> Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this?
Goodhart’s law, unfortunately. Whatever metric the stock market rewards gets gamed like there is no tomorrow (or next quarter, here.)
Goodhart’s law, unfortunately. Whatever metric the stock market rewards gets gamed like there is no tomorrow (or next quarter, here.)
In both cases of the stock market and a popular search engine, I don't really know if there is a solution that prevents people from trying to game it.
This implies that Google is helpless to do more, which I kind of doubt. I think the misaligned incentive here is that it's unprofitable to do more to fight spam. They already have the vast majority of the market, making search 40% better isn't going to get them 40% more money.
I think it's just a calculated decision to keep search "good enough" to not lose too much market share, while not having to spend too much on engineer salaries.
I also kind of suspect the markets left to try to capture are either less profitable or more difficult to serve (specializing in niche content).