won't work for them. It's not like there's a shortage of projects, and I'd like to maximize my political "leverage".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Yeah, I have ignored recruiters hiring for companies I have moral qualms in regards to, despite the jobs being undoubtedly quite lucrative. Haven't ever let them know about my moral aversion though.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546028&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Sounds like a good call.<p>It's much easier to excel in the pursuit of something you believe in. Seems like folks who accept jobs that they don't believe in are liable to become increasingly demotivated and eventually burned out.
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 <p>Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government? I'm asking because the government doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and kicked Taiwan out of the United Nations in 1971.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18547514&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><br /><div>
 <p>The United States did not kick the Republic of China out of the United Nations in 1971, the UN General Assembly did. The US voted against Resolution 2758.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546312&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government?<p>What kind of question is that? No citizen supports all the actions of their government. Government options are a lot more limited than employment options.
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 <p>I, too, had a very similar experience. Although I am of Indian descent, I still strongly agree with your views. It's really unfortunate that the <i>leadership</i> at Google doesn't follow the "do no evil" mantra anymore. These sorts of decisions aren't in the hands of an every-day engineer, so they are not at fault here in my opinion. And by standing up and vocalizing that distaste, I believe they are doing the right thing. Google makes some amazing products, so I see the appeal of working there. But many of those engineers have been around before the company started going in this direction, so I can't blame them. It's the leadership that needs to understand values &gt; profits. At least if they want my continued support.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Much of this is PR dominance as well. Corporate media has already done 90% of the hard work for people to be able to easily market and feel good about opposing specific issues. You just need to fill in the colors in the coloring book. But these issues have been done and accepted for the longest time, such as Google's State Department staffed Jigsaw branch that creates tools, shown in Wikileaks, to assist overthrowing foreign governments in collaboration with the State Department, or tools that AI-censors comments, or tools that delegates control of the discoverability of grassroot contents to other corporate conglomerates.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18547206&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google.<p>How can you say this when those that build, even small parts, of surveillance technology are directly contributing to oppression?</p><p>Workers absolutely have a moral obligation to what they work on. This notion that they're not responsible for this is horrifically wrong.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546077&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I'm fairly anti-China and loved Taiwan, can't wait to go back, loved it, loved the Taiwanese people.<p>Good for you on making a decision like that.</p><p>But... Just so long as you know that someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked. That's something I think many idealistic users here aren't understanding.
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 <a href="vote?id=18547393&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked.<p>If talented engineers were that easy to find, Google wouldn't have participated in illegal wage-fixing; and that's without selecting for engineers that want to support an authoritarian regime. Statistically speaking, every rejection drives up the price. To wield even more power, we'd need to form some kind of industry-wide union.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545397&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. By placing values above profits, it increases it's goodwill with customers thus increasing it's moat and it's retention, as well as it's employee retention. This strategy made sense in the early days.<p>Not anymore.</p><p>As Google's position becomes increasingly strengthend (with all the market share it can capture in search already realized ~ and it slightly decreasing anyway due to it's slightly tarnished brand), it doesn't need to maintain this illusion of values over profits anymore.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545651&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries.<p>Since 2005, though, good engineers have had <i>lots</i> of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And "Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is critical for them.</p><p>I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough that it doesn't really matter.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545926&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google.<p>Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...
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 <a href="vote?id=18546024&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation. Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x.<p>I think the boom in web &amp; mobile startups is basically over at this point, but there's a new boom in cryptocurrency &amp; AI startups that's just beginning, along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.
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 <a href="vote?id=18548333&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>This is only really true at startups. At a bigco, your on paper comp can be 250 or 350k annually in cash equivalents. That quickly generates wealth even if you are given only cash.<p>You're comparing 2 pre-ipo companies to Google and apple.
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 <p>Still true at BigCo. Total comp as a senior SWE at Google when I left (almost 5 years ago - it's more now) was something like ~$175K cash, ~$125K stocks + options, ~$50K bonus. With the 5x appreciation in stock that was going on while I was there, the stock portion could be worth $625K/year by the time it all vested. That's as employee 20,000+.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546224&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>"or have more growth potential"<p>Right, but this is different from having higher expected value, or higher likely-case value. Most people don't value compensation offers based on 'growth potential' (aka 'best case').</p><p>(I'm assuming you mean growth in the sense of 'growth in value of equity', based on your reply to another commenter)
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 <p>I was actually thinking of growth as in "professional growth" - getting promoted faster, having a chance to learn more skills, doing things you wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking of the equity growth in terms of "pay more".</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>OK, so I'm curious: do many companies in the bay area pay more for engineers (on either an expected value or a worst case basis) than Google does? Sure, some of those startups will make their early employees very very rich, but most will fizzle or fail.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>By reputation, Netflix pays more cash than Google. Like I said in the other subthread, though, the majority of your compensation in a tech company is in equity. The biggest price appreciation in equity is for younger, faster-growing companies. When I was at Google, that was largely Facebook; by the time I'd left, it was companies like AirBnB, Pinterest, Medium, and Snapchat (though I dunno how well folks at the latter 3 are doing nowadays).</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545737&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>There's something you've overlooked: companies are ultimately run by humans. Humans who make decisions at all levels of the hierarchy, in order to further their own personal priorities, even if it dramatically conflicts with the shareholders' goals of maximizing profits.<p>In some cases, the personal priorities can be personal advancement. We see this all the time when managers hire/promote their friends, sexually harass their subordinates, and make decisions on the basis of politics as opposed to technical/business merit.</p><p>And in other cases, the personal priorities can be moral values. Values such as promoting free speech, fighting censorship, protecting consumer rights, and avoiding layoffs.</p><p>The idea that every single decision taken by a company is perfectly optimized to maximize long term profits, is baseless. There simply does not exist any mechanism to monitor and enforce such a requirement. The shareholders have only one lever to pull: accept the current leadership team, imperfections and all. Or fire them and risk destroying the company in the resulting churn. This gives both the executives and employees tremendous leeway to prioritize values over profits, as long as they are good enough to not get fired.
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 <p>Shareholders can do more than just fire the management team, they can set meaningful objectives and tie management compensation to reaching them.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545984&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values.<p>Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their values than about making as much money as possible.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546086&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.<p>I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.
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 <a href="vote?id=18547498&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.<p>What an absurdly preposterous thing to say. Money is <i>a</i> motivator and a large one for many, many people, but it's ridiculous to call it the sole motivator for everyone.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546961&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care...<p>There are an awful lot of people in this very comment thread who would claim to be counterexamples to this. Are you going to say they're all lying or deluded about their own motivations?
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 <a href="vote?id=18545705&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p><i>Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term.</i><p>This might sound weird but some people (and companies) don't subscribe to the notion that money is the only thing that matters.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545801&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Well, a publicly traded company has the fiduciary obligation to make its shareholders money. So it really does not matter what the "the people" want, it matters what the shareholders want. In fact, the board and executive team are legally required to make the the decisions that make increase the value of the company. They could be in real trouble with the law if they knowingly do something that devalues the company.<p>It's not to say that the employees don't have some power. Shareholders may play along with their request while figuring out how to maximize the profits and avoid such road bumps as this in the future.</p><p>So in the end you have to weigh the wants/needs of the employees and how much money might be lost or gained if you go along with their demands vs how much money can be made or lost if you ignore them.</p><p>I could see a argument that upsetting your employees could lead to a value drop that might be greater than whatever contract they are protesting. But it is hard to judge, and it will often only be looked at quarter to quarter.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545868&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Nope.<p>Now if you give the impression that you are all bout money but don't act like it then shareholders can be rightfully upset. But if you clearly state your values and ambitions and shareholders don't like it? Then, sucks to be them! There is nothing more to it than that.</p><p><i>Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators. </i></p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits">https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...</a>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545964&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I am sorry, I think both you and Lynn Stout, are wrong, regardless of her credentials -- she sort of is making a name of her self by swing this sort of nonsense -- so her articles are self serving.<p>And yes, we can define shareholder value -- its the stock price. But I see your point and why I have talked about the grey area of <i>what is</i> the best move. But you would be hard pressed to find a group of shareholders who who all agree not taking big contracts is going to be the best move.
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 <p>It doesn't matter if the shareholders believe it is not the best move. It matters if the board believes it is the best move for the <i>long term</i> benefit of the company and its shareholders. The duty of loyalty does not require a board to do everything the shareholders want or to maximize short term profits. If a majority of the shareholders disagree they can vote to replace the board, but that doesn't mean the board hasn't met its fiduciary duty.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545995&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>If the companies value and ambition is to maximize the stock price then the stock price is a good metric. If the companies value is something else then stock price isn't really a good metric.<p>It will also attract shareholders that share those values and thus going against them will cause an uproar.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546044&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>It really depends on their charter. People don't park money in a company simply to have the stock value drop or stay the same -- with exception of companies who pay out dividends.<p>Most companies charters talk about their relationship and obligations to the shareholders -- people don't invest in companies that don't intend on increasing in value.
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 <p>Again, value doesn't have to be monetary. Shareholders has the right to expect return on their investment, yes. If the company delivers on their ambitions and values then that is the shareholders reward.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18549222&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I don't think we are going to agree any time soon. The law is messy and it seems different cases can be signed supporting both of our points.<p>Thanks for a civil disagreement and exchange.
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 <p>Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't expect that <i>all</i> (or even <i>most</i>) shareholders think that <i>only</i> money matters.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>If the stock market is as amoral as you think then it seems something ought to be done to the stock market. But I don't think most people would invest in something that goes starkly against their personal ethics, no matter how profitable. And if you regard following one's moral compass as just "virtue gaming" I'm not sure what to think.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Doesn't matter. Shareholders must do their research. If they don't subscribe to the values then they can either not buy or suit themselves.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545901&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>That is not how that works. A company -- with a few special exceptions and special charters -- ONLY goal is to increase value for this shareholders. A single shareholder with a non majority holding can sue if the company knowingly does something that causes the values of his shares to decrease -- even if the rest of the shareholders are okay with the loss because they agree with the sentiment.<p>There is some grey area along strategy short game vs long game, but a company's charter is to increase the value of its shareholders -- THE ONLY THING that literally matters for a publicly traded company*</p><p>* Some companies can be setup with a different charter that does not prioritize profit, but google and most of the publicly traded companies on the market today are not those. And it would be very hard to convert to such a company.
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 <p>How does a shareholder prove that it's not just a short term loss in value, and that the decision won't actually benefit the company in the long run?</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545459&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>Huh, that's an excellent point. When a company is so big and entrenched it doesn't need to seem like the nice guy anymore.<p>Perhaps similarly to anti-monopoly laws we should also have size caps on companies.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545624&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; we should also have size caps on companies<p>As a thought experiment, I've often wondered the best way to maintain the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow.</p><p>It's not clear it's simply growth, or whether it's profits. I wonder if a non-charity oriented non-profit would maintain a better corporate culture.
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 <a href="vote?id=18546351&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow.<p>It's more like regression to the mean; it gets harder to be different as you grow. Good companies get worse, bad companies better (just look at Uber's internal culture).
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 <p>Dunbar's Number, I believe, gives some insight. Basically, humans can only maintain about 150 relationships. As organizations grow personal relationships are replaced with rules and structures as a matter of necessity.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>Agreed. I suppose sociopaths can get away with more when there's so many people that the relationship/connections between everyone are weaker on average.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18545661&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>&gt; I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term.<p>Come on. A lot of people create startups to do something interesting that they're passionate about. Customers and profit merely serve these ends, not the other way around.
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 <a href="vote?id=18545684&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>What are some potential solutions here? Some form of intervention by the US government? I think many of us will agree that the sort of behavior these employees are speaking out against is at least unethical, and it also seems this "profits-over-values" behavior is a common one for large tech companies to gradually start engaging in. To your point, corporations in all sectors always do what makes the most economic sense, even if it means building internet censorship tech, dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, etc.<p>As a society which (hopefully) would like to have some sort of moral compass, how do we prevent large companies from seeking profit even at the expense of our freedoms/health/planet? It seems to me that if the punishment for unethical behavior is economically "less" than the costs or potential losses associated with acting in a good, ethical way, companies will continue to do what we're seeing them do now. My intuition is that capitalism (in its current Western incarnation) can't function without some strict controls to protect what our societies value most.</p><p>Or do we simply value profit over everything else? If so, that's kind of depressing, but I get the sense that <i>most</i> people don't think this way.
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 <p>The US government? I find it hard to believe they would intervene with china unless they plan on using it as leverage in order to gain economic standing. However, seeing as google is already censoring content via prioritizing search results with favored websites before relevant websites and since the government is always happy to find new outlets to get personal information from its own and foreign citizens. I don't see this as being stoppable unless you make your own company and start competing with Google.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <p>The tech sector has always been ripe for co-operatives and profit sharing. Politically speaking libertarian attitudes were the popular norm in most tech culture but now small co-opts could become the next phase for many small tech companies. That could be a first small step.</p></div></td></tr>
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 <a href="vote?id=18546350&amp;how=up&amp;goto=item%3Fid%3D18542830"></a> </td><td><p>I think it's always a combination of factors. Unless you subscribe to the theory that every CEO is 100% sociopath.<p>There's the consideration of true values. Then there's the consideration of lost opportunities from following those values. Then there's the cold consideration of the money gained from PR boost due to following the values. Then there's the "game theory" consideration of altogether dying in the marketplace if your competition don't act on those values.</p><p>I think the best thing for all of us to do on the outside is to create a culture where every company benefits from the PR boost. Google executives are one concentrated interest, separate from Microsoft, etc. The employees, I reckon, are not as financially motivated (i.e. don't stand to lose _as_ much individually) and can afford to advocate their values. It seems to me (I'll phrase it conservatively, since I'm just throwing out ideas here) that Google employees should make friends with Microsoft employees to make sure they raise the same noise on their end as well. Make it okay for each company to gain (monetarily or otherwise) from good PR, and make it less profitable for all of their competitors to sell out.
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  We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly ( medium.com/googlersagainstdragonfly )            
 1652 points by daveowei on Nov 27, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 840 comments             
               
               
               
 nimbius on Nov 27, 2018 | next [–]              
               
 Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it comes to business.            
               
 Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea as a "service center" for municipalities that purchased MRAP combat vehicles for their police departments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP         
               
 We all, especially the veterans I work with, hated this idea. MRAP's are for combat, not police work, and have a dangerous propensity to roll over in city streets or escalate already violent situations. 14 of us sent a signed letter to the owner and senior management detailing our major concerns and heard nothing back for about a month. Then out of the blue we got a call for a meeting with 3-4 very senior managers at a local irish bar.        
               
 They paid for dinner and tried to explain how the business would be extremely lucrative. we would all see major bonuses, we could hire more workers, and grow the business faster than just large truck repair. It took 3 very emotional hours, but we eventually talked down a handful of people from making a very wrong decision.         
               
 for a week after, we were all sort of stunned that it actually worked at all. Tire cages meant for MRAP tires were cut up and turned into random parts holders, or as new hangers for air lines...one even replaced our mailbox post.           
               
               
 alangibson on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | next [–]              
               
 You deserve massive credit for striking a blow against this madness. A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.           
               
 I say that fully realizing that not everyone is in the financial position where they can risk a fight with their employer. You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.            
               
               
 shareometry on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.            
               
 I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our civilization is facing might be greatly improved.           
               
               
 kiliantics on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.             
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.             
               
 The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations. They don't need a contract at all.         
               
 What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through direct democracy. It does nothing unless the employer is doing something bad wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the employer concedes or they strike.          
               
 Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.          
               
               
 cultus on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already.             
               
 Software one of the highest margins of any industry. They can afford to pay more, especially since they are constantly whining about "shortages" of tech workers.            
               
 http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...             
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > They can afford to pay more              
               
 Which is why they already do pay more than other industries.              
               
 The best argument you have against that is the anti-poaching shenanigans they've engaged in -- but that's already illegal, so the answer there is a courtroom rather than a union.            
               
               
 ygjb on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 No, it really isn't. The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern, and be willing to risk their reputation. With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.          
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern             
               
 How is that different with a union?              
               
 > and be willing to risk their reputation              
               
 Class action suit or submit evidence confidentially to the attorney general.             
               
 > With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.            
               
 If Apple won't hire Google employees then the Google employees can retaliate against Apple by not working for them?             
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > they're compensated fine already.              
               
 I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.             
               
 Yes, having a higher salary would be ridiculous in a lot of these cases, but we should moderate that through legislation that benefits the most people - not by a public company further lining the coffers of its owners.           
               
 Apple and Google particularly have a lot of cash just lying around, and that cash is the result of the employee's efforts, and they deserve it. I think if we think their salaries are too high in that case, we need to talk about better taxation systems.           
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.             
               
 They have massive cash reverses because the tax laws have encouraged that rather than paying it to shareholders as dividends. And that level of return is necessary because of the nature of the industry -- you have to spend millions of dollars trying to create the next tech giant before you know whether you've succeeded or not, and most of the time you haven't. The returns to success have to be enough to overcome the high failure rate.        
               
 Most of the employees aren't taking the same level of risk. If you work for a company for five years taking home a six figure salary and that company fails, you don't have to give back your salary and in a few months you're working for another company making the same amount of money.          
               
 If you think you can do better on your own, risking your own time and money instead of taking outside investment, go right ahead -- but then shouldn't it be you who gets more of the reward if you succeed rather than the people you hire in after you're already an established success?          
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.          
               
 It feels like what you're saying is that the risk of failing in a startup is massive enough for a founder that they deserve literally billions of dollars.            
               
 Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? Are you saying that because a founder may go bankrupt they are entitled to thousands of times more money? Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? Could you help me understand what makes you think that?      
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.          
               
 Of course, because the level of risk is different. $100,000 guaranteed is worth more than a <50% chance at $200,000, much less a <1% chance. A very high reward is inherently necessary to offset the very low probability of major success, otherwise people aren't going to do it.          
               
 > Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee?            
               
 The less than one in a thousand chance of making that much.              
               
 > Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee?            
               
 There are many ways to turn a thousand dollars into a 0.1% chance at a million dollars. Then 99.9% of the time you lose the thousand dollars -- and it's your time/money, not the bank's. Nobody is going to give you an unsecured loan to gamble with.           
               
 But if you bet on your own horse at 1000:1 odds and win, how are you not entitled to the proceeds?             
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?            
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?            
               
 The amount they mutually agree upon. The employee wouldn't agree to work indefinitely for no pay.             
               
 The high compensation of successful founders is actually one of the things keeping salaries up, because any of the salaried employees has the option to quit and found their own company. The existing company has to pay well enough to compete with that -- because if what they're paying wasn't actually competitive with that alternative given the relative risk between them, why would anybody accept the salary?        
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 That'd be all very reasonable if we lived in a world where Apple and Google weren't colluding to keep wages down.             
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 30, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Which is why there are laws against that, which are actively being enforced against them.             
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 30, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 So you both think people are being paid reasonably and that Google and Apple are colluding with one another.             
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 30, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 1) The collusion has presumably stopped now that they're caught.             
               
 2) It is possible for both to be true at the same time, because the industry is much larger than Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe. Even if they didn't compete with each other, they still have to outbid Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. -- and pay enough to prevent the workers leaving to found their own companies. It's not unreasonable to expect that the effect on wages was marginal even when it was occurring.        
               
               
 tomlock on Dec 1, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 You're having to make a lot of presumptions to have to believe these employees are being paid fairly.             
               
               
 pravinva on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees. Employees compete with each other for salaries. Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices. By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable. Even Marx got this part correct       
               
               
 tomlock on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees.            
               
 Incorrect, that value is only sustained and increased by the efforts of company workers.             
               
 > Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices.             
               
 Incorrect. Companies that don't have significant oversight in the form of government regulation or strong unions tend to collude to keep salaries low - which is exactly what has happened in the valley, and has meant that these companies have gigantic cash reserves that they aren't leveraging to hire the best talent.          
               
 > By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable.             
               
 No, I'm merely saying that the differences and risks suffered by investors and founders versus regular salaried employees are not a justification for the sometimes ridiculous difference between the compensation of the two.           
               
               
 kiliantics on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 If tech workers form a union, I'm sure it will look very different to the industrial worker's unions of the 20th century. And so it should, the needs of today are very different. The thing is, apart from the remaining unions from that time, most unions already look very different to that model so this is not really a good argument against unionising.         
               
 The other thing you aren't taking into account is the fact that this boom in the tech industry isn't guaranteed to continue forever. There will come a time, maybe pretty soon, where tech workers will become as precarious as those steel workers and autoworkers eventually became. Big tech companies are already putting a lot of effort and resources into educating the next generation of programmers to provide a more competitive labour market and drive down salaries. There's already talk of a coming recession, where I'm sure the belts will be tightened and people will be laid off. When we have a union, we will be more protected from the inevitable exploitation in such scenarios.    
               
 The temporarily embarassed unicorn founders among us need to realise that we are the creators of all the value in these companies and, collectively, we have the power to influence their direction and impact on society. We can help secure not only our own rights as workers but also have the power to change society at large and secure better standards of living for all workers (or non-workers). That's why these recent actions by Google employees have been so important. They can set a precedent for how other companies and even states can safely act in future, without fearing repercussions from their most valuable resource - the workers.    
               
               
 ineedasername on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues? How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?          
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues?             
               
 The technology needed to let people submit proposals and let other people vote on them is on the level what individuals do over a weekend as adjunct to a side project.            
               
 > How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?            
               
 Why do you need to force them to? By definition the majority will already agree, and then many in the minority would participate out of solidarity because that's the whole point of joining a union to begin with. You don't need 100.0%, a large majority is quite sufficient in general. And anything that actually required 100.0% is already lost, because then they could pay off the cheapest defector or contract it out.        
               
               
 ineedasername on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.            
               
 And your picture of humam behavior is all too rose-colored glasses if it's having all members of a minority vote just go along out of solidarity when it's non-binding. I've seen unions vote on issues, and it's often contentious with emotions running high on all sides. If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have. Sometimes they try to anyway.        
               
               
 AnthonyMouse on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.            
               
 This is a major problem for country-level populations. For corporations it typically comes pre-solved by the corporation itself, because each employee would have a company email address or Active Directory account etc. that could be used for authentication. (In theory the corporation could illegally tamper with the results that way, but the tampering would be immediately obvious to the person whose vote was changed.)        
               
 > If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have.             
               
 Because they're using the union for the wrong stuff. A lot of the votes would be for things like accepting a policy that gives raises to only senior people. No doubt the junior people being screwed over by that policy would strenuously object when they're the 49%, especially when being in the union deprives them of the opportunity to negotiate something else as an individual.         
               
 But how many Google employees have that kind of personal stake in a question like whether to censor search results in China?             
               
               
 tracker1 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Unions are rarely formed unless conditions are particularly bad. One upon a time in this country, the national guard with machine guns might have been called out to clear a strike/protest. Most people are very happy being ignorant of their surroundings or influence of.          
               
 The most I've ever done is threaten to quit if a project for the RIAA was accepted by my employer when I was invited into the pre-pitch meeting. It just depends on a specific case.            
               
               
 kiliantics on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I'm part of a very privileged workforce and our situation, while not great, was a lot better than the average worker. We still managed to form a union. It can be done.            
               
               
 petee on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I wish more people knew that workers fought and died for those rights.             
               
 Its one thing to say maybe you'll quit, or skip your pay check for change, its another to actually put your life on the line for what you know is right.            
               
               
 pompousprick on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Since China is known for its countless human rights violations, Are these Google employees also going to...             
               
 1. Give up their Chinese-Manufactured iPhones/Android Phones? Tablets? Laptops and workstations??             
               
 2. Give up watching movies/shows on their Chinese-manufactured TVs??             
               
 3. Stop wearing Chinese-made iwatches/fitbits/etc.??              
               
 4. Boycott silicon valley startups that have accepted chinese investments?             
               
 5. Boycott every product by US/Foreign company (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, GE, Disney, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, etc.) doing business in China?            
               
               
 colordrops on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 There's a difference between boycotting products made in China and protesting against building technologies that enable dictatorial regimes. They do not deserve to be conflated.            
               
               
 derangedHorse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 They're not "enabling" a dictatorial regime, they're just following the laws of a foreign government. Making a censored search engine isn't "supporting" the government, it's just abiding by it.           
               
               
 PeterisP on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 A censored search engine is a direct instrument of oppression.              
               
 Contracting to build a censored search engine is the moral equivalent of contracting to build a barbed wire fence around a concentration camp.            
               
 You're being an active participant that directly assists in making that oppression happen by building tools required for the actual act of oppression, as opposed to building something that merely done in the same country.           
               
               
 sullyj3 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 "You're not allowed to do anything good ever if you're not already a maximally good person. That would make you a hypocrite, which is way worse than someone who doesn't do anything to help in the first place."           
               
               
 derangedHorse on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I don't understand the context in which you're posting this quote. pompousprick's argument was that we shouldn't morally prosecute these companies as supporting dictatorships just because they do business in China.           
               
               
 jpster on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Bargaining power. (Organized) working humans have it...but it will erode as robots and algorithms take on more and more work. An argument for striking while the iron is hot. (No pun intended.)           
               
               
 profalseidol on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Historically, whenever there's advancement in technology. Powers that control the current will get challenged, and so far, it has been for the better for the majority.            
               
 We've gone a long way from being serfs who have almost no rights, even the right to read and write.. to citizens who can communicate via the internet.            
               
 Advancement in technology will/have make current powers obsolete. Robots and algorithms have been taking more work since the stone age.            
               
 Better tools, means more surplus, means more time to think critically, more time to comment over the internet, or read books.             
               
 The only problem is that we probably won't see any observable improvement in one lifetime. It is however, also very possible that the incumbent powers put an end to our civilization. Hopefully enough people like these Google employees, Snowden, Assange will be there to stop fascism.          
               
               
 kiliantics on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I think technology has allowed power to become more and more concentrated. Never before has one state had the power to annihilate entire cities, or land entire armies worth of troops at any point on earth within 24 hours. Never before have large and powerful organisations and governments had the capability to read every word that every person sends to each other and track their every motion around the city with cameras.        
               
 Yes there is more surplus, but where is that going? People in developed societies are working more hours now than they were 100 years ago. Wealth inequality has risen to higher levels than ever existed in modern society. I wish it gave me more time to read books...          
               
 We definitely need to be more engaged in resisting these dangerous tendencies, particularly with recent political developments. I think organised tech workers have immense power. If Google employees could formalise their current actions and then even unite with other groups across other companies, they would be a force to be reckoned with.         
               
               
 Lkjhmnbv on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Corruption is a bottom up process.              
               
 It only works if everyone goes along.              
               
 Be brave and stand up for yourself, what do you have to lose?              
               
               
 RangerScience on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 - if they're willing              
               
 + if they're willing and able              
               
 FTFY              
               
               
 jkaplowitz on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Agreed. But this many Google employees acting collectively, including some very senior and long-tenured Googlers, meet that additional condition.            
               
 (Disclosure: having worked at Google I know some names on that list personally, and respect them greatly. I haven't worked at Google since early 2015.)            
               
               
 taude on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 But this was 139 out of 88K employees [1]. Doesn't seem like that many? How do we interpret the other 87K+?             
               
 [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...             
               
               
 jkaplowitz on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 It's been a long time since my statistics and econometrics courses, but one conclusion that's definitely unwarranted would be to assume that the rest disagree with the signatories. People who speak up on an issue will always be a small fraction of the larger population of people who share the same opinion.          
               
               
 nothrabannosir on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.           
               
 If that were true, then their silence can definitely not be construed as any kind of tacit agreement, or even disinterest.             
               
 How many Chinese citizens (or people otherwise susceptible to this purported pressure) work at Google?             
               
 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543164              
               
               
 ardy42 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.           
               
 Even as an American with no family in China, I'd be slightly worried that putting my name on such a list might prevent me from getting a visa to visit the PRC. They've shown a willingness to factor politics into visa decisions:           
               
 https://www.ft.com/content/b1bd2aec-e333-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c...             
               
 That guy didn't even express a stance, like these Google employees have, he just happened to be the acting leader of the club when a speaker the PRC opposed was scheduled to give a talk.            
               
               
 RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.           
               
               
 ardy42 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.           
               
 That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't see why the USG would want to sanction them, especially since this letter has nothing to do with the USG.            
               
 If they're discouraged from signing due to their US visa status, the mechanism that makes more sense is that they fear Google could fire them and it would take them longer than 60 days to line up another job that could sponsor them.           
               
               
 rhizome on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 What is the risk, that their status would be changed in response to their involvement? If so, would there be an officially articulated basis?            
               
               
 int_19h on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 They can get fired. If they're still an H-1B, that basically requires them to leave the country immediately.             
               
 There's a short grace period in practice (usually, and this isn't official) if you have another job all lined up that is ready to sponsor you. But if you were an H-1B applying for a green card via your employer, this basically resets your position in line, unless you're in late stages of the process. And keep in mind that the wait is measured in years for many countries (e.g. for India, >9 years right now unless you're in the "exceptional" category).       
               
               
 samstave on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 It would be really interesting stat to know how well heeled the 139 are vs the 88k who can afford to financially bacjk up their principles...            
               
 Out of the 88k how many dont care, how many cant afford to care, how many are looking to profit off not caring.             
               
               
 dylan604 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out. Don't know the accuracy of that, but I've taken it to heart and have been willing to be one of the first to speak out on multiple occasions at multiple jobs. Sometimes things change for the better. Sometimes things don't change, and I force a change by leaving. If nobody speaks up, then the status quo wins.       
               
               
 ardy42 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out.            
               
 I've heard this before. I'm not sure if it's a statistic or just a saying. What's the standard formulation?             
               
               
 dylan604 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I could see it being considered both. I've also heard it applied to congress critters and senators. For every person that contacts them, they equate it to equaling a certain percentage of the people they represent. I've heard the weight of a phone call vs hand written letter vs email are different, but that was some time ago. It makes sense that when a small number/percentage of the people make contact out of a group in the thousands that some sort of statistical method would be used. These representatives should pay more attention the people as that is who puts them in their job. It doesn't really apply to corporations as they will just replace the squeaky wheels even if it's not the best thing to do morally/socially. They only care about this quarter's earnings. It's the rare company that will fix the squeak rather than replacing it, and they should be highlighted when it happens.
               
               
 rhacker on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Yet 1 person in that company could kill it in 3 seconds even if this didn't happen. That's 1 in 88K.             
               
 My wife and I once went around and petitioned all 100 people that lived in a condo complex for a specific issue. About 80 people signed. We didn't even need to present the signature sheet - the one hold out on the board we had to convince had caved after learning about the efforts - not knowing the percentage of signers (only we had the number).         
               
               
 taude on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I'm more thinking from the side of all the other employees who either don't care, or have different perspetives on how well the Chinese government might or might not be doing with their tactics. I find the public internet form, especially sites like HN don't promote as much discussion from all angles as we think. I'm sure that anyone from Google who spoke up for moving into China would absolutely be skewered on here. Yet, I know they exist.        
               
               
 kbuchanan on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 See Nassim Taleb's minority rule: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...             
               
               
 alangibson on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 The activation energy to mobilize people is incredibly high, especially on issues that don't directly effect them. And even then it's still huge. People will always debate exactly why, but it does mean that the vast majority of people will remain mostly politically inert.          
               
               
 jimbokun on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 So far.              
               
               
 alangibson on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I think I covered ableness in the second paragraph. For a large and growing number of people in the US, taking on that fight could easily mean homelessness. I don't hardly consider them able on grounds of self preservation.           
               
               
 hcnews on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 It's Gandhi and not Ghandi. (Couldn't resist correcting, sorry).             
               
               
 mandeepj on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > Ghandi              
               
 Maybe, you meant to say - Gandhi [0] ?              
               
 [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi              
               
               
 profalseidol on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.              
               
 If we're talking about Ghandi, the man that fought for Indian rights (but not for Africans and in fact was a racist against them). And that is probably for the best:            
               
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTxNSU2k6l4              
               
               
 ultrasounder on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 "You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.". You meant Gandhi.              
               
               
 ameister14 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 No, he meant ગાંધી              
               
               
 alangibson on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 No, I meant Bapu              
               
               
 komali2 on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Damn, good for y'all for sticking to your values. How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?            
               
               
 tokai on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 >How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?             
               
 Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.             
               
               
 apostacy on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Google is well aware of the spyware that the Chinese govt is using to oppress it's ethnic minorities, but they don't lift a finger to thwart it. They don't blacklist the app that the government requires Muslims in Xinjiang to have on their phones at all time[1]. They could easily blacklist it.          
               
 How far is Google willing to go to be friends with China? Mass detainment and ethnic cleansing are well within the realm of possibility, especially in the likely event of an economic crisis.            
               
 Will Google help sniff out their Anne Franks? Imagine trying to operate an underground railroad against the full force of Google. There are so many ways that machine learning and modern private surveillance can determine things like if there are extra uncounted people living in an area.          
               
 If Beijing did decide to solve the Uyghur problem, would Google cover for them and purge search queries?             
               
 No, this is not at all hyperbolic or reaching. American corporations did business with our enemies right up until they were forced to stop during WWII. American machines have been used to commit horrific atrocities. And read Chinese history. Read about what China has done as recently as a few decades ago.          
               
 I'm glad to see Google employees taking a break from their virtue pageantry to actually take a stand on something that matters, finally.            
               
 [1]: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...             
               
               
 BurningFrog on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Here is a thought for you:              
               
 If Google actually were to do anything to help they Anne Franks of China, do you think they would announce it to the world to debate on HN, or do you think they would do it in secret?            
               
               
 apostacy on Dec 2, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Perhaps. But "Maybe Google is just pretending to be evil" does not give me much comfort. Especially as I have friends who are ethnic minorities in SE Asia.            
               
               
 AlexCoventry on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I'm sure they're unhappy about the dragonfly publicity, so I don't understand the point you're making.             
               
               
 wiz21c on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 this 100%. The business made a business decision : either veteran, that is, most valuable assets get mad and all sort of problems affecting productivty/quality happen or, a few not-yet-realized business opportunities disappears.           
               
 That was very pragmatic. Both sides wins.              
               
               
 grecy on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [42 more]              
               
 > Pretty bold              
               
 It's interesting you would label this as such.              
               
 In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer?           
               
 If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else.             
               
 In the year 2018 I would hope it's very much not bold to do so.             
               
               
 PhasmaFelis on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Publicly calling out your employer is bold anywhere. Perhaps less so in countries like the US where that sort of speech is protected, and in sectors like tech where the speakers are likely to be well-off and not fungible, but doing this sort of thing publicly always puts you at risk of losing your job (for "unrelated performance reasons") and of being quietly blacklisted by future employers (for "poor culture fit" or any other easy excuse).        
               
               
 rifung on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer?           
               
 Free speech only applies to the government though? Your employer is still free to fire you.             
               
 Sure you won't be put in jail but for most people losing their job still certainly affects their livelihood.             
               
               
 x220 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Free speech is a value, not just a legal right.              
               
               
 AlexCoventry on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Corporations are explicitly tyrannies. Check out Corporate Confidential for a flavor of what a typical corporate employee could expect for signing a letter like this.            
               
               
 projectramo on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Not to be cynical, but did another company take over that work for them? Did the police get their MRAPs?             
               
               
 Benjammer on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 This is a problem that my employer faces. We have a strong concept of corporate responsibility, and plenty of opportunity for employee pushback, but we repeatedly see our decisions simply subverted by competitors who don't have any sense of morals and just go where the money is. It becomes a nasty tradeoff where you think about building/doing things that don't feel good, just to maintain a position to have a positive influence on _other_ areas, where a competitor might simply act without morals everywhere. It's not fun to think about these things in a market with bad incentives.     
               
               
 refurb on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Wait, because your competitors will maintain MRAPs “they have no sense of morals”?             
               
 Your morals are your own? Why do you insist on imposing them on others?             
               
               
 Mankrik on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I get what you mean and it's a case by case basis, if people didn't try and push any morals we would all live in vacuums where all we have is the law to tell us what is _right_.            
               
 A lot of people have no problem with their countries governments manufacturing and/or selling arms to dictatorships that inflict harm on innocents and supply extremists e.g. UK-Saudi arms trading. As far as some are concerned the UK is just doing what another country may do instead.          
               
               
 ABCLAW on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Because that's the only way to solve moral co-ordination problems?             
               
 If you leave a morally odious contract on the table (lets say it's cutting up human babies for baby veal) knowing your competitors will take the project, enrich themselves, expand, and develop the capacity to engage in larger, even more odious business, then what's the proper course of action?          
               
 Do you cut up babies because fuck morals? Or do you try to get no one to cut up babies? What if you have imperfect information and aren't certain if your competition would do it? What if they have imperfect information about your intentions and decide to take the deal purely on that basis?          
               
 Should be straightforward to recognize how corrosive this cycle gets.             
               
 EDIT: some people seem to be upset with the baby example. Just exchange that with anything you find clearly morally unacceptable. Like selling reverse mortgages to elderly people with limited capacity, or signing people up for ponzi schemes or adding intentionally addictive additives to a harmful consumable product, etc.         
               
               
 Benjammer on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I mean, all I'm trying to say is that most companies are subject to the competition pressure in their market regardless of internal employees' morals, and it becomes hard to justify "standing up for your beliefs" in a business sense that isn't just "shut down the business or change industries," if there are inherent moral issues in the current industry.         
               
 When I say "have no sense of morals," I'm talking about competitors who were acquired by large PE firms a decade or more ago and do not have any internal discussions about the morals of what their employees are building/maintaining. They operate entirely by asking what clients want and then trying to build what they can of those requests.         
               
 I'm mostly talking about incentives and market pressures, not "imposing morals on others" or other such emotional nonsense that you are reading into here.            
               
               
 senderista on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Hence regulation.              
               
               
 rashomon on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 If that one employer made it public that they chose not to deal with MRAP repair, I would wholly choose to do business with them and spread the word that they have are a responsible corporate citizen like wildfire.           
               
               
 vkou on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 And you'd have half your city boycott it because they refuse to support the boys in blue.             
               
               
 pcdoodle on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Great story dude. We can't pretend more people don't think like this. People working in and around corporations can make a difference by talking about it with other people. Thanks for sharing!           
               
               
 misiti3780 on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Great story - random question --- but how did you find out about HN? (I'm just asking because you implied you don't work in software, etc.)            
               
               
 jgrahamc on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Well, his profile says... "Linux fan".              
               
               
 misiti3780 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 ah i missed that. thanks              
               
               
 amatecha on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Thank you for standing up for what's right... :) If only more individuals & businesses stood up against militarism in our communities!            
               
               
 AndyMcConachie on Nov 28, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 The key here is you acted together. Individuals acting alone have very little bargaining power. But once employees start acting together with a single purpose their power gets very difficult to ignore.           
               
 Whether people believe unions are a good idea or not, the key is to organize into something that allows people to work together and find common ground to address common problems.            
               
               
 Crashbat on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Well done buddy, it's great to hear about people taking a principled stand, especially when money's involved.             
               
               
 discordance on Nov 28, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 It's not just about the equipment the police force use, it's also about the training. Given military equipment, the police force will also get military training matching the equipment they get. Military knowledge and tactics should not be used used to police a civilian population.          
               
 Thank you for standing up to this.              
               
               
 docker_up on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Thank you. We literally need more people exactly like you in this world. The militarization of the police force is something that started with George W., continued unabated with Obama, and will probably be accelerated under Trump, and it is anti-democracy in my opinion.          
               
               
 Diederich on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Thank you for sharing this; the world needs many more people who actually live and act on their ethical boundaries.             
               
               
 ryanmcbride on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Thanks for standing up              
               
               
 DINKDINK on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Thank you for committing yourself to non-aggression.              
               
               
 karpodiem on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Wow. Great story, thank you for sharing this.              
               
               
 idontpost on Nov 28, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 You are the heroes we need.              
               
               
 kome on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Beautiful and inspiring story.              
               
               
 choot on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Wow! So basically, someone managed to risk police offier lives with their ill thought out plan and people on HN are applauding them?            
               
 What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?             
               
               
 idontpost on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Gun control legislation.              
               
               
 carapace on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?             
               
 The Army?              
               
               
 dane-pgp on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I wonder how this policy would interact with something like the Posse Comitatus Act.             
               
 Would it effectively require applying the label "terrorist" or "national security threat" to any criminal who shows they are prepared to use lethal force against a law enforcement officer?            
               
               
 carapace on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Yeah, life isn't "Die Hard", if someone is using "high caliber armor piercing guns" against the local PD, then classifying them as "domestic terrorists" and calling in specialists to deal with them seems appropriate to me.           
               
 Police have to deal with enough crap that they shouldn't be expected to handle paramilitary situations as well, is what I'm saying.            
               
 As a counterexample, remember the "Bundy standoff"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff That's the kind of situation where the Posse Comitatus Act means you don't send in the Army. However, if they had shot a bunch of people I'm sure they would have had to face at least the National Guard, eh?          
               
               
 Puer on Nov 27, 2018 | prev | next [–]              
               
 I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let the recruiter know this because I believe it's important that they know. I'm curious if anyone else on HN has had similar experiences.      
               
               
 lostgame on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | next [–]              
               
 Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.            
               
 While I think the average developer has a more negative opinion of Google these days, for years they have been considered one of the best places to work in the world.            
               
 I know if I told my parents, for instance, I had done what you did, they probably would've called me an idiot. :P They just know Google is one of the biggest tech companies in the world, they don't see a lot of their especially recent practices as bad.           
               
 To say 'no, thank you, I'd rather not as I don't agree with the company's practices' indicates a kind of moral standing I wish more people would confidently have. It shows you're taking a personal stand against what you believe to be corruption, and that's awesome.          
               
 Rock on!              
               
               
 giobox on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.            
               
 While it is a nice enough gesture, let's not kid ourselves that this was some difficult selfless act on the part of the OP. Apologies to the OP if I have misinterpreted their earlier post but:           
               
 > I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me             
               
 This statement often becomes true by virtue of having a reasonable computer science qualification and living in the Bay Area - eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email. Actually converting an outreach from a recruiter to you know, an actual concrete job offer at Google, is another matter entirely.         
               
 If declining recruiters is the new (very low!) bar for high minded civic engagement, I'm accidentally a grizzled activist on the front line.            
               
               
 mandevil on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 You don't just have to live in the Bay Area to get those emails, at the very least anywhere in the US you will get them.             
               
 Source: have never lived in the Bay Area. Have a large number of those emails in my gmail.             
               
               
 glenneroo on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I live outside the US and have also received recruiter emails for Google offices throughout the EU.             
               
               
 hkmurakami on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 People knowing about OP’s decision, was those in his social circle, makes a profound difference if compounded by others.             
               
               
 axiom92 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 >eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email.             
               
 This. I have said 'no, thanks' to FAANG in the last 3 months because my life is in a bit of a flux right now. It was a bit more than a simple 'no, thanks' in case of Facebook, but that's a story for another thread :)           
               
               
 NullPrefix on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Post it, it's relevant              
               
               
 senderista on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 OTOH, AMZN and MSFT have never even hesitated to accommodate the Chinese govt's demands. Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances? (I don't work there.)           
               
               
 tomlagier on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Dont forget AAPL! (who hesitated, but ended up capitulating on the iCloud front).             
               
 I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.             
               
               
 kodablah on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > who hesitated              
               
 Source? I was not aware there was any hesitation or even disagreement from Apple's side. Is there an Apple statement saying they disagree w/ Chinese government requests similar to the statements saying they disagree w/ US government requests? In their absence, is it safe to assume they agree since they have shown that when they disagree they make public statements?         
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 They didn't really hesitate, they just dodged questions. Apple moved their user data and keystore to local datacenters in China [1]. Apple even updated their TOS and forced their Chinese users to accept (or drop service) to reflect this.           
               
 As of July, these datacenters were nationalized [2], giving the Chinese government access to all Apple user data.             
               
 It took only two years to go from refusing the FBI request for one user to handing over the encryption keys to millions of users.            
               
 [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...             
               
 [2] https://mashable.com/article/china-government-apple-icloud-d...             
               
               
 retromario on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 fyi neither of your links work.              
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Fixed - thanks.              
               
               
 Aeolun on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Not selling out loses all meaning the moment you do.              
               
               
 kodablah on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances?             
               
 If you wanted to do software work for a company that didn't kowtow to Chinese government demands, chances are 99% of jobs are available to you. Does that mean they could if they would? Unknown, and since regimes change with frequency you can't rely on stated principles, only actions.          
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Would you still work for Amazon? Microsoft? Apple? Facebook?              
               
 Because they are actually in China and give concessions to the government.             
               
               
 yholio on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 The idea that a foreign corporation has a duty to break Chinese law with regards to web filtering is very problematic, if that's what you mean by "give concessions to the government". How far should such a corporation go with breaking the law, is tax evasion against the Chinese state morally acceptable, since those taxes might be used for oppression?         
               
 We should recognize here a very thin line between respecting the Chinese law and actively collaborating to subvert human rights - because the law is defined by an authoritarian regime with a long history of human right abuses.           
               
 That being said, surely you cannot change Chinese law from outside China, and if respecting it's current iteration is not in itself an unacceptable violation of human rights, it stands to reason that expanding in China at least forces the government to stick to it's own laws under the threat of a public exit and protest if unlawful pressures are made. It puts ethical companies in a position where they can nudge the Chinese towards ethical behavior - or at least very publicly denounce unethical demands.       
               
               
 khuey on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 You can't change Chinese law from inside China either. The only winning move is not to play.             
               
               
 maccam94 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Are there any legal restrictions on what the Chinese government can ask websites to censor? I am not aware of any, so I don't see where there would be an opportunity to protest.            
               
               
 yholio on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I believe it's already established that operating in China means responding to all censorship requests. Nonetheless, there are still many things an ethical company could refuse: access to the private searches and information of an individual without a due legal process, collecting sensitive information altogether knowing that it's fair game for the state, knowingly alter or influence results to promote official narratives and propaganda, knowingly use or profit from the proceeds of labor camps, underage or other forms of work exploitation; and many, many more, which are surely not positively codified in any Chinese law, yet are widespread.    
               
               
 diminoten on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I don't think it's fair to try and nitpick people's ethical decisions like this.             
               
 Imagine yes, this person would work for Amazon even though they're in China too. Does that make them not working for Google because they're in China a bad choice? I don't think so.            
               
 Are we really prepared to tear everyone down who isn't absolute in their morality?             
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 A moral inconsistency is not a nitpick when it's the entire industry.             
               
 Their logic makes Google a better employer than Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and any other tech company currently operating in China. Saying they spurned Google because the company was considering going to China is disengenious, since the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.          
               
               
 ardy42 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Saying they spurned Google...the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.             
               
 There is life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble. If you refuse to work at Google, it doesn't mean that you're then obligated to work at Amazon or Microsoft, etc.            
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.            
               
 If we're looking at it in that lens, then GP's problem isn't with Google, but with large tech companies in general because that's the industry standard.            
               
               
 ardy42 on Nov 29, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.            
               
 The life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble isn't just "small-town software shop[s]." There's a lot more diversity than that, and to conceive of the industry in that way is too parochial.            
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 30, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 How many of those companies can be considered substitute employers to Google? That offer the same level of compensation?             
               
 That is what an economic substitute is. SMB tech companies typically don't compare.             
               
               
 diminoten on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 You're saying his moral position is invalid because he doesn't apply it consistently, and that is not true, and also possibly harmful.            
               
               
 bduerst on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I said the moral position is disingenuous because it is both inconsistent and opposite to what he is describing, when considering all things related.            
               
               
 diminoten on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 But each "related" decision is different, and there is no accurate generalization, by the very nature of what a generalization is.            
               
               
 int_19h on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 There's a big difference between operating a business in China in general, and operating a business that necessarily involves implementing their surveillance infrastructure.            
               
               
 Buge on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 And Bing doesn't, while Dragonfly does?              
               
               
 int_19h on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I honestly have no idea. Last I heard, Bing is blocked in China, which I assume means that there are things that come in its search result that Chinese government doesn't like.            
               
 But Dragonfly [ostensibly] went well beyond just censoring results, in that it implemented specific tools like linking search requests with phone numbers identifying people who made those requests. That's straight-up aiding and abetting oppressing people - political opposition, for example, or even unorganized dissenters. I can't believe we are even seriously talking about whether this is okay or not.        
               
               
 NamTaf on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 bing.com redirects to a Chinese version of Bing, which prioritises Chinese sites.             
               
 I have no basis for saying this beyond not knowing how they could do this otherwise, but I would assume that they must censor results to exist there. I don't know if they go further, such as you describe Dragonfly plans to do.           
               
               
 komali2 on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I sympathize with your position, especially regarding Taiwan, but I wonder if your early rejection was as effective as employees rebelling? One need not take the most effective route, but given the size of Google, when I was in a similar position to yours I justified it by saying if I got an offer, I'd make it very clear I'd want nothing to do with the censorship work for the exact reason you listed.        
               
               
 CobrastanJorji on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Both are good. I'm sure Google carefully tracks why candidates decline jobs at Google, and if enough of them say "I can't work with you because you're doing specific evil thing X," then it becomes more and more worth it not to do X.           
               
 Similarly, if internal morale is in decline and reports come back saying that it's because of X, that also has a real (and quite possibly quantifiable) cost.            
               
               
 gurkendoktor on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Do you think that recruiters spend time forwarding your response to someone at Google who actually cares? I usually decline jobs/projects outright, but I wonder if I shouldn't waste some time on interviews before telling the company why I won't work for them. It's not like there's a shortage of projects, and I'd like to maximize my political "leverage".         
               
               
 amatecha on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Yeah, I have ignored recruiters hiring for companies I have moral qualms in regards to, despite the jobs being undoubtedly quite lucrative. Haven't ever let them know about my moral aversion though.           
               
               
 _Nat_ on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Sounds like a good call.              
               
 It's much easier to excel in the pursuit of something you believe in. Seems like folks who accept jobs that they don't believe in are liable to become increasingly demotivated and eventually burned out.           
               
               
 garmaine on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I will not work for Google for the same reason, fwiw.              
               
               
 headsupftw on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government? I'm asking because the government doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and kicked Taiwan out of the United Nations in 1971.           
               
               
 khuey on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 The United States did not kick the Republic of China out of the United Nations in 1971, the UN General Assembly did. The US voted against Resolution 2758.            
               
               
 driverdan on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government?              
               
 What kind of question is that? No citizen supports all the actions of their government. Government options are a lot more limited than employment options.            
               
               
 nl on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 This absolutist view of things is really problematic.              
               
 It's true that the US government officially recognizes the Beijing government as the legitimate Chinese government and doesn't recognize Taiwan.            
               
 OTOH, the US has a security partnership with Taiwan. See https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-united-states-securit... for details of this unique relationship.            
               
               
 garysahota93 on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I, too, had a very similar experience. Although I am of Indian descent, I still strongly agree with your views. It's really unfortunate that the leadership at Google doesn't follow the "do no evil" mantra anymore. These sorts of decisions aren't in the hands of an every-day engineer, so they are not at fault here in my opinion. And by standing up and vocalizing that distaste, I believe they are doing the right thing. Google makes some amazing products, so I see the appeal of working there. But many of those engineers have been around before the company started going in this direction, so I can't blame them. It's the leadership that needs to understand values > profits. At least if they want my continued support.   
               
               
 xster on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Much of this is PR dominance as well. Corporate media has already done 90% of the hard work for people to be able to easily market and feel good about opposing specific issues. You just need to fill in the colors in the coloring book. But these issues have been done and accepted for the longest time, such as Google's State Department staffed Jigsaw branch that creates tools, shown in Wikileaks, to assist overthrowing foreign governments in collaboration with the State Department, or tools that AI-censors comments, or tools that delegates control of the discoverability of grassroot contents to other corporate conglomerates.     
               
               
 tuxxy on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google.              
               
 How can you say this when those that build, even small parts, of surveillance technology are directly contributing to oppression?            
               
 Workers absolutely have a moral obligation to what they work on. This notion that they're not responsible for this is horrifically wrong.            
               
               
 SlowRobotAhead on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I'm fairly anti-China and loved Taiwan, can't wait to go back, loved it, loved the Taiwanese people.             
               
 Good for you on making a decision like that.              
               
 But... Just so long as you know that someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked. That's something I think many idealistic users here aren't understanding.           
               
               
 gurkendoktor on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked.             
               
 If talented engineers were that easy to find, Google wouldn't have participated in illegal wage-fixing; and that's without selecting for engineers that want to support an authoritarian regime. Statistically speaking, every rejection drives up the price. To wield even more power, we'd need to form some kind of industry-wide union.         
               
               
 megaman8 on Nov 27, 2018 | prev | next [–]              
               
 I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. By placing values above profits, it increases it's goodwill with customers thus increasing it's moat and it's retention, as well as it's employee retention. This strategy made sense in the early days.         
               
 Not anymore.              
               
 As Google's position becomes increasingly strengthend (with all the market share it can capture in search already realized ~ and it slightly decreasing anyway due to it's slightly tarnished brand), it doesn't need to maintain this illusion of values over profits anymore.          
               
               
 nostrademons on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | next [–]              
               
 The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries.         
               
 Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And "Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is critical for them.      
               
 I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough that it doesn't really matter.        
               
               
 tanilama on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google.            
               
 Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...           
               
               
 nostrademons on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation. Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x.           
               
 I think the boom in web & mobile startups is basically over at this point, but there's a new boom in cryptocurrency & AI startups that's just beginning, along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.          
               
               
 joshuamorton on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 This is only really true at startups. At a bigco, your on paper comp can be 250 or 350k annually in cash equivalents. That quickly generates wealth even if you are given only cash.            
               
 You're comparing 2 pre-ipo companies to Google and apple.              
               
               
 nostrademons on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Still true at BigCo. Total comp as a senior SWE at Google when I left (almost 5 years ago - it's more now) was something like ~$175K cash, ~$125K stocks + options, ~$50K bonus. With the 5x appreciation in stock that was going on while I was there, the stock portion could be worth $625K/year by the time it all vested. That's as employee 20,000+.         
               
               
 rahimnathwani on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 "or have more growth potential"              
               
 Right, but this is different from having higher expected value, or higher likely-case value. Most people don't value compensation offers based on 'growth potential' (aka 'best case').            
               
 (I'm assuming you mean growth in the sense of 'growth in value of equity', based on your reply to another commenter)             
               
               
 nostrademons on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I was actually thinking of growth as in "professional growth" - getting promoted faster, having a chance to learn more skills, doing things you wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking of the equity growth in terms of "pay more".           
               
               
 rahimnathwani on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 OK, so I'm curious: do many companies in the bay area pay more for engineers (on either an expected value or a worst case basis) than Google does? Sure, some of those startups will make their early employees very very rich, but most will fizzle or fail.           
               
               
 nostrademons on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 By reputation, Netflix pays more cash than Google. Like I said in the other subthread, though, the majority of your compensation in a tech company is in equity. The biggest price appreciation in equity is for younger, faster-growing companies. When I was at Google, that was largely Facebook; by the time I'd left, it was companies like AirBnB, Pinterest, Medium, and Snapchat (though I dunno how well folks at the latter 3 are doing nowadays).        
               
               
 whack on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 There's something you've overlooked: companies are ultimately run by humans. Humans who make decisions at all levels of the hierarchy, in order to further their own personal priorities, even if it dramatically conflicts with the shareholders' goals of maximizing profits.          
               
 In some cases, the personal priorities can be personal advancement. We see this all the time when managers hire/promote their friends, sexually harass their subordinates, and make decisions on the basis of politics as opposed to technical/business merit.           
               
 And in other cases, the personal priorities can be moral values. Values such as promoting free speech, fighting censorship, protecting consumer rights, and avoiding layoffs.            
               
 The idea that every single decision taken by a company is perfectly optimized to maximize long term profits, is baseless. There simply does not exist any mechanism to monitor and enforce such a requirement. The shareholders have only one lever to pull: accept the current leadership team, imperfections and all. Or fire them and risk destroying the company in the resulting churn. This gives both the executives and employees tremendous leeway to prioritize values over profits, as long as they are good enough to not get fired.      
               
               
 Retric on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Shareholders can do more than just fire the management team, they can set meaningful objectives and tie management compensation to reaching them.            
               
               
 CydeWeys on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values.         
               
 Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their values than about making as much money as possible.            
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.           
               
 I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.           
               
               
 _qwfv on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.           
               
 What an absurdly preposterous thing to say. Money is a motivator and a large one for many, many people, but it's ridiculous to call it the sole motivator for everyone.            
               
               
 teraflop on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care...            
               
 There are an awful lot of people in this very comment thread who would claim to be counterexamples to this. Are you going to say they're all lying or deluded about their own motivations?            
               
               
 hedvig on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 We need to disempower shareholders.              
               
               
 stevenicr on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Interesting interview / history on this issue I read recently from the guy behind much of panera bread: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-founder-of-p...            
               
               
 tjoff on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term.             
               
 This might sound weird but some people (and companies) don't subscribe to the notion that money is the only thing that matters.            
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Well, a publicly traded company has the fiduciary obligation to make its shareholders money. So it really does not matter what the "the people" want, it matters what the shareholders want. In fact, the board and executive team are legally required to make the the decisions that make increase the value of the company. They could be in real trouble with the law if they knowingly do something that devalues the company.        
               
 It's not to say that the employees don't have some power. Shareholders may play along with their request while figuring out how to maximize the profits and avoid such road bumps as this in the future.           
               
 So in the end you have to weigh the wants/needs of the employees and how much money might be lost or gained if you go along with their demands vs how much money can be made or lost if you ignore them.           
               
 I could see a argument that upsetting your employees could lead to a value drop that might be greater than whatever contract they are protesting. But it is hard to judge, and it will often only be looked at quarter to quarter.           
               
               
 tjoff on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Nope.              
               
 Now if you give the impression that you are all bout money but don't act like it then shareholders can be rightfully upset. But if you clearly state your values and ambitions and shareholders don't like it? Then, sucks to be them! There is nothing more to it than that.          
               
 Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators.        
               
 https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...             
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I am sorry, I think both you and Lynn Stout, are wrong, regardless of her credentials -- she sort of is making a name of her self by swing this sort of nonsense -- so her articles are self serving.           
               
 And yes, we can define shareholder value -- its the stock price. But I see your point and why I have talked about the grey area of what is the best move. But you would be hard pressed to find a group of shareholders who who all agree not taking big contracts is going to be the best move.          
               
               
 davidcbc on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 It doesn't matter if the shareholders believe it is not the best move. It matters if the board believes it is the best move for the long term benefit of the company and its shareholders. The duty of loyalty does not require a board to do everything the shareholders want or to maximize short term profits. If a majority of the shareholders disagree they can vote to replace the board, but that doesn't mean the board hasn't met its fiduciary duty.       
               
               
 tjoff on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 If the companies value and ambition is to maximize the stock price then the stock price is a good metric. If the companies value is something else then stock price isn't really a good metric.           
               
 It will also attract shareholders that share those values and thus going against them will cause an uproar.             
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 It really depends on their charter. People don't park money in a company simply to have the stock value drop or stay the same -- with exception of companies who pay out dividends.            
               
 Most companies charters talk about their relationship and obligations to the shareholders -- people don't invest in companies that don't intend on increasing in value.            
               
               
 tjoff on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Again, value doesn't have to be monetary. Shareholders has the right to expect return on their investment, yes. If the company delivers on their ambitions and values then that is the shareholders reward.           
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I don't think we are going to agree any time soon. The law is messy and it seems different cases can be signed supporting both of our points.            
               
 Thanks for a civil disagreement and exchange.              
               
               
 amelius on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Shareholders do.              
               
               
 Sharlin on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't expect that all (or even most ) shareholders think that only money matters.             
               
               
 kamaal on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 There are better places to play the virtue game, than on the stock market.             
               
               
 Sharlin on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 If the stock market is as amoral as you think then it seems something ought to be done to the stock market. But I don't think most people would invest in something that goes starkly against their personal ethics, no matter how profitable. And if you regard following one's moral compass as just "virtue gaming" I'm not sure what to think.         
               
               
 tjoff on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Doesn't matter. Shareholders must do their research. If they don't subscribe to the values then they can either not buy or suit themselves.            
               
               
 mbrumlow on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 That is not how that works. A company -- with a few special exceptions and special charters -- ONLY goal is to increase value for this shareholders. A single shareholder with a non majority holding can sue if the company knowingly does something that causes the values of his shares to decrease -- even if the rest of the shareholders are okay with the loss because they agree with the sentiment.        
               
 There is some grey area along strategy short game vs long game, but a company's charter is to increase the value of its shareholders -- THE ONLY THING that literally matters for a publicly traded company*           
               
 * Some companies can be setup with a different charter that does not prioritize profit, but google and most of the publicly traded companies on the market today are not those. And it would be very hard to convert to such a company.           
               
               
 pazimzadeh on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 How does a shareholder prove that it's not just a short term loss in value, and that the decision won't actually benefit the company in the long run?            
               
               
 fouc on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 Huh, that's an excellent point. When a company is so big and entrenched it doesn't need to seem like the nice guy anymore.             
               
 Perhaps similarly to anti-monopoly laws we should also have size caps on companies.             
               
               
 vorpalhex on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > we should also have size caps on companies              
               
 As a thought experiment, I've often wondered the best way to maintain the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow.            
               
 It's not clear it's simply growth, or whether it's profits. I wonder if a non-charity oriented non-profit would maintain a better corporate culture.            
               
               
 TulliusCicero on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 > the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow.             
               
 It's more like regression to the mean; it gets harder to be different as you grow. Good companies get worse, bad companies better (just look at Uber's internal culture).            
               
               
 Consultant32452 on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 Dunbar's Number, I believe, gives some insight. Basically, humans can only maintain about 150 relationships. As organizations grow personal relationships are replaced with rules and structures as a matter of necessity.           
               
               
 fouc on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 Agreed. I suppose sociopaths can get away with more when there's so many people that the relationship/connections between everyone are weaker on average.            
               
               
 Consultant32452 on Nov 28, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 I used to think the same way, but then I came to a different understanding of sociopathy as an evolutionary adaptation. Those sociopaths are important and useful. The video below has a little deeper explanation.           
               
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ftipn4fyI              
               
               
 briandear on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I would agree with that if we could also have a size cap on government.             
               
               
 naasking on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 > I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term.            
               
 Come on. A lot of people create startups to do something interesting that they're passionate about. Customers and profit merely serve these ends, not the other way around.            
               
               
 cjmoran on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 What are some potential solutions here? Some form of intervention by the US government? I think many of us will agree that the sort of behavior these employees are speaking out against is at least unethical, and it also seems this "profits-over-values" behavior is a common one for large tech companies to gradually start engaging in. To your point, corporations in all sectors always do what makes the most economic sense, even if it means building internet censorship tech, dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, etc.      
               
 As a society which (hopefully) would like to have some sort of moral compass, how do we prevent large companies from seeking profit even at the expense of our freedoms/health/planet? It seems to me that if the punishment for unethical behavior is economically "less" than the costs or potential losses associated with acting in a good, ethical way, companies will continue to do what we're seeing them do now. My intuition is that capitalism (in its current Western incarnation) can't function without some strict controls to protect what our societies value most.      
               
 Or do we simply value profit over everything else? If so, that's kind of depressing, but I get the sense that most people don't think this way.            
               
               
 bizentin on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]              
               
 The US government? I find it hard to believe they would intervene with china unless they plan on using it as leverage in order to gain economic standing. However, seeing as google is already censoring content via prioritizing search results with favored websites before relevant websites and since the government is always happy to find new outlets to get personal information from its own and foreign citizens. I don't see this as being stoppable unless you make your own company and start competing with Google.      
               
               
 people_not_bots on Nov 27, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]             
               
 The tech sector has always been ripe for co-operatives and profit sharing. Politically speaking libertarian attitudes were the popular norm in most tech culture but now small co-opts could become the next phase for many small tech companies. That could be a first small step.          
               
               
 orblivion on Nov 27, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]              
               
 I think it's always a combination of factors. Unless you subscribe to the theory that every CEO is 100% sociopath.             
               
 There's the consideration of true values. Then there's the consideration of lost opportunities from following those values. Then there's the cold consideration of the money gained from PR boost due to following the values. Then there's the "game theory" consideration of altogether dying in the marketplace if your competition don't act on those values.         
               
 I think the best thing for all of us to do on the outside is to create a culture where every company benefits from the PR boost. Google executives are one concentrated interest, separate from Microsoft, etc. The employees, I reckon, are not as financially motivated (i.e. don't stand to lose _as_ much individually) and can afford to advocate their values. It seems to me (I'll phrase it conservatively, since I'm just throwing out ideas here) that Google employees should make friends with Microsoft employees to make sure they raise the same noise on their end as well. Make it okay for each company to gain (monetarily or otherwise) from good PR, and make it less profitable for all of their competitors to sell out.   
               
               
               
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Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it comes to business.Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea as a "service center" for municipalities that purchased MRAP combat vehicles for their police departments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP  We all, especially the veterans I work with, hated this idea. MRAP's are for combat, not police work, and have a dangerous propensity to roll over in city streets or escalate already violent situations. 14 of us sent a signed letter to the owner and senior management detailing our major concerns and heard nothing back for about a month. Then out of the blue we got a call for a meeting with 3-4 very senior managers at a local irish bar. They paid for dinner and tried to explain how the business would be extremely lucrative. we would all see major bonuses, we could hire more workers, and grow the business faster than just large truck repair. It took 3 very emotional hours, but we eventually talked down a handful of people from making a very wrong decision. for a week after, we were all sort of stunned that it actually worked at all. Tire cages meant for MRAP tires were cut up and turned into random parts holders, or as new hangers for air lines...one even replaced our mailbox post.
    
    
        
     You deserve massive credit for striking a blow against this madness. A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.I say that fully realizing that not everyone is in the financial position where they can risk a fight with their employer. You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.
    
    
        
     &gt; A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our civilization is facing might be greatly improved.
    
    
        
      
 Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.   
    
        
     &gt; Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations. They don't need a contract at all. What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through direct democracy. It does nothing unless the employer is doing something bad wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the employer concedes or they strike. Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.
    
    
    
        
     &gt; They can afford to pay moreWhich is why they already do pay more than other industries. The best argument you have against that is the anti-poaching shenanigans they've engaged in -- but that's already illegal, so the answer there is a courtroom rather than a union.
    
    
        
      
 No, it really isn't. The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern, and be willing to risk their reputation. With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.   
    
        
     &gt; The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the patternHow is that different with a union? &gt; and be willing to risk their reputation Class action suit or submit evidence confidentially to the attorney general. &gt; With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off. If Apple won't hire Google employees then the Google employees can retaliate against Apple by not working for them?
    
    
        
     &gt; they're compensated fine already.I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have. Yes, having a higher salary would be ridiculous in a lot of these cases, but we should moderate that through legislation that benefits the most people - not by a public company further lining the coffers of its owners. Apple and Google particularly have a lot of cash just lying around, and that cash is the result of the employee's efforts, and they deserve it. I think if we think their salaries are too high in that case, we need to talk about better taxation systems.
    
    
        
     &gt; I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.They have massive cash reverses because the tax laws have encouraged that rather than paying it to shareholders as dividends. And that level of return is necessary because of the nature of the industry -- you have to spend millions of dollars trying to create the next tech giant before you know whether you've succeeded or not, and most of the time you haven't. The returns to success have to be enough to overcome the high failure rate. Most of the employees aren't taking the same level of risk. If you work for a company for five years taking home a six figure salary and that company fails, you don't have to give back your salary and in a few months you're working for another company making the same amount of money. If you think you can do better on your own, risking your own time and money instead of taking outside investment, go right ahead -- but then shouldn't it be you who gets more of the reward if you succeed rather than the people you hire in after you're already an established success?
    
    
        
     On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.It feels like what you're saying is that the risk of failing in a startup is massive enough for a founder that they deserve literally billions of dollars. Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? Are you saying that because a founder may go bankrupt they are entitled to thousands of times more money? Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? Could you help me understand what makes you think that?
    
    
        
     &gt; On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.Of course, because the level of risk is different. $100,000 guaranteed is worth more than a &lt;50% chance at $200,000, much less a &lt;1% chance. A very high reward is inherently necessary to offset the very low probability of major success, otherwise people aren't going to do it. &gt; Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? The less than one in a thousand chance of making that much. &gt; Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? There are many ways to turn a thousand dollars into a 0.1% chance at a million dollars. Then 99.9% of the time you lose the thousand dollars -- and it's your time/money, not the bank's. Nobody is going to give you an unsecured loan to gamble with. But if you bet on your own horse at 1000:1 odds and win, how are you not entitled to the proceeds?
    
    
        
      
 I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?   
    
        
     &gt; I'm assuming that you don't think risking making no money is enough to entitle a founder to their entire employees wage. How much does it entitle them to?The amount they mutually agree upon. The employee wouldn't agree to work indefinitely for no pay. The high compensation of successful founders is actually one of the things keeping salaries up, because any of the salaried employees has the option to quit and found their own company. The existing company has to pay well enough to compete with that -- because if what they're paying wasn't actually competitive with that alternative given the relative risk between them, why would anybody accept the salary?
    
    
        
      
 That'd be all very reasonable if we lived in a world where Apple and Google weren't colluding to keep wages down.   
    
    
        
      
 So you both think people are being paid reasonably and that Google and Apple are colluding with one another.   
    
        
     1) The collusion has presumably stopped now that they're caught.2) It is possible for both to be true at the same time, because the industry is much larger than Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe. Even if they didn't compete with each other, they still have to outbid Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. -- and pay enough to prevent the workers leaving to found their own companies. It's not unreasonable to expect that the effect on wages was marginal even when it was occurring.
    
    
        
      
 You're having to make a lot of presumptions to have to believe these employees are being paid fairly.   
    
        
      
 The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees. Employees compete with each other for salaries. Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices.
By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable. Even Marx got this part correct   
    
        
     &gt; The successful entrepreneur makes his money by capital gains in the share or venture capital markets and not by extracting it from his employees.Incorrect, that value is only sustained and increased by the efforts of company workers. &gt; Employer competes with other employers for both a)market share b) hiring employees -bidding up their prices. Incorrect. Companies that don't have significant oversight in the form of government regulation or strong unions tend to collude to keep salaries low - which is exactly what has happened in the valley, and has meant that these companies have gigantic cash reserves that they aren't leveraging to hire the best talent. &gt; By comparing gains from entrepreneurship with regular salaries, you are comparing a stock variable with a flow variable. No, I'm merely saying that the differences and risks suffered by investors and founders versus regular salaried employees are not a justification for the sometimes ridiculous difference between the compensation of the two.
    
    
        
     If tech workers form a union, I'm sure it will look very different to the industrial worker's unions of the 20th century. And so it should, the needs of today are very different. The thing is, apart from the remaining unions from that time, most unions already look very different to that model so this is not really a good argument against unionising.The other thing you aren't taking into account is the fact that this boom in the tech industry isn't guaranteed to continue forever. There will come a time, maybe pretty soon, where tech workers will become as precarious as those steel workers and autoworkers eventually became. Big tech companies are already putting a lot of effort and resources into educating the next generation of programmers to provide a more competitive labour market and drive down salaries. There's already talk of a coming recession, where I'm sure the belts will be tightened and people will be laid off. When we have a union, we will be more protected from the inevitable exploitation in such scenarios. The temporarily embarassed unicorn founders among us need to realise that we are the creators of all the value in these companies and, collectively, we have the power to influence their direction and impact on society. We can help secure not only our own rights as workers but also have the power to change society at large and secure better standards of living for all workers (or non-workers). That's why these recent actions by Google employees have been so important. They can set a precedent for how other companies and even states can safely act in future, without fearing repercussions from their most valuable resource - the workers.
    
    
        
      
 How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues? How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?   
    
        
     &gt; How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues?The technology needed to let people submit proposals and let other people vote on them is on the level what individuals do over a weekend as adjunct to a side project. &gt; How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule? Why do you need to force them to? By definition the majority will already agree, and then many in the minority would participate out of solidarity because that's the whole point of joining a union to begin with. You don't need 100.0%, a large majority is quite sufficient in general. And anything that actually required 100.0% is already lost, because then they could pay off the cheapest defector or contract it out.
    
    
        
     The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.And your picture of humam behavior is all too rose-colored glasses if it's having all members of a minority vote just go along out of solidarity when it's non-binding. I've seen unions vote on issues, and it's often contentious with emotions running high on all sides. If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have. Sometimes they try to anyway.
    
    
        
     &gt; The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.This is a major problem for country-level populations. For corporations it typically comes pre-solved by the corporation itself, because each employee would have a company email address or Active Directory account etc. that could be used for authentication. (In theory the corporation could illegally tamper with the results that way, but the tampering would be immediately obvious to the person whose vote was changed.) &gt; If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have. Because they're using the union for the wrong stuff. A lot of the votes would be for things like accepting a policy that gives raises to only senior people. No doubt the junior people being screwed over by that policy would strenuously object when they're the 49%, especially when being in the union deprives them of the opportunity to negotiate something else as an individual. But how many Google employees have that kind of personal stake in a question like whether to censor search results in China?
    
    
        
     Unions are rarely formed unless conditions are particularly bad. One upon a time in this country, the national guard with machine guns might have been called out to clear a strike/protest. Most people are very happy being ignorant of their surroundings or influence of.The most I've ever done is threaten to quit if a project for the RIAA was accepted by my employer when I was invited into the pre-pitch meeting. It just depends on a specific case.
    
    
        
      
 I'm part of a very privileged workforce and our situation, while not great, was a lot better than the average worker. We still managed to form a union. It can be done.   
    
        
     I wish more people knew that workers fought and died for those rights.Its one thing to say maybe you'll quit, or skip your pay check for change, its another to actually put your life on the line for what you know is right.
    
    
        
     Since China is known for its countless human rights violations, Are these Google employees also going to...1. Give up their Chinese-Manufactured iPhones/Android Phones? Tablets? Laptops and workstations?? 2. Give up watching movies/shows on their Chinese-manufactured TVs?? 3. Stop wearing Chinese-made iwatches/fitbits/etc.?? 4. Boycott silicon valley startups that have accepted chinese investments? 5. Boycott every product by US/Foreign company (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, GE, Disney, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, etc.) doing business in China?
    
    
        
      
 There's a difference between boycotting products made in China and protesting against building technologies that enable dictatorial regimes. They do not deserve to be conflated.   
    
        
      
 They're not "enabling" a dictatorial regime, they're just following the laws of a foreign government. Making a censored search engine isn't "supporting" the government, it's just abiding by it.   
    
        
     A censored search engine is a direct instrument of oppression.Contracting to build a censored search engine is the moral equivalent of contracting to build a barbed wire fence around a concentration camp. You're being an active participant that directly assists in making that oppression happen by building tools required for the actual act of oppression, as opposed to building something that merely done in the same country.
    
    
        
      
 "You're not allowed to do anything good ever if you're not already a maximally good person. That would make you a hypocrite, which is way worse than someone who doesn't do anything to help in the first place."   
    
        
      
 I don't understand the context in which you're posting this quote. pompousprick's argument was that we shouldn't morally prosecute these companies as supporting dictatorships just because they do business in China.   
    
        
      
 Bargaining power. (Organized) working humans have it...but it will erode as robots and algorithms take on more and more work. An argument for striking while the iron is hot. (No pun intended.)   
    
        
     Historically, whenever there's advancement in technology. Powers that control the current will get challenged, and so far, it has been for the better for the majority.We've gone a long way from being serfs who have almost no rights, even the right to read and write.. to citizens who can communicate via the internet. Advancement in technology will/have make current powers obsolete. Robots and algorithms have been taking more work since the stone age. Better tools, means more surplus, means more time to think critically, more time to comment over the internet, or read books. The only problem is that we probably won't see any observable improvement in one lifetime. It is however, also very possible that the incumbent powers put an end to our civilization. Hopefully enough people like these Google employees, Snowden, Assange will be there to stop fascism.
    
    
        
     I think technology has allowed power to become more and more concentrated. Never before has one state had the power to annihilate entire cities, or land entire armies worth of troops at any point on earth within 24 hours. Never before have large and powerful organisations and governments had the capability to read every word that every person sends to each other and track their every motion around the city with cameras.Yes there is more surplus, but where is that going? People in developed societies are working more hours now than they were 100 years ago. Wealth inequality has risen to higher levels than ever existed in modern society. I wish it gave me more time to read books... We definitely need to be more engaged in resisting these dangerous tendencies, particularly with recent political developments. I think organised tech workers have immense power. If Google employees could formalise their current actions and then even unite with other groups across other companies, they would be a force to be reckoned with.
    
    
        
     Corruption is a bottom up process.It only works if everyone goes along. Be brave and stand up for yourself, what do you have to lose?
    
    
    
        
     Agreed. But this many Google employees acting collectively, including some very senior and long-tenured Googlers, meet that additional condition.(Disclosure: having worked at Google I know some names on that list personally, and respect them greatly. I haven't worked at Google since early 2015.)
    
    
    
        
      
 It's been a long time since my statistics and econometrics courses, but one conclusion that's definitely unwarranted would be to assume that the rest disagree with the signatories. People who speak up on an issue will always be a small fraction of the larger population of people who share the same opinion.   
    
        
     People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.If that were true, then their silence can definitely not be construed as any kind of tacit agreement, or even disinterest. How many Chinese citizens (or people otherwise susceptible to this purported pressure) work at Google?  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543164
    
    
        
     &gt; People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.Even as an American with no family in China, I'd be slightly worried that putting my name on such a list might prevent me from getting a visa to visit the PRC. They've shown a willingness to factor politics into visa decisions:  https://www.ft.com/content/b1bd2aec-e333-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c...  That guy didn't even express a stance, like these Google employees have, he just happened to be the acting leader of the club when a speaker the PRC opposed was scheduled to give a talk.
    
    
        
      
 While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.   
    
        
     &gt; While threats from the Chinese government may be valid, it's more likely that they don't want to / cannot risk their H-1B status or green card priority date. So their immediate threat is more likely (indirectly) coming from USG.That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't see why the USG would want to sanction them, especially since this letter has nothing to do with the USG. If they're discouraged from signing due to their US visa status, the mechanism that makes more sense is that they fear Google could fire them and it would take them longer than 60 days to line up another job that could sponsor them.
    
    
        
      
 What is the risk, that their status would be changed in response to their involvement? If so, would there be an officially articulated basis?   
    
        
     They can get fired. If they're still an H-1B, that basically requires them to leave the country immediately.There's a short grace period in practice (usually, and this isn't official) if you have another job all lined up that is ready to sponsor you. But if you were an H-1B applying for a green card via your employer, this basically resets your position in line, unless you're in late stages of the process. And keep in mind that the wait is measured in years for many countries (e.g. for India, &gt;9 years right now unless you're in the "exceptional" category).
    
    
        
     It would be really interesting stat to know how well heeled the 139 are vs the 88k who can afford to financially bacjk up their principles...Out of the 88k how many dont care, how many cant afford to care, how many are looking to profit off not caring.
    
    
        
      
 There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out. Don't know the accuracy of that, but I've taken it to heart and have been willing to be one of the first to speak out on multiple occasions at multiple jobs. Sometimes things change for the better. Sometimes things don't change, and I force a change by leaving. If nobody speaks up, then the status quo wins.   
    
        
     &gt; There's some statistic that says if one person is willing to speak out, then there's X number of people that agree but are unwilling to speak out.I've heard this before. I'm not sure if it's a statistic or just a saying. What's the standard formulation?
    
    
        
      
 I could see it being considered both. I've also heard it applied to congress critters and senators. For every person that contacts them, they equate it to equaling a certain percentage of the people they represent. I've heard the weight of a phone call vs hand written letter vs email are different, but that was some time ago. It makes sense that when a small number/percentage of the people make contact out of a group in the thousands that some sort of statistical method would be used. These representatives should pay more attention the people as that is who puts them in their job. It doesn't really apply to corporations as they will just replace the squeaky wheels even if it's not the best thing to do morally/socially. They only care about this quarter's earnings. It's the rare company that will fix the squeak rather than replacing it, and they should be highlighted when it happens.   
    
        
     Yet 1 person in that company could kill it in 3 seconds even if this didn't happen. That's 1 in 88K.My wife and I once went around and petitioned all 100 people that lived in a condo complex for a specific issue. About 80 people signed. We didn't even need to present the signature sheet - the one hold out on the board we had to convince had caved after learning about the efforts - not knowing the percentage of signers (only we had the number).
    
    
        
      
 I'm more thinking from the side of all the other employees who either don't care, or have different perspetives on how well the Chinese government might or might not be doing with their tactics. I find the public internet form, especially sites like HN don't promote as much discussion from all angles as we think. I'm sure that anyone from Google who spoke up for moving into China would absolutely be skewered on here. Yet, I know they exist.   
    
    
        
      
 The activation energy to mobilize people is incredibly high, especially on issues that don't directly effect them. And even then it's still huge. People will always debate exactly why, but it does mean that the vast majority of people will remain mostly politically inert.   
    
    
        
      
 I think I covered ableness in the second paragraph. For a large and growing number of people in the US, taking on that fight could easily mean homelessness. I don't hardly consider them able on grounds of self preservation.   
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
      
 Damn, good for y'all for sticking to your values. How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?   
    
        
     &gt;How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.
    
    
        
     Google is well aware of the spyware that the Chinese govt is using to oppress it's ethnic minorities, but they don't lift a finger to thwart it. They don't blacklist the app that the government requires Muslims in Xinjiang to have on their phones at all time[1]. They could easily blacklist it.How far is Google willing to go to be friends with China? Mass detainment and ethnic cleansing are well within the realm of possibility, especially in the likely event of an economic crisis. Will Google help sniff out their Anne Franks? Imagine trying to operate an underground railroad against the full force of Google. There are so many ways that machine learning and modern private surveillance can determine things like if there are extra uncounted people living in an area. If Beijing did decide to solve the Uyghur problem, would Google cover for them and purge search queries? No, this is not at all hyperbolic or reaching. American corporations did business with our enemies right up until they were forced to stop during WWII. American machines have been used to commit horrific atrocities. And read Chinese history. Read about what China has done as recently as a few decades ago. I'm glad to see Google employees taking a break from their virtue pageantry to actually take a stand on something that matters, finally. [1]: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
    
    
        
     Here is a thought for you:If Google actually were to do anything to help they Anne Franks of China, do you think they would announce it to the world to debate on HN, or do you think they would do it in secret?
    
    
        
      
 Perhaps. But "Maybe Google is just pretending to be evil" does not give me much comfort. Especially as I have friends who are ethnic minorities in SE Asia.   
    
    
        
     this 100%. The business made a business decision : either veteran, that is, most valuable assets get mad and all sort of problems affecting productivty/quality happen or, a few not-yet-realized business opportunities disappears.That was very pragmatic. Both sides wins.
    
    
        
     &gt; Pretty bold It's interesting you would label this as such. In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer? If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else. In the year 2018 I would hope it's very much not bold to do so.
    
    
        
      
 Publicly calling out your employer is bold anywhere. Perhaps less so in countries like the US where that sort of speech is protected, and in sectors like tech where the speakers are likely to be well-off and not fungible, but doing this sort of thing publicly always puts you at risk of losing your job (for "unrelated performance reasons") and of being quietly blacklisted by future employers (for "poor culture fit" or any other easy excuse).   
    
        
     &gt; In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer?Free speech only applies to the government though? Your employer is still free to fire you. Sure you won't be put in jail but for most people losing their job still certainly affects their livelihood.
    
    
    
        
      
 Corporations are explicitly tyrannies. Check out Corporate Confidential for a flavor of what a typical corporate employee could expect for signing a letter like this.   
    
    
        
      
 This is a problem that my employer faces. We have a strong concept of corporate responsibility, and plenty of opportunity for employee pushback, but we repeatedly see our decisions simply subverted by competitors who don't have any sense of morals and just go where the money is. It becomes a nasty tradeoff where you think about building/doing things that don't feel good, just to maintain a position to have a positive influence on _other_ areas, where a competitor might simply act without morals everywhere. It's not fun to think about these things in a market with bad incentives.   
    
        
     Wait, because your competitors will maintain MRAPs “they have no sense of morals”?Your morals are your own? Why do you insist on imposing them on others?
    
    
        
     I get what you mean and it's a case by case basis, if people didn't try and push any morals we would all live in vacuums where all we have is the law to tell us what is _right_.A lot of people have no problem with their countries governments manufacturing and/or selling arms to dictatorships that inflict harm on innocents and supply extremists e.g. UK-Saudi arms trading. As far as some are concerned the UK is just doing what another country may do instead.
    
    
        
     Because that's the only way to solve moral co-ordination problems?If you leave a morally odious contract on the table (lets say it's cutting up human babies for baby veal) knowing your competitors will take the project, enrich themselves, expand, and develop the capacity to engage in larger, even more odious business, then what's the proper course of action? Do you cut up babies because fuck morals? Or do you try to get no one to cut up babies? What if you have imperfect information and aren't certain if your competition would do it? What if they have imperfect information about your intentions and decide to take the deal purely on that basis? Should be straightforward to recognize how corrosive this cycle gets. EDIT: some people seem to be upset with the baby example. Just exchange that with anything you find clearly morally unacceptable. Like selling reverse mortgages to elderly people with limited capacity, or signing people up for ponzi schemes or adding intentionally addictive additives to a harmful consumable product, etc.
    
    
        
     I mean, all I'm trying to say is that most companies are subject to the competition pressure in their market regardless of internal employees' morals, and it becomes hard to justify "standing up for your beliefs" in a business sense that isn't just "shut down the business or change industries," if there are inherent moral issues in the current industry.When I say "have no sense of morals," I'm talking about competitors who were acquired by large PE firms a decade or more ago and do not have any internal discussions about the morals of what their employees are building/maintaining. They operate entirely by asking what clients want and then trying to build what they can of those requests. I'm mostly talking about incentives and market pressures, not "imposing morals on others" or other such emotional nonsense that you are reading into here.
    
    
    
        
      
 If that one employer made it public that they chose not to deal with MRAP repair, I would wholly choose to do business with them and spread the word that they have are a responsible corporate citizen like wildfire.   
    
        
      
 And you'd have half your city boycott it because they refuse to support the boys in blue.   
    
        
      
 Great story dude. We can't pretend more people don't think like this. People working in and around corporations can make a difference by talking about it with other people. Thanks for sharing!   
    
        
      
 Great story - random question --- but how did you find out about HN? (I'm just asking because you implied you don't work in software, etc.)   
    
    
    
        
      
 Thank you for standing up for what's right... :) If only more individuals &amp; businesses stood up against militarism in our communities!   
    
        
     The key here is you acted together. Individuals acting alone have very little bargaining power. But once employees start acting together with a single purpose their power gets very difficult to ignore.Whether people believe unions are a good idea or not, the key is to organize into something that allows people to work together and find common ground to address common problems.
    
    
        
      
 Well done buddy, it's great to hear about people taking a principled stand, especially when money's involved.   
    
        
     It's not just about the equipment the police force use, it's also about the training. Given military equipment, the police force will also get military training matching the equipment they get. Military knowledge and tactics should not be used used to police a civilian population.Thank you for standing up to this.
    
    
        
      
 Thank you. We literally need more people exactly like you in this world. The militarization of the police force is something that started with George W., continued unabated with Obama, and will probably be accelerated under Trump, and it is anti-democracy in my opinion.   
    
        
      
 Thank you for sharing this; the world needs many more people who actually live and act on their ethical boundaries.   
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     Wow! So basically, someone managed to risk police offier lives with their ill thought out plan and people on HN are applauding them?What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?
    
    
    
        
     &gt; What should a police crew use against a criminal equipped with high caliber armor piercing guns?The Army?
    
    
        
     I wonder how this policy would interact with something like the Posse Comitatus Act.Would it effectively require applying the label "terrorist" or "national security threat" to any criminal who shows they are prepared to use lethal force against a law enforcement officer?
    
    
        
     Yeah, life isn't "Die Hard", if someone is using "high caliber armor piercing guns" against the local PD, then classifying them as "domestic terrorists" and calling in specialists to deal with them seems appropriate to me.Police have to deal with enough crap that they shouldn't be expected to handle paramilitary situations as well, is what I'm saying. As a counterexample, remember the "Bundy standoff"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff That's the kind of situation where the Posse Comitatus Act means you don't send in the Army. However, if they had shot a bunch of people I'm sure they would have had to face at least the National Guard, eh?
    
    
        
      
 I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let the recruiter know this because I believe it's important that they know. I'm curious if anyone else on HN has had similar experiences.   
    
        
     Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.While I think the average developer has a more negative opinion of Google these days, for years they have been considered one of the best places to work in the world. I know if I told my parents, for instance, I had done what you did, they probably would've called me an idiot. :P They just know Google is one of the biggest tech companies in the world, they don't see a lot of their especially recent practices as bad. To say 'no, thank you, I'd rather not as I don't agree with the company's practices' indicates a kind of moral standing I wish more people would confidently have. It shows you're taking a personal stand against what you believe to be corruption, and that's awesome. Rock on!
    
    
        
     &gt; Good for you, for real. It takes a lot sometimes to stand up against something that a lot of other people would jump for the chance to do.While it is a nice enough gesture, let's not kid ourselves that this was some difficult selfless act on the part of the OP. Apologies to the OP if I have misinterpreted their earlier post but: &gt; I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me This statement often becomes true by virtue of having a reasonable computer science qualification and living in the Bay Area - eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email. Actually converting an outreach from a recruiter to you know, an actual concrete job offer at Google, is another matter entirely. If declining recruiters is the new (very low!) bar for high minded civic engagement, I'm accidentally a grizzled activist on the front line.
    
    
        
     You don't just have to live in the Bay Area to get those emails, at the very least anywhere in the US you will get them.Source: have never lived in the Bay Area. Have a large number of those emails in my gmail.
    
    
        
      
 I live outside the US and have also received recruiter emails for Google offices throughout the EU.   
    
        
      
 People knowing about OP’s decision, was those in his social circle, makes a profound difference if compounded by others.   
    
        
     &gt;eventually a recruiter for a FAANG style company is going to spam you with an email.This. I have said 'no, thanks' to FAANG in the last 3 months because my life is in a bit of a flux right now. It was a bit more than a simple 'no, thanks' in case of Facebook, but that's a story for another thread :)
    
    
    
        
      
 OTOH, AMZN and MSFT have never even hesitated to accommodate the Chinese govt's demands. Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances? (I don't work there.)   
    
        
     Dont forget AAPL! (who hesitated, but ended up capitulating on the iCloud front).I think the moral of the story here is that it's better to sell out from day 1 than to be seen as a hypocrite.
    
    
        
     &gt; who hesitatedSource? I was not aware there was any hesitation or even disagreement from Apple's side. Is there an Apple statement saying they disagree w/ Chinese government requests similar to the statements saying they disagree w/ US government requests? In their absence, is it safe to assume they agree since they have shown that when they disagree they make public statements?
    
    
    
    
    
    
        
     &gt; Which other companies do you think would be more ethically conscious than GOOG in these circumstances?If you wanted to do software work for a company that didn't kowtow to Chinese government demands, chances are 99% of jobs are available to you. Does that mean they could if they would? Unknown, and since regimes change with frequency you can't rely on stated principles, only actions.
    
    
        
     Would you still work for Amazon? Microsoft? Apple? Facebook?Because they are actually in China and give concessions to the government.
    
    
        
     The idea that a foreign corporation has a duty to break Chinese law with regards to web filtering is very problematic, if that's what you mean by "give concessions to the government". How far should such a corporation go with breaking the law, is tax evasion against the Chinese state morally acceptable, since those taxes might be used for oppression?We should recognize here a very thin line between respecting the Chinese law and actively collaborating to subvert human rights - because the law is defined by an authoritarian regime with a long history of human right abuses. That being said, surely you cannot change Chinese law from outside China, and if respecting it's current iteration is not in itself an unacceptable violation of human rights, it stands to reason that expanding in China at least forces the government to stick to it's own laws under the threat of a public exit and protest if unlawful pressures are made. It puts ethical companies in a position where they can nudge the Chinese towards ethical behavior - or at least very publicly denounce unethical demands.
    
    
        
      
 You can't change Chinese law from inside China either. The only winning move is not to play.   
    
        
      
 Are there any legal restrictions on what the Chinese government can ask websites to censor? I am not aware of any, so I don't see where there would be an opportunity to protest.   
    
        
      
 I believe it's already established that operating in China means responding to all censorship requests. Nonetheless, there are still many things an ethical company could refuse: access to the private searches and information of an individual without a due legal process, collecting sensitive information altogether knowing that it's fair game for the state, knowingly alter or influence results to promote official narratives and propaganda, knowingly use or profit from the proceeds of labor camps, underage or other forms of work exploitation; and many, many more, which are surely not positively codified in any Chinese law, yet are widespread.   
    
        
     I don't think it's fair to try and nitpick people's ethical decisions like this.Imagine yes, this person would work for Amazon even though they're in China too. Does that make them not working for Google because they're in China a bad choice? I don't think so. Are we really prepared to tear everyone down who isn't absolute in their morality?
    
    
        
     A moral inconsistency is not a nitpick when it's the entire industry.Their logic makes Google a better employer than Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and any other tech company currently operating in China. Saying they spurned Google because the company was considering going to China is disengenious, since the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.
    
    
        
     &gt; Saying they spurned Google...the majority of the substitute employers are already in China.There is life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble. If you refuse to work at Google, it doesn't mean that you're then obligated to work at Amazon or Microsoft, etc.
    
    
        
     Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.If we're looking at it in that lens, then GP's problem isn't with Google, but with large tech companies in general because that's the industry standard.
    
    
        
     &gt; Of course there is, but when considering substitute employers, in the economic sense, working in a small-town software shop isn't quite the same as working at a multinational tech company.The life outside of the FAANG/GAFAM bubble isn't just "small-town software shop[s]." There's a lot more diversity than that, and to conceive of the industry in that way is too parochial.
    
    
        
     How many of those companies can be considered substitute employers to Google? That offer the same level of compensation?That is what an economic substitute is. SMB tech companies typically don't compare.
    
    
        
      
 You're saying his moral position is invalid because he doesn't apply it consistently, and that is not true, and also possibly harmful.   
    
        
      
 I said the moral position is disingenuous because it is both inconsistent and opposite to what he is describing, when considering all things related.   
    
        
      
 But each "related" decision is different, and there is no accurate generalization, by the very nature of what a generalization is.   
    
        
      
 There's a big difference between operating a business in China in general, and operating a business that necessarily involves implementing their surveillance infrastructure.   
    
    
        
     I honestly have no idea. Last I heard, Bing is blocked in China, which I assume means that there are things that come in its search result that Chinese government doesn't like.But Dragonfly [ostensibly] went well beyond just censoring results, in that it implemented specific tools like linking search requests with phone numbers identifying people who made those requests. That's straight-up aiding and abetting oppressing people - political opposition, for example, or even unorganized dissenters. I can't believe we are even seriously talking about whether this is okay or not.
    
    
        
     bing.com redirects to a Chinese version of Bing, which prioritises Chinese sites.I have no basis for saying this beyond not knowing how they could do this otherwise, but I would assume that they must censor results to exist there. I don't know if they go further, such as you describe Dragonfly plans to do.
    
    
        
      
 I sympathize with your position, especially regarding Taiwan, but I wonder if your early rejection was as effective as employees rebelling? One need not take the most effective route, but given the size of Google, when I was in a similar position to yours I justified it by saying if I got an offer, I'd make it very clear I'd want nothing to do with the censorship work for the exact reason you listed.   
    
        
     Both are good. I'm sure Google carefully tracks why candidates decline jobs at Google, and if enough of them say "I can't work with you because you're doing specific evil thing X," then it becomes more and more worth it not to do X.Similarly, if internal morale is in decline and reports come back saying that it's because of X, that also has a real (and quite possibly quantifiable) cost.
    
    
        
      
 Do you think that recruiters spend time forwarding your response to someone at Google who actually cares? I usually decline jobs/projects outright, but I wonder if I shouldn't waste some time on interviews before telling the company why I won't work for them. It's not like there's a shortage of projects, and I'd like to maximize my political "leverage".   
    
        
      
 Yeah, I have ignored recruiters hiring for companies I have moral qualms in regards to, despite the jobs being undoubtedly quite lucrative. Haven't ever let them know about my moral aversion though.   
    
        
     Sounds like a good call.It's much easier to excel in the pursuit of something you believe in. Seems like folks who accept jobs that they don't believe in are liable to become increasingly demotivated and eventually burned out.
    
    
    
        
      
 Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government? I'm asking because the government doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and kicked Taiwan out of the United Nations in 1971.   
    
        
      
 The United States did not kick the Republic of China out of the United Nations in 1971, the UN General Assembly did. The US voted against Resolution 2758.   
    
        
     &gt; Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government?What kind of question is that? No citizen supports all the actions of their government. Government options are a lot more limited than employment options.
    
    
    
        
      
 I, too, had a very similar experience. Although I am of Indian descent, I still strongly agree with your views. It's really unfortunate that the leadership at Google doesn't follow the "do no evil" mantra anymore. These sorts of decisions aren't in the hands of an every-day engineer, so they are not at fault here in my opinion. And by standing up and vocalizing that distaste, I believe they are doing the right thing. Google makes some amazing products, so I see the appeal of working there. But many of those engineers have been around before the company started going in this direction, so I can't blame them. It's the leadership that needs to understand values &gt; profits. At least if they want my continued support.   
    
        
      
 Much of this is PR dominance as well. Corporate media has already done 90% of the hard work for people to be able to easily market and feel good about opposing specific issues. You just need to fill in the colors in the coloring book. But these issues have been done and accepted for the longest time, such as Google's State Department staffed Jigsaw branch that creates tools, shown in Wikileaks, to assist overthrowing foreign governments in collaboration with the State Department, or tools that AI-censors comments, or tools that delegates control of the discoverability of grassroot contents to other corporate conglomerates.   
    
        
     &gt; I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google.How can you say this when those that build, even small parts, of surveillance technology are directly contributing to oppression? Workers absolutely have a moral obligation to what they work on. This notion that they're not responsible for this is horrifically wrong.
    
    
        
     I'm fairly anti-China and loved Taiwan, can't wait to go back, loved it, loved the Taiwanese people.Good for you on making a decision like that. But... Just so long as you know that someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked. That's something I think many idealistic users here aren't understanding.
    
    
        
     &gt; someone did take your job there. And they're almost certainly happy to do anything asked.If talented engineers were that easy to find, Google wouldn't have participated in illegal wage-fixing; and that's without selecting for engineers that want to support an authoritarian regime. Statistically speaking, every rejection drives up the price. To wield even more power, we'd need to form some kind of industry-wide union.
    
    
        
     I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. By placing values above profits, it increases it's goodwill with customers thus increasing it's moat and it's retention, as well as it's employee retention. This strategy made sense in the early days.Not anymore. As Google's position becomes increasingly strengthend (with all the market share it can capture in search already realized ~ and it slightly decreasing anyway due to it's slightly tarnished brand), it doesn't need to maintain this illusion of values over profits anymore.
    
    
        
     The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries.Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And "Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is critical for them. I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough that it doesn't really matter.
    
    
        
     &gt; Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google.Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...
    
    
        
     Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation. Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x.I think the boom in web &amp; mobile startups is basically over at this point, but there's a new boom in cryptocurrency &amp; AI startups that's just beginning, along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.
    
    
        
     This is only really true at startups. At a bigco, your on paper comp can be 250 or 350k annually in cash equivalents. That quickly generates wealth even if you are given only cash.You're comparing 2 pre-ipo companies to Google and apple.
    
    
        
      
 Still true at BigCo. Total comp as a senior SWE at Google when I left (almost 5 years ago - it's more now) was something like ~$175K cash, ~$125K stocks + options, ~$50K bonus. With the 5x appreciation in stock that was going on while I was there, the stock portion could be worth $625K/year by the time it all vested. That's as employee 20,000+.   
    
        
     "or have more growth potential"Right, but this is different from having higher expected value, or higher likely-case value. Most people don't value compensation offers based on 'growth potential' (aka 'best case'). (I'm assuming you mean growth in the sense of 'growth in value of equity', based on your reply to another commenter)
    
    
        
      
 I was actually thinking of growth as in "professional growth" - getting promoted faster, having a chance to learn more skills, doing things you wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking of the equity growth in terms of "pay more".   
    
        
      
 OK, so I'm curious: do many companies in the bay area pay more for engineers (on either an expected value or a worst case basis) than Google does? Sure, some of those startups will make their early employees very very rich, but most will fizzle or fail.   
    
        
      
 By reputation, Netflix pays more cash than Google. Like I said in the other subthread, though, the majority of your compensation in a tech company is in equity. The biggest price appreciation in equity is for younger, faster-growing companies. When I was at Google, that was largely Facebook; by the time I'd left, it was companies like AirBnB, Pinterest, Medium, and Snapchat (though I dunno how well folks at the latter 3 are doing nowadays).   
    
        
     There's something you've overlooked: companies are ultimately run by humans. Humans who make decisions at all levels of the hierarchy, in order to further their own personal priorities, even if it dramatically conflicts with the shareholders' goals of maximizing profits.In some cases, the personal priorities can be personal advancement. We see this all the time when managers hire/promote their friends, sexually harass their subordinates, and make decisions on the basis of politics as opposed to technical/business merit. And in other cases, the personal priorities can be moral values. Values such as promoting free speech, fighting censorship, protecting consumer rights, and avoiding layoffs. The idea that every single decision taken by a company is perfectly optimized to maximize long term profits, is baseless. There simply does not exist any mechanism to monitor and enforce such a requirement. The shareholders have only one lever to pull: accept the current leadership team, imperfections and all. Or fire them and risk destroying the company in the resulting churn. This gives both the executives and employees tremendous leeway to prioritize values over profits, as long as they are good enough to not get fired.
    
    
        
      
 Shareholders can do more than just fire the management team, they can set meaningful objectives and tie management compensation to reaching them.   
    
        
     Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values.Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their values than about making as much money as possible.
    
    
        
     The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.
    
    
        
     &gt; The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company.What an absurdly preposterous thing to say. Money is a motivator and a large one for many, many people, but it's ridiculous to call it the sole motivator for everyone.
    
    
        
     &gt; The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care...There are an awful lot of people in this very comment thread who would claim to be counterexamples to this. Are you going to say they're all lying or deluded about their own motivations?
    
    
    
    
        
      Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. This might sound weird but some people (and companies) don't subscribe to the notion that money is the only thing that matters.
    
    
        
     Well, a publicly traded company has the fiduciary obligation to make its shareholders money. So it really does not matter what the "the people" want, it matters what the shareholders want. In fact, the board and executive team are legally required to make the the decisions that make increase the value of the company. They could be in real trouble with the law if they knowingly do something that devalues the company.It's not to say that the employees don't have some power. Shareholders may play along with their request while figuring out how to maximize the profits and avoid such road bumps as this in the future. So in the end you have to weigh the wants/needs of the employees and how much money might be lost or gained if you go along with their demands vs how much money can be made or lost if you ignore them. I could see a argument that upsetting your employees could lead to a value drop that might be greater than whatever contract they are protesting. But it is hard to judge, and it will often only be looked at quarter to quarter.
    
    
        
     Nope.Now if you give the impression that you are all bout money but don't act like it then shareholders can be rightfully upset. But if you clearly state your values and ambitions and shareholders don't like it? Then, sucks to be them! There is nothing more to it than that.  Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators.    https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
    
    
        
     I am sorry, I think both you and Lynn Stout, are wrong, regardless of her credentials -- she sort of is making a name of her self by swing this sort of nonsense -- so her articles are self serving.And yes, we can define shareholder value -- its the stock price. But I see your point and why I have talked about the grey area of what is the best move. But you would be hard pressed to find a group of shareholders who who all agree not taking big contracts is going to be the best move.
    
    
        
      
 It doesn't matter if the shareholders believe it is not the best move. It matters if the board believes it is the best move for the long term benefit of the company and its shareholders. The duty of loyalty does not require a board to do everything the shareholders want or to maximize short term profits. If a majority of the shareholders disagree they can vote to replace the board, but that doesn't mean the board hasn't met its fiduciary duty.   
    
        
     If the companies value and ambition is to maximize the stock price then the stock price is a good metric. If the companies value is something else then stock price isn't really a good metric.It will also attract shareholders that share those values and thus going against them will cause an uproar.
    
    
        
     It really depends on their charter. People don't park money in a company simply to have the stock value drop or stay the same -- with exception of companies who pay out dividends.Most companies charters talk about their relationship and obligations to the shareholders -- people don't invest in companies that don't intend on increasing in value.
    
    
        
      
 Again, value doesn't have to be monetary. Shareholders has the right to expect return on their investment, yes. If the company delivers on their ambitions and values then that is the shareholders reward.   
    
        
     I don't think we are going to agree any time soon. The law is messy and it seems different cases can be signed supporting both of our points.Thanks for a civil disagreement and exchange.
    
    
    
        
      
 Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't expect that all (or even most) shareholders think that only money matters.   
    
    
        
      
 If the stock market is as amoral as you think then it seems something ought to be done to the stock market. But I don't think most people would invest in something that goes starkly against their personal ethics, no matter how profitable. And if you regard following one's moral compass as just "virtue gaming" I'm not sure what to think.   
    
        
      
 Doesn't matter. Shareholders must do their research. If they don't subscribe to the values then they can either not buy or suit themselves.   
    
        
     That is not how that works. A company -- with a few special exceptions and special charters -- ONLY goal is to increase value for this shareholders. A single shareholder with a non majority holding can sue if the company knowingly does something that causes the values of his shares to decrease -- even if the rest of the shareholders are okay with the loss because they agree with the sentiment.There is some grey area along strategy short game vs long game, but a company's charter is to increase the value of its shareholders -- THE ONLY THING that literally matters for a publicly traded company* * Some companies can be setup with a different charter that does not prioritize profit, but google and most of the publicly traded companies on the market today are not those. And it would be very hard to convert to such a company.
    
    
        
      
 How does a shareholder prove that it's not just a short term loss in value, and that the decision won't actually benefit the company in the long run?   
    
        
     Huh, that's an excellent point. When a company is so big and entrenched it doesn't need to seem like the nice guy anymore.Perhaps similarly to anti-monopoly laws we should also have size caps on companies.
    
    
        
     &gt; we should also have size caps on companiesAs a thought experiment, I've often wondered the best way to maintain the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow. It's not clear it's simply growth, or whether it's profits. I wonder if a non-charity oriented non-profit would maintain a better corporate culture.
    
    
        
     &gt; the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow.It's more like regression to the mean; it gets harder to be different as you grow. Good companies get worse, bad companies better (just look at Uber's internal culture).
    
    
        
      
 Dunbar's Number, I believe, gives some insight. Basically, humans can only maintain about 150 relationships. As organizations grow personal relationships are replaced with rules and structures as a matter of necessity.   
    
        
      
 Agreed. I suppose sociopaths can get away with more when there's so many people that the relationship/connections between everyone are weaker on average.   
    
    
    
        
     &gt; I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term.Come on. A lot of people create startups to do something interesting that they're passionate about. Customers and profit merely serve these ends, not the other way around.
    
    
        
     What are some potential solutions here? Some form of intervention by the US government? I think many of us will agree that the sort of behavior these employees are speaking out against is at least unethical, and it also seems this "profits-over-values" behavior is a common one for large tech companies to gradually start engaging in. To your point, corporations in all sectors always do what makes the most economic sense, even if it means building internet censorship tech, dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, etc.As a society which (hopefully) would like to have some sort of moral compass, how do we prevent large companies from seeking profit even at the expense of our freedoms/health/planet? It seems to me that if the punishment for unethical behavior is economically "less" than the costs or potential losses associated with acting in a good, ethical way, companies will continue to do what we're seeing them do now. My intuition is that capitalism (in its current Western incarnation) can't function without some strict controls to protect what our societies value most. Or do we simply value profit over everything else? If so, that's kind of depressing, but I get the sense that most people don't think this way.
    
    
        
      
 The US government? I find it hard to believe they would intervene with china unless they plan on using it as leverage in order to gain economic standing. However, seeing as google is already censoring content via prioritizing search results with favored websites before relevant websites and since the government is always happy to find new outlets to get personal information from its own and foreign citizens. I don't see this as being stoppable unless you make your own company and start competing with Google.   
    
        
      
 The tech sector has always been ripe for co-operatives and profit sharing. Politically speaking libertarian attitudes were the popular norm in most tech culture but now small co-opts could become the next phase for many small tech companies. That could be a first small step.   
    
        
     I think it's always a combination of factors. Unless you subscribe to the theory that every CEO is 100% sociopath.There's the consideration of true values. Then there's the consideration of lost opportunities from following those values. Then there's the cold consideration of the money gained from PR boost due to following the values. Then there's the "game theory" consideration of altogether dying in the marketplace if your competition don't act on those values. I think the best thing for all of us to do on the outside is to create a culture where every company benefits from the PR boost. Google executives are one concentrated interest, separate from Microsoft, etc. The employees, I reckon, are not as financially motivated (i.e. don't stand to lose _as_ much individually) and can afford to advocate their values. It seems to me (I'll phrase it conservatively, since I'm just throwing out ideas here) that Google employees should make friends with Microsoft employees to make sure they raise the same noise on their end as well. Make it okay for each company to gain (monetarily or otherwise) from good PR, and make it less profitable for all of their competitors to sell out.
We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542830
http://seo2.onreact.com/google-search-is-bad
This is Why Google Search is Bad and What Engine to Use in 2022 - SEO 2.0
2012-09-10
Tadeusz Szewczyk
<div><div>	
	
<figure></figure>
<p><em>Do you think Google sucks?</em> I’m not a big friend of <strong>Google</strong> either.</p>
<p>These are my personal preferences though. I won’t deal with them here. </p>
<blockquote><p>This post is not about ideology. It’s purely practical.</p></blockquote>
<p>This time I reflect on how bad the Google search engine performs by 2022.</p>
<p>To solve the problem <em>I will suggest a better <a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/google-alternatives">alternative</a></em> or more than one.</p>
<p>Before we start: take note though: <a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/do-i-hate-google">I do not hate Google</a>. I just criticize them.</p>
<p>That’s a big difference. Constructive criticism is actually helpful.</p>
<h2><br />Google Search Does not Work As Expected</h2>
<p>There is one straightforward reason why I prefer not to use Google Search though whenever possible. </p>
<p>When you search for something <em>you expect to see actual search results</em> don’t you?</p>
<blockquote><p>The Google search experience is bad! </p></blockquote>
<p>It’s not even search anymore. It’s Google Ads. </p>
<p>Google does not show real organic search results above the fold! What fold? </p>
<p>That is in the visible part of the search engine results pages (SERPs). </p>
<p>It’s a metaphor from the newspaper era. They folded in half.</p>
<p>For lucrative keywords Google displays just ads on top.</p>
<p>Don’t believe me? <em>Have you been looking for hotels recently?</em></p>
<p>Just search for [hotels] on Google.com – This is what I get (searching in English from the US by using <a href="http://protonvpn.com/">Proton VPN</a>) and why I consider it bad:</p>
<figure><a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/google-search-hotels-20200818.png"></a></figure>
<p><em>Can you spot even one real unpaid or so called “organic” result</em>? Take note that I use a clean browser here with no toolbars, only a bookmark bar.</p>
<p>I am not using a tablet or something with a small screen. I’m not even using a standard sized 15,6′ laptop screen. It’s a 17,3′ notebook!</p>
<blockquote><p>OK, so Google is not a real search engine anymore. It does not work as expected.</p></blockquote>
<p>What is it then? It’s a dynamic portal worse than Yahoo has ever been. </p>
<p>Most “results” are either ads or Google’s own properties. </p>
<p>In this case we see <a href="https://skift.com/2018/10/31/book-on-google-stands-out-more-forcefully-in-hotels-redesign/">Google’s proprietary hotel booking tool</a> below the adverts.</p>
<h2><br />How Can You Actually Search the Web in 2022?</h2>
<p>What can you use instead to search for real? The best alternative right now <strong>in 2022</strong> is <a href="https://neeva.com/p/signup?o=s&amp;c=w6-_ky_bWFlkVU2monL8b2d9eL_"><strong>Neeva</strong></a> [partner link].</p>
<p>You probably never heard of Neeva. They just started. It’s a new private and completely ad free search engine.</p>
<p>It’s so new, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sridhar-ramaswamys-neeva-search-startup-july-launch-revenue-share-program-2021-6?op=1">it only went live in 2021</a>. Yet the results were excellent from day one.</p>
<p>Most importantly they were actual results on top you can see without scrolling!</p>
<p>When you search for hotels there are hotels on top that haven’t paid to be shown there:</p>
<figure><a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/neeva-hotels.png"></a></figure>
<p>It’s Hotels.com on top as expected and then actual local hotels from the area I searched from appear below a map in a neat list.</p>
<p>You may wonder why I “partnered” with Neeva. I do not get paid by them. I only get to use Neeva for free for a month when you sign up using my link.</p>
<p>As I don’t live in the US and it does not support searching from Germany yet it does not make sense for me to pay for it.</p>
<p>That’s the only catch. Neeva needs money to run the show and because they don’t sell your data and attention to advertisers they need to make you pay. </p>
<p>The good thing is: <a href="https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/neeva-search-engine">Neeva is affordable</a>. It’s less than $5 per month (after a 4 months free trial).</p>
<p>When you count the time you wasted on scrolling and looking at ads you actually save money.</p>
<p>Another viable option is <a href="https://www.ecosia.org/"><strong>Ecosia</strong></a>. You may also consider <a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/private-search"><strong>Startpage</strong></a>.</p>
<p><strong>Ecosia</strong> shows ads above the search results too but far fewer of them and you even support <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/eco-friendly-search-engine-ecosia-celebrates-planting-100m-trees">reforestation</a> <a href="https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ecosia-marks-100-million-trees-planted/">efforts</a> all over the world with <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ecosia-use-profits-to-plant-trees/">80% of the ad revenue</a> <a href="https://mymodernmet.com/ecosia-100-million-trees/">when you click their ads</a>.</p>
<p>I like to plant trees to keep climate change at bay and thus I am even more likely to click ads. </p>
<p>In the case of the [hotels] search there weren’t many though. I disabled all ad blockers and privacy tools to make sure I can see them:</p>
<figure><a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ecosia-search-hotels-20200818.png"></a></figure>
<p>Hooray! What do we see? We recognize two relevant search results for [hotels] without trying hard: Hotels.com and Expedia. Then we’ll notice a Wikipedia entry on the right side. It’s Hotels.com again.</p>
<p>These results are real results determined by site authority and incoming links. The more people recommend those sites the higher they are in the results.</p>
<h2><br />Are You Still Scrolling or Already Searching?</h2>
<figure></figure>
<p>I could go on explaining why the above Google “results” are bad and the Neeva or Ecosia results are better but IMHO it’s obvious.</p>
<p>I do not even have to <a href="http://blog.jitbit.com/2012/09/googles-serp-is-only-25-serp.html">use colors to highlight</a> like others did before me. Just compare it to <a href="http://startupboy.com/2005/12/20/fix-the-search-interface-first/">the distant past of 2005</a>.</p>
<p>Back then Google had real results in the visible area. Ask.com had the most ads but still fewer than Google now and <a href="http://searchengineland.com/ask-com-to-focus-on-qa-search-end-web-crawling-55209">where is Ask now</a>?</p>
<p>A more current <a href="https://www.brightedge.com/sites/default/files/BrightEdge-Research-Demystifying-Google-SERP-Layout-Changes-2016_0.pdf">report from BrightEdge</a> shows how wide-spread the “ads-only above the fold” issue was in 2016.</p>
<p>My advice for all those who have no stake in Google: <em>Let’s move on to a real search engine.</em> Why have to sift through numerous ads to see actual results dozens of times a day?</p>
<blockquote><p>Don’t waste your time scrolling. Start searching!</p></blockquote>
<p>Ecosia uses mostly Bing results so that the technology behind the results is also state of the art while the environmental business model and the much cleaner interface are additional benefits.</p>
<p>In some cases – for so called “long tail” searches of three or more words Google can yield better results than Bing and with it Ecosia. </p>
<p>Startpage is the best solution then – it offers Google results without the </p>
<ul><li>tracking</li><li><a href="https://fs.blog/2017/07/filter-bubbles/">filter bubble</a> </li><li>visual clutter. </li></ul>
<p>It’s not as good for the planet as Ecosia though.</p>
<p>I haven’t tested Neeva often enough to tell whether their results outperform Google, Startpage, Ecosia and DuckDuckGo but the searches I did returned very helpful results.</p>
<p><em>Neeva has its own index!</em> Thus it does not use Google or Bing results like Startpage, Ecosia or DuckDuckGo. That’s probably the most important reason to try it!</p>
<h2><br />Google Search Quality</h2>
<figure><figcaption>The search result for [seo 2.0] as seen using Simple Search by The Markup</figcaption></figure>
<p>As I rank on top of Google for queries like [google is bad] many people come here to complain about the overall Google search quality in my comment section. </p>
<p>I assure you that once you find the actual search results below a huge pile of ads and Google owned services or features they are still very good. </p>
<p>Google excels especially when searching for so called “long tail” queries with 3, 4 or more words. </p>
<blockquote><p>Google has problems with “bigger” or more popular keywords! </p></blockquote>
<p>Why? It’s because they show not the </p>
<ul><li>best</li><li>most popular </li><li>authoritative </li></ul>
<p>pages but instead the </p>
<ul><li>latest</li><li>newest </li><li>most current ones. </li></ul>
<p>Thus an article from 2022 may outrank a much better post from 2017 mainly because it’s 5 years younger.</p>
<p><em>Often the best results are those that have aged for a few years like good wine</em>. Yet <a href="http://seo2.onreact.com/run-dmc-and-google-want-you-to-keep-it-fresh">Google prefers “fresh content”</a>. </p>
<p>One way to deal with this is to constantly update your content. I do that and that’s why I keep on ranking with some pages for a decade. </p>
<ul><li>When you are looking for the latest inside scoop on technology, politics or gossip – you might want to use Google. </li><li>When you are looking for some weird sentence long questions also ask Google. </li><li>For timeless and evergreen searches Ecosia or DuckDuckGo are often better as they both use Bing results. </li></ul>
<p>To overcome the problem of hidden organic results below the fold you can use Startpage which is based on Google results.</p>
<p>You can also use a tool called <a href="https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/11/10/introducing-simple-search">Simple Search by The Markup</a> that simply gets rid of all the clutter above Google search results and just shows the actual results in an overlay. </p>
<p>You add it to your browser (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-search/bbpcngjcblhpkhadnbhgdjhmidojegha">Chrome</a> or <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-search/">Firefox</a> e.g) and every time you search Google you just get to see the real search results not those someone paid for to get shown on top. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://varn.co.uk/01/18/varn-original-research-almost-60-people-still-dont-recognise-google-paid-ads-see/">Most people do not even realize that what they see on top of Google are ads</a></em>. In case you are one of them just make sure to view and click the proper results.</p>
<p>What search engine do you use and recommend in 2022? Do you still use Google? Why? Why not? Did you try Neeva? Please respond below!</p>
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 Home » This is Why Google Search is Bad and What Engine to Use in 2022

 This is Why Google Search is Bad and What Engine to Use in 2022

 Do you think Google sucks? I’m not a big friend of Google either.

 These are my personal preferences though. I won’t deal with them here.

 This post is not about ideology. It’s purely practical.

 This time I reflect on how bad the Google search engine performs by 2022.

 To solve the problem I will suggest a better alternative or more than one.

 Before we start: take note though: I do not hate Google. I just criticize them.

 That’s a big difference. Constructive criticism is actually helpful.


 Google Search Does not Work As Expected

 There is one straightforward reason why I prefer not to use Google Search though whenever possible.

 When you search for something you expect to see actual search results don’t you?

 The Google search experience is bad!

 It’s not even search anymore. It’s Google Ads.

 Google does not show real organic search results above the fold! What fold?

 That is in the visible part of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

 It’s a metaphor from the newspaper era. They folded in half.

 For lucrative keywords Google displays just ads on top.

 Don’t believe me? Have you been looking for hotels recently?

 Just search for [hotels] on Google.com – This is what I get (searching in English from the US by using Proton VPN) and why I consider it bad:

 Can you spot even one real unpaid or so called “organic” result? Take note that I use a clean browser here with no toolbars, only a bookmark bar.

 I am not using a tablet or something with a small screen. I’m not even using a standard sized 15,6′ laptop screen. It’s a 17,3′ notebook!

 OK, so Google is not a real search engine anymore. It does not work as expected.

 What is it then? It’s a dynamic portal worse than Yahoo has ever been.

 Most “results” are either ads or Google’s own properties.

 In this case we see Google’s proprietary hotel booking tool below the adverts.


 How Can You Actually Search the Web in 2022?

 What can you use instead to search for real? The best alternative right now in 2022 is Neeva [partner link].

 You probably never heard of Neeva. They just started. It’s a new private and completely ad free search engine.

 It’s so new, it only went live in 2021. Yet the results were excellent from day one.

 Most importantly they were actual results on top you can see without scrolling!

 When you search for hotels there are hotels on top that haven’t paid to be shown there:

 It’s Hotels.com on top as expected and then actual local hotels from the area I searched from appear below a map in a neat list.

 You may wonder why I “partnered” with Neeva. I do not get paid by them. I only get to use Neeva for free for a month when you sign up using my link.

 As I don’t live in the US and it does not support searching from Germany yet it does not make sense for me to pay for it.

 That’s the only catch. Neeva needs money to run the show and because they don’t sell your data and attention to advertisers they need to make you pay.

 The good thing is: Neeva is affordable. It’s less than $5 per month (after a 4 months free trial).

 When you count the time you wasted on scrolling and looking at ads you actually save money.

 Another viable option is Ecosia. You may also consider Startpage.

 Ecosia shows ads above the search results too but far fewer of them and you even support reforestation efforts all over the world with 80% of the ad revenue when you click their ads.

 I like to plant trees to keep climate change at bay and thus I am even more likely to click ads.

 In the case of the [hotels] search there weren’t many though. I disabled all ad blockers and privacy tools to make sure I can see them:

 Hooray! What do we see? We recognize two relevant search results for [hotels] without trying hard: Hotels.com and Expedia. Then we’ll notice a Wikipedia entry on the right side. It’s Hotels.com again.

 These results are real results determined by site authority and incoming links. The more people recommend those sites the higher they are in the results.


 Are You Still Scrolling or Already Searching?

 I could go on explaining why the above Google “results” are bad and the Neeva or Ecosia results are better but IMHO it’s obvious.

 I do not even have to use colors to highlight like others did before me. Just compare it to the distant past of 2005.

 Back then Google had real results in the visible area. Ask.com had the most ads but still fewer than Google now and where is Ask now?

 A more current report from BrightEdge shows how wide-spread the “ads-only above the fold” issue was in 2016.

 My advice for all those who have no stake in Google: Let’s move on to a real search engine. Why have to sift through numerous ads to see actual results dozens of times a day?

 Don’t waste your time scrolling. Start searching!

 Ecosia uses mostly Bing results so that the technology behind the results is also state of the art while the environmental business model and the much cleaner interface are additional benefits.

 In some cases – for so called “long tail” searches of three or more words Google can yield better results than Bing and with it Ecosia.

 Startpage is the best solution then – it offers Google results without the

 * tracking
 * filter bubble
 * visual clutter.

 It’s not as good for the planet as Ecosia though.

 I haven’t tested Neeva often enough to tell whether their results outperform Google, Startpage, Ecosia and DuckDuckGo but the searches I did returned very helpful results.

 Neeva has its own index! Thus it does not use Google or Bing results like Startpage, Ecosia or DuckDuckGo. That’s probably the most important reason to try it!


 Google Search Quality

 The search result for [seo 2.0] as seen using Simple Search by The Markup

 As I rank on top of Google for queries like [google is bad] many people come here to complain about the overall Google search quality in my comment section.

 I assure you that once you find the actual search results below a huge pile of ads and Google owned services or features they are still very good.

 Google excels especially when searching for so called “long tail” queries with 3, 4 or more words.

 Google has problems with “bigger” or more popular keywords!

 Why? It’s because they show not the

 * best
 * most popular
 * authoritative

 pages but instead the

 * latest
 * newest
 * most current ones.

 Thus an article from 2022 may outrank a much better post from 2017 mainly because it’s 5 years younger.

 Often the best results are those that have aged for a few years like good wine. Yet Google prefers “fresh content”.

 One way to deal with this is to constantly update your content. I do that and that’s why I keep on ranking with some pages for a decade.

 * When you are looking for the latest inside scoop on technology, politics or gossip – you might want to use Google.
 * When you are looking for some weird sentence long questions also ask Google.
 * For timeless and evergreen searches Ecosia or DuckDuckGo are often better as they both use Bing results.

 To overcome the problem of hidden organic results below the fold you can use Startpage which is based on Google results.

 You can also use a tool called Simple Search by The Markup that simply gets rid of all the clutter above Google search results and just shows the actual results in an overlay.

 You add it to your browser (Chrome or Firefox e.g) and every time you search Google you just get to see the real search results not those someone paid for to get shown on top.

 Most people do not even realize that what they see on top of Google are ads. In case you are one of them just make sure to view and click the proper results.

 What search engine do you use and recommend in 2022? Do you still use Google? Why? Why not? Did you try Neeva? Please respond below!

 Related Posts

 * Google Alternatives: Search Engines, E-Mail, Analytics and other Tools
 * When Will Google Sunset Search?
 * Why and How to Add nofollow When Linking Google Sites
 * Advantages of Google-Free Blogging
 * Do I Hate Google?
 Sovrn
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 * 
 * 
 * 
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 * More
 Last updated: July 4, 2022 · Google , Search , UX

 56 Responses

 1. Mat Newton September 12, 2012 at 01:10 ·

 Google destroys all these guys when it comes to local, and that’s where relevancy matters most.

 2. Farky Rafiq September 14, 2012 at 19:37 ·

 I think that Google’s reach a point of too big to fail, some of the changes they’ve made to shopping this week shows they can do what they like. I’m unsure how the public regard search quality. Bing’s also showing good results too but does anyone still use Yahoo. I’d love to see Facebook partner with Bing (pull demographic data to drive search). That would hit Google where it hurts!

 3. Kent October 6, 2012 at 14:56 ·

 I don’t think is that bad. And they keep changing algorithm for better quality result.

 4. Tadeusz Szewczyk October 8, 2012 at 12:16 ·

 Kent: You don’t see any search results up there thus the improved algorithms do not matter.

 5. Sol December 20, 2012 at 13:39 ·

 I disagree – I found this article through Google!

 But seriously – Come on!! I think what you really mean to say is that Google is changing by increasing ad space.

 Don’t worry – a challenger will be along any day to redress this imbalance (http://duckduckgo.com/ perhaps?)

 6. Tadeusz Szewczyk December 20, 2012 at 16:19 ·

 Sol: Yes, DuckDuckGo is another good alternative to Google.
 Btw. you can’t have found my post via Google because I banned Google on my blog and this post wasn’t even indexed.
 Don’t start your comment with a lie because it doesn’t support the rest of your message.

 7. Bengalaa April 17, 2013 at 22:16 ·

 whenever i make a search on google, he knows what i am looking for. With google, i always find what i was searching for.
 ofc it’s full of publicity and crap, but when i seek for academic information in google, i always find what i was searching for, and it supports lots of languages others search engines wont support.
 I know google is evil (i have read your articles and i agree), but i still think that google is the best search engine.

 I want to change it for duckduckgo, I REALLY DO!! but i cant… google’s search engine is the best i know ):

 8. Kent March 21, 2021 at 10:47 ·

 Duck Duck go is a joke and it uses google anyhow, why not just use brave or something? So much for the thoery about google being replaced quickly lol. Definitely not by DDG but think they are selling auto ins now lol. It’s honestly not funny to have to poor through manuals to retrieve facts you know are readily available to google for work, school, or just the inquisitive mind.

 9. Tadeusz Szewczyk March 22, 2021 at 16:31 ·

 Hey Kent!

 Thank you for your feedback.

 DDG uses Bing results (among others) though.

 Startpage uses Google results.

 I didn’t even recommend DDG in this post.

 I suggested Ecosia and Startpage.

 Sincerely, Tad

 10. Mike April 26, 2021 at 16:03 ·

 Tadeusz, i also found your site from Google search so i don’t think the other person is lying at all. In my search for “Why are Google search results so bad right now” on 04-26-2021, you, or more particularly this blog entry on your site was the #2 organic result.

 I will say that something has happened to Google as a whole in the last month since they made the update to card based layouts. That says it seems like it’s really affecting their predictive systems and query and ad engine elevance and accuracy for the worst.

 11. Tadeusz Szewczyk April 27, 2021 at 12:30 ·

 Thanks for the feedback Mike!

 The comment was from 2012 (I updated this post continuously ever since) and I allowed Google search bots to crawl and index my blog in 2015 again.

 Sincerely, Tad

 12. Carlos April 30, 2021 at 10:27 ·

 Hey Tad, I am agreeing that Google gets worse and worse for providing quick or even accurate results, but you definitely owe Sol an apology, I am reading this article on Android. THROUGH GOOGLE SEARCH.
 I was using Google to search why Google it so bad, as in three pages, I could not see a single result that was even close to relevant to the original question I was asking.

 This article was the third or fourth link on the first page relating to my search, so before you outright call someone a liar, please research the situation for yourself so you can give an informed reply.

 You may have blocked Google, but either.

 1.) Whatever you did, did not work in the intended manner.

 Or

 2) Google, being a powerful organisation, found your article, and displayed it on their engine anyway.

 There is absolutely no reason to jump down somebody’s throat and insult them without having bothered to verify your initial thought first.

 And I don’t want to read something containing any version of “I didn’t know” ignorence is not an excuse for plain A-holery.

 Thanks for reading and please stay well.

 13. Carlos April 30, 2021 at 10:30 ·

 Never mind, I see it was addressed to after on and you actually opened up access by Google again, I apologize profusely.

 14. Tadeusz Szewczyk May 3, 2021 at 14:17 ·

 No problem Carlos. Maybe I should delete comments that lost their original context.

 15. Hannah May 6, 2021 at 19:53 ·

 I saw this blog through Google search as well. I typed “are Google search results getting worse” then scrolled a bit and found this blog.

 16. Hannah May 6, 2021 at 19:56 ·

 Sorry I should’ve realized this was from years ago my bad I’m embarrassed

 17. Deborah Lockard May 26, 2021 at 11:40 ·

 Google only let’s us see what Google wants us to see. Google is bundled with fake subsideraries that acutely belong to Google. Just like the countries, they are all in cahoots. Sell and buy sites , all grouped with Amazon!!! Even single Privite sellers. I say we form our own internet. Just Google that see what you get. You will get only what works best for Google. And only those that have a stake and big cut of bacon! Etc later. There has to be a way to do it like moris code kind of thing. Analog is fine anyhow.

 18. Joe Dirt June 14, 2021 at 02:33 ·

 Every single time I search for anything I’m interested in on Google I can’t find it. Back in the good ol days 1990’s you could type in Google sucks and find thousands of personal stories to read about it. It seems they’ve completely eradicated anything they want to. I’ve read articles about how if you want to find anything you need to access the dark web. It’s funny they call it dark web to put a criminal spin on searching for things im interested in that goes against the grain. The big internet corps dont want people to have freedom to choose. I’m going to have to learn Tor, Onions and fake IP addresses to access the dark web. They call America free but I’m thinking the dark web is probably a search engine in Nigeria. Go figure.

 19. Pŕıñçə§§Ķůňț June 19, 2021 at 12:14 ·

 I think it’s great this is from 2012 and we are in 2021and we are still asking the same question. I never remember a time when Google ran out of results, I now have experienced it several search times.

 What the frick lol

 I think it needs a add on of a few thibgs that we now have controlled results in certain places, I am not 100% sure on how or what obviously otherwise I wouldn’t be here but yes this was also good to know how Google has changed and continues to change, not for thw best though clearly!

 20. Joeal July 6, 2021 at 04:45 ·

 My name is Joeal Manimtim and I’m the only person in the world with this name and when I search Google for my name, google ranks other names spelled differently higher on serps. Wtf Google, learn how to spell. All other search engines get it right.

 21. Rob July 29, 2021 at 15:53 ·

 Google is terrible. I just searched for QLED TV less than 50 inches. The first 10 results were NOT what I was looking for.
 This is what happens when you have a monopoly and you replace most of your engineers with SJW’s
 Google is now garbage. I will try your search engine suggestion.

 22. Chris Kelley July 31, 2021 at 22:32 ·

 A large Purge of search results happened approximately 2 years ago. It’s hard to tell now the time frame. Google search results used to be near perfect. They don’t like you talking about them purging information. In a professional, yet critical manner I wrote my feelings on this in quite a few Google forums… only to have the Forum shut down for no further comment, and even at one point, I was banned.. Yup! Imagine that, banned from a Google product Forum. When I reached out to them, they undid the ban. My personal belief on the reasoning why search results were purged two years ago was due to pressure from Fortune 500 companies with critical articles, forums with people complaining, etc. And political interests who can easily be judged or criticized online with the same forums or articles. I believe there were many antitrust and class action lawsuits. So much for Freedom eh? I really don’t think this has much to do with Google Ads – the way they are displayed was already leaning towards this way prior to two years ago.. search relevancy is what suffered.

 I used to search information about technical subjects, Health subjects, political subjects.. and what used to take me maybe five seconds to be satisfied, now takes me upwards of 15 to 20 minutes. Or, I just give up and move on without the information I requested.

 The good news is that search results are getting slightly better over the past two years; but nowhere near 2018 or 2019 awesomeness. I’d say we are at Circa 2009 or 2010 level Google search results right now. Google, if you are listening.. this is not who you used to be.

 23. Kent August 20, 2021 at 09:38 ·

 I was referring to another poster, little has changed as I still search the google sucks results it’s good to see this blog still up, p.s. also found with google search but hey they obviously are doing whatever they want thanks

 24. h3 September 8, 2021 at 15:43 ·

 You realise you’ve posted this on google?

 25. Tadeusz Szewczyk September 9, 2021 at 13:33 ·

 h3: I didn’t “post” it on Google. Google crawled and indexed an article I posted on my blog. I banned Google search bots for a few years on my blog (between 2012 and 2015) but allowed Google search to spider it again after that.

 Also make sure to read the whole post and its latest update in the last section.

 26. George September 13, 2021 at 20:43 ·

 I wish more people realised that results from Google are not organic. Great post and I would also like to add another alternative into the mix – https://dropicon.com

 27. Dumb Phone September 16, 2021 at 15:01 ·

 Even within the commercial realm Google has become completely useless. A search for small appliance stores in the city I am currently in and get a response of 4 solid pages of hotels. Every day I seem to get more of this useless garbage. Not worth the bother.

 28. Marcel C September 30, 2021 at 09:47 ·

 Hello,

 Google search is useless now. Banned words, only adds and first page always the same few big news sites. I used to be able to find interesting stuff, like forums or obscure sites on certain topics, now its only adds and maybe you were searching for this … when I was not.

 The predictive algorithm ruined internet searches.

 Alternatives are not so good also, I don’t care about adds as long I get correct searches.

 29. Goat Rite October 11, 2021 at 14:37 ·

 I don’t believe Google is dumb because of ads, without it.. No other search engines would even be out there.

 30. Goat Rite October 11, 2021 at 14:39 ·

 Oh and, Google is one of the most highly advanced programs out there.

 Thank you for taking your time to read this. We all have different opinions I’m not trying to start an argument. I appreciate yours.

 31. Factynista October 11, 2021 at 14:45 ·

 Algorithm mind warp. Check out Alphabet activities. Great Reset. Huxley and others are in the shade. The nightmare is only just beginning. Matrix and some. Sordid. Terrifying. TIME TO WALK!

 Darpa FBI etc. etc. etc. fist in glove

 32. Pamala Zornosa December 17, 2021 at 19:26 ·

 Google used to be the best search engine out there. Especially for doing research…actually digging in and finding what you want/need…but now I have actually had them come back with unable to locate anyting under my search…what the… how is that even possible. Whatever Google is doing, it is dumbing down the search engine to the point is not even a viable research tool anymore. Sad and very frustrating. Grrrr.

 33. Goran December 19, 2021 at 12:06 ·

 In short,i started to hate google,WHY?All other search engines index and rank my main keywords on my site,only google doesnt,they hold me on block until i pay them,but thats not gonna happen.
 Cheers all.

 34. Vivian December 23, 2021 at 01:12 ·

 I tried Ecosia and it is very much like Google . A simple search of, “I made my own water garden” no longer shows any of the key words that I type in. All adds. I want to know from actual humans in my search of how they make their own things. Yes, they are on youtube but not on web. If only Google and the other search engines would resort back to the old days of searching.

 35. Tadeusz Szewczyk December 23, 2021 at 15:06 ·

 Hey Vivian!

 Thank you for the feedback! Indeed I tested your search query from the US and it shows three ads on top and three on the side but I still see three actual results below them.

 It’s not ideal for sure.

 I’m already in the process on updating this post for 2022. I will recommend another search engine that is completely ad free, it’s called Neeva.

 Give it a go. There is one catch though: you have to pay for it. It’s like $2 a month or something.

 Sincerely, Tad

 36. Donnie January 6, 2022 at 22:39 ·

 What can I say that hasn’t already been said? Google is completely useless for me. I am looking for an alternative even if I have to pay. I am finding all Google products useless any more including things like Google Play. I spent hours in two different languages searching “white gold” pendants. I got every kind of gold and metal but not white gold. I thought quotation marks are supposed to return sites and ads that only include white gold? But apparently not. Usually I found what I want on the first page, but now I search ten pages down and never see what I am looking for. Really, what use does Google have when you can’t even find an advertisement with your key words!? I recently moved to a different country and I cannot get anything on Google Play that is related solely to my new country. They won’t let me get results until I have a new bank in the country I’m in which I need Google Play to switch over and I cant get an account for six months and there is no alternative to Google Play. Personally I am finished with Google. I will try your suggestion and I used to love my Chrome browser but it is crap too. I think I will try Firefox for now until Google screws it up. I used to be a major player on the dark web but maybe I will have to go back to the Onion. :s

 37. Luka January 22, 2022 at 19:46 ·

 I found your site via Startpage, Google doesn’t destroy anything expect the persons ability to get search results that are accurate relevant, devoid of adds and or Google relationships, that don’t facilitate confirmation bias.
 I am astounded at the masses, misguide understanding of how to research the internet. The belief that Google is so venerable that the word search is replaced by the phrase ‘Google it’. Clearly they have not bother nor do they care to learn how search engines work. Searching a topic to get accurate and correct data should be your first priority not confirmation that what you think or currently believe is the truth. So I would suggest researching how to research.

 38. Bardo January 23, 2022 at 01:19 ·

 I’ve been on the net since the 90s, when altavista was king. Google was awesome about 15 years ago, returning many pages for any weird search. Even files in ftp sites would appear. Gradually it got weaker. Now, I sometimes get 5 results only for a search that a few months ago only gave me 20 pages!
 The world is changing for the worse, information is kept from us and google is in the thick of it all.

 39. Ron Avery February 5, 2022 at 05:51 ·

 Google is CRAP!!!!

 Then I will say it again

 40. gunnygol February 12, 2022 at 22:18 ·

 GOOGLE SEARCH SUCKS AND I MEAN REALLY SUCKS What ever happened to the good old phone book. Try to find something on Google and it LIES like a top level democrat. Must be run by robotic democrat piglets

 41. Owner of Qgap March 1, 2022 at 00:06 ·

 I hate google!
 Qgap is a way better search engine!
 qgap.2539901.repl.co
 There are no Ads!

 42. Papa March 12, 2022 at 15:21 ·

 If Neeva are charging they wont last long

 43. Nathaniel May 3, 2022 at 12:26 ·

 I agree with you and disagree with all these Google panderers on here, prob paid by Google to stick up for them, or they work for Google, Google gets paid to remove things from their search engine, so you can find them, and find out the truth about some of these companies, like if I search bad reviews from something and it won’t show up, like I’m supposed to believe no one said anything bad about said company.

 44. Peter May 9, 2022 at 08:25 ·

 I gave up Google and all the other search engines. I now use Qwant, which is a European engine.

 I only use MyPal browser because it is the only one that works with Windows XP, which I will never ‘update’ as I only use my computer seriously and have no use for idiotic anti-social networks.

 45. Frank June 8, 2022 at 03:17 ·

 in my opinion has been a long time that gg has shifted from being a ‘search engine’ (the best at the time) to a ‘recommendation engine’ (paid from advertisers)

 it’s annoying that they pretend, despite the keywords i enter, to know what i am looking for, better than my father and my mother when i was nine y/o

 so it has become a ‘reccomendation engine for kids’ (paid from advertisers)

 recently is getting even worse, from ‘recommendation engine’ is shifting to ‘entertainment engine’ or in other words a ‘grab-attention engine’

 like facebook, instagram, youtube and ticktok

 when the query has not a commercial intent (aka ads aka $$$ from advertisers) then the second priority become that you don’t leave the google properties, youtube, maps.. everything that may be at least a bit relevant

 i think that on one side this is manipulative and on the other is humiliating for the users that are treated like dumbs

 46. David Lee June 17, 2022 at 22:52 ·

 Is this a joke?
 I just tried “neeva”, looking for a place to find bathroom sinks and the results were REST AREA BATHROOMS ON THE INTERSTATE.
 Even google knows what a sink is.

 47. J June 21, 2022 at 06:40 ·

 Google search sucks in no small part because of people who do SEO. So quite frankly part of the blame is yours. It’s your game they’re playing.

 48. Blueberryfin June 22, 2022 at 00:04 ·

 We actually need a proper search engine. Like the earlier google. Google is now PURE manipulation engine. You don’t get search results. All you get is suggestions. And most of the time you can’t find what you are searching for. In fact it’s so bad, they don’t even reply any complaints/feedbacks etc. They don’t care.. Same applies to many other search engines. SUGGESTIONS… This is horribly wrong. YouTube is also as bad.

 49. Ruppa June 22, 2022 at 21:07 ·

 So DuckDuckGo is still better. Type into GOOGLE, NEEVA, and DUCKDUCKGO, “How to make baby formula”. Both Google and NEEVA will give you an entire page of why Corporate Baby Formula is better and also scare campaigns to keep you from making your own. DuckDuckGo takes you on page 1 to several sites telling you the recipe and how to make it straight up. I am looking for HOW TO MAKE BABY FORMULA, not “why I shouldn’t try and make baby formula, here buy overpriced factory formula instead” so NEEVA and GOOGLE results are irrelevant, 100% useless. This is why we are getting away from Google by the way.

 50. Ruppa June 22, 2022 at 21:12 ·

 So DuckDuckGo is still better. Type into GOOGLE, NEEVA, and DUCKDUCKGO, “How to make baby formula”. Both Google and NEEVA will give you an entire page of why Corporate Baby Formula is better and also scare campaigns to keep you from making your own. DuckDuckGo takes you on page 1 to several sites telling you the recipe and how to make it straight up. I am looking for HOW TO MAKE BABY FORMULA, not “why I shouldn’t try and make baby formula, here buy overpriced factory formula instead” so NEEVA and GOOGLE results are irrelevant, 100% useless. This is why we are getting away from Google by the way. Ok, just test Lycos and also Startpage. Startpage gives the same Corporate sponsored stuff however, Lycos, still the old Lycos, and gives good relevant results same as DuckDuckGo.

 51. laurent July 16, 2022 at 16:34 ·

 In the past the google search engine could be refined using the keywords or operators (+ or – for example) which are now clearly just ignored.
 DDG is doing exactly the same, giving less useless results but enough to go to google, get worse results and ending here by despair after making a “why google search sucks” search into google search.
 I ll definitly try the others here; could the be very worse than the others ? Not sure
 PS you can f… SEO if you had operators like “not including”, the old (-) operator

 52. Ev July 19, 2022 at 08:47 ·

 Absolutely EVERYTHING that crap company makes is total trash!

 53. Rambling Idiot August 31, 2022 at 22:51 ·

 Another fun thing they’ve done in the last ten years or so (so since around the original posting of this topic) is intentionally change auto predict or text complete results to what they think they should be. This isn’t conspiracy stuff, this is things that people working there have proudly disclosed. And it shows. The same force that makes it difficult to see any criticism for Google through Google (especially compared to a decade ago) is the same force that influences how any number of queries come out. It’s getting harder and harder to find anything actually related to what you’re searching for.

 At this point if I want to see honest opinions about anything (not even necessarily political though that one is obvious, could be as basic as travel suggestions, opinions, troubleshooting, etc) is to specifically look for forums or in anyway possible cut out most of the results that will naturally pop up on the page. And of course you need to scroll past all the paid content that I imagine captures +80% of web traffic.

 It’s funny that they’ve become these deciders of morals, who feel that they should control the flow of discourse and ideology, but then we see what’s allowed to trend on platforms owned by them like Youtube and it’s obvious that the driver has always just been money. Google has essentially ruined what the internet was meant to be about. The web developers who set up the framework that Google spidered into being the biggest company in the world must hate to see the nightmarish garbage that came of it.

 54. Aaron Hu October 12, 2022 at 23:15 ·

 Nowadays, Google has NO privacy. They read everything you do and more. Sadly, it is also much harder to steer clear from Google, as many Google alternatives don’t have the money Google has and are typically either paid or freemium services, with exceptions from search engines. Even worse, schools usually use Chromebooks, a Google product, meaning that students give out their data to Google. On spreadprivacy.com, a DuckDuckGo website, I found an article listing Google alternatives.
 Link: https://spreadprivacy.com/how-to-remove-google/

 55. lon hope October 20, 2022 at 04:59 ·

 Tad, how difficult and how much do you think it would cost to build a search engine like google used to be but without the corporate greed. I looked at neeva that you mentioned and was started by two former google employees and the investors invested in dangerous CRAP like facebook.
 I don’t know what to use now for a browser or search engine. Brave was ok for privacy I guess but their search results are worse than google.

 56. SM November 19, 2022 at 05:20 ·

 Your recommendation of Neeva is no longer worth anything. I’m getting the exact same results with Neeva as I do with Duck Duck Go – in other words, irrelevant but slightly less irrelevant than Google.

 The problem isn’t just the search engines, it’s the Search Engine Optimization industry. The whole point in SEO is to manipulate a site to appear more favorable to search engines, regardless of actual relevancy, in order to drive traffic to your site rather than someone else’s, even if someone else’s site might be objectively more relevant.

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 I'm a vegan dog-owner, parkour and Zen practicioner. You can call me Tad. How can I help you?

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Do you think Google sucks? I’m not a big friend of Google either.
These are my personal preferences though. I won’t deal with them here. 
 This post is not about ideology. It’s purely practical. 
This time I reflect on how bad the Google search engine performs by 2022.
To solve the problem I will suggest a better alternative  or more than one.
Before we start: take note though: I do not hate Google. I just criticize them.
That’s a big difference. Constructive criticism is actually helpful.
 Google Search Does not Work As Expected
There is one straightforward reason why I prefer not to use Google Search though whenever possible. 
When you search for something you expect to see actual search results don’t you?
 The Google search experience is bad!  
It’s not even search anymore. It’s Google Ads. 
Google does not show real organic search results above the fold! What fold? 
That is in the visible part of the search engine results pages (SERPs). 
It’s a metaphor from the newspaper era. They folded in half.
For lucrative keywords Google displays just ads on top.
Don’t believe me? Have you been looking for hotels recently? 
Just search for [hotels] on Google.com – This is what I get (searching in English from the US by using Proton VPN) and why I consider it bad:
   
 Can you spot even one real unpaid or so called “organic” result? Take note that I use a clean browser here with no toolbars, only a bookmark bar.
I am not using a tablet or something with a small screen. I’m not even using a standard sized 15,6′ laptop screen. It’s a 17,3′ notebook!
 OK, so Google is not a real search engine anymore. It does not work as expected. 
What is it then? It’s a dynamic portal worse than Yahoo has ever been. 
Most “results” are either ads or Google’s own properties. 
In this case we see Google’s proprietary hotel booking tool below the adverts.
 How Can You Actually Search the Web in 2022?
What can you use instead to search for real? The best alternative right now in 2022 is  Neeva  [partner link].
You probably never heard of Neeva. They just started. It’s a new private and completely ad free search engine.
It’s so new, it only went live in 2021. Yet the results were excellent from day one.
Most importantly they were actual results on top you can see without scrolling!
When you search for hotels there are hotels on top that haven’t paid to be shown there:
   
It’s Hotels.com on top as expected and then actual local hotels from the area I searched from appear below a map in a neat list.
You may wonder why I “partnered” with Neeva. I do not get paid by them. I only get to use Neeva for free for a month when you sign up using my link.
As I don’t live in the US and it does not support searching from Germany yet it does not make sense for me to pay for it.
That’s the only catch. Neeva needs money to run the show and because they don’t sell your data and attention to advertisers they need to make you pay. 
The good thing is: Neeva is affordable. It’s less than $5 per month (after a 4 months free trial).
When you count the time you wasted on scrolling and looking at ads you actually save money.
Another viable option is  Ecosia . You may also consider  Startpage .
 Ecosia shows ads above the search results too but far fewer of them and you even support reforestation efforts all over the world with 80% of the ad revenue when you click their ads.
I like to plant trees to keep climate change at bay and thus I am even more likely to click ads. 
In the case of the [hotels] search there weren’t many though. I disabled all ad blockers and privacy tools to make sure I can see them:
   
Hooray! What do we see? We recognize two relevant search results for [hotels] without trying hard: Hotels.com and Expedia. Then we’ll notice a Wikipedia entry on the right side. It’s Hotels.com again.
These results are real results determined by site authority and incoming links. The more people recommend those sites the higher they are in the results.
 Are You Still Scrolling or Already Searching?
 
I could go on explaining why the above Google “results” are bad and the Neeva or Ecosia results are better but IMHO it’s obvious.
I do not even have to use colors to highlight like others did before me. Just compare it to the distant past of 2005.
Back then Google had real results in the visible area. Ask.com had the most ads but still fewer than Google now and where is Ask now?
A more current report from BrightEdge shows how wide-spread the “ads-only above the fold” issue was in 2016.
My advice for all those who have no stake in Google: Let’s move on to a real search engine. Why have to sift through numerous ads to see actual results dozens of times a day?
 Don’t waste your time scrolling. Start searching! 
Ecosia uses mostly Bing results so that the technology behind the results is also state of the art while the environmental business model and the much cleaner interface are additional benefits.
In some cases – for so called “long tail” searches of three or more words Google can yield better results than Bing and with it Ecosia. 
Startpage is the best solution then – it offers Google results without the 
 tracking  filter bubble  visual clutter.  
It’s not as good for the planet as Ecosia though.
I haven’t tested Neeva often enough to tell whether their results outperform Google, Startpage, Ecosia and DuckDuckGo but the searches I did returned very helpful results.
 Neeva has its own index! Thus it does not use Google or Bing results like Startpage, Ecosia or DuckDuckGo. That’s probably the most important reason to try it!
 Google Search Quality
 The search result for [seo 2.0] as seen using Simple Search by The Markup 
As I rank on top of Google for queries like [google is bad] many people come here to complain about the overall Google search quality in my comment section. 
I assure you that once you find the actual search results below a huge pile of ads and Google owned services or features they are still very good. 
Google excels especially when searching for so called “long tail” queries with 3, 4 or more words. 
 Google has problems with “bigger” or more popular keywords!  
Why? It’s because they show not the 
 best most popular  authoritative  
pages but instead the 
 latest newest  most current ones.  
Thus an article from 2022 may outrank a much better post from 2017 mainly because it’s 5 years younger.
 Often the best results are those that have aged for a few years like good wine. Yet Google prefers “fresh content”. 
One way to deal with this is to constantly update your content. I do that and that’s why I keep on ranking with some pages for a decade. 
 When you are looking for the latest inside scoop on technology, politics or gossip – you might want to use Google.  When you are looking for some weird sentence long questions also ask Google.  For timeless and evergreen searches Ecosia or DuckDuckGo are often better as they both use Bing results.  
To overcome the problem of hidden organic results below the fold you can use Startpage which is based on Google results.
You can also use a tool called Simple Search by The Markup that simply gets rid of all the clutter above Google search results and just shows the actual results in an overlay. 
You add it to your browser (Chrome or Firefox e.g) and every time you search Google you just get to see the real search results not those someone paid for to get shown on top. 
  Most people do not even realize that what they see on top of Google are ads . In case you are one of them just make sure to view and click the proper results.
What search engine do you use and recommend in 2022? Do you still use Google? Why? Why not? Did you try Neeva? Please respond below!
This is Why Google Search is Bad and What Engine to Use in 2022 - SEO 2.0
http://seo2.onreact.com/google-search-is-bad
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/is-google-search-worse/446919/
Is Google Search Worse? Many Seem to Agree
2022-04-22
Roger Montti
<div><div><p>A member of Reddit asked if Google search was becoming worse and thousands of others responded overwhelmingly that Google search was not showing what they were looking for. The SEO community on Twitter picked up the discussion and largely agreed.</p>
<h2>Google Search Quality Has Declined, According to Users?</h2>
<p>While a few members of Reddit (referred to as Redditors) said that Google search used to be worse and asserted that Google was better now, those that defended Google Search were in the minority.</p>
<p>Seemingly most of the commenters on the Reddit thread claimed that Google search was worse and for a variety of reasons.</p>
<h2>Articles With a Poor User Experience</h2>
<p>A common theme at Reddit was that Google was surfacing content with a bad user experience.</p>
<h3>One Sentence Web Pages</h3>
<p>An example of a bad user experience that Google ranks are the listicle pages that force a user to keep clicking to read an article one sentence at a time.</p>
<p><strong>One Redditor <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u74vx6/comment/i5d9613/">commented</a>:</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>“I’m no SEO optimization expert or anything, but the amount of [redacted] blog posts I get when looking up stuff is ridiculous. I think the absolute worst offender are those sites that do the “TOP 10 OF X THING” that legitimately interests you, but instead of just listing them in order on the page, they use …slides…”</p></blockquote>
<h3>Every Site in SERPs Wants to Sell You Something</h3>
<p>Another common complaint was that sites ranking for informational queries had a sales slant. That results in the situation where a search for information leads to sites that are advertising or selling a product.</p>
<p><strong>One Redditor <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u74vx6/comment/i5ceaw3/">complained</a>:</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>“most results are just road maps to point you towards buying something rather than giving you info.</p>
<p>I searched something the other day… something fairly mundane and was hoping to just find intel on it.</p>
<p>All google gave me was a bunch of amazon, ebay, walmart, and other big box retail links. …I just wanted to know about this thing, im not looking to buy… if I wanted that I’d use the shopping tab.”</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Another Redditor agreed, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u74vx6/comment/i5cncas/">writing</a>:</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>“Agree. What’s the point of having a shopping tab if everything is shopping?”</p></blockquote>
<p>A subsequent comment from another member observed that searching for information about dental fillings resulted in low quality listicles of best fillings to buy and other content that was focused on selling dental fillings rather than provide information about it.</p>
<h2>Pages That Force Scrolling to Find the Content</h2>
<p>Another form of bad user experience that was complained about were sites featuring an informational query that forced a user to scroll past paragraphs of content in order to reach the answer they were looking for.</p>
<p><strong>One Redditor <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u74vx6/comment/i5e4ruc/">explained</a>:</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>“The worst is when I’m looking for a release date, for example, and it’s a 5 paragraph article.</p>
<p><em>“You want to know the date? We’ll tell you the release date. </em></p>
<p><em>Just keep scrolling past these ads to find out the release date.”</em></p>
<p><em>…irrelevant backstory</em></p>
<p><em>“The release date is coming soon. Everyone is excited for the release date”</em></p>
<p><em>More ads</em></p>
<p><em>“Now a lot of people wonder what the release date is. Currently we do not have a release date.”</em>“</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Google Offers a Response</h2>
<p><strong>A Google spokesperson contacted Search Engine Journal and offered this response:</strong></p>
<p>“We’re constantly making improvements to our systems – <a href="https://blog.google/products/search/danny-25-years-of-search/">5,000 in 2021, based on more than 800,000 quality tests</a> – to make sure we’re delivering helpful and relevant information.</p>
<p>Over the last seven years, we decreased irrelevant results by over 50%, and our AI identified nearly <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/webspam-report-2021">six times more spam sites</a> than last year, keeping more than 99% of Search spam-free.</p>
<p>We value user input, and anyone can report any issue they may find via the feedback function on Search.</p>
<ul><li>We’ve made major investments in language understanding and AI to evolve Search along with the internet and the world around us, which is constantly changing.</li>
<li>Search has automated processes designed to identify and prevent spam or machine-created content from influencing results.</li>
<li>We always value feedback on areas where we may not get it right, and use this input to help inform product improvements alongside quantitative feedback from live experiments and qualitative feedback from our human reviewers.”</li>
</ul><h2>Search Community Opinion on Google Search</h2>
<p>On the SEO community side there were many who agreed that Google Search is worse.</p>
<p><strong>A representative tweet:</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Definitely worse. This result seems to have changed on mobile now, but I kept it as a wtf example of how search often doesn’t give the best top result 🤦🏻‍♀️ <a href="https://t.co/GGCYM3FsSZ">pic.twitter.com/GGCYM3FsSZ</a></p>
<p>— Rachael Pilcher | SaaS Copywriter (@MightyFineCopy_) <a href="https://twitter.com/MightyFineCopy_/status/1516927827437830144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
<p>Another person offered the opinion that AI content creation was ranking heavily in Google.</p>
<p><strong>He tweeted:</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think AI generated (or assisted) articles is hurting the information ecosystem more than we may realize. </p>
<p>Google in turn could be tweaking the algorithm in unfortunate ways to try to cut through the garbage… but I don’t think it’s working.</p>
<p>— Mike Huggard (@miglehu) <a href="https://twitter.com/miglehu/status/1516976918863790083?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
<h2>Big Brands and Clickbait Dominate Google?</h2>
<p>Others offered their opinions that big brands and clickbait were dominating Google search results.</p>
<p><strong>They tweeted:</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Noticeably worse on my end. Pretty much exclusively Forbes, Hearst, Red, dominating SERPS with their authority portfolios.</p>
<p>A lot of times not even matching search intent correctly and are certainly not industry experts.</p>
<p>— Austin Tuwiner (@AustinTuwiner) <a href="https://twitter.com/AustinTuwiner/status/1516850193391656960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>EAT is a joke when a clickbait site outperforms some of the most credible sites.</p>
<p>— Krishna B. Karki (@midnightstrngr) <a href="https://twitter.com/midnightstrngr/status/1516981205174210560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2022</a></p></blockquote>
<h2>Why Is Google Search Worse?</h2>
<p>Both the Reddit and Twitter communities were divided as to why Google search was so bad.</p>
<p>Some blamed the publishers for gaming Google in order to rank content that doesn’t answer informational queries or that offer a poor user experience.</p>
<p>Others blamed Google’s search algorithms since that’s what decides to rank the poor quality content.</p>
<p>A good example of the content and ranking problem can be seen in recipe search queries.</p>
<p>The recipe blogging community believed that Google only ranked long form content. In response, the recipe bloggers published recipes containing long and sometimes irrelevant personal anecdotes that forced site visitors to scroll past paragraphs of irrelevant content to the bottom of the page to find the recipe they were looking for.</p>
<p><strong>The discussions seemed to ultimately lead to this one question:</strong></p>
<p><em>Are Google search results worse or is the content being published nowadays overwhelmingly poor?</em></p>
<h2>Citations</h2>
<h3>Read the Original Reddit Discussion</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u74vx6/does_anyone_else_think_google_search_quality_has/">Does anyone else think Google search quality has gone downhill fast?</a></p>
<h3>Read the Search Community on Twitter Discuss if Google is Worse</h3>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nichepursuits/status/1516828314781962242">Do you think Google search is getting better or worse?</a></p>
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 1. SEJ
 2. ⋅
 3. SEO

 Is Google Search Worse? Many Seem to Agree

 Is Google Search Worse? And if so, is it because content is so bad or is the algorithm to blame?

 SEJ STAFF

 Roger Montti

 * April 22, 2022
 * ⋅
 * 5 min read
 SEJ STAFF

 Roger Montti

 Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com
 Bio
 Follow
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 SHARES
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 READS

 A member of Reddit asked if Google search was becoming worse and thousands of others responded overwhelmingly that Google search was not showing what they were looking for. The SEO community on Twitter picked up the discussion and largely agreed.

 Google Search Quality Has Declined, According to Users?

 While a few members of Reddit (referred to as Redditors) said that Google search used to be worse and asserted that Google was better now, those that defended Google Search were in the minority.

 Seemingly most of the commenters on the Reddit thread claimed that Google search was worse and for a variety of reasons.

 Articles With a Poor User Experience

 A common theme at Reddit was that Google was surfacing content with a bad user experience.

 One Sentence Web Pages

 An example of a bad user experience that Google ranks are the listicle pages that force a user to keep clicking to read an article one sentence at a time.

 One Redditor commented:

 “I’m no SEO optimization expert or anything, but the amount of [redacted] blog posts I get when looking up stuff is ridiculous. I think the absolute worst offender are those sites that do the “TOP 10 OF X THING” that legitimately interests you, but instead of just listing them in order on the page, they use …slides…”

 Every Site in SERPs Wants to Sell You Something

 Another common complaint was that sites ranking for informational queries had a sales slant. That results in the situation where a search for information leads to sites that are advertising or selling a product.

 One Redditor complained:

 “most results are just road maps to point you towards buying something rather than giving you info.

 I searched something the other day… something fairly mundane and was hoping to just find intel on it.

 All google gave me was a bunch of amazon, ebay, walmart, and other big box retail links. …I just wanted to know about this thing, im not looking to buy… if I wanted that I’d use the shopping tab.”

 Another Redditor agreed, writing:

 “Agree. What’s the point of having a shopping tab if everything is shopping?”

 A subsequent comment from another member observed that searching for information about dental fillings resulted in low quality listicles of best fillings to buy and other content that was focused on selling dental fillings rather than provide information about it.

 Pages That Force Scrolling to Find the Content

 Another form of bad user experience that was complained about were sites featuring an informational query that forced a user to scroll past paragraphs of content in order to reach the answer they were looking for.

 One Redditor explained:

 “The worst is when I’m looking for a release date, for example, and it’s a 5 paragraph article.

 “You want to know the date? We’ll tell you the release date.

 Just keep scrolling past these ads to find out the release date.”

 …irrelevant backstory

 “The release date is coming soon. Everyone is excited for the release date”

 More ads

 “Now a lot of people wonder what the release date is. Currently we do not have a release date.”“

 Google Offers a Response

 A Google spokesperson contacted Search Engine Journal and offered this response:

 “We’re constantly making improvements to our systems – 5,000 in 2021, based on more than 800,000 quality tests – to make sure we’re delivering helpful and relevant information.

 Over the last seven years, we decreased irrelevant results by over 50%, and our AI identified nearly six times more spam sites than last year, keeping more than 99% of Search spam-free.

 We value user input, and anyone can report any issue they may find via the feedback function on Search.

 * We’ve made major investments in language understanding and AI to evolve Search along with the internet and the world around us, which is constantly changing.
 * Search has automated processes designed to identify and prevent spam or machine-created content from influencing results.
 * We always value feedback on areas where we may not get it right, and use this input to help inform product improvements alongside quantitative feedback from live experiments and qualitative feedback from our human reviewers.”

 Search Community Opinion on Google Search

 On the SEO community side there were many who agreed that Google Search is worse.

 A representative tweet:

 Definitely worse. This result seems to have changed on mobile now, but I kept it as a wtf example of how search often doesn’t give the best top result 🤦🏻‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/GGCYM3FsSZ

 — Rachael Pilcher | SaaS Copywriter (@MightyFineCopy_) April 20, 2022

 Another person offered the opinion that AI content creation was ranking heavily in Google.

 He tweeted:

 I think AI generated (or assisted) articles is hurting the information ecosystem more than we may realize.

 Google in turn could be tweaking the algorithm in unfortunate ways to try to cut through the garbage… but I don’t think it’s working.

 — Mike Huggard (@miglehu) April 21, 2022

 Big Brands and Clickbait Dominate Google?

 Others offered their opinions that big brands and clickbait were dominating Google search results.

 They tweeted:

 Noticeably worse on my end. Pretty much exclusively Forbes, Hearst, Red, dominating SERPS with their authority portfolios.

 A lot of times not even matching search intent correctly and are certainly not industry experts.

 — Austin Tuwiner (@AustinTuwiner) April 20, 2022

 EAT is a joke when a clickbait site outperforms some of the most credible sites.

 — Krishna B. Karki (@midnightstrngr) April 21, 2022

 Why Is Google Search Worse?

 Both the Reddit and Twitter communities were divided as to why Google search was so bad.

 Some blamed the publishers for gaming Google in order to rank content that doesn’t answer informational queries or that offer a poor user experience.

 Others blamed Google’s search algorithms since that’s what decides to rank the poor quality content.

 A good example of the content and ranking problem can be seen in recipe search queries.

 The recipe blogging community believed that Google only ranked long form content. In response, the recipe bloggers published recipes containing long and sometimes irrelevant personal anecdotes that forced site visitors to scroll past paragraphs of irrelevant content to the bottom of the page to find the recipe they were looking for.

 The discussions seemed to ultimately lead to this one question:

 Are Google search results worse or is the content being published nowadays overwhelmingly poor?

 Citations

 Read the Original Reddit Discussion

 Does anyone else think Google search quality has gone downhill fast?

 Read the Search Community on Twitter Discuss if Google is Worse

 Do you think Google search is getting better or worse?

 Category News SEO
 ADVERTISEMENT
 Read Full Bio
 SEJ STAFF

 Roger Montti

 Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com

 Roger Montti is a search marketer with over 20 years experience. I offer site audits, phone consultations and content and ...

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A member of Reddit asked if Google search was becoming worse and thousands of others responded overwhelmingly that Google search was not showing what they were looking for. The SEO community on Twitter picked up the discussion and largely agreed.
Google Search Quality Has Declined, According to Users?
While a few members of Reddit (referred to as Redditors) said that Google search used to be worse and asserted that Google was better now, those that defended Google Search were in the minority.
Seemingly most of the commenters on the Reddit thread claimed that Google search was worse and for a variety of reasons.
Articles With a Poor User Experience
A common theme at Reddit was that Google was surfacing content with a bad user experience.
One Sentence Web Pages
An example of a bad user experience that Google ranks are the listicle pages that force a user to keep clicking to read an article one sentence at a time.
 One Redditor commented: 
 “I’m no SEO optimization expert or anything, but the amount of [redacted] blog posts I get when looking up stuff is ridiculous. I think the absolute worst offender are those sites that do the “TOP 10 OF X THING” that legitimately interests you, but instead of just listing them in order on the page, they use …slides…” 
Every Site in SERPs Wants to Sell You Something
Another common complaint was that sites ranking for informational queries had a sales slant. That results in the situation where a search for information leads to sites that are advertising or selling a product.
 One Redditor complained: 
 “most results are just road maps to point you towards buying something rather than giving you info.
I searched something the other day… something fairly mundane and was hoping to just find intel on it.
All google gave me was a bunch of amazon, ebay, walmart, and other big box retail links. …I just wanted to know about this thing, im not looking to buy… if I wanted that I’d use the shopping tab.” 
 Another Redditor agreed, writing: 
 “Agree. What’s the point of having a shopping tab if everything is shopping?” 
A subsequent comment from another member observed that searching for information about dental fillings resulted in low quality listicles of best fillings to buy and other content that was focused on selling dental fillings rather than provide information about it.
Pages That Force Scrolling to Find the Content
Another form of bad user experience that was complained about were sites featuring an informational query that forced a user to scroll past paragraphs of content in order to reach the answer they were looking for.
 One Redditor explained: 
 “The worst is when I’m looking for a release date, for example, and it’s a 5 paragraph article.
 “You want to know the date? We’ll tell you the release date.  
 Just keep scrolling past these ads to find out the release date.” 
 …irrelevant backstory 
 “The release date is coming soon. Everyone is excited for the release date” 
 More ads 
 “Now a lot of people wonder what the release date is. Currently we do not have a release date.”“
Google Offers a Response
 A Google spokesperson contacted Search Engine Journal and offered this response: 
“We’re constantly making improvements to our systems – 5,000 in 2021, based on more than 800,000 quality tests – to make sure we’re delivering helpful and relevant information.
Over the last seven years, we decreased irrelevant results by over 50%, and our AI identified nearly six times more spam sites than last year, keeping more than 99% of Search spam-free.
We value user input, and anyone can report any issue they may find via the feedback function on Search.
 We’ve made major investments in language understanding and AI to evolve Search along with the internet and the world around us, which is constantly changing.
Search has automated processes designed to identify and prevent spam or machine-created content from influencing results.
We always value feedback on areas where we may not get it right, and use this input to help inform product improvements alongside quantitative feedback from live experiments and qualitative feedback from our human reviewers.”
 Search Community Opinion on Google Search
On the SEO community side there were many who agreed that Google Search is worse.
 A representative tweet: 
Definitely worse. This result seems to have changed on mobile now, but I kept it as a wtf example of how search often doesn’t give the best top result 🤦🏻‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/GGCYM3FsSZ 
— Rachael Pilcher | SaaS Copywriter (@MightyFineCopy_) April 20, 2022  
Another person offered the opinion that AI content creation was ranking heavily in Google.
 He tweeted: 
I think AI generated (or assisted) articles is hurting the information ecosystem more than we may realize. 
Google in turn could be tweaking the algorithm in unfortunate ways to try to cut through the garbage… but I don’t think it’s working.
— Mike Huggard (@miglehu) April 21, 2022  
Big Brands and Clickbait Dominate Google?
Others offered their opinions that big brands and clickbait were dominating Google search results.
 They tweeted: 
Noticeably worse on my end. Pretty much exclusively Forbes, Hearst, Red, dominating SERPS with their authority portfolios.
A lot of times not even matching search intent correctly and are certainly not industry experts.
— Austin Tuwiner (@AustinTuwiner) April 20, 2022  
EAT is a joke when a clickbait site outperforms some of the most credible sites.
— Krishna B. Karki (@midnightstrngr) April 21, 2022  
Why Is Google Search Worse?
Both the Reddit and Twitter communities were divided as to why Google search was so bad.
Some blamed the publishers for gaming Google in order to rank content that doesn’t answer informational queries or that offer a poor user experience.
Others blamed Google’s search algorithms since that’s what decides to rank the poor quality content.
A good example of the content and ranking problem can be seen in recipe search queries.
The recipe blogging community believed that Google only ranked long form content. In response, the recipe bloggers published recipes containing long and sometimes irrelevant personal anecdotes that forced site visitors to scroll past paragraphs of irrelevant content to the bottom of the page to find the recipe they were looking for.
 The discussions seemed to ultimately lead to this one question: 
 Are Google search results worse or is the content being published nowadays overwhelmingly poor? 
Citations
Read the Original Reddit Discussion
 Does anyone else think Google search quality has gone downhill fast? 
Read the Search Community on Twitter Discuss if Google is Worse
 Do you think Google search is getting better or worse?
Is Google Search Worse? Many Seem to Agree
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/is-google-search-worse/446919/
https://www.techradar.com/news/brave-partners-with-reddit-to-give-you-the-answers-youre-really-looking-for
Brave adopts Reddit to give you the search results you're really looking for
2022-04-22
Max Slater-Robins
<div><div>
<section>
<div>
<div>
</div>
<figcaption>
</figcaption>
</div>
<div>
<p>Brave Software has introduced a very useful new feature to its search engine, called Discussions, that will help surface the results users are really looking for.</p><p>"When people search, they want relevant, useful results, free of noise," the company wrote in a <a href="https://brave.com/discussions-in-brave-search/">blog post</a>. However, advances in the field of <a href="https://www.techradar.com/news/best-seo-tool">SEO</a> have propelled less useful resources up the rankings.</p><p>A recent viral post <a href="https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying">took a look</a> at the issues in more detail, provocatively arguing that <a href="https://www.techradar.com/tag/google">Google</a> Search was "dying", because useful answers are becoming harder and harder to find.</p><p>The solution, as many people have found, is to add "Reddit" to the end of results, surfacing discussions on the topic that have taken place in a relevant sub-reddit.</p><p>The Discussions feature for Brave Search introduces a panel directly into results highlighting any relevant discussions from popular online forums, including Reddit.</p><figure><div><p></p></div><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p>Brave says Discussions are especially useful for several specific types of searches: product questions, questions about current events, travel-related questions, computer programming / coding questions, and highly unique or specific questions.</p><h2>Search wars </h2><p>Google is, in many ways, the best internet service ever to exist: cataloguing the entire web and helping people search for pretty much anything was such a massive breakthrough. </p><div><section><p>Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!</p></section></div><p>But whether the dominance of Google has been healthy for the search market is another question. In its blog post, Brave argues that the focus on Google rankings among businesses has had a particularly detrimental impact.</p><p>"Unfortunately, search engine optimization has become such a science - and a big business - that results pages in Big Tech search engines like Google are often cluttered with ads and automated content (or “<a href="https://www.techradar.com/tag/seo">SEO</a> spam”) from marketers trying to game the system and increase the rank of their sites," wrote the firm.</p><p>While Brave occupies a <a href="https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share">tiny share</a> of the search market, it's interesting to see pressure applied to Google and perhaps there's a team at the search giant working on a Discussions-esque feature, too. </p><ul><li><a href="https://www.techradar.com/best/keyword-research-tools">Boost your SEO game with the best keyword research tools around</a></li></ul>
</div>
<div><p>Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside.</p></div>
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 1. Pro

 Brave adopts Reddit to give you the search results you're really looking for

 News
 By Max Slater-Robins
 last updated 25 April 2022

 After criticism of Google, Brave wants to help surface more useful results

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
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 (Image credit: Brave)

 Brave Software has introduced a very useful new feature to its search engine, called Discussions, that will help surface the results users are really looking for.

 "When people search, they want relevant, useful results, free of noise," the company wrote in a blog post. However, advances in the field of SEO have propelled less useful resources up the rankings.

 A recent viral post took a look at the issues in more detail, provocatively arguing that Google Search was "dying", because useful answers are becoming harder and harder to find.

 The solution, as many people have found, is to add "Reddit" to the end of results, surfacing discussions on the topic that have taken place in a relevant sub-reddit.

 The Discussions feature for Brave Search introduces a panel directly into results highlighting any relevant discussions from popular online forums, including Reddit.

 (Image credit: Brave)

 Brave says Discussions are especially useful for several specific types of searches: product questions, questions about current events, travel-related questions, computer programming / coding questions, and highly unique or specific questions.

 Search wars

 Google is, in many ways, the best internet service ever to exist: cataloguing the entire web and helping people search for pretty much anything was such a massive breakthrough.

 Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

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 But whether the dominance of Google has been healthy for the search market is another question. In its blog post, Brave argues that the focus on Google rankings among businesses has had a particularly detrimental impact.

 READ MORE

 > Brave, DuckDuckGo just gave you another way to flip Google the middle finger

 > Google wants to help you avoid bad Chrome extensions

 > Google Docs is having some serious issues with its new 'inclusive language' warnings

 "Unfortunately, search engine optimization has become such a science - and a big business - that results pages in Big Tech search engines like Google are often cluttered with ads and automated content (or “SEO spam”) from marketers trying to game the system and increase the rank of their sites," wrote the firm.

 While Brave occupies a tiny share of the search market, it's interesting to see pressure applied to Google and perhaps there's a team at the search giant working on a Discussions-esque feature, too.

 * Boost your SEO game with the best keyword research tools around
 Max Slater-Robins

 Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside.

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Brave Software has introduced a very useful new feature to its search engine, called Discussions, that will help surface the results users are really looking for. "When people search, they want relevant, useful results, free of noise," the company wrote in a blog post. However, advances in the field of SEO have propelled less useful resources up the rankings. A recent viral post took a look at the issues in more detail, provocatively arguing that Google Search was "dying", because useful answers are becoming harder and harder to find. The solution, as many people have found, is to add "Reddit" to the end of results, surfacing discussions on the topic that have taken place in a relevant sub-reddit. The Discussions feature for Brave Search introduces a panel directly into results highlighting any relevant discussions from popular online forums, including Reddit.         Brave says Discussions are especially useful for several specific types of searches: product questions, questions about current events, travel-related questions, computer programming / coding questions, and highly unique or specific questions. Search wars  Google is, in many ways, the best internet service ever to exist: cataloguing the entire web and helping people search for pretty much anything was such a massive breakthrough.    Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!   But whether the dominance of Google has been healthy for the search market is another question. In its blog post, Brave argues that the focus on Google rankings among businesses has had a particularly detrimental impact. "Unfortunately, search engine optimization has become such a science - and a big business - that results pages in Big Tech search engines like Google are often cluttered with ads and automated content (or “SEO spam”) from marketers trying to game the system and increase the rank of their sites," wrote the firm. While Brave occupies a tiny share of the search market, it's interesting to see pressure applied to Google and perhaps there's a team at the search giant working on a Discussions-esque feature, too.    Boost your SEO game with the best keyword research tools around  
 Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside. 
  Most Popular
Brave adopts Reddit to give you the search results you're really looking for
https://www.techradar.com/news/brave-partners-with-reddit-to-give-you-the-answers-youre-really-looking-for
https://help.joindeleteme.com/hc/en-us/articles/8323242048019-How-to-Push-Down-Negative-Search-Results
How to Push Down Negative Search Results
2022-09-27T18:06:04Z

<html><body><div><article>
 <header>
 
 <div>
 
 
 
 <p>
 </p></div>
 
 <div><p><span>Not yet followed by anyone</span></p></div>
 
 </header>
 <div><p></p>
<p>Many people struggle with removing negative content online. Occasionally, the best thing to do is to “bury” negative search results by creating new, positive, content.</p>
<p><strong>Note that if you’re looking to disappear from the web, this is not the solution for you.</strong> Instead, you’ll be creating <em>more</em> content about you, allowing you to tip the scale from negative to positive.</p>
<h3><strong>Step 1: Create new public profiles for yourself.</strong></h3>
<p>Certain sites will always appear at the top of Google search results. You can push down negative results just by creating profiles with your name and a bit of identifying information on these websites. Make sure your privacy settings are set to be publicly viewed, and only post content that you’re absolutely sure you won’t regret in the future. Here is a list of sites to use:</p>
<ul>
<li>Twitter <strong><a href="http://twitter.com/">http://twitter.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>LinkedIn <strong><a href="http://linkedin.com/">http://linkedin.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Facebook <strong><a href="http://facebook.com/">http://facebook.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Google <strong><a href="http://plus.google.com/">http://plus.google.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Blogger <strong><a href="http://blogger.com/">http://blogger.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Tumblr <strong><a href="http://tumblr.com/">http://tumblr.com/</a></strong>  </li>
<li>Photobucket <strong><a href="http://www.photobucket.com/">http://www.photobucket.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Quora <strong><a href="http://profiles.google.com/">http://profiles.google.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Reddit <strong><a href="http://www.reddit.com/">http://www.reddit.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>MySpace <strong><a href="http://www.myspace.com/">http://www.myspace.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Formspring <strong><a href="https://formspring.livejournal.com/">https://formspring.livejournal.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Foursquare <strong><a href="http://foursquare.com/">http://foursquare.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>About.Me <strong><a href="http://about.me/">http://about.me/</a></strong></li>
<li>Digg <strong><a href="http://www.digg.com/">http://www.digg.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Yahoo Pulse <strong><a href="http://pulse.yahoo.com/">http://pulse.yahoo.com/</a></strong></li>
<li>Flickr <strong><a href="http://www.flickr.com/">http://www.flickr.com/</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<h3><strong>Step 2: Use your new “public” online accounts to comment on news articles, forums or social media.</strong></h3>
<p>Another option is to use your real name to register on news sites and comment on articles.  These types of posts don’t usually rank as highly as the kinds of sites posted above. If you’re ready to do a bit of self-censorship, posting under your real name can be a good way to ‘sell’ yourself.  Keep in mind that anything you say online can show up when someone Googles you, so use your postings to your advantage: post intelligent, well-reasoned content that is spell-checked and grammatically correct.  Express yourself in the field in which you want to be established.</p>
<h3><strong>Step 3: Link to all of your different sites.</strong></h3>
<p>One of the ways that Google decides rankings in search results is by seeing how many times other sites link to a specific search result.  Your content can rise by simply linking to itself, e.g. create a Twitter account, connect that to your Facebook page, connect both to your Photobucket, and link to them all in your Blogger page. The more you use your accounts and interact with other people using those accounts, the more likely they are to link to your content, which will drive your results even higher.</p>
<h3><strong>Step 4: Reclaim negative keywords.</strong></h3>
<p>If a generic search for your name is showing positive results, but including a particular keyword brings up negative or unwanted results, you can create content to reclaim that term.  For example, if a search for “John Doe” is positive, but a search for “John Doe State College” brings up negative results, creating content including the phrase “John Doe State College” can help push down those negative results.</p></div>
 
 
 
 
 
 </article></div></body></html>
Not yet followed by anyone  
 
 
   
Many people struggle with removing negative content online. Occasionally, the best thing to do is to “bury” negative search results by creating new, positive, content.
 Note that if you’re looking to disappear from the web, this is not the solution for you. Instead, you’ll be creating more content about you, allowing you to tip the scale from negative to positive.
 Step 1: Create new public profiles for yourself. 
Certain sites will always appear at the top of Google search results. You can push down negative results just by creating profiles with your name and a bit of identifying information on these websites. Make sure your privacy settings are set to be publicly viewed, and only post content that you’re absolutely sure you won’t regret in the future. Here is a list of sites to use:
Twitter  http://twitter.com/  
LinkedIn  http://linkedin.com/  
Facebook  http://facebook.com/  
Google  http://plus.google.com/  
Blogger  http://blogger.com/  
Tumblr  http://tumblr.com/   
Photobucket  http://www.photobucket.com/  
Quora  http://profiles.google.com/  
Reddit  http://www.reddit.com/  
MySpace  http://www.myspace.com/  
Formspring  https://formspring.livejournal.com/  
Foursquare  http://foursquare.com/  
About.Me  http://about.me/  
Digg  http://www.digg.com/  
Yahoo Pulse  http://pulse.yahoo.com/  
Flickr  http://www.flickr.com/  
 Step 2: Use your new “public” online accounts to comment on news articles, forums or social media. 
Another option is to use your real name to register on news sites and comment on articles.  These types of posts don’t usually rank as highly as the kinds of sites posted above. If you’re ready to do a bit of self-censorship, posting under your real name can be a good way to ‘sell’ yourself.  Keep in mind that anything you say online can show up when someone Googles you, so use your postings to your advantage: post intelligent, well-reasoned content that is spell-checked and grammatically correct.  Express yourself in the field in which you want to be established.
 Step 3: Link to all of your different sites. 
One of the ways that Google decides rankings in search results is by seeing how many times other sites link to a specific search result.  Your content can rise by simply linking to itself, e.g. create a Twitter account, connect that to your Facebook page, connect both to your Photobucket, and link to them all in your Blogger page. The more you use your accounts and interact with other people using those accounts, the more likely they are to link to your content, which will drive your results even higher.
 Step 4: Reclaim negative keywords. 
If a generic search for your name is showing positive results, but including a particular keyword brings up negative or unwanted results, you can create content to reclaim that term.  For example, if a search for “John Doe” is positive, but a search for “John Doe State College” brings up negative results, creating content including the phrase “John Doe State College” can help push down those negative results.
How to Push Down Negative Search Results
https://joindeleteme.com/help/kb/push-down-negative-search-results/
https://www.reddit.com/r/google
r/google
2023-02-27
None
<div><div><div><header><div><p>Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts</p><a href="/?feed=home"></a></div></header><p>Found the internet!<i></i></p></div><div><div><p>Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations.</p></div><div><div><p></p><div><p></p><h2>r/google</h2><p></p></div></div><div><div><div><p><i></i>pinned by moderators</p><div><p>Posted by</p><p>Moderator</p><p>1 month ago</p></div><div><p>
 </p></div></div><div><div><p>Crossposted by14 hours ago</p></div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><a href="/r/funny/comments/11bx0op/ayo_i_got_a_4_hr_ad_wtf/"><div><p></p></div></a></div></div></div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><ul><li><figure><p></p></figure></li><li><figure></figure></li><li><figure></figure></li><li><figure></figure></li></ul></div></div><div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><a href="/r/google/comments/11csmpk/spring_time_with_my_p7/"><div><p></p></div></a></div></div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><div><p>Crossposted by5 hours ago</p></div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><div><p>
 </p></div><div><ul><li><figure><div><p>see full image</p></div></figure></li><li><figure><div><p>see full image</p></div></figure></li></ul></div></div></div></div><div><div><p></p><h2>About Community</h2><p></p></div><div><p></p><h2>Related Communities</h2><p></p></div><div><div><p></p><h2>r/google Rules</h2><p></p></div><div><div><p>No screenshots that are meant to be amusing or displaying a glitch.</p></div><div><p>No shilling/Conspiracy theories</p></div></div></div><div><p></p><h2>Moderators</h2><p></p></div><div><p>Reddit Inc © 2023. All rights reserved</p></div></div></div></div></div></div>||||I|||| Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts
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 Crossposted by 14 hours ago

 Ayo I got a 4 hr ad wtf

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 Ayo I got a 4 hr ad wtf

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 Posted by 10 hours ago

 How You Can Join The Bard Beta Program And Become A Google Beta Tester

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 Add layers. Colorize. Remove objects. Change backgrounds. With Photoshop, everyone can.

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 Everyone can remove objects with Photoshop. adobe.com/photoshop
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 Posted by 6 hours ago

 Spring time with my P7

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 Posted by 1 day ago

 Google allowing SCAMMERS to advertise on its platform while at the same time BANNING repair shops from using any of its advertising services

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 Crossposted by 5 hours ago

 Google translate offline not working with downloaded language

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 Posted by 14 days ago

 Google translate offline not working with downloaded language

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 * see full image

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Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts     Found the internet!      Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations.         r/google          pinned by moderators  Posted by Moderator 1 month ago   
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