'The Man Who Killed Google Search' 147
Edward Zitron, citing emails released as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, writes about Prabhakar Raghavan: And Raghavan -- a manager, hired by Sundar Pichai, a former McKinsey man and a manager by trade -- is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Raghavan chose to bulldoze actual workers and replace them with toadies that would make Google more profitable and less useful to the world at large. Since Prabhakar took the reins in 2020, Google Search has dramatically declined, with the numerous "core" search updates allegedly made to improve the quality of results having an adverse effect, increasing the prevalence of spammy, search engine optimized content.
It's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what "Google" means anymore. Prabhakar Raghavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of "did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of note, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how bad it is." This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when "management" is synonymous with "staying as far away from actual work as possible." And when you're a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You're not a user, you're a parasite, and it's these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value.
Raghavan's story is unique, insofar as the damage he's managed to inflict (or, if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo) on two industry-defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder. Perhaps more remarkable, he's achieved this while maintaining a certain degree of anonymity. Everyone knows who Musk and Zuckerberg are, but Raghavan's known only in his corner of the Internet. Or at least he was. Now Raghavan has told those working on search that their "new operating reality" is one with less resources and less time to deliver things. Rot Master Raghavan is here to squeeze as much as he can from the corpse of a product he beat to death with his bare hands. Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and "shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.
It's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what "Google" means anymore. Prabhakar Raghavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of "did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of note, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how bad it is." This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when "management" is synonymous with "staying as far away from actual work as possible." And when you're a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You're not a user, you're a parasite, and it's these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value.
Raghavan's story is unique, insofar as the damage he's managed to inflict (or, if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo) on two industry-defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder. Perhaps more remarkable, he's achieved this while maintaining a certain degree of anonymity. Everyone knows who Musk and Zuckerberg are, but Raghavan's known only in his corner of the Internet. Or at least he was. Now Raghavan has told those working on search that their "new operating reality" is one with less resources and less time to deliver things. Rot Master Raghavan is here to squeeze as much as he can from the corpse of a product he beat to death with his bare hands. Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and "shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.
Sympathy for the Devil (Score:3, Interesting)
How is Google not going to suck more? The internet has changed. Nobody's writing webpages anymore. Who's still blogging? People use the internet by logging on to Instagram or using a phone app, which can't be accessed by a Google search.
That is a very angry bit of editorializing, and it's entirely misplaced.
Re:Sympathy for the Devil (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a very angry bit of editorializing, and it's entirely misplaced.
No it's not. You're not wrong about Instagram and other platforms but even the Gen Z'ers who think those platforms == the Internet still use Google. With the possible exception of Reddit (always a toxic place and now that it's public it seems highly probable they'll add 'enshittification' to the toxicity) what platform can you use to find recipes, instructions to repair a broken appliance, swap a part on your car, reviews on some product you're looking for, experiences people have had with credit cards, airlines, etc.?
Google is still highly relevant, for better or worse, and the erosion of their core product is so commonly known that it has been covered by the MSM [theatlantic.com]. Google Search is objectively less useful than it ever has been. Google (err, Alphabet) as a company lost its way a long time ago, probably around the time "Don't be evil" was removed, and it has been run by the same MBA asshats that ruined everything for at least the last decade if not longer.
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I haven’t noticed any difficulty myself in finding information I need to know. Can you give an example of a search where the top results are demonstrably far from accurate, and it’s clearly the kind of commercial poisoning the article referred to? I ask because it seems to me that if the product was really obviously bad, I should be able to see it, and I just can’t
Re:Sympathy for the Devil (Score:5, Informative)
I don't really think it's incumbent on me to prove to you that the perspectives of myself and others are valid.
That said, have you tried to find a non-astroturfed product review for literally anything these days? Have you not noticed how Google -- who used to have the philosophy of getting you off their page as quickly as possible -- has plastered search results with "panels", using data stolen, err, I mean "borrowed", from actual webpages, and frequently directing you to other Google products and services? The last bit is the straw that broke the anti-trust camel's back on both sides of the Atlantic.
That's just Search. If you've worked with G-Suite/Workspace, you're well aware of the anti-consumer changes they've made to that product over the years. If you've come to rely on any Google products as part of your personal or professional workflow, you've probably had the discomforting experience of having the rug pulled out from under you [killedbygoogle.com]. Is it really a wonder how they managed to go from being hip, cool, and disruptive, to the focus of so much ire?
I weirdly prefer working with Microsoft, despite their countless flaws/problems, and that's saying a lot. If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd feel that way I would have laughed in your face and asked how high you were. Hell, I became an Apple user because of a multitude of negative experiences with Nexus phones, specifically, the complete lack of QA/QC Google maintained over that flagship product line. Dismiss this as an anecdote if you want, it's not, the Nexus 6P ended in a class action lawsuit [topclassactions.com], countless people had the same lousy experience I did. Android had me for nearly a decade. If you had told me at any point prior to October 2016 I'd end up an iPhone user, again, I'd have laughed in your face.
If the products still work for you, great, but don't discount the multitude of voices saying they're inferior to yesterday's products and deeply frustrating to use.
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First off, I know it's not *incumbent* on you -- that's why I asked and didn't demand!
Second, I have done lots of searches for product reviews in the last few days -- for a Samsung S95C TV, for various EVs including the Taycan, for Speyside whisky, for the Humane AI pin. In every case, the results seemed .... useful and not at all astroturfed.
As for your complaint about the panels in search -- I know this annoys some producers of web content, but I have to say, I like fast results. I think the old Google ap
Re: Sympathy for the Devil (Score:2)
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I’m not sure what you’re suggesting: is it that, for example, Wired is taking kickbacks to given an overly rosy view of the Samsung S95C, or that Wired is paying Google to come up higher on the search results than it otherwise would?
If the former, that doesn’t sound like it’s Google’s fault, and anyway it’s down to me to decide which sites’ reviews I trust and many sites depend on audience trust in their impartiality, so it’s not in their interest to be nicey-
Re:Sympathy for the Devil (Score:4, Interesting)
In search query, just replace one word with a synonym. And today's google most of the time can't find anymore. Worked most of the time in the past.
What also worked much much better: longer search queries. In the past more words meant better results. Today you basically get mish mash of some junk, and rarely anything relevant.
Nowadays, I feel that unless I know very much precisely the keywords/sentence I'm searching for, google fails more often than not.
P.S. At first I thought that they've replaced google devs with youtube devs (crap search on youtube is ancient problem**). But then I've took TikTok for a spin... What you want to see is less important to them than what's popular (since more ad-worthy). And I know where the crap is coming from. Some say it's "enshitification". But to me it's TV-ization of internet. I.e. turning internet back into a kind of TV, where you have many channels that created illusion of choice - but rarely any real choice of content that you actually wanted.
**And this is a problem. In the past one could bypass crappy youtube search by gooling videos. Not anymore. (I would have said "same shit", but youtube now rolling out another weird crappy redesign, that makes google video search being still slightly better. 'Invidious' gradually becomes indispensable.)
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Can you give any specific examples? I tried, for example, "tallest woman in the world" and then tried "tallest woman alive" and then "tallest woman today" and got the same answer each time. So I can't replicate the problems you experience
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I tried this with "Sweet little lies" and with "none of you apes" and with "slippery friction of mucous membranes" (Heinlein had such a knack for great phrases". In each case, I got search results that were for exactly that phrase for at least the top 10 results (which is almost always all I'd use)
I keep hearing about shitty Google search results, but I keep struggling to replicate any specific poor results. I'm willing to believe it, I just wondered if anyone can share any specific examples!
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"heroine addiction" - it was a girl group some decades back. and not talking about the 2011 improv group either.
Albeit it's a bad example b/c it has probably been tuned/SEOd by ppl who mean well.
Also note, I'm not a fan... it's just a name that has stuck with me for 20 years.
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Well, I definitely can't quickly find any links to pages about a girl band called "heroine addiction" with google. Do such pages exist, then?
(I'm not sure this is a massive surprise given the punning nature of the name, the fact that an improv troupe has also used it much more recently, and that the original group didn't have enough of an impact to have, for example, their own Wiki page. Is this really an example of engineering failings?)
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all I can say is that about 17 years ago, it was able to be found on google with a little insistence.
True, it could have fallen into a memory hole in general, and thus not Google's fault.
Re:Sympathy for the Devil (Score:4, Insightful)
It's very acerbic and all, but while it demonstrates that someone else also thinks Google Search is broken, I still am keen to see an example of an actual broken search, because I can't replicate the problems everyone else seems to experience!
Re: Sympathy for the Devil (Score:2)
The last true blogger died six months ago
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let's be realistic, the people using instagram/fb would not have written blogs or spent time writing webpages in the first place.
Re: Sympathy for the Devil (Score:5, Funny)
So you're saying not to hire people from San Francisco?
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Not speaking for the OP, but yes. :)
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You may think this is true but the web is full of useful things that Google can no longer find.
There was recently a demo that Google search no longer goes beyond about four pages. After the 4th page it just starts repeating. That is a terrible thing because, if you know an exact, best search phrase with no real alternative, but it's also used by other more common results, there's no longer a way of penetrating through to the final result except possibly exclusion keyphrases which will not always work. True enshittification, if only I believed in the theory that this will cause Google to die and be re
another example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:another example (Score:4, Insightful)
That comment was not a "Troll", it's the truth that nobody will accept. If you want another example, look at the UK as it becomes more like India every day as its public services degrade into uselessness
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look at the UK as it becomes more like India every day as its public services degrade into uselessness
Brits have created the framework for this uselessness themselves. India workers (and others) are just complying with the framework. At this point, it would be the same thing if there were no immigrants in Britain at all.
Culture is more than quaint food. (Score:2)
India is a mess because of its culture or its citizens would have
no reason to flee to the US and rest of world.
Emigration is flight, an act of desperation, and in this case undermines Western culture to no benefit to the recipient. Anyone imagining all cultures interchange should move there and test that belief.
Re:another example (Score:5, Insightful)
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India has nowhere near a lock on "asshole managers." I've had white managers, and Indian managers. There were assholes of either stripe. Two of my Indian managers are now my better friends. Let's just admit that assholes come in all colors.
Whilst this is true, Indian work culture has a serious conflict with getting things done.
1. No-one can make a decision. Everything has to be discussed in a large group until a consensus is reached, usually this consensus is to do nothing or to see who the problem can be passed onto.
2. Passing the buck is a 100% legit solution that needs to be employed as much as possible. As long as you can pass the problem to someone else, it's solved. A ticket will happily keep going on a merry-go-round with different
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Re:another example (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a generalization but it's all over the internet and in the most disparate fields: India management means problems...they need to update their way of teaching and their overall approach to society if they want to be appreciated and welcomed on the world stage.
This is some racist ass bullshit and the people modding it up should be ashamed of themselves.
If you want to condemn India for something, condemn them for copying the worst parts of American capitalism.
Tell me, how many Indians do you see here [boeing.com]? I count zero. You might be able to claim one, if you discount the fact that Ms. Amuluru is a natural born US citizen, about as Indian as I am German, but whatever, even if you include her I doubt very much she was a decision maker when it came to the aggressive cost cutting -- err, I mean "optimization" -- that lead to this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], or this [wikipedia.org].
Re: another example (Score:2)
This is some racist ass bullshit and the people modding it up should be ashamed of themselves.
Some is. And some is spot on. Quite a few Indian professionals came here (or Britain) because they couldn't put up with the racist caste system back home. Perhaps they were not Brahmins and therefore destined for a career of mediocraty. Or they didn't want to spent their lives pushing past the Paperwork Wallahs that are the remains of an ex-Socialist system.
Others came because they _were_ the big shots in Indian society. And they looked over here and saw that many Americans were squandering excellent oppor
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India management means problems...they need to update their way of teaching and their overall approach to society if they want to be appreciated and welcomed on the world stage.
India teaching and culture are just ultra-pragmatic. Future managers are taught that in their trade profit is the single most important thing they should care about, no ifs and buts and "don't be evils". And frankly, this is not something bad. It gets the work done. Enshittification in tech is due to weak laws and lack of government oversight, direction and regulation, not due to what some manager at some company does.
Real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Raghavan chose to bulldoze actual workers and replace them with toadies
People who don't play office politics lose to people who do. Having "toadies" helps you win the game of Survivor. It works because the CEO doesn't recognize actual skill.
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Yep. Mr. Raghavan isn't the illness, he's just a symptom of ordinary market forces that innovative tech startups can only resist for so long.
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As set forth in an essay I love (Score:2)
"Why does this happen? Because the better an organization is at fulfilling its purpose, the more it attracts people who see the organization as an opportunity to advance themselves."
And if their superpower is advancing themselves, mere merit has no chance to compete.
https://bobshea.net/empire_of_... [bobshea.net]
Re:Real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
It is inevitable that a small startup that becomes successful will, eventually, be taken over by an MBA type, or fail because of the growing pains. And the MBAs may or may not have a clue.
Entrepreneurs are builders, not maintainers.
It really can't be any other way.
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The only problem with this claim is it's not falsifiable. Any counterexamples can be explained by just saying "it hasn't happened YET but EVENTUALLY it will."
Spot On (Score:5, Insightful)
I've lost count of the number of times someone has been upset over a chart, in a report. I've lost count of the number of times I've been told the analytics don't make sense, when the issue is the person doesn't understand what they're looking at. Hell, I've been in meetings where the solution to the report not looking perfect, was to start using Sprints. When I objected and pointed out that fixing the documentation, planning, and project management needed to be done first, I was scuffed and laughed at.
Management has turned from leading the troops into battle, to sitting at a desk, playing risk, with the monopoly rules, and crying about not getting nap time, then blaming the engineers because the product is yellow, not red. The funny thing about management, is that if you do it well, people don't know you're a manager. Good managers lead, and pull everyone up by setting an example. Typical managers, use buzz words, broken tools, bad reports and meeting to hide udder incompetence.
Let's Be Clear (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's what happened in tech. I can speak with authority because I was there.
During the 1990s, when corporate America was caught in last place technology-wise, they had no trouble hiring and fairly paying people to help them build what they needed. I was one of those people, and because of my hard work, knowledge and skill I multiplied my salary 500% in seven years.
This was all funded by hard investments in technology infrastructure, and it is when all the key platforms were invented or perfected: browser,
Re:Let's Be Clear (Score:5, Insightful)
I started in IT in the late 90s, am still in IT today, and it paid for my home, my vehicles, raising my kids, etc. I can retire any time now, but so far I have chosen not to.
If you worked in IT until 2000 and have since been unable to work in IT... You failed to adapt in an industry where you should be retraining annually.
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I started in IT in the late 90s, am still in IT today, and it paid for my home, my vehicles, raising my kids, etc. I can retire any time now, but so far I have chosen not to.
If you worked in IT until 2000 and have since been unable to work in IT... You failed to adapt in an industry where you should be retraining annually.
Losers almost alway have an excuse for their failure, and it never ever involves them. It's always the system or at this time, those damn boomers.
And yet, there are successful millennials and GenZ. Those successful ones tend to take accountability.
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If you worked in IT until 2000 and have since been unable to work in IT... You failed to adapt in an industry where you should be retraining annually.
Dude. Really? He "failed to adapt"? What exactly was he supposed to adapt to? Not getting paid properly? Having his professional opinion discounted? He helped CREATE many of the technologies that you are using right now. What makes you think he couldn't still be creating if he was paid and respected?
What is funny is that this is how all of us will be treated. Something bad happened to you? YOU failed to adapt. YOU failed to try hard enough. YOU YOU YOU. It is never the manager that refuses to respect you. I
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> Then what are you bitching about?
I'm not the only one who got screwed.
> And how successful can they be when they only last an average of five years?
The fuck are you talking about?
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Here's what happened in tech. I can speak with authority because I was there.
Trigger alert!
From a Boomer to a Doomer - if you are right down at the bottom of the barrel, the ultimate victim of the horrible system, the person whom the system actively grinds down...
Perhaps a little introspection is in order. Yeah, I'm a boomer. Big deal, there are boomers among the losingist losers ever. You doomers didn't invent losers.
My millennial son is doing just fine, rising in his company, and is going to buy a house soon.
Wife's best friend has 2 millennial sons, gainfully employed, and
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My millennial son is doing just fine, rising in his company, and is going to buy a house soon.
Wife's best friend has 2 millennial sons, gainfully employed, and own houses.
The same with other friends children, I just give three examples.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."
Maybe it has something to do with attitude
It has everything to do with attitude. I stopped thinking like an employee and started thinking like a leader. The results speak for themselves.
No one owes you anything.
You're right. That's why I built it myself.
No one owes you a 6 or 7 figure job.
I built my own job.
No one owes you a one skill-set for life - if your skill-set becomes useless, develop a new skill-set.
I did. That's why I was able to start successful businesses in four different industries.
Bring value added to your work.-If you bring no value added to your work, you are mediocre at best
I have customers in sixteen countries.
That about cover it?
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That about cover it?
You forgot to add that you are a kvetch.
And I take it that you still believe what you wrote to which I very specifically gave my reply? I'll repeat it for you in case you forgot.
"P.S. For those of you who think you beat the system, just keep this in mind: your kids will never own a home, have a family or have a real job. They'll also never elect anyone to office. Have a nice day."
Care to comment on that? You didn't say you were speaking in generalities, you very specifically wrote never have a home, family, or real job. Or the strange bit about electing people.
That my friend is a no wiggle room statement. Never means never and is never anything other than never. What you choose to call my "anecdotes",
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Brilliant. Savage, True.
Well done.
Re: Let's Be Clear (Score:2)
TCP/IP is way older than the 1990s and you know it.
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Jacobsen's Algorithm wasn't widely implemented until the 90's and you know it.
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China may be the place where all of that continues. Unfortunately. The fact they're an almost-totalitarian dictatorship and their tyrants have a focus on hard, real technological growth, coupled with what you wrote, has a high likelihood of causing them to get the lead. Not because China, can all other things being equal, do it faster than the US, for freedom to innovate almost always beats top-down impositions. But because the US, as a whole, has decided to make things unequal in the worst possible way --
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This was all funded by hard investments in technology infrastructure, and it is when all the key platforms were invented or perfected: browser, TCP/IP, streaming video, high-speed graphics libraries, multiplayer gaming, ecommerce, Flash, LAMP, etc.
This is a refrain that I've heard over and over again over the last three to four decades. Every generation believes this, that the foundational work was done by their generation and that all the other stuff is just derivative and incremental. Industry folks believe this, and academics also believe this. It will be forever so because humans need a way to believe in their own inherent worth.
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I don't think you can hold up the DotCom Boom as an example of right management. Sure, it was fun building things from nothing with little legacy and no thought of profitability. But it was unsustainable and at least as dysfunctional as the current tech world. I was there too. If you want to stay employable you have to adapt. Either adapt to a more mature and restrictive climate or adapt your skills to be in the centre of the next raging boom. If you do the latter, you will have to do it again as thes
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Your generation didn't have nearly as many kids
No shit??
now we have a tiny generation entering the workforce just as the largest generation (the boomers) is in the midst of retiring. This isn't rocket science; it's arithmetic.
If there were a shortage of workers, wages would be increasing. The only problem is wages have been stagnant for 51 years. (source: American Enterprise Institute)
Meanwhile, now only half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents. It was 90% in the 1950s. (Source: Brookings)
Worker shortages are bullshit. The entire American job market is fraud-coated fraud.
And if you started and grew 4 "successful" companies and you still don't have a wife or a home
Median price for a house in my part of the world has gone up 700% in the last 30 years. No house, no wife.
That about cover it?
Re: Let's Be Clear (Score:2)
Meanwhile, now only half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents. It was 90% in the 1950s. (Source: Brookings)
That's what you call cherry picking. You arbitrarily picked the highest growth period in US history to compare it with. And that only happened because Europe and Asia decided to give fascism and communism a try and ended up blowing themselves up or otherwise just wrecking their own economies in the name of progress, leaving the US basically unscathed, leaving it with a massive competitive advantage that ended by about 1980 after the others finally rebuilt. And conveniently, you're comparing to a period wher
I just posted something like this yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
To a techie mailing list I'm on.
Here's evidence it worse than sucks: I'm working on some revisions to what was a short story, and may turn into a novelette. I need some information about the Russian city of Kursk around the year 1200. Five or six years ago, I found, among other things, a pic of a drawing? painting" of the city no later than 1600.
Now? Even after I exclude from the search battle, ussr, soviet, nuclear and a few more items, I can't find any real history of the city, when its walls were built, *zippo*.
Re:I just posted something like this yesterday (Score:5, Interesting)
To a techie mailing list I'm on.
Here's evidence it worse than sucks: I'm working on some revisions to what was a short story, and may turn into a novelette. I need some information about the Russian city of Kursk around the year 1200. Five or six years ago, I found, among other things, a pic of a drawing? painting" of the city no later than 1600.
Now? Even after I exclude from the search battle, ussr, soviet, nuclear and a few more items, I can't find any real history of the city, when its walls were built, *zippo*.
The knowledge-shrinkage epidemic is even worse than that. Your experience is 100% valid, but what makes it worse is that during this same time period all our previously stable, richly-sourced knowledge management systems have been gutted. I am talking, of course, about libraries. Some of them held on during the 2005-2015 era, but in the past 10 years most have succumbed and the pace is only increasing. Because yes, from 1995-2015 (which we will look back later and recognize as Peak human-internet) you, a person, could use this information tool to access a wide variety of online sources. And if you couldn't find something online you could go down to your local library and get help using their much richer sources. The world we thought we were moving toward was one where any piece of knowledge could be accessed by anyone with minimal effort.
And so... libraries have been gutted by city managers and university business-ops managers who have replaced storehouses of on-prem information, staffed by on-prem professional researchers, with vendor products and an assumption that, "We don't need to hang on to primary sources and copies of books and microfilm, because pretty soon all of that will be on the Internet. Which also means we don't need to pay comp&ben for as many researchers and scholars to build and tend to these collections". So collections have been slashed - literally dumped into landfills by thousands of tons - because it's all online anyway, right?
Thus we begin manifesting the "Canticle For Liebowitz" scenario, where human knowledge only survives in a very few niche pockets where some group of monastic weirdos managed to hold onto their passion for Scholasticism despite the fires of ignorance scouring the planet. Everything else is the product of SEO/LLM autocoprophagia. The Internet is no longer a human tool. The Internet is now just an inhuman centipede gradually necrotizing as it recycles its own filth endlessly.
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Ha! I enjoyed the 'autocoprophagia' neologism for describing current LLM trends
Thanks. My suspicion is that all of this new content-generation stuff will look amazing for the first full generation of 10-15 years. So people will make all sorts of assumptions about its capacity, not recognizing that its successes were the product of having Good Data from all the pre-existing human-generated/verified input data. But once human content-generation atrophies, retreats behind paywalls/DRM, or just becomes crowded out by the crap-fountain of SEO/LLM content, the "AI" will become MORE, not les
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To a techie mailing list I'm on.
Here's evidence it worse than sucks: I'm working on some revisions to what was a short story, and may turn into a novelette. I need some information about the Russian city of Kursk around the year 1200. Five or six years ago, I found, among other things, a pic of a drawing? painting" of the city no later than 1600.
Now? Even after I exclude from the search battle, ussr, soviet, nuclear and a few more items, I can't find any real history of the city, when its walls were built, *zippo*.
The knowledge-shrinkage epidemic is even worse than that. Your experience is 100% valid, but what makes it worse is that during this same time period all our previously stable, richly-sourced knowledge management systems have been gutted. I am talking, of course, about libraries. Some of them held on during the 2005-2015 era, but in the past 10 years most have succumbed and the pace is only increasing. Because yes, from 1995-2015 (which we will look back later and recognize as Peak human-internet) you, a person, could use this information tool to access a wide variety of online sources. And if you couldn't find something online you could go down to your local library and get help using their much richer sources. The world we thought we were moving toward was one where any piece of knowledge could be accessed by anyone with minimal effort.
And so... libraries have been gutted by city managers and university business-ops managers who have replaced storehouses of on-prem information, staffed by on-prem professional researchers, with vendor products and an assumption that, "We don't need to hang on to primary sources and copies of books and microfilm, because pretty soon all of that will be on the Internet. Which also means we don't need to pay comp&ben for as many researchers and scholars to build and tend to these collections". So collections have been slashed - literally dumped into landfills by thousands of tons - because it's all online anyway, right?
Thus we begin manifesting the "Canticle For Liebowitz" scenario, where human knowledge only survives in a very few niche pockets where some group of monastic weirdos managed to hold onto their passion for Scholasticism despite the fires of ignorance scouring the planet. Everything else is the product of SEO/LLM autocoprophagia. The Internet is no longer a human tool. The Internet is now just an inhuman centipede gradually necrotizing as it recycles its own filth endlessly.
I'd just like to tip my hat to you for the lovely writing. It paints a picture, and is factually correct enough to resonate. Well done.
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I had a less historical, more geeky, version of the same. No matter how much I tried to emphasize 1977 *original* price, I could not get Google to give me a site that described the original retail prices of Star Wars figures at the time (I was looking for it as a matter of measuring inflation, to the price of Prisoner figures today on a kickstarter).
Everything just kept being page after page of either modern price guides, or actual figures for sale. Google just wouldn't give up on the commercial side of it
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Thus we begin manifesting the "Canticle For Liebowitz" scenario, where human knowledge only survives in a very few niche pockets where some group of monastic weirdos managed to hold onto their passion for Scholasticism despite the fires of ignorance scouring the planet. Everything else is the product of SEO/LLM autocoprophagia. The Internet is no longer a human tool. The Internet is now just an inhuman centipede gradually necrotizing as it recycles its own filth endlessly.
This is the most beautiful thing I have ever read on social media. The fact that you know ACfL and how it applies perfectly in this context makes it even better.
Quick, find a way to monetize it.
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This is outline-ish, maybe not what you call a real history.
https://rusmania.com/central/k... [rusmania.com].
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Some important, out of print chemical series were carefully built up over decades. If people like me can't find the answers formerly in that Reference section, or now online in the Russian sites carrying western texts, the average citizen is more likely to suffer in
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blackjackhookerswebsearch.biz (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just what happens when a once-innovative company gets big enough. It's inevitable. The business weenies move in, and try to adapt the company to maximize its efficiency. It's their job! The only way they know to do this is through taking formerly less-structured workflows and imposing process upon them, so as to reduce their unpredictability and redundancy. Then they point at the numbers for this quarter, and there, these ones are bigger, and these ones are smaller. (Hopefully. If not, do it again next quarter, even harder.) They've done their jobs.
Except that innovation is a form of unpredictability, of course. Just as reliability, and therefore quality, is a form of redundancy.
And so great companies ossify, and stop doing the thing they originally did, the one that customers liked, the one that took all the work and thinking and effort and investment, you know, art and/or engineering, and instead they put all their eggs in the shiniest basket they can fill with the eggs at hand. And if they can't really fill it, they can arrange the eggs carefully to look like it's filled. It's their fiduciary duty!
Eventually, to extend the egg metaphor, they start boiling their layers and selling them to the dog-food company. It really pumps up the numbers for this quarter! And never mind next quarter; fiduciary duty doesn't reach that far.
To do the reverse of the situation described in this article, and inappropriately cast a business scenario in terms of computer science, it's as if every algorithm written, now matter how intricate or brilliant it started out, slowly devolved into a greedy search algorithm.
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The problem is that bad tech companies used to be replaced with new upstarts that were faster to innovate.
That's tough to do with Google, though, which basically has a monopoly on search and controls 60% of the tablets and smartphones on the market. They pretty much control the means of web content hosting and distribution, can bury their competitors in legal paperwork, and can afford to buy out anyone who they couldn't sue into submission.
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This same quote could apply to... (Score:5, Interesting)
This same quote could apply to Boeing more or less. The CEO and C-suite changed Boeing into a profit-maximizing, cost-minimizing fiasco, eliminating decades worth of trust and respect the Boeing brand name used to have.
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And in all likelihood the current leadership will be 'proven right' in terms of profitability. Its not like Boeing can actually fail no matter how many of their plans fall out of the sky. They are TBTF/Strategically_Important dear old Uncle Sam will step in a save them somehow no matter what. Sure if things get embarrassing enough some of the top dogs are send off with their severance packages (large enough to completely alter the life of anyone commenting here) so what do they care as individuals?
You wa
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Yeah - the McDonnell Douglas attitude. Such mergers, where the better company (who was the larger) gives way to the management of the smaller one happened with the SiriusXM merger. XM had the better tech, the wider variety of stations, the wider variety of playlists within those stations, the more loyal customers, and generally the higher individual stock value at the time (XM holders got 4.6 post-merger shares for each 1 XM).
Yet Sirius's management won out on every level except the tech, where they were th
Failing Upward (Score:4, Insightful)
Failing upward happens in every organization known to man. It's because most of us are social creatures and we weight personal relationships more than measurable results.
"fake it 'til you make it" is really "fake it and get promoted before anyone figures it out" (and repeat)
In the corporate world, there seems to be a level that once you reach, you'll never fall below. Somewhere around "director" makes you hireable no matter why you got fired.
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Honestly, if you have no other skils, manger is a great title to have. About 20 years ago, I worked at a DME company and was considered by most to be one of the most knowlegable and resourceful people there. I loved my job.
Then layoffs came. They didn't effect me but I realized that all of my great knowledge was limited to that one company's systems and processes. I sacrified my social and family life and took an overnight shift to become a "Team Leader." The bar to get into that was low due to the horrid
so, just like ... (Score:2)
... the average tech manager, then? what would be special is that (apparently, can't be bothered to rtfa) this one had a really influential position, but that isn't really that rare either. ok.
Quick Question: Why don't we just build our own? (Score:2)
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I mean, there's at least one home-grown search engine trying to get off the ground: https://clew.se/ [clew.se]
Currently under DDoS or something though, because we can't have nice things. They're focused on finding non-corporate kinds of information (so personal blogs, open source stuff, etc.).
Hopefully there are others.
I'm currently waffling between DuckDuckGo and Kagi, but they've both been poisoned by AI brainworms.
Maybe we go back to Yahoo!'s hand-curated index? I have no idea.
This is not a problem confined to just Tech (Score:5, Insightful)
This is problem that spans the many corporate empires that exist. Did I say many? Sorry, I meant few.
Look to the companies you admire and look to the ones you don't. Why do you admire the companies you do? Why do you loathe the companies you do?
To me the key difference is, "am I getting a good product or service for what I am paying for it" verses "Is this company profiting good this quarter?" If you are looking to the stock market, you want the latter company. If you are a customer, you are looking to the former company.
While I am getting closer to retirement every day, if I invest, I want to look to a solid, product or service centered company which is going to be around for a bit. If I want to make a quick buck, profit extraction is king baby!.
Boeing is a great example of a company that was focused on delivering a great plane to customers but shifted a couple decades ago to making as much money as possible and not caring whether the plane flies or not.
Seems like our society has focused on who they can fleece for the most instead of building something to be proud of. Unfortunately we as a nation are going to continue to decline until the C suite class of people decide they want to focus on making something to be proud of instead of focusing on how big of a yacht they own.
Re:This is not a problem confined to just Tech (Score:4, Insightful)
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yeah, I agree. For a company that first peaked by being a mail-order catalog based system, they could have taken Amazon's model, paid up on the stupid patent rights (even though most of the details about online shopping are bleeping obvious, but never mind, /. had that discussion 25 years ago...I was there.), and dominated that model all over again... ...but they knew if they did, they'd hurt their retail...so they died (multiple times).
This aspect has been true in other parts of tech history; a company won
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I was just saying that Sears should have allowed on-line ordering with the ability to have the items shipped OR pick up the items at their stores (if they did have that pick-up ability, which is ubiquitous at stores today, it was 'hidden' from me). They already had www.sears.com ordering with normal shipping, why wasn't their huge physical footprint leveraged--som
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Seems like our society has focused on who they can fleece for the most instead of building something to be proud of. Unfortunately we as a nation are going to continue to decline until the C suite class of people decide they want to focus on making something to be proud of instead of focusing on how big of a yacht they own.
Heroin addicts rarely quit, even when faced with insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, they are lucky, and something REALLY bad happens to them and they manage to survive it. It is at THAT point, that they MIGHT reconsider their behavior. Since most do not reconsider, even after catastrophe, I don't imagine any of the CEOs or other power players will reconsider their behaviors. Their addiction is money, not heroin.
Here's a question (Score:2)
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They're usually forced upon them by banks and Wall Street firms when they seek financing rounds to 'insure their investment' and end up destroying it instead because they know nothing about the investment they're trying to protect.
Management no longer knows how to deliver quality (Score:2)
It's kind of astonishing that the reaction to revenue dropping and a rash of articles about the the product has gone downhill is a, "new operating model" with less resources and more time pressure.
All this started when short term shareholder value became the only thing executives cared about. For a while, I think it was more that leadership just didn't give a shit about product quality or long term viability.
But now I think the management culture has changed so much that they legitimately don't know how to
Google search? Haven't used that in ages (Score:2)
I moved away some years ago, when it started to just be annoying. Short-term thinking moron in control, obviously. Although all of Google is advancing in Enshittification, search is clearly the worst.
Microsoft, Amazon (Score:2)
Could we perhaps encourage him to go work for Microsoft or Amazon/AWS? On the one hand, nobody would likely notice; on the other hand, he might improve things; on another hand yet (a foot?), he might strike a mortal blow and we'd all be better off...
What are the alternatives? (Score:2)
Has anything really come out of Alphabet? (Score:2)
No shocker here (Score:2)
Jack Welch (Score:2)
This whole decline started in earnest with Jack Welch at GE. None of his many sycophants ever acknowledge the object fact that Jack Welch's ideology has never been anything but a naked failure in practice. The man ran GE, one of the largest and most powerful companies on Earth, into the ground such that it is no little more than a name brand bought to slap on goods made by some Chinese third party.
The same management philosophy drove MacDonald Douglas into the ground and is currently killing off Boeing.
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That there was a trove of e-mails that are now publicly available from executives at Google as a result of discovery? I mean, that's some pretty interesting stuff, if it does give a backstory for how Google search is pretty much useless now.
If only I could exclude search results from the last 5 years, it would be so much more useful...
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/2... [cnbc.com]
What comes across overwhelmingly to me here is a sense of panic. There doesn't seem to be any confidence that they can build something unique. He's totally focused execution - on catching up with whatever somebody else released last month.
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