> "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. "
(http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)
At the time they thought this was a bad thing...
Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon
and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links. It's even worse for more niche errors or code snippets.
We cannot, as a healthy internet, let Google control so much of the web.
I believe nearly all the search engines are still guilty of this one.
I also think firms should be able to buy "blank space." For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result. Maybe they already do, I dont see an ad when I search facebook, however I do see an ad for amazon above the top amazon result. Google should just be smart enough to see the top result and the ad are the same link, and handle the situation more appropriately, like tucking the ad text underneath the result, or signifying that the top result owner has paid to hide ads. I have to say, I dont find these results differentiated ENOUGH from the ad. https://i.imgur.com/8Dhr1mj.png
A visual guide: "A (mostly comprehensive history of Google's ad shading and labeling" https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png
This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google's domain instead of the website's — and as they can't fix that without losing out on tracking, they're trying to change what the URL means.
Thanks for ruining the Web, Google.
The changes seem to have added enough noise to make parsing the page annoying, but maybe it's one of those things you brain learns to ignore after a while.
It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.
If this helps ads mix in with real search results, maybe the ads need to be changed to stand out more? I feel people are focusing on "favicons = bad" instead of "ads looking the same as search results = bad".
However they are an ad company - and they ultimately benefit from blurring the line between an advertisement and a "real" result. I do feel like it is harder to find certain types of results as a "power user" though, and it feels like the quality of results rapidly drops off after the first page. I am not sure if the fault lies with Google or with spammy websites hacking the SEO.
I wish Google had something like duckduckgo.com/lite (also ddg.gg/lite) for the atypical "power user." It's nothing but text results. I find it really useful for certain types of searches and when you don't want to be bothered by how "busy" the Google search results page has become.
Is GreaseMonkey the best for that, or is there a nice lightweight alternative more fit to purpose?
I'll try and submit to the Chrome Store, let's see if it gets in :)
In the long run this kind of fix-up is a losing game. But maybe it'll bring you some visual peace for now.
Friends don't let friends use the internet without an adblocker.
Go to your Firefox' settings and change the default search engine, there, done. See if you care in a week to change it back, I promise you that you won't.
I still do lots of image searches. I wonder if those are also heavily influenced by ads now.
In retrospect, I'm sure blurring the lines between ads and search results was probably part of the motivation. But if they modified ads a bit more to further distinguish them and kept the favicons, I don't think I'd mind.
And while I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, quick reminder that unless you're running Lynx or some crap, literally everyone on this blog should have an adblocker installed (preferably uBlock Origin).
I appreciate there are multiple perspectives people have on whether adblocking should be a scorched-earth policy, or whether it's better to just target the worst actors. But disguising ads as native content is abusive enough behavior that you should be blocking those ads no matter where you fall on that spectrum -- and the UI changes here are very clearly, very obviously meant to make ads blend in with normal page results. The 'ad' indicator is meant to look like just another favicon.
I'm seeing people here suggest greaseMonkey scripts, and maybe there's something I'm missing, but I just really don't understand that. Don't restyle the ads, block them! Block advertisers that are abusive.
The sidebar is blank. The main page has results from "Places", "People also ask" and "images", interspersed with the normal results (which now look more like the old ads), but I don't see any actual ads, even with adblock off. For those of you that have the new look and see ads, where are they?
Which comes at the cost of a good user experience, where the feature PM didn’t truly ask: “does this deliver any value to the people using the search?”
Always trying to remember the wonderful excerpt[0] from Ken Kocienda’s “Creative Selection” on A/B tests - just because the data shows the outcomes are more significant does not make that a better experience.
[0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/kocienda/status/11134509457051770...
I'm pretty sure for the layout itself I'll eventually just get a tampermonkey script to make it look like the old, but this is the first thing that has truly made me look for a Google alternative. They have severely damaged their main product, in my opinion.
The dominance of Google and Facebook is turning the web into a toxic waste.
Their last changes are total crap. Designers/product-managers who came up with this crap are so out of their depth I have no idea how they got their job in the first place.
Needles to say I've been completely relying on ddg for the past weeks that now I really find there's no need for google search. So I'm kinda happy they did this honestly. Hopefully it drives more people away from google.
...
What I like the most about it is that I get a unified search results page for all engines, which avoids some of the profile bubble, and that the UI is always consistent, avoiding these scummy redesigns A/B tested to infinity and implemented because it increases their revenue.
Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the below screenshot.
https://i.imgur.com/f0Kolfv.png
Doesn't this seem wrong? For a lot of people, Google has become a site to not only search the internet, but to simply navigate it. It's normal for someone wanting to visit Expedia to search "expedia.com" or "expedia". They are trying to navigate to that website, Expedia is the first organic result, and yet Expedia is pressured into paying for an advertisement to prevent one of their competitors from appearing first. Even when a competitor hasn't advertised, they're still stuck paying like the above screenshot. To me, this feels inappropriate. Google is getting a hefty payday by simply redirecting someone searching for "expedia.com" to the Expedia website.
Im done with google.
will use duckduckgo.
I personally dislike such changes, which no one asks for. Either people are just pushing their BS through Google higher ranks or they have no clue how their users actually feel and use their core product.
...
There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO.
Especially when considering the interoperability of the "platform," it's clear Google is streets ahead of the competition.
It's a shame that the best featured tools in this space are also not open-source, and used (probably) to mine massive amounts of data.
I'd be ok if you mined my data while I'm on your servers, but only if you allow me to host my own version of your software for when I don't want to be on your servers.
If websites change their fav icons to “Ad”, effectively all results look like ads.
Doesn’t achieve a lot, but it does highlight an obvious flaw in their design. It could force a change, but most likely they would just filter the fav icon.
My impressions were the same as that tweet. I'm not happy with the new Google search results. At all. I can't tell what is what. Is it an Ad? Is it a page? Is it...? So I've now told people who contact me to avoid Google's home page and use DDG so they get the results they're after. Feedback so far is they prefer the DDG replacement instead of Google. "Fixed" is what one person said. Their POV was that Google's result page was now "broken". (These aren't tech savvy people, either)
I also read in one of the follow up tweets that we now apparently have a form of "banner blindness" where we skip ads because they are deemed not or less relevant. This theory might be right. But Google's solution is not wise: if we associate ads as less relevant and fade out attention when we see Ads versus results, what happens when the entire google results page looks like ads?
The problem with this kind of aggressive A/B testing is that it's a game of "how far can we push the user?" So instead of having enthusiastic fans, they have people who begrudgingly use them. Sure, Google picks up an extra nickel here or there, and I'm sure some PMs got a raise. But I don't know any strong Google boosters any more, and there are hordes of people ready to switch over once something tolerable comes along.
(And from the comments, it seems like many of you have already found tolerable replacement search engines. I think I'm going to join you.)
Anyone have an extension to CSS it back to the way it was?
> Your item did not comply with the following section of our Program Policies:
>
> "Spam and Placement in the Store"
Clearly not spam:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engine...
"Don't be evil" :)
It is an unpopular opinion but I believe Google is dying. They have been for a long time. The cancer is that nothing other than search ads generates the revenue and margins they need and the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010.
Personally I'm long on Microsoft/Bing as a candidate for the surviving English language web index. My prediction (which isn't shared by many so don't be surprised if you disagree :-)) is that once Google's dying becomes mainstream and they start heading into ground that Apple will buy their assets, keep Maps, Search, and maybe Waymo and throw the rest away.
... Fiction aside, since so much evil is done by accident and indifference it's only fitting that some heroics be done by similar mechanisms.
Actually I’ve stopping using google for EVERYTHING, except one old legacy throwaway gmail account. I must say, it feels really good!
By malicious I mean websites that destroy the back history, create alerts, beeps the computer (not sure how that works) and other nonsense about virus infections.
It reminded me of the story that got posted about Boeing: https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...
I don't know if people will necessarily die, like it did with the 737 Max. But I wouldn't be surprised if the key underpinnings of a participatory democracy gets compromised.
By malicious I mean websites that destroy the back history, create alerts, flash the favicon, etc. By duplicate websites I mean websites that take content from something like stack overflow and puts it on a website with ads.
For example here's how I found it as I was writing this:
I wrote "stack trace" in search to get some auto complete results for something to test.
I see "stack trace #0 main thrown in" as one of the suggestions and search for that with quotes.
I get 2 results, one website that looks legit, and one website that's malicious website, something that redirects me to a website that looks like facebook telling me I won something. It also destroys my back history.
From the article,
- To remove the favicon: google.com##.xA33Gc
- To remove the URL: google.com##.iUh30.bc.rpCHfe
- To remove the arrow next to the URL: google.com###am-b0 and google.com##.GHDvEf.ab_button
- To remove everything: google.com##.TbwUpd and google.com###am-b0 and google.com##.GHDvEf.ab_button
[1] https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/how-to-fix-googles-ugl...
This one explains very well how I've recently come to feel about Google Search. I still remember when they were new and everybody flocked to them because they had the cleanest search with the best results. These days I barely see any results anymore because I'm automatically parsing them all as ads.
Because that's what they did here: organic results look more like ads now. So my automatic ad blindness filters them out. Whenever I search on Google, I feel like I'm only getting useless results, so I switched completely to DuckDuckGo now (I've used it before, but only occasionally; from now on it's going to be my default everywhere).
Many of these UIs don’t have the controversial changes that Google has recently been implementing, including adding favicons and hiding full URLs.
I also found that there were several different mobile UIs for Google with different navigation schemes and search box styles.
I implemented what I found in a simple Firefox extension that changes the user agent string for Google searches [1].
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search...
Google is about as evil as they come now. They’re taking the role MS did in the 90s.
AMP is google worst attempt yet at taking over the web. It’s so user hostile. It breaks lots of sites with its fake scroll and fake back button at the top of google news. I hate it soo bad!
As an independent app dev I find this unconscionable.
I expect to be fed web results that are not tainted by Google's own offerings especially not in the form of an web app that pushes other independent results halfway down the page.
It's actions like this that make it clear Google is a threat to the web at large and this threat needs to be neutralized or we will all pay down the line.
Personally I wouldn't know I have been using ddg for the last few months and I highly recommend it.
I'm pretty sure ad providers liked the changes because they are getting more traffic to their websites. So, the actual clients are happy why so much dislike towards a new change.
The most disappointing thing for me in this thread is recommendations to install ad blockers. This thing is harming the web the most because instead of focusing on the issue (bad UI) we just supporting such behaviour by using websites with bad UI.
p.s. I'm in risk of being downvoted because of just expressing unpopular opinion about ad blockers.
Nobody bookmarks/memorizes domains or URLs anymore. Google == the web, as far as most people are concerned.
90% of the time I search for something, I end up on Wikipedia, StackExchange, or HTML versions of documentation/code repos like Github. So I started just searching Wikipedia etc. directly. Next step in taking back my sovereignty is to get in the habit of cloning git repos and ripgrepping the code/docs instead of relying on Github (another monopoly getting bigger every day).
(Advertising companies HATE him!)
I hate it. It makes me feel dirty.
For a long time I have dismissed the perrenial chant that starts every time Google does something someone doesn't like that they're now "evil".
But this really seems to be 100% pure user hostile and directly in conflict with Google's mission to "organise the world's information".
It’s an interesting study. I remember Google before Gmail. It was a different time with such promise for a better web and better world.
What a shame it’s becoming such an irrelevant piece of junk. Then again, where else could it have went ?
What a shame.
They already ruined the web with Facebook by riddling their search results with ads, being part of the ICAAN and having their own TLD, and then introducing AMP. In this case for this ad search result problem, uBlock Origin wipes these ad-links anyway. No need for these other funky hacks suggested in the Twitter thread.
It's also funny to see some Twitter users in the thread who have a website only for me to see on uBlock Origin which reports usages of 'Google Analytics'. Looks like we will all go back to spreading Googleware once again.
Like many around here, I have (re)started using alternatives to Google products last year. We're early adopters, so it will take a while for Google to be affected by a mass exodus, but what will happen when it will start? What medium will they use to fill the gap. The only (currently) untapped options matching Search's reach to display ads are: Gmail, Android, Google Photos. Probably nothing else. What happens for advertisers targeting specifically users like me who end up stopping using Google Search (e.g., how do you reach a high earner from Bay Area if they have completely stopped using Search? Because this, will happen first, and these users are valuable).
The required scale of any alternative is critical. Compensating for Search revenue decline is no easy feat. So much that, until now, nothing else generates anything even close to Search's revenue. If you talk profit, it's even worse as YouTube is probably not as profitable as Google would like (YouTube Premium anyone?) it to be.
So, the future will probably come from outside of Google's own properties, and that is why they are slowly killing competition in the ad tech space (3rd party cookies & Chrome). That is why they have been trying to diversify and are wisely enough pushing very hard with GCP and other proven revenue streams like subscriptions (YouTube Music, YouTube Premium, gSuite).
Probably also why founders really left.
It will be an interesting decade, for sure!
Google has always preferred you just give them a dump truck of money and have them run the ads where they would prefer.
With Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) they generate the ads and the keywords you bid on. Which means you can basically agree to pay Google X amount per month and they will run ppc ads for you.
The part that you won’t find online, since most of these guides come from agencies that want you to pay them to manage the ads, is that these DSA search ads actually work really well, in some cases outperforming agency work.
It could be preferential treatment internally for its own generated content or maybe google just knows which specific copy to show, URL’s to link to and which keywords to surface the ads under, better than any human can.
Either way, it’s starting to paint a bleak future for the web and even as a marketer, it’s not one I’m excited about.
The picture of the search results doesn't even show any ads in it.
DDG is search of choice now, !g a last resort
I'm going to voice maybe the unpopular opinion here... Disclaimer:I don't work for google, nor am I rich or part of a big corp.
Thinking of what google has given us... mostly for free (yes yes I know we have paid in data and privacy...)
1. Really good search results: I remember the day of the search wars. AltaVista was the best there was and it was kinda crap. But but but I hear you say.... the results are worse and the ads blah blah so use another search engine then. For the most part they deliver on what they promised.. Organising the worlds information and they do it mostly for free for you.
2. Maps: Holly hell I don't want to live in a world WITHOUT IT !! I'm the type of person that gets lost in a mall. I kid you not. Yea I had a very expensive(for me at least) TomTom but Google maps has been free and always in my pocket.
3. GMail: When last did you have to delete a mail ? I freaking love GMail. There are few companies so good at spam protecting a 10 year old email address ! Sure there are things that can be better... ironical for me I wish it was search-inside-gmail. But apart from that Gmail is amazing they almost never down and never crap. GMail got there first with the big mailboxes and not too crappy UI. Thunderbird is a mess and slow. I save so many digital stuff(forever) just by emailing it to myself. Its Free - You bloody ungratefull fools !
3.Chrome(Browser). As stated I come from a time of the browser wars and Netscape and though Netscape was nice for the time. Chrome again blow it out the water... It just took us to the next level. Fine right now most modern browsers are at this next level but again Google got their first and again its free.
4. ML and Data-Tools. Maybe I get a bit specilzied here but TensorFlow is a fantastic.. yes its awkward to program but keras is a nice layer on-top of it. But Google did the ground work and still pushing the boundaries. Guess what yea... TF is free. Every had to pay for a "Delphi-Component" or any fancy Borland Compilers ?? Blessed you lucky stars ! Thanks Google !
5. Targeted Ads: Yea I get ads can be anoying but all these amazing planatary free service as mentioned above needs to be paid somehow... Guess what I like personlized ads compared to shitty ads about hair shampoo for women ! I watched "normal free to air tv" the other day, and q generic ad break came on... Lol it almost felt cruel to watch this advertiser just blasting it's un-targeted ads at me that will never buy fancy hair shampoo to the masses. If I type in plumber by god I want to see plumber ads in my area.
5b GoogleAds: Still the cheapest way to promote your business. Can you imagine going back to the old day... Printing 5000 flyers paying some kid to delivery it for you Try working out your CPL on that ! I always try to look for new advertising opportunities for my small business from newsletters to billboards the money they want to charge is crazy !! And most of the time untraceable ! With GoogleAds if I spent 1k on ads I can pretty much make up a spreadsheet model and deduce how much I will get for it. Try doing that with a billboard, flyers, school newspaper, BingAds( awful ), newsletter.radio or SMS.
Balancing the products and balance sheet of a company as big as Google must be a nightmare I don't want that job. Most comments here about Google ruining this and that... well its easy don't use their products go be unhappy on another platform. My life is truly easier with Google in my life !
Thank You Google.... You Are Like A Long Marriage... Your Not Perfect And Neither Am I... But My Life is Better With You. Thanks For All The Freebies And Advances.
Google took queues from Reddit and fucked their UI. That's why those top UI/UX grads get paid the big bucks I guess.
Also, Carthage must be destroyed: the vertical created by ownership of the database and user interface is a Bad Thing about the web and HTML. Yes, it can be made consistent for everyone which is great from an adoption or branding point of view, which in turn generates more economic activity, but it becomes worse and worse for consumers of the service over time as providers move toward extraction of economic rents.
On the other hand, perhaps this speeds evolution. I foresee distributed and (quasi-adversarial) search networks with much more client-side intelligence, somewhat like Archie and Veronica search engines in the pre-web days.
https://gist.github.com/navidkhn1/a2eff24419ef8d4ff8b40b6498...
If the whole page looks like an ad then maybe we should see it that way. Google search is now for finding which ad to click on. Its now an advertising index. Not a general search engine. They don't want you finding anything but ads. So they've made everything look like ads.
I think I'll stick with DDG. Unfortunately if the whole page is an ad then the whole page is likely irrelevant. No matter how much data they have on me, paid content in my search results are likely not what I want to see.
Them knowing I have fish hasn't helped them advertise to me. Google results don't include who I regularly buy from. Even reading my fish hobby email account hasn't helped them improve. I've already used google search with that google account etc. All the ads were completely useless. Trying to sell me irrelevant items from irrelevant retailers. Wrong fish. Or trying to steer me towards boats. If anything, I didn't find what I needed and dropped back to DDG. I needed information necessary to a sale and paid content is completely inappropriate.
All that infrastructure slowed down and frustrated a sale. So. Not so good.
www.google.com##+js(remove-attr.js, onmousedown, .rc > .r > a)
www.google.com##.rc > .r > a:after:style(content: attr(href); display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; color: darkgreen; white-space: nowrap; width: 100%)
www.google.com##.rc > .r > a > br
www.google.com##.TbwUpd
www.google.com##.B6fmyf:style(right: 0px)
(submitted 4 days ago as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072706)
I then installed Stylus, a firefox extension that allows you to add a few lines of CSS to any website. I dont do webdev, but the level of CSS it requires is minimal. I just made filters for all the websites with these toxic features.
I wish there was a repository where people could share their CSS corrections with each other to make the web saner.
Fixed by making search results look like ads.
At this point DuckDuckGo is best for keyword searches, Google is good if your searching for concepts and links sorted by popularity and similar subjects.
One of the main selling point when they introduced ads was that they would be clearly marked as such. The ads were on the side so that they couldn't be confused with the search results.
This was sold in contrast to all the other "bad" search engines who would first show a page of ads that looked like search results.
Journey of Google Ads from Being Ads to Being Normal Search Result: https://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2019/06...
Source: https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-goog...
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