amf12

> Google is trying to force through Web Environment Integrity which would eventually obliterate any remaining semblance of privacy on the web,

How so?

FWIW, Gemini Pro is equivalent to GPT 3.5, so expected

As with any subscription, there is a time bound to it, after which either side can refuse to renew it. The account was never "unlimited for life".

Let's assume it's AWS storage. After you stop paying (renewing) would you still expect to keep your data forever free of cost?

Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. We just have half of the story.

But, that's a false premise. Apple doesn't allow competing app stores.

Sink is too dramatic for a 1.5% drop. The stock has increased in the past week.

> I've been using phind.com lately and it seems there can be search without junk even in this age.

A few reasons partially (if not fully) responsible for it might be:

- Google is a hot target of SEO, not Phind.

- If Google stops indexing certain low quality without a strong justification, there would be lawsuits, or people saying how "Google hasn't indexed my site" or whatever. How would you authoritatively define "low quality"?

- Having to provide search for all spectrum of users in various languages, countries and not just for "tech users".

> I don't see how this is different.

When you buy a house with a mortgage, you are valuing the property as X, and the lender is also valuing the property as X. That's your cost, and no gain yet. If the value increases in a few years, it's unrealized gain.

Now, if you want to use the increased value to get a HELOC, that would be considered 'realizing the gains'. If eventually you pay off the mortgage and either sell the property or use it as a collateral to buy another property, that is also 'realizing the gains'.

If you are using a collateral, you and your bank are basically valuing it and realising some gain from that value.

Well, mortgage might be special because you don't outright own the property until you pay off the mortgage. Now using a paid off property as a collateral to buy another property might be considered as realized gain according to OPs argument.

I had looked into it. In my area, I can get 1 Gbps residential service or a 50Mbps business service for the same cost. That speed is ridiculously low.

> Google has a ridiculous reputation for customer service.

Have you tried Comcast customer service? It's shit. I've had better support with paid Google services (both Pixel and Workspace) than Comcast.

Google has bad customer service reputation only for its free products, which is not unexpected. If someone values good support, then a different paid service is an obvious alternative over a free Google service.

> This suggests there's alternative services available anyway, so why take the risk on Google at all?

Isn't that for people to decide for themselves? Few reasons I can think of: preference, trust, integrations, better features, don't want to support Comcast, etc.

Because it got other providers to get off their butts. Besides, it's relatively easy to switch providers anyway (where available).

I don't understand why people are scared of using services that have relatively low switching barriers, because they may be shut down one day.

I've used so many services over the years - big tech and from start ups that I've since moved form because they closed down or remained stagnant over better alternatives, and I never had to give it a second thought.

> I get it that companies want to distance themselves for bad stuff those LLMs output.

Another thing companies want to avoid is liability. Take the example of "dangerously spicy mayo" in the article. Let's say some person asks ChatGPT for a recipe and it suggests one which results in hospitalization of that person. There is a good chance they might sue OpenAI for it.

Liability wise, it may be better to avoid answering such prompts.

But you can still store trackers right? Just not cross reference the tracking cookie with the cookie from other domains.

> serving that snippet from one's own domain is still pretty trivial, and indeed what most of the big ad brokers are moving toward

But in this case it's not as trivial to link usage across two domains. Sure, each domain can serve the snippet from its own domain, but the analytics snippet can't cross reference data from other sites which use the same script (unless of course the domain builds some data sharing mechanism - not trivial for non tech companies).

In which case why even serve the snippet form your domain when you can use the container mechanism.

They are a bit too cluttered. Its like "find Waldo" all over the map. These make sense at a high-zoom level where you are trying to find a specific house, or something within a few block radius, but not at a higher zoom level.

The colors are a bit too bright for my taste. Also not color-blind friendly.

If you zoom in, the map shows the street names. I suspect it's only a change in "what resolution should show which names".

I get your point. I too hate that subscriptions add up, and that too many products that were but once are moving to a subscription model.

However, this is partly on us too. For years we have been blocking ads on services we use, saying we want alternative means of monetization over tracking, blocking ads. Now this is the end result. At least YouTube still offers add supported model. Some websites have been subscription only for a while now.

> My view is that the people on the inside often can't see the forest for the trees.

Agreed. But it's also a problem of partial information - on both sides. People on the outside also have partial information about things coming from tech. We sometimes believe something done was definitely intended to be "evil", but usually isn't the case. We just have partial information about the actual reasons, and fill the rest in with our bias.

What I've usually noticed on HN is, if Apple does something "bad", people find mindbending justifications for it. But if Google/Microsoft does it, it was definitely "intended to be evil". Not that I agree with everything Google or Microsoft does.

Most likely the difference in training datasets. There is a reason why authors have sued OpenAI but not Google.

> Huh? We've gone from being mad at Google for bribing Apple to being mad at Apple for charging too much?

Isn't accepting a bribe also as bad as offering it? Apple is a gate keeper of a huge segment. There can only be one default. You either come to an agreement with them or lose.

If the general consensus is that Google is is abusing monopoly in this case, what should the resolution be?

- Google isn't allowed to pay Apple, but other search engines are.

- Nobody is allowed to pay Apple, and Apple should pick one without getting anything in return.

- Apple is forced to offer a choice on startup. But which search engines would be at the top of this list? And how should Apple decide that?

The first option seems unfair to Google (in a lawsuit about "fairness"). The second and third a loss for Apple more than Google.

I just tried it. You have to hum until it says stop. It keeps prompting you to keep going

> Unlikely. One reason Google Cloud is so terrible is that nobody in Google actually uses Google Cloud.

Well, actually, Google Cloud is just an abstraction on top of internal Google infra, so this isn't the right question. So, it depends on what you want to infer/compare.

> E.g. Kagi over Google > Kagi could hypothetically be 25% superior in all searches.

The difference is the business model. Except for a small minority of people in tech and with disposable incomes, the majority aren't willing to pay for Search.

So if Kagi wants to increase their adoption they would need another business model. Advertising (in one form or another) is the easiest one.

I just tried your query, and I got the answer in the featured snippet at the top, and I didn't have to read any wall of text:

> "How to get: After beating Buck in the fight in Arroyo, along with fighting off all of his friends, you can find this weapon lying on some barrels by where you first spoke with him"

Unfortunately Search is a hard problem to solve, considering how much the internet has grown from 90s or early 2000s to now.

"The alligator got my attention. Which, of course, was the point." ... "you can’t quite stop yourself from being curious".

The first three sentences of the post basically counter the author's narrative. Clickbait is ruining the internet. It doesn't matter whether it is Google, or Tiktok or Facebook or whatever, what gets popular surfaces to the top. If people like clicking on clickbait content, why blame platforms?

> See: Pixel Pass being canceled right before it was supposed to pay off with a phone upgrade

Did you first try to understand what Pixel Pass was? No, it wasn't supposed to "pay off" with a phone upgrade. To get a new phone, users would have had to renew their Pixel Pass subscription. It wasn't - pay monthly for 2 years and get 2 phones: one at the start and end of the 2 years.