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The man who killed Google Search?

(www.wheresyoured.at)
1884 points elorant | 10 comments | 23 Apr 24 16:43 UTC | HN request time: 2.122s | source | bottom
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skilled ◴[23 Apr 24 17:27 UTC] No.40134575[source]▶
Google is doing something similar now[0], both from a searchers and a site owners perspective.

Barry Schwartz regularly posts Google updates on his site[1], for over a decade no less. Since August 2023, those updates have been reaching the 500 mean comment range with many updates reaching 700-900 comment range. And this has been happening for 8 straight months!

People have been robbed of their livelihoods and many have caught strays, with the culprit being that Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn have tripled/doubled their traffic.

I just don’t understand why Google can’t create a Discussions panel and let people decide what they want to view as opposed to flat out cutting creators off at the knees.

No content creator thinks to themselves, “let me go write my next article on Reddit”.

Now they are throwing AI in the mix also which is probably the dumbest thing they could have done, but I get why they are doing it.

I hope it clicks for Google soon that they are “fucked” and will never recover users they lost to OpenAI, etc.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40067605

[1]: https://www.seroundtable.com/category/google-updates

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1. tgv ◴[23 Apr 24 17:35 UTC] No.40134685[source]▶
> People have been robbed of their livelihoods

That's absurd. People gambled with their livelihood, some got rich, and most lost.

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2. arromatic ◴[23 Apr 24 17:39 UTC] No.40134731[source]▶
I have the same opinion but Google does downrank actual personal site/blogs even if it's useful or good and serves you garbage.
3. skilled ◴[23 Apr 24 17:43 UTC] No.40134780[source]▶
Google now uses an ML classifier to assert the “helpfulness” of content. Your entire website gets penalized if the algorithm thinks your site is “not good enough”.

And so far, for the last 8 months, not a single person has had their site reinstated after this penalty.

That is the very definition of being robbed.

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4. blueflow ◴[23 Apr 24 17:54 UTC] No.40134914[source]▶
If you never had the right to have people find your website, you are not getting robbed. You can only get robbed of things you have some right to.
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5. skilled ◴[23 Apr 24 18:06 UTC] No.40135082{3}[source]▶
Not sure what you are getting at. Care to elaborate?

Google wouldn’t exist without websites to index.

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6. blueflow ◴[23 Apr 24 18:28 UTC] No.40135380{4}[source]▶
Its not robbery if you never had the rights to it? You misused that word.
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7. skilled ◴[23 Apr 24 18:34 UTC] No.40135477{5}[source]▶
What would be a better word, given the context?
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8. tgv ◴[23 Apr 24 18:45 UTC] No.40135621{4}[source]▶
In that logic, someone removing their websites robs Google of content.
9. blueflow ◴[23 Apr 24 18:56 UTC] No.40135764{6}[source]▶
maybe "loss of income for content creators"?
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10. zrn900 ◴[23 Apr 24 19:02 UTC] No.40135835[source]▶
Those people did everything according to Google's guidelines then Google changed everything and screwed them over. That's what has been happening all the way since 2010 when they issued their first update and penalized all the small sites for following their guidelines. They are screwing everyone for their shareholders' sake.

> gambled with their livelihood

Google owns ~90% of search. Its basically a public utility at this point. On which every small business owner has to rely. There is no saying "Go use a competitor" when using a competitor means you will lose access to ~90% of world search traffic. Imagine your salary being cut down to 10% of what it was last month - that's what using an 'alternative' to google for your business means.

These tech giants have been holding literal unregulated power over the livelihoods of people for decades now. And as we have recently come to see in many examples, they use that power to screw over everyone for shareholders.

The situation we have today is a situation that is as crazy as privatizing the entire road network and allowing an unregulated company to do whatever with the traffic that runs on it.