They cloned iOS not because they think they can make it better but because they saw how big mobile would get, and didn't like that apple was in control.

They want to cut costs by trying to automate everything with "deep learning and AI."

> They want people to really trust the first answer they get from Google.

Yeah they already messed up this one by going for their ai crap here. I still remember the article about the journalist who google claimed was dead when you googled her name. Not just that but it was nearly impossible for her to contact anyone at google to correct that. Which is not surprising if you consider the arrogance of google. Nobody there even considers that their automation could make mistakes, so why have any way of contacting a real person there that could do anything? Seriously I mean it. That's the only explanation I can come up with after having read countless articles about how google locked down people's gmail for "suspicious activity" and made it impossible to reactivate, or contact anyone who could even provide any information about what exactly is wrong. All the stories about YouTube's inconsistent flagging of videos, false copyright strikes and no way of getting help. Even big channels that have a dedicated representative get a "sorry can't do anything" in many of those cases. If you ever get fucked over by google your only hope is that you can make a post on some big website that will blow up to the point where google sees it might damage their reputation.

When grandma googles something, and sees a "quick answer" does she trust it ? probably.

I'm not convinced on this one. It feels like they've ceded the SEO spam war to me. As mentioned in the article, they just crudely exclude large swaths of content now instead of trying to filter out actually bad content.

And they have just generally devalued the organic results in favor of ads, widgets, curated stuff...anything that keeps you walled in to Google owned properties or ads. It's fairly common now to have zero organic results above the fold.

But in general, the job of SEO's is increasingly being about writing better content and satisfying the user, and less about "tricks". That's true , at least generally.

But when i say better content, better is defined as more engaging, shareable, linkable, clickable. that sort of stuff. This isn't our cup of tea here at HN, but maybe that's what most people go for. Maybe.

BTW, my fun pet conspiracy theory(everybody should have one!) , is that somewhere deep in the belly of alphabet, they have a secret search engine built for engineers, that nobody knows it exists, even the engineers(it uses a google theme), and it's the key behind their moonshot empire. :)

Are you kidding? Look at the articles posted on HN. MANY are pure marketing or self-promotion pieces designed to be shared on social media like HN, get clicks, and start discussion.

It’s funny how HN commenters only call it seo, clickbait, and marketing if they don’t like it lol.

But would you say the same about the comments ?

But also, we come here mostly for entertainment. And even in our entertainment we prefer a high-quality discussion.

But Google isn't a tool for entertainment. And people here do complain about shitty Google results.

And to be fair, they also complain about the declining quality of HN. But still, it's better than the alternative communities, probably.

Plenty of people who think because they’re paid a lot of money to be computer programmers that they can instantly have genius insights into completely unrelated fields. A good amount of “well actually” when any social issue is discussed. Surprising volume of apologizing for discrimination/racism/sexism/etc. under the guise of “free speech”.

But for me, that's not the reason i come here. I'm more interested in discussion about entrepreneurship and businesses, and some of the commentors are quite good.

Anyone trying to build a scalable business and expecting SEO to play a meaningful role probably doesn’t have a firm grasp on what Google has done over the past 10 years and will continue to do. Most businesses, and their investors, should be calculating what their numbers look like if they were to receive 0 free users from Google.

Maybe true. but it can still, sometimes be an effective tool for small businesses, both in local and organic.

But once you most people blindy trust the first answer Google gives them , you know what an awesome sales tool that is ?

And instead of advertisers having 4 Adwords + 4 local search(sometimes) + Google shopping + SEO to target placement for - what if everyone competed for the same, single ad placement location ? What would that do ad prices ?