That and google had a major interest in killing bookmarks. Bookmarks were actively competing with google search traffic, so they put in a lot of effort to get you to stop using them. Why bookmark something when you can just search for it.
Eh, it's true that Google's incentives aren't really aligned with bookmarking tools, but the magnitude of the effect is much less than you're thinking of. Basically 100% of Google's revenues come from commercial-seeking queries, cases where the user has a purchasing intent before they came to the search engine. All of the non-commercial uses - coding, random facts, research, education, navigational queries, etc - are just loss-leaders so that your fingers automatically reach for Google when you're searching for lawyers, contractors, home-improvement fixtures, apps, furniture, flowers, restaurants, consumer electronics, etc. Google (of the 2010s certainly, but also true now) considered Amazon to be its primary competition, not Yahoo or del.icio.us.
They put precisely zero effort into killing bookmarks. I know because I was there, and probably would've been tasked with doing it. Well, that and because bookmarks still exist and I can still use them. They also put zero effort into improving bookmarks or making them easier for you to use, but it's death by inaction and consumer choice, not by anything Google did.
I don't really understand why they were able to exist as they do and not lose users. I have not had Chrome for over a decade, I use Gmail exclusively for my actual real identity, which I don't recall the last time I used - I can only access my Gmail from a tablet I never use. I used to use Google search, when all other options failed - but these days, google is the first to fail, I literally do not remember the time I used it.
It is a genuinely novel experience for me, to see any sort of ad on the internet - that is not hyperbole.
I am not as capable as so many of the people who frequent HN, tbh - very little of what I do is hard, why do all of you live as you do??
I don't understand at all.
Think of some very fringe group of 0.1%, which you question from time to time how they function/exist/for what purpose. That’s basically how general populace looks at people who go through efforts of de-Googlifying. Stuff that matters to you (privacy, owning your data and etc.) does not matter to super majority of the people, especially outside of the tech circles.
I’m somewhat in-between of two extremes, but in grand scheme of things I don’t really care, as I have completely different priorities in life. Convenience services enable me to focus on those priorities, and I don’t really care about all other stuff to a specific degree.
I’ve been lucky enough to see how people from every walk of life interact with the Internet, and realized the way I function is extremely different. To them, I am the “flat earth weirdo and do stuff differently than the others”.
To give another example - I’m expecting people in HN type about 100 words per minute on average because of our general exposure to coding, typing, internet and etc. That puts us to 99th percentile. Average person does not live like us, nor cares about it.
Frankly I just don’t care that much, I hate Google and llms have mostly replaced the search but after work I want to spend time with family and do hobbies and degoogling is a nice to have that is nowhere near the top of my priorities list.
I don’t know if they did or didn’t try to kill bookmarks.
But on the commercial incentives, it does make sense for them to kill it.
Companies pay good advertisement so they show up first on the search result when a user want to find them.
Eg you want to go to carglass website: you type carglass in google and the company will most likely pay Google to show up first in the ads section because competitors are trying to sway away customers from them. If they didn’t outbid their competitors, even though the customer want to go to carglass, he will click on first result and may end up buying from their competitor without even noticing.
That wouldn’t happen if people had put carglass.com website in bookmark.
Google doesn't show ads on navigational queries because of the potential trademark-infringement legal issues that could result from recommending a competitor when somebody searches for a trademark.
Search for [carglass], no ads. Search for [facebook], no ads. Search for [spotify], no ads. Search for [american airlines], no ads. All of these would be very desirable queries to advertise a competitor on.
(IIRC they've gone back and forth on this depending on what the lawyers thought they could get away with; ISTR when Bing launched Microsoft would run ads on [google] that pointed to Bing. It's been a long time since I've seen an ad on a navigational query though.)
As a counter example, a couple days ago I was to install DaVinci Resolve on a new windows installation, so I searched "davinci resolve." Since I was used to having adblocker, I just clicked the top result, which is titled "DaVinci Resolve" but actually takes you to some awful shady thing like wondershare or softonic/uptodown, I forgot.
I feel like, navigational queries or no, Google should be held liable for allowing scam sites like that to advertise. I think there was a trending HN post recently on that front.
> As a counter example, a couple days ago I was to install DaVinci Resolve on a new windows installation, so I searched "davinci resolve." Since I was used to having adblocker, I just clicked the top result, which is titled "DaVinci Resolve" but actually takes you to some awful shady thing like wondershare or softonic/uptodown, I forgot.
I just tried this query on chrome / android.
This is the first link on the page at the very top:
When people tell me this stuff about their Google searches it drives me insane, I want to know why our experiences are so different. It is regional? Is it OS, is it browser, is it something else? I want to know!
You know your search results are personalized right? If I google something and my girlfriend googles the same thing, on the same network, we get different results.
>You know your search results are personalized right?
Of course.
But these results don't seem to change on a degoogled chromium on desktop, with no google account login personalization, no account logged in, in incognito, using: Ublock origin lite, User Agent / OS Randomizer, Privacy Badger, and using a VPN to other locales.
That's why I want to know, I've been curious about this for years, and nothing I've looked at seems conclusive.
My biggest guess is country or native language, but it's been hard to pin down. I think that may be the biggest factor (with local laws contributing maybe to how search results get displayed).
I'm curious! I want to know the driver behind the bad experiences people are having with it. (I've been using it literally since it was released.)
This a search domain term that means a search query where the user is trying to find a specific destination/product. I don't know how Google search works, but often a search will first go through an intent classifier and then use a different model based on the query type.
A "navigational query" is a query with a certain website in mind. So like if you search for [facebook], 99.99% of the time you are looking to go to Facebook, if you search for [hacker news] 99.99% of the time you are looking to go to news.ycombinator.com. Basically it replaces the address bar for people who don't know what URLs are. You aren't looking for information about the business, you want to go to the site/business itself.
In my experience, those commercial seeking queries are what google can't do. Many stores in the result ship to USA only, and there's also no good way to compare prices and features.
Google used to not have any ads for many years while they got market share. Then only small ads off to the side. Eventually the ads moved inline and were half the results, etc.
AI summary seems like the same play, even if it hurts their current ad business some. After all why search for stuff when a chatbot can just tell you? Makes sense they'd view it as an existential crisis and push their AI.
Google will be well positioned when ads start being added to AI for most users.
Are you sure you don't have any privacy protections enabled?
With my normie setup (logged in account, granted location permissions, no PiHole, no particular anti-tracker mechanisms beyond classic ad blocking), I get decent local results on Google, in contrast to basically any other "privacy focused" search engine.
Chat GPT and Claude seem to be struggling a lot more. I suspect this is because OpenAI and Anthropic aren't talking to the local companies here, and they may have some robots.txt shenanigans going on.
Honestly i'd love to migrate off of google, but its been a pain. My family is a heavy user of google calendar so I either have to migrate them off or I have to keep my google calendar account.
I tried fastmail but honestly its not as easy to use as gmail.
Has anyone pulled off a migration like this? how did you do it?
Its fundamentally different. Science doesn't ask you to accept unknowns on faith, its provides evidence that there is something we dont yet understand and that evidence has predictive value.
If science operated like religion it would say "We dont know what dark energy is, but you have to accept it or your wrong".
Instead the argument is "Hmm... our current best understanding of the universe is lacking, when we add in these extra variables many of our predictions go from wildly inaccurate to nearly accurate. There must be something going on here we cannot observe, so lets call it "dark"."
Dark energy is "Wow, there's a factor at play here that we dont understand, without it our equations do not predict what we see, with it the equations are very accurate. Additionally we can predict multiple different things with this."
And the most important part, as soon as there is evidence that refutes the Dark Energy/Matter hypothesis scientists will quickly (over a few years, a decade at the most) walk away from it. Versus religious systems take centuries for people to shift their beliefs.
No, that is not how science actually progresses, it is an idealised view of it at best. Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" back in the 1960s. Plank's principle stated "Science progresses one funeral at a time".
Scientists are also human and will tend to defend existing ideas. In cosmology the arguments over LCDM, dark matter and dark energy have been raging for decades. Dark matter people like to say that the Bullet Cluster is incontrovertible evidence of dark matter; MOND people don't agree and point to other aspects they claim refute dark matter! It's gonna take a long time for it all to shake out.
Not an expert, but isn't your LCDM vs MOND example assymetric? Like different kinds of data supports each model very well, and so reconciliation isn't simple?
Certainly true that the data can be viewed in many different ways. Often the same data is used by both sides!
The funeral thing isn't really a position I strongly hold; it's a pithy comment that points out science is a human endeavor and maybe not quite as objective as it is often presented.
But science as a whole is ultimately a self correcting methodology, even if it might take longer than we would want and doesnt always get it right.
MOND people have become a small minority. In addition to the galaxy cluster observations, MOND doesn’t match the CMB power spectrum, while ΛCDM does, and various very precise measurements within the solar system also contradict MOND. This was different 30-40 years ago, but since then, as evidence has strongly mounted against MOND, a lot of “shaking out” has already taken place.
Well, MOND is not a cosmological theory or relativistic - there are some different versions that attempt that. MOND itself can't be used to match the CMB spectrum.
It has always been a minority position - but it is interesting to see a different perspective. ΛCDM is not without it's own problems. Not least that when new observations contradict it, it just gets tweaked - since we still have no idea what the CDM, if it does exist, actually is. It does not have a great predictive record; it is good at explaining obervations after the fact (the CMB notwithstanding).
I am interested to know what the measurements within the solar system are that you refer to. I had thought this was far too small a scale to prove anything about MOND or CDM.
> It does not have a great predictive record; it is good at explaining obervations after the fact (the CMB notwithstanding).
Can you elaborate on what you mean? LCDM hasn't been "tweaked" since \Lambda was established in the 90s (at least, not for large-scale cosmological observations). The current discrepancies are all at the precision level (<10%) rather than a qualitative O(1) difference. An important (but not dispositive) nuance is that LCDM well explains all observations individually; the percent-level tensions arise only between fits to datasets, meaning unknown systematics remain a viable explanation.
The unknown fundamental nature of CDM (as important a problem as it is) seems irrelevant to arguments about LCDM's predictivity (as a cosmological model).
1. LCDM predicted hierarchical formation of large galaxies through aggregation. JWST seems to show this is not what happens (large galaxies at early times). I am sure it can be made to work, but it was not a prediction.
2. Constant Lambda - recent obervations seem to show it may be changing (OK - that is more built into the theory rather than being a prediction).
By the way, I am not saying LCDM is not massively successful. It can clearly be used to explain a lot of things. I am saying that I am not aware of many things it successfully predicted ahead of observations being made.
> I am saying that I am not aware of many things it successfully predicted ahead of observations being made.
CDM successfully predicted the CMB features that COBE could measure. LCDM certainly was a known model before supernova data in the 90s first provided evidence for it. CMB data shortly after detected a consistent fraction of \Lambda and have since provided evidence of multiple kinds (structure growth in addition to the original, the distance to the last scattering surface). Distances from baryon acoustic oscillations are another subsequent, independent test that corroborated the LCDM model.
2 and (especially) 1 are to me too speculative to place much weight on. I would also draw analogy to the Standard Model of particle physics: its predictivity and past success are not refuted by any deficiencies beyond the regimes we've been able to probe thusfar. (Of course, in the SM we fully expect those deficiencies.) Just to say that not every failed prediction falsifies a model's success in previously established regimes of energy/scale/dynamics.
> By the way, I am not saying LCDM is not massively successful. It can clearly be used to explain a lot of things.
Hmm... this doesn't quite add up. Do we have brain scans showing that critical thinking centers of the brain turn off when people read books or play table games?
1. The location of tattoo, some regions of skin are VERY sensitive.
2. The skill of the tattooer. How deep do they go, how fast do they pull, etc...
3. The size of the lines and shading A fine line tattoo feels very different that a block shaded piece. (One needle vs up to 7)
4. The style of the tattoo. Black and gray realism tattoos require the artist to go over an area many times. Going over an already inflamed piece of skin feels way worse than fresh skin.
Diversify! Historically, the average length of a recession has been 12-24 months. So set up a system whereby you won’t screw’s yourself over by selling when things are low, but instead you can weather the storm.
Build a rainy day fund. Determine how much cash you will need if you are out of a job and how long you think that will last, allocate some portion of that amount into low risk bonds. Russ way if you need cash you aren’t selling investments at a big loss.
If you have enough liquidity put some in real estate as a forced savings vehicle as it’s harder to liquidate than stocks. Then just sit out any coming storm.
If there's a big AI bust, there will be no escaping it. Like 2008, the entire economy will slow down. This time it might even end in a war. A well diversified portfolio e.g. index funds will weather the storm and recover.
Build your emergency fund first if you don't have one. 6-12 months of salary in cash or CDs. Then dollar-cost average into well diversified equities. Don't watch them day-to-day. You're concerned about their value in 20-30 years, not tomorrow.
Nobody can tell you what to diversify into without information about what you are concentrated in.
Sure, spread investments across stocks and bonds and treasuries from different markets.
But you can also diversify more broadly beyond economic capital to cultural and social capital. Learn new skills and build networks of generalized reciprocity with others before you (or they) need help.
By the same logic if you pay money to United States based companies (FAANG) you're directly funding genocide, mass incarceration of people of color, the undermining of digital privacy, and a techo-fascist regime.
Yes, if that’s your belief. Do you practice what you preach? Do you use oil-based products? Do you transit via Dubai or Istanbul?
The issue with Musk related politics here is pretending higher moral positions. Even though I’m against China’s policies, I have absolutely no issues with Chinese products. Their achievements are phenomenal (look at that Europe and India). I’m against hypocrisy.
Say you grabbed a random selection of just 100 million people in the world, then ask them two questions, "Have you heard about Nike?" and "Have you heard about Cursor?", what would you guess the ratio would be like?
Even when you use "Nike the Company" vs "Cursor as a general search term" to compare search history in Google Trends, it's 71/5, so I'm guessing most people would say they've heard about Nike, while probably most never heard about any software program called "Cursor".
Fair point, those are valuable for other reasons. My point was more to illustrate "Nike is valuable because of the brand", without using those exact words :)
Its best thought of as the testing systems that are run as part of pull request review / merge to main / build processes.
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