upvote

points

by pflenker10 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby thelastgallon8 hours ago|
next
[-]
This reminds me of Walmarts squeezing strategy with all the manufacturers. Business with us at the price we say or out of business.
reply
upvoteby johnny_canuck4 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right?

In this context, if Google is going to give me the recipe without having to scroll through the story, that seems like a win to me.

The ad-revenue driven Internet of web 2.0 is finally dead and I'm not sure I'm all that sad.

reply
upvoteby jasonkester4 minutes ago|
parent|
next
[-]
But google won’t give you the recipe. It’ll give you a pretty piece of text that resembles a recipe. You’ll only find out it’s not a recipe when it fails to produce a cake.

But then, the sites it’s training on are starting to do the same thing, so maybe it won’t matter. Just last night, I pulled up four sites with “gluten free almond cake” recipes. One specified less than 1/4 the flour it would have needed, and another didn’t have any butter in the ingredients list. I had to eyeball the median and tweak from experience to actually get a bakable cake out.

reply
upvoteby Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe11 minutes ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
> But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right?

No because it's killing competition and becoming an even more obvious monopoly. Then at any occasion they have to choose between consumers and profits, they'll do what shareholders want and increase profits.

reply
upvoteby redsparrow3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Without some way to generate revenue, people aren't going to publish recipes (for Google to scrape into their AI.) Maybe we could live without more recipes being fed into the machine, but there are many other types of content that will suffer the same fate.

It would be nice to find something better than an ad-revenue driven web, but I'm not sure this is it. We'll find out I guess...

reply
upvoteby bbondo3 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
> people aren't going to publish recipes

Sure they are. I can attest that musicians will gladly publish their music even when no recompense is offered. Surely culinary artists are the same.

reply
upvoteby gwbas1c2 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
We just won't get countless recipe websites where you have to scroll, scroll, scroll through slop about someone's day to read a scraped recipe that every other website has.

This is just disruption.

reply
upvoteby goosejuice38 minutes ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
You can find many ad free recipes in the cookbooks at your local library. They're likely of higher quality as well.
reply
upvoteby mcphage2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
> But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right?

No. Temporarily it’s good for the consumer. Ultimately it is bad for the consumer, because as prices drop, so to does quality.

reply
upvoteby itsmek1 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
It's not uncommon for free things to be higher quality than cheap things, especially when we're not talking about physical goods. Think hobbyist vs hack. Selective pro bono vs quantity over quality. The former describes old internet while the latter describes much ad-supported internet. I'm not saying cheap is better than expensive, and I'm not saying everything works this way, but I do think many things do, especially for pure information that doesn't have a major capital cost associated.
reply
upvoteby Ar-Curunir3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
No, because now Google controls entirely what you see. They could decide to show you the recipe after all.

Also, at some point even the ad-laden websites will die, and then Googles sources will be extinguished.

reply
upvoteby burnte8 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
Yep, this is exactly why some companies simply don't work with Walmart.
reply
upvoteby augzodia7 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
next
[-]
it's because both google and walmart have too much market power
reply
upvoteby BurningFrog4 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
This is tough for the manufacturer, but great for the consumer.

I think it's a good tradeoff.

reply
upvoteby iamtedd10 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
Real-world Prisoner's Dilemma.
reply
upvoteby jonshariat10 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
It always comes back to game theory haha
reply
upvoteby khana8 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
[dead]
reply
upvoteby CGamesPlay4 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
That doesn't feel like a repetition at all? You said that the first time there was "traffic loss but without the extra google money", but that this time there's no extra google money either way.
reply
upvoteby pflenker57 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
The part where data providers lose traffic because their own data is displayed directly on the google premises is what repeats.
reply
upvoteby drcongo9 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
"Nice data you got there, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it"
reply
upvoteby vb-84488 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
The fact is that internet is already "tech giants own realm": the power is way beyond public imagination and affects all of us in real life on daily bases, but there are still people thinking they are not the "evil one" here.
reply