Boycott Google

Now when I do a google search, first I get links like I used to and then suddenly commercialized links take over the top of the page. Worst, sometime I click on a link, in the brief interval, and end up opening one of the commercial links that flips into its place.
If I scroll down the page I find commercial links interspersed.
It functions less well, now, for my purposes and not just a little.
Since Google is the best search engine – open to correction here – I think this has a terrible, in tiny effects but cumulative, total effect on society. More time wasted, more distraction, for millions of users.
I get it, they are a private company, but I sure hope people complain.

The search results have definitely evolved since yesterday… my search brought up only a few pertinent links, the rest of the page was filled with adverts generated from my search words. Annoying much!

Good thing google is not a public utility! /sarc

Educating the public? Pft! What matters is making money! :bow-blue: $

We don’t need no education!

Yes, google is the best, but it was better 10 years ago before it started trying to understand what I type.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Friedman’s idea that monopolies fall apart on their own and what’s impressive is that he called the fact the little bitty Kmart would buy Sears.

FWD to 19:49

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvNzi7tmkx0[/youtube]

As a matter of fact, you say can Sears buy Kmart, but the way Kmart has been growing the question is gonna be can Kmart buy Sears LOL!

That was back around 1980-81 and was an astounding call!

It sure seems true that companies grow so big such that they eventually rest on their laurels and allow a smaller company to topple them. It’s been proven time and time again, but the question is what happens if by chance a monopolistic company doesn’t become stupid by virtue of success?

Yout seem to be saying there is justice in the market, that Google will pay for this, Rome is on the decline. I am skeptical, but I hope you’re right.

I’m saying I don’t know, but would like to explore the topic to find out. Friedman had his opinion and Donahue had his. Idk, I can see both sides. It’s a puzzle that I can’t solve and it’s going to annoy me until I solve it :slight_smile:

Let me contribute to google’s potential problems
lifehack.org/374487/try-the … ch-results
I used to use duckduckgo, I will now again…

My experience with duckduckgo wasn’t that great a year or so ago. Here is a search comparison viewtopic.php?f=3&t=193229&hilit=duckduckgo#p2677656

Perhaps it has improved.

The odds are google isn’t going to care, just like sears didn’t and verizon isn’t, or how else would companies rise and fall?

It’s not google per se, it’s the Trump administration’s new policy on net neutrality.

Oh I forgot about that.

and face book too!

#LIKE #SARC

#hug or what ever the non-aggressive, politically and culturally correct equivalent way to say, that’s some rocket think.

Not a dancer but if I were… >dance<

I’m just a bot

Could you expand on that…

I’m trying dogpile right now
.

Oh what such cray cray names… these new search engines have. :open_mouth:

Any good contenders/alternatives iyo? Google now just looks an over-cluttered mess, like the site administrators have a massive case of anti-OCD… a grotesque eyesore, if you will.

At the expense of aesthetic, it seems…

I used dogpile in the 90s. I don’t know what it is now, but then it was a pile of results from various search engines, hence the name.

I’m stuck with google… google scholar, google newspapers, google youtube… I just have to learn to work around their latest bs.

Hey, I am pretty selfish and if I can’t get something as good I will drift back to Google. But it bothers me that what actually is a massive change - when we think of how many people use Google, how the new system will cause people to lose time, click on links they do not want, and how core the use of Google is for getting information - and that I see very little reaction and that people will likely just bow down to this, it is horrible. In a sense Google search has become part of our own cognitive processes. Well we all got just a little bit drunk or a little bit on the road to dementia and that will have huge ripple effects. I also wonder if this is a taste of things to come, where the infrastructure in general will shift, frog in slowly rising to a boil water, to systems that subtly fuck us over more and more.

Things look good out there. Evne with the economic problems and so on, we are more and more stressed, more and more addicted - though our addictions have less of the drama of some of our older addictions - and more and more shallow. We are getting shallower and more stressed.

Trump admin installs new fcc chairman. Amit something, he goes against the will of the people and allows isps to give precedent to the requests of bigger media companies. So back in the day, you could google something, for instance, “ford mustang”, and click, “images” and you’d see all kinds of things from all kinds of sites that everyone uploaded in the images tab, so maybe you’d see someone’s old beat up car, or some random dude’s car in his driveway etc…because, technical shit aside, the internet didn’t favor one content producer over another to the extent that it does now, and legally so because the new FCC guy ended net neutrality. Now when you google, “ford mustang” and click, “images”, you’ll just get a whole shit ton of stock photos. It basically consolidated power to verizon, at&t, etc and gave those companies a huge chunk of something valuable that used to be equal and free for everyone.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

cnet.com/news/the-net-neutr … d-to-know/

ajc.com/news/national/what- … ARKPHtw5N/

nytimes.com/2018/06/11/tech … epeal.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

cnet.com/news/the-net-neutr … d-to-know/

ajc.com/news/national/what- … ARKPHtw5N/

nytimes.com/2018/06/11/tech … epeal.html
[/quote]
Thank you!

np

I don’t think I could agree more.

I don’t know. It depends how relevant profit is. Walmart doesn’t sell the 1950s style garden nozzles that last forever because the plastic pieces of crap is what makes the most profit.

Seems like it.

That seems a lot like Reagan’s FCC guys eliminating the Fairness Doctrine on the premise that competition would ensure unbiased news. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairn … Revocation

Reagan pretty much caused what Trump now calls fake news lol