> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human.
Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot.
But if while using their free service they cannot identify you as a human given the factors they measure(becuase you actively disabled the programs that measure such factors), then I see nothing wrong in them trying alternative ways (which were a standard before).
I think you are making a storm in a teacup. If you feel offended by the way their website work, just don't use them. I don't see any red flags at all.
Has calling someone entitled ever been useful? For the last few years it's felt like nothing more than a petty "you're wrong" remark with bonus condensation built right in.
Been useful at changing their behaviour/beliefs? No, for the same psychological reasons any direct contradiction isn't.
Been useful at communicating that they feel someone is confusing expectations with rights? Yes, that's why there is a word for it.
Also, I get it's annoying to hear entitled, ad hominem, logical fallacy, privilege, and other currently trendy words being over used and often misused. But I'll take it over what there was before that, which was no discussion at all at that level of abstraction most of the time. The places where these words are overused are places where the community is learning these concepts.
> Has calling someone entitled ever been useful? For the last few years it's felt like nothing more than a petty "you're wrong" remark with bonus condensation built right in.
In this case, calling someone entitled is actually a compliment, not an ad hominem insult or put-down, because it acknowledges the poster's humanity.
The proper response in this case would be, "Why, yes, I probably am a bit entitled, like most people. Thank you for recognizing that I am human."
It's only ad hominem if it's used as support for an argument not directly related to the other's personality. It's not ad hominem in this case, because "you're entitled" is being used to support the claim, or as a parallel claim, that it's unreasonable to be insulted by a computer program thinking you're another computer program.
Claim: Turing was wrong about the Church-Turing Thesis because he was a homosexual -> ad hominem
Claim: Turing was immoral because he was a homosexual -> not ad hominem (although still not a good argument)
Because they don't make any money, because only the sorts of shitty practises people often complain about are what enables making money providing free services.
If enough people were actually willing to pay to use a search engine you could have an awesome search engine with none of that.
DDG is excellent most of the time, but way behind when doing video or map searches. I have it as my default in most places, but sometimes I just have to fall back to Google.
Agreed. Additionally, DDG is useless when searching for current news events. Google is great at flowing in headlines for recent events with searches, which often leads me to include the "!g" bang if searching for a recent issue/store.
Yup. The bang feature makes DDG amazing. I use it as my default because it's a great way to quickly do tailored searches. It's very easy to say, search Hacker News (!hn), python documentation (!py3), R sites (!rseek) or just pull up a wikipedia page (!w).
I wish that were true. I tried to switch to them after they did their 'next' a few months back but the results were most of the time not nearly as good as Google's for my queries and I had to switch back.
You trade your data, screen real estate, and attention for their service. This is worth a lot - Google is worth a lot. They didn't do it by giving out services for free.
If you trade a fish for a service it isn't free. If you trade a gold bar for a service it isn't free. If you trade a service for a service it isn't free.
If you trade data for a service it is not free.
To consider "free" a function only of fiat currency is naive, both of history and of economics.
Google search is not free.
If it is I have no idea how they made so much money...
Or maybe you can tell me what 'free actually means'?
By that broad definition, there is practically no free website on the web (analytics, logs, etc.). Actually, by posting this on HN, I just "traded data, screen real estate and attention". Would you argue HN isn't free as well? I get what you mean but I don't think this is how the word free is commonly used.
Besides, I believe the original point made still makes sense if "free" is assumed to mean "non paid".
A note that screen real estate and attention here pertains mostly to paid impressions - be they advertisements or politicizing messages. When it comes to content sought by the user, it's hard to say that the user is giving the service provider real estate and attention. It is only when the service provider is showing content not for the benefit of the consumer but for their own self that the attention and real estate can be thought of as 'rented' to them.
I would agree with the assertion that there are practically no free websites on the web. Since when did we convince ourselves we can get things for free?
There are major exceptions. Wikipedia is for the most part free. It does not advertise to you, nor does it siphon and sell your data. It does not track you around the web, it does not sell your Wikipedia viewing behavior to urchin for cents. It is driven by donations.
HN also appears legitimately free to me. As far as I know YCombinator does not mine or sell your data or collect data other that what is required for the forum to be a forum. YCombinator makes its money by other means. It certainly benefits by cultivating a technical online community, which is why I think it does it - though what influence YC can/does project on the community could be thought of as a social cost (I know very little to nil about whether or how much this is done).
Google, however, is not one of these cases. Nor is most of the web.
I'm not sure if the original point still makes sense with 'non paid' (nor am I sure 'non paid' is right). The original point uses 'free' (in caps) to emphasize a sense of charity they use to inform their 'entitled' argument. First, their argument is essentially 'What you expect this to be free? You are entitled!' Second, I'm not sure that replacing the term will work, unless it also communicates charity.
The point here is that the exchange does not constitute charity. Google thinks the trade is a very good deal. Presumably internet surfers do too. But there is an exchange and that needs to be recognized.
Anyway this means that any term that communicates 'charity' will be ignorant of the conditions of how Google's service works - and I would have posted the same misgivings.
If a fisherman gives you a fish in exchange for writing your name and time of your visit down in his logbook, I consider the fish to be free for all intentions and purposes.
I know what you are saying, but actually this service is free. Blocking bots effectively is in both the website owner and Google's interests, because bots disrupt the value propositions of both. And you could argue that it is in the website reader's interests too, by extension.
Given their scale and resources, Google are able to provide a far more effective bot detector than any of us could do on our own. I for one am delighted they are providing this very valuable service.
Not sure what blocking bots have to do with the freeness of the service. Perhaps you'd like to reply on one of the comments further down to get into why you believe the service is free?
You may argue that the trade is in the website reader's best interest. This is a different argument than whether it is free.
My real estate and attention are given to them because I came to their service asking to fill my screen according to my query.
I can agree Google is not providing a free pure-search-results service, but they do provide a free search results + ads service.
Whether getting relevant results + [relevant] ads is a worth anything to you - even $0 - is a separate question, but it's a stretch to frame as an exchange.
It's like taking a free hot dog and complaining it's not free because you traded your time & taste buds eating the bun while you only wanted the sausage...
[I'd buy it more for e.g. youtube pre-video ads, where you are forced to give attention and time to the ad first.]
Now my data is a better point. Very valid for the totality of google services; quite weak for logged-out search use. If you work answering questions, and recording the questions that get asked and where they came from, then yes I did hand you this data but it's almost inherent in asking the question.
[Disclaimer: I'm a xoogler. And all this is nit-picking.]
I don't understand how this clarifies the term free? Free as in beer is used to specify the freeness of a product or service, rather than the freeness of 'freedom', say from authoritarianism.
This conversation is about the meaning of 'money' modulo this understanding of free-as-in-beer - i.e. whether non-fiat scarce resources (user data/screen real estate) count as money.
free has 20+ definitions.[1] A discussion about what we mean when we say Google's services are (or are not) free is using free the same way we use it in free as in beer [thus its definition is relevant].
Colloquially we usually use free to mean not having a financial cost. Another word or phrase is usually used when referring to non-monetary costs. i.e. I would say "Google is free" but I would never say "Google costs nothing."
The top sentence is granted - not sure it was ever in question.
The bottom part you use personal anecdotes to support the claim that a broader 'we' do something. I'm not sure, as my personal experience differs. But it does get to exactly what I was saying in the above comment - what the discussion centers about is what counts as 'money' (as you say "referring to non-monetary costs").
I think the place we differ is whether non-fiat scarce resources count as money. I think they do. Historically they have. In economics literature and practice they do.
Or perhaps the reservation is that the scarce resources in this instance are 'soft' resources like attention, screen real estate and personal data? Much of what is traded by financial institutions (for example) today are very virtual - trades of risks, credits (promises), futures, bets. Even real estate is traded on the idea that it occupies space of human attention and investment - not necessarily because it can be used as a means to 'produce' something. I'm hesitant to draw firm lines between these soft assets - I'm not sure where I could sensibly draw them.
Either way, I'm glad we agree that Google costs something. I do think that the OP intended their use of free (in capitals and context) to mean "Google costs nothing."
I didn't downvote but you may want to read HN's Guidelines[1], particularly: Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
The challenge (no complaint here, though I do believe it was down(modded?) merely because of disagreement and not for relevance or quality) was meant to incite more on topic discussion.
It's interesting I've never read the guidelines before now. Was refreshing to have taken a look, although it's mostly common sense and etiquette.
You're generalising. This argument only makes sense if Google's entire ecosystem of services was just like any other random, independent selection of sites on the Internet.
There is no equivalent to Google. Nobody else is doing this, particularly not to this extent. Not using all that computing power and AI to do it.
Yes, if Google thinks I'm a robot, I don't think it's so strange to consider that some sort of value judgement, even if it's done by a legion of machines. Definitely more so than if some random small-time website decides to make that call based on a couple of if-then statements.
Imagine if using a web service is like visiting a shop, and you get directed to the slow-checkout+ID-check lane because maybe you stammered your order, or because you know the store that well, your shopping-cart route through the aisles is deemed "too fast" (read: efficient, also avoiding the "special offers", cookies/candy/soda/junk aisles).
Amusingly, how I feel about that "judgement", varies. Sometimes it's annoying sometimes it's cool because I feel "hey I'm doing something clever that humans usually don't". Similar to how being ID-checked in a liquor store can be both annoying and flattering (depending on your age and how often it happens).
You'd have a point except for the fact that recaptchas have become increasingly impossible to solve (for humans!). And recaptchas aren't just on google sites, they're everywhere.
Which is what this is trying to help solve. They know they're getting harder, so they're trying to identify you before even hitting the captcha part so that you don't have to do it.
Actually it would be great is someone has some ideas for ways to identify humans that don't require stuff like javascript. From the perspective of a service provider (and I'm one) the bots are a scourge, they consume resources and they are clearly attempting to 'mine' the search engine for something, but they are unwilling to come forward and just ask the search provider if they would sell it to them. And since they are unwilling to pay, but willing to invest resources in appearing more human like, it leaves service providers in a pretty crappy position.
So anyone have some CSS or otherwise innocuous ways of identifying humans I'm all for it.
On a small scale, it's not too difficult. Detecting form POSTs with a new session catches most comment spam bots, and if an empty input field hidden with CSS is submitted with content, that's also a giveaway.
And I wouldn't discount javascript - another hidden field populated by onSubmit() is simple and effective. A few vocal paranoiacs advocate browsing with javascript turned off, but they are few and far between - and I bet they get sick of adding sites they want to see to their whitlist. We have over three thousand fairly technically aware users, and none have been tripped up by the javascript test.
If your site is valuable enough for an attacker to manually figure out your defences, then you need to consider emailing a a verification token - or even better, use SMS if you can afford the cost. Because this gives you a number to pass to law-enforcement, it means an attacker has to buy a burner SIM card.
Back on topic, Google's initiative is a useful tool to add to your defences.
Isn't this just the cost of having a "free" product? Bots are not really a problem. Its just that their traffic cannot be monetized. If you could monetize-bot traffic your problem would be solved. Or put another way, if you framed the issue as a business model one, not a technical one, it might be a useful exercise.
> if you framed the issue as a business model one, not
> a technical one, it might be a useful exercise.
That was kind of my point. Clearly most of the bots are trying to scrape my search engine for some specific data. I would (generally) be happy to just sell them that data rather than have them waste time trying to scrape us (that is the business model, which goes something like "Hey we have a copy of the big chunk of the web on our servers, what do you want to know?" but none of the bot writers seem willing to got there. They don't even send an email to ask us "Hey, could we get a list of every site you've crawled that uses the following Wordpress theme?" No instead they send query after query for "/theme/xxx" p=1, p=2, ... p=300.
On a good day I just ban their IP for a while, when I'm feeling annoyed I send them results back that are bogus. But the weird thing is you can't even start a conversation with these folks, and I suppose that would be like looters saying "Well ok how about you help load this on a truck for me for 10 cents on the dollar and then your store won't be damaged." or something.
Google posts lots of contact information on their contact page. You would probably want to reach business development. I don't think they are willing to sell access to that index however, we (at Blekko) would. I suppose you could also try to pull it out of common crawl.
It need not to be commercial service. For example, Wikipedia is a donation-only service. A bot visit is generally not different then most user visiting (I'd assume most users don't donate anyway). Wikipedia doesn't really mind serving users that aren't donating, but the bot, while generally not different to normal user, are stealing resources away from actual users.
They should, but the proper response would be a solution that solves what others can't not complaining about someone not solving something you decided yourself to try out.
Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot.
But if while using their free service they cannot identify you as a human given the factors they measure(becuase you actively disabled the programs that measure such factors), then I see nothing wrong in them trying alternative ways (which were a standard before).
I think you are making a storm in a teacup. If you feel offended by the way their website work, just don't use them. I don't see any red flags at all.