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Darius Kazemi

It is sad to me that in 2024 if I search "Moby-Dick by Herman Melville" (no quotes) on Google, the free Project Gutenberg ebook isn't even in the top ten results

5 March at 15:32 | Open on friend.camp
26 comments
Craig P

@darius On DuckDuck it's beneath a stack of summaries aimed at middleschoolers cheating on their homework. ๐Ÿ˜…

5 March at 15:33 | Open on mastodon.social
Darius Kazemi

We launched Google Ads in 2000 in an effort to make a lot of money. While the product has a loyal following among Senior Vice Presidents, over the years we've made enough money. So, on July 1, 2025 we will sunset Google Ads.

5 March at 15:42 | Open on friend.camp
Jessamyn

@darius I was surprised it was as high as 12th (for my search anyhow) but I skip over video results as "Obviously not a book" (a librarian superpower in this day and age).

5 March at 15:47 | Open on glammr.us
Darius Kazemi

@jessamyn yeah it was right under the fold for me. Really glad they surfaced a $215,000 rare edition in the top 5, very useful

5 March at 15:49 | Open on friend.camp
Jessamyn

@darius I like to think one of the benefits of being a billionaire is you can tell Google just what search results you want and it listens. #LateStageCapitalism

5 March at 15:55 | Open on glammr.us
Ethan Marcotte
Steven Hilton

@darius Pointing to free content like that doesn't enhance shareholder value.

5 March at 15:56 | Open on mastodon.online
Rachel Greenham

@darius @anildash these days for old books i tend to go first to Standard EBooks standardebooks.org (and yes, Moby Dick is there ๐Ÿณ)

5 March at 16:05 | Open on mastodon.social
acb

@darius Why bother with the old and busted original? Surely, in 2024, they can get their AI server farm to confabulate a shiny new Moby Dick for you wholesale.

5 March at 16:11 | Open on mastodon.social
๐Ÿ˜€๐Ÿšฒ

@darius two ads, a wikipedia summary, a couple more sites and then Gutenberg. IDK why anyone still uses google search in this decade

duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Moby-Dick

5 March at 16:37 | Open on urbanists.social
Darius Kazemi

@enobacon to be clear that DDG result is also abysmal!

5 March at 16:39 | Open on friend.camp
๐Ÿ˜€๐Ÿšฒ

@darius because there's two ads? Add the words full text, there's still two ads but no summaries.

5 March at 16:43 | Open on urbanists.social
Darius Kazemi

@enobacon I mean if you add full text on Google it's number one, no ads at all. I've used Google and DDG and both really suck and it pains me

5 March at 16:46 | Open on friend.camp
Richard Terroriksson

@darius Iโ€™m going to use my mid-2000s (the decade) SEO knowledge and do something about that!

5 March at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.social
David Schlaepfer
Darwin Woodka

@darius I learned the "before:" trick yesterday, If you search with "before:2020" for example it removes some of the SEO fuckery. Works if you're looking for more internet historical things and know roughly the date you're after.

5 March at 17:23 | Open on mastodon.social
Renรฉ Seindal

@darius On Google after Wikipedia I get online booksellers, for the next thirty-forty results at least.

On ddg Gutenberg is in the top ten, after some different language Wikipedia entries.

5 March at 20:13 | Open on mastodon.social
Bill Seitz

@darius also irksome: the difficulty in finding non-ecom-site review-posts for a book. (I prefer blog posts or MSM reviews over stream-posts to GoodReads, Amazon, etc)

5 March at 20:38 | Open on toolsforthought.social
joat

@darius in mine it's 8th. I wonder if Google prioritize based on what I've previously clicked? Even if they do, most of the higher-ranked links aren't somewhere I've clicked recently so still weird.

5 March at 21:00 | Open on mastodon.scot
Duncan Lock
๐“ผ๐“ฎ๐“ป๐“ช๐“น๐“ช๐“ฝ๐“ฑใ€ใƒ„ใ€‘โ˜ฎ(๐Ÿ“๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง)

@darius
this is all planned.
create corporate owned AI
train it on all available knowledge
then destroy the public knowledge to prevent competitors
advertise to all ppl to use AI, because it gives better results
have a networo effect, critical mass of AI user, to get exclusive access to all the new knowledge, to cement your position forever.

it is playing out in front of our eyes slowly, but also quite fast.

@darius
this is all planned.
create corporate owned AI
train it on all available knowledge
then destroy the public knowledge to prevent competitors
advertise to all ppl to use AI, because it gives better results
have a networo effect, critical mass of AI user, to get exclusive access to all the new knowledge, to cement your position forever.

6 March at 13:59 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Leonard Ritter
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