[tomComb]

Google's investments in the web has been massive. Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got.

Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons, but thank goodness they do - you can hate Google and targeted ads all you want but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms.

Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google, which people were only able to justify based on their hatred of the target companies and a willingness to sacrifice the web to their ends.

[o8r3oFTZPE]

"... it would stand little chance against the competing platforms."

Little chance of what. It sounds like this is framing the web as some sort of commercial venture. And Google is the gatekeeper. A venture where they can effectively make sites "appear" or "disappear" from the web and they decide what the public will or not see. Google watches the traffic, shows what is "popular" and buries the rest. Everyone begs for Google's favour to show their site "at the top, on page one". If not an organic listing, then Google will let anyone pay to be "at the top, on page one" in the form of an ad that looks much like a search result.

That's a very dysfunctional "public platform". (The Google founders wrote about how dysfunctional it was to sell out that way in their 1998 paper announcing their new, alternative search engine.) No one ever agreed the only way the "public platform" would be useful is for a few big corporations to control it. That is a recent idea held only by those who stand to (continue to) benefit from its realisation.

News Corp is bad, Google is bad, Facebook is bad, but c'mon this does not mean the web has to be bad. If one cannot see the difference between "the web" and a few big corporations, then some "reframing" is defintely in order. The web is a medium not a destination. Google, Facebook and others trying to emulate them are all acting as middlemen on the medium.

[inopinatus]

On the contrary, the end-to-end federated Internet was doing just fine before Google came along, and will do just fine, perhaps better, when it's gone and no longer trying to co-opt every god-damn standards process for their own preferences. No-one has a monopoly on innovation: most inventions are driven by necessity, and large companies stifle genius, they don't foster it. Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, and often downright incompetent outside of selling ads; even the usefulness of their flagship search is in decline.

[ignoramous]

> Far from being the greater good, Google is remarkably pig-headed, often downright incompetent outside of selling ads...

As is the nature of dualities, the web has benefit immensely from Google's investments even if it would have chartered a different (and in your opinion, a better) course had Google not existed in the first place. Someone pointed out, you couldn't say the same for Amazon. As for incompetence: imho, webrtc, which Google standardized and open sourced, is likely the single most important innovation on the interwebs (in terms of impact) just ahead of Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest.

[josephg]

> webrtc, which Google standardized and open sourced, is likely the single most important innovation on the interwebs (in terms of impact) just ahead of Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest.

Thats a really weird claim. We can point to some real ways google has benefited the web: Their search engine is excellent, and was a huge leap forward when it was released. SPDY/QUIC are set to become the next HTTP2/HTTP3. And google chrome has made the browser a much more powerful and compelling platform over the last few years. If anything they're investing too much - and hurting the web by making it hard for other browser vendors to keep up.

But webrtc?? Webrtc is still mostly a toy, barely used outside of video conferencing. Its insanely overcomplicated for any other use case. And I still haven't seen a compelling reason to use it for anything else. Decentralized communication doesn't buy you much when the site itself is still loaded from a centralized server.

More important / impactful than XMLHttpRequest? No, I think not.

[tristan957]

What is the point of having a WebRTC standard if Google doesn't even follow it? Mozilla Firefox is given the shaft for many services because they don't support Chrome-only WebRTC APIs? Chrome and Google are bad for diversity on the web.

[_0w8t]

This all assumes that without Google this would not happen. But I fail to see why is this so. Linux happened without single corporation controlling it.

[ineedasername]

Linux was helped along massively when IBM embraced it and invested a $billion in it in 2000.

RedHat benefited significantly from funding by large corporations in it's early days.

Undoubtedly these companies helped shape the Linux ecosystem. A single company doesn't control it, but as big as Google is a single company doesn't control the web either.

[pjmlp]

Not only IBM, also Compaq and the daily hated Oracle were early contributers.

[ignoramous]

> This all assumes that without Google this would not happen.

To be fair, I am not the one that's assuming things here. I am speaking of how Google has indeed contributed when they really didn't have to (as pointed out with the example of Amazon).

> Linux happened without single corporation controlling it.

A consortium of corporations, sure: linaro.org

[nwallin]

What does linaro.org have to do with linux? I've been using linux since a decade before linaro.org was founded, and this is the first I've heard of it. Did you mean the Linux Foundation?

[ignoramous]

linaro.org contributes ARM-related work that directly impacts largest deployment of Linux (Android). And how long before ARM takes over servers as well?

I meant to highlight that Linux, not in its entirety but parts of it, is indeed driven by orgs (that you haven't even heard of).

[keeganpoppen]

there's no chance that webrtc is a more important innovation than XMLHTTPRequest... the web would be just a bunch of hyperlinked text and images without XHR...

[rixed]

This made me realize how much I would actually love that, somehow.

[kalleboo]

Yeah it would have been an interesting world if Java hadn't sucked so bad (and MS hadn't tried to kill it) and the web had remained a hypertext document platform and all the deep interactivity ended up in applets and Java Web Start apps. Both pros and cons to that.

[josefx]

Java, Flash, Silverlight, lets not pretend that Java was the only attempt. Sad part is that flash and java plugins got killed over security exploits while the always growing API surface of current JavaScript implementations still gets consistently owned in Pwn2Own style competitions.

[beebeepka]

Google was great until 2004 or so. I think uncle Sam made them an offer they could not or simply did not want to refuse. Then this Schmidt guy came and did the actual damage

[mr_toad]

Google was great until after they won the second browser war and gradually became used to power.

They’re a lot like a revolutionary government that gradually becomes corrupt and as bad as the regime they overthrew.

[pjerem]

Like mostly everyone, I was amongst those people who heavily recommended Google (really cool) products to friends & family.

Retrospectively, I feel so stupid to have promoted « free products paid by an advertising company » for years.

I know Google duped everyone on this so I don’t feel to be stupid alone. But still, in hindsight, there were no possible future where Google could stay on top without doing dirty things. We didn’t see the targeted ads coming.

[rixed]

I certainly hate ads more than the average person, probably even more than the average hell, but it feels strange to hear people sometime speak about Google as if targeted ads were the worse thing that could happen on the internet.

I've seen censorship, identity theft, money laundering, online harassment, online crime, information theft on very large scale to target, arrest and hang political opponents... All of which Google used to oppose more than any other big tech co. But somehow, the pitchforks are out against targeted ads.

[vineyardmike]

> As for incompetence: imho, webrtc, which Google standardized and open sourced, is likely the single most important innovation on the interwebs

Complex browser-based alternative to TCP? Standardized alternative to Socket.io? I can't say its not useful but webrtc is hardly the most important thing...

[efdee]

Was it though? Search kind of sucked before Google came along. Javascript in the browser was a joke. Google Maps and Mail were revolutionary.

I'm not as positive about Google today as I used to be in the past, but I don't feel it's fair to pretend that they didn't help us take giant steps forward.

[inopinatus]

Many of my primary sources of information have been obliterated by Google; they've also taken giant steps backwards, one case in point being the abridgement of the DejaNews archives, and frankly, no, search did not suck prior to Google: I always had better results writing queries for Altavista, and to this day I continue to use more specific predicates in the same fashion because results are often irrelevant otherwise - predicates that are, depressingly, having an ever-decreasing impact on the outcome.

One consequence was the preceding generation of search engines being harder to drive for everyday folks, and a relevance approximation thereby more immediately accessible on the consumer scale, but let's face that the algorithmic approach also spawned a whole bottom-feeding industry of SEO snake oil vendors and their merry-go-round of clickbait, malware, and global-scale consumer surveillance. The incentive to hang yourself from a single keyword means that Google became the foster parent of AOL's Eternal September.

My personal feeling on the matter of Gmail and Google Maps is that they are best attributed to their personal creators (Paul Buchheit, and the Rasmussens, respectively), not the corporation. The seed of Google Maps was an acquisition, after all, and many other technologies I've seen offered up in neighbouring threads as proof of Google's benevolence were either acquisitions, or ones where substantial parts of any credit must be shared (webrtc has been mentioned; it is both).

Javascript in the browser still sucks mightily, and although it's not an argument I particularly wish to stir up there's plenty to say in support of that perspective. What's more, many of the best solutions are the product of independent/small/OSS groups, although I will confess a soft spot for TypeScript. Consequently, and especially w.r.t Gmail, Youtube, Maps, and <whatever Google Apps is called this year>, Chrome starts to look like the Lotus Notes of today: a thick client, developed by a large firm, in support of its specific service & platform offerings.

[zuppy]

I have a different opinion regarding Altavista search results quality. The results were so bad that most of the times I had to also try Hotbot, Ask Jeeves and various directories (Yahoo, dmoz, etc). They were not good search engines but the web back then was way smaller and there was a high chance that you could have different content on the other engines.

That’s the reason why Google, a very small newcomer, crashed the entire search engine market.

[foobiekr]

Search sucks now. Searching on google is like talking to someone with no long term memory. It's like nothing prior to the last, maybe, 24 months exists.

[pjmlp]

Also one needs a black magic ceremony to be able to come up with a search expression that actually works without Google jumping in and help me by rewriting it.

[bsedlm]

As I see it, the real problem was making google into a for-profit corporation.

The world would be a better place if google search had been made a not-for-profit (maybe like wikipedia?)

By this point I would (maybe) pay a monthly subscription for a really good websearch like google circa 2005-2010

[throwaway3699]

> By this point I would (maybe) pay a monthly subscription for a really good websearch like google circa 2005-2010

UI changes and new features aside, the web is just so much more adversarial nowadays. It's no wonder so much rubbish floats to the top of Google because the reality it's drowning out all the other content.

If you had the source code for 2005 Google it would be objectively worse today than it was then.

[jay_kyburz]

I'm often ridiculed for this idea when I voice it, but on day soon I'd like to make a search engine that is only whitelisted domains, with opinionated / hand curated weightings.

[vineyardmike]

Not crazy. Do it and share it.

Just be prepared: the future of the internet is navigating politics. You better be prepared for people to be upset at query X returns results too right/left/up/down for their political preferences. Then senators start tweeting at you.

[jay_kyburz]

Actually I just remembered we don't have copyright fair use here in Australia so I can't legally scrape websites. Oh well.

Also, my search engine will be called "Jays Favorite Websites" and the right side of politics can bite me.

[drdaeman]

What would be an incentive to innovate past launch?

I'm trying to think of any changes to Wikipedia that happened after it launched and can't think of any. It surely does its job, but it doesn't change and there is no drive. Wiki concept was novel at the time, they did and continue to do an amazing job, but there's no evolution there. Or maybe I'm just a blind or unaware or biased - but, honestly, I tried to think of something and nothing came to mind.

Google constantly tries out some new things. They're really bad at maintaining them, they can't stop inventing chat services, they suck a lot and we could bash them endlessly, but let's credit what's due - they're always exploring some frontiers.

[adhesive_wombat]

Wikidata is a pretty neat thing that the WMF created well after Wikipedia launched. And it's not like the Mediawiki software has stood still since then, it's way more advanced now.

Just because cars still mostly have 4 wheels doesn't mean automotive engineers haven't been innovating the past 100 years.

[_0w8t]

When runnaroo.com was shut down I was surprised that it was done by single person who managed for some searches to return better results than Google.

Which among other things shows that patents are bad for innovation in new and quickly changing industry. Google came up with their algorithm and heavily patterned it. As an invention it was not ground-breaking, but it matched very well how web worked. This gave them essentially monopoly in search from which they massively profited. At least now those patents expire.

[sidibe]

I've never heard of anyone saying patents have much to do with Googles success, can you point me to something about that? To me their infrastructure and scale was the big edge they've had over everyone

[loudtieblahblah]

Google's investment in the web is just like Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy, just far more sophisticated and nuanced. Just like the new Microsoft's so-called new-found embrace of Linux, open standards and interoperability. It's all a sham.

Garbage like AMP, or flexing their dominance in the search market to force websites to comply with this or that or risk delisting, is garbage.

[tomComb]

You are kinda' making my point in highlighting AMP: one of the most hated Google 'contributions' to the web.

Why did they do it? Because news website were heavy, slow, bad experiences compared to Facebook Instant news and Apple News etc. and so they those proprietary options were winning. AMP was designed to allow web sites compete with that.

It was reported that Apple News is taking 50% cut. When media companies keep customers on their own sites they have many options - more are now running their own ad business entirely (NYT most recently). For many reasons I hated to see those proprietary platforms crush the web sites, but the web sites really were too slow and heavy.

I'm certainly not telling you to like AMP - my point is that even their most hated, ham fisted product fits into this mold. It is totally open in every important way (look it up if you don't believe me) and it made a big difference in allowing sites to compete with proprietary platforms.

MS is happy to use/embrace Linux, Chrome (even AMP) etc. but contributing is new to them. The embrace & extinguish thing is not the same when the company is creating and contributing the tech themselves.

[passivate]

>Why did they do it? Because news website were heavy, slow, bad experiences compared to Facebook Instant news and Apple News etc. and so they those proprietary options were winning. AMP was designed to allow web sites compete with that.

They could have prioritized websites with fewer tracking/ads/scripts.

I don't believe that Google cares at all about whats good for the web. They simply want to exploit it and pocket the money (as opposed to re-invest any major portion back in the infra/community) - in that sense, they're no different than any other nameless/faceless corporation.

[tomComb]

They are now moving to scoring sites based on their speed, but any big change they make to their search algorithm is done very slowly and with tons of advance warning - AMP was something of a quick stop gap.

They are a for profit corporation in the end, so it is unfortunate to depend on them, of course, but I think they need to care about the health of the web - their profits tomorrow depend on it. And I think they've demonstrated it by creating so much tech that they give away.

[Railander]

> They could have prioritized websites with fewer tracking/ads/scripts.

The downside comes down to the end user experience if those websites being prioritized have lower quality material, which in turn might force those users to use a different search engine that might not care about that if it means they're getting more users.

[PhineasRex]

That's 100% bullshit. Google made AMP to lock media companies into their ad network. All AMP pages have to use their ad network exclusively.

If they wanted to penalize slow sites they could have… penalized slow sites. There are numerous metrics (paint time, etc) that they can track for that.

[Angostura]

> Why did they do it? Because news website were heavy, slow, bad experiences compared to Facebook Instant news

Simply prioritising fast, mobile-friendly sites in search results would have achieved that aim.

[csande17]

I'm actually not sure it would have.

If there's one thing that's clear from visiting any news publisher's website, it's that news publishers are unable to build sites that are fast and mobile-friendly. But one things news publishers do know how to do is rig up their CMS to also publish to proprietary systems like Facebook Instant Articles.

The magic of AMP was that it tricked publishers into thinking they were publishing to one of those proprietary systems, when in reality they were building a fast mobile website! Because it imposed strict rules rather than just "faster is better", publishers could throw out all of the stupid, awful practices they'd built up around making websites. Can't use that bloated framework of the week, AMP doesn't support it. Can't give the ads department free reign to ship whatever third-party scripts they please, AMP doesn't support it. Don't worry, website team, we're not threatening your jobs -- AMP is just another proprietary reading system, just like Facebook's.

[MaxBarraclough]

> If there's one thing that's clear from visiting any news publisher's website, it's that news publishers are unable to build sites that are fast and mobile-friendly.

No, it shows that they're not motivated to build fast and lightweight sites. If Google search severely penalised bloated websites, bloat would soon improve.

[dcow]

> would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms

Citation needed. What proprietary platforms would have taken hold if not for the grace of gmail?

> Your suggestion that Google pay sites for the traffic they generate should (sic.) like that ridiculous News Corp/Australian shakedown of Facebook and Google

Facebook is complying: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/facebook-to-lift-a... because hey, sharing the pot is better than no pot.

I think the point is that nobody would go to Google if they didn't need to look something up on Wikipedia. So while Google helps users discover content and funnel them towards sites, Google would be 100% useless without the content that ultimately drives the traffic. The status quo, where Google lays 100% claim to the traffic and gets to control monetization, is frankly not in anybody's interest. So why should we accept it?

[choppaface]

Yes, you can definitely flip my argument or criticize it however you please. But I think what would help decide things is to see the hard $$ numbers on why Google thinks FLoC is actually inventive-compatible. They must have done a study here in order for FLoC to get the OK for launch. Maybe that study is right, maybe it’s wrong. But Sundar has—- several times—- admitted that Google has lost trust, and now Google is trying to sell a big change without showing the whole picture. That’s standard MO at McKinsey, but Sundar is now on a much bigger stage. Given the recent evidence showing how closely Google worked with Facebook to bias ad auctions, I think it’s high time we review how Google assesses incentive compatibility.

While I agree with you that Google paying for serving requests or some other equity mechanism sounds just plain odd, there are few tools to deal with multinational monopolies. Tesla is making bank right now in no small part from carbon offsets and consumer tax benefits—- that’s all because Aramco and big oil won’t diverge from their shareholder interests. Google usually welcomes novel web/social mechanisms and it’s very telling when they so thoroughly refute the interests of news sites. Or try to solve the problem with something crappy like AMP.

[judge2020]

> but without Google pushing web and ad tech forward it would stand little chance against the competing proprietary platforms.

To give some evidence for this, Google pushed hard for PWAs - it serves their interests since they can focus on one platform for their desktop platforms, but also means that on Desktop (via Chrome) and Android each web app can just install themselves without having to distribute a native package or go through an app store.

[dalbasal]

>> Your whole framing can be flipped on its head be pointing out that Google, unlike Amazon has been willing to make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got.

True, as are some of the counterpoints. I don't think it contradicts OP's point though. FLoC is designed by Google, for Google's needs. Some/most of those are genuinely privacy related, the way that they're related is via advertising/targeting/tracking... which Google rely on for all their revenue.

Amazon, meanwhile, doesn't benefit from FloC much... hence conflict.

These datasets are being used as defining advantages by both companies. Why should amazon want to adopt/feed google's new analytics project?

[MisterPea]

> Obviously Google does it for self interested reasons

My understanding was Google works a ton on open source and essentially making "the internet" better so that people will ultimately use Google more (since Google is the backbone of the internet) and therefore consume more ads.

All of these tech advancements definitely helps the world more than it helps Google but I'm failing to know why/how FLoC helps the community more than it does Google? Not saying Google is in the wrong to do things out of self-interest, but this scenario is a little different

[karmasimida]

By no means I am defending Amazon, but

> make such huge investments in the one public platform we've got

How are things like AMP justifying this goal?

Ofc every company is doing things to advance its own interests, in that regard, Amazon has 0 incentives to share customer data which is truly unique/invaluable, with Google, or any 3rd parties.

[pjmlp]

Ironically if someone stated the same about Microsoft, I wouldn't be able to read their comment by now.

The more the things change, the more they stay the same