RT Will Dormann (@wdormann on twitter)
This is probably crazy, but hear me out...
What if, before Google pushes a paid advertisement link at customers, they checked with the Google-owned VirusTotal site to confirm that the site isn't distributing known malware?
You know, to at least pretend that they care...
🤔
For context: If you search for "OBS studio" on Google, there are tons of sponsored links in the top results, which redirect to phising websites distributing malware. The real (legit) website only appears way later.
@SamantazFox cc: @mtomczak for another wonderful example of our previous conversation.
@ocdtrekkie @SamantazFox That's unfortunate. :(
FWIW, I don't doubt it happens more than zero but the relevant number that none of us have is malware to safe serves, because that's where you derive the probability that a visit to Google is going to get your system compromised.
I suspect it's higher than people want it to be (and, of course, it's some classic Google obscurity that they don't publish it---not that folks would trust a self-published number from Google if they already believe Google is the Antichrist anyway), but the malware in ads problem is a measure counter measure game with millions if not billions of dollars on the table and both sides grasping for the smartest people they can get to solve the problem for them. No search engine that runs ads as immune to it, and every company keeps their methods secret to detect it for obvious reasons.
@mtomczak @SamantazFox It's true that none of us have that number: Google is very, very motivated to keep the data they have on malware they profit from a secret. It's likely many billions of dollars of profit can be directly attributed to serving malicious content above legitimate results.
The solution, of course, is to aggressively block Google's Ads, because legitimate organic results tend to be more trustworthy.
@ocdtrekkie @SamantazFox that's a hard number to swallow without concrete sources. Digital ad spend worldwide was only $521 billion in 2021. I would be absolutely shocked if fraudulent ads were anywhere near 0.1% of the market; every online advertiser would consider that an absolute pandemic and a threat to the existence of the industry, and we'd be hearing hundreds to thousands of reports daily, not single incidents blowing up on Twitter.
@mtomczak @SamantazFox I would be shocked if malicious ads were less than 1%. And shocked if the revenue from them were less than 10% of the overall, because they pay well over average.
And that doesn't even get into the ads I suspect are 30% or more of Google's revenue, which Larry and Sergey themselves considered unethical, and Google is completely unsustainable as a business without: Blackmailing brands for their own search term.
@ocdtrekkie @SamantazFox Tell me you don't know anything about the ad industry without telling me you don't know anything about the ad industry. :(
@mtomczak @SamantazFox Check out Appendix A of http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
"For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine."
- Larry and Sergey before they became rich
@ocdtrekkie This is off-topic from the previous conversation and I'm not interested in engaging with it. Suffice to say I'm not at all shocked the search engine those guys built operates differently decades later when neither of them are CEO.
... Besides, I thought you already care not for Brin's character; why are you giving air time to that philanderer's opinions?
@mtomczak It operated this way when they were CEO, and they are still the controlling shareholders, the company is run by Larry and Sergey regardless of their title. The fact that they recognized it was wrong but did it anyways is notable.
The important point is that both this and the malicious advertising combine into a huge tax we pay as a society for Google to exist. Businesses pay an ad tax even when Google is just routing, individuals pay a scam tax when Google misleads them.
@ocdtrekkie Let's imagine Google evaporates tomorrow. Do you believe that would eliminate or even ameliorate those two concerns in the medium (or even short)-term?
@mtomczak Yep!
I'm actually quite confident if we were to force the first listed result on search engines to be the organic first instead of the ad, Google would collapse, because people would tend to get the legitimate result for free.
Obviously I'd rather "force search engines", not "force Google" to avoid the problem just sliding to another business entity.
@ocdtrekkie right, I think you misunderstood me. I was trying to pin down whether your issue was Google or ad-revenue-backed search engines in genera, because you're making industry-standard practices and industry-standard problems as reasons Google is evil.
If anything, my assumption would be that these problems get worse if that company evaporates. They have the most experience in the industry at this point with dealing with attempts to use an ad engine for malware distribution at scale. I don't imagine Bing would fare much better if they became the primary target.
If your actual concern is that ad-funded search is evil, well, I'd love to see the alternative succeed too. But not even DDG is that alternative; they are also ad-funded.
@mtomczak The problem with an alternative succeeding is that a far more profitable method is currently allowed, even though it's unethical, harmful, and abusive. If we want alternative models to have room to grow, we first need to obliterate the bad models.
I think it's a matter of time until the EU realizes Google as an entity is incompatible with their laws, and hopefully that will give alternatives a space to grow.
@ocdtrekkie I think this conversation has run its course. At this point, you're throwing around terms like "monopoly" for an arrangement that is neither legally nor practically one. They are a major player, but at the end of the day, the concern about companies having to buy their own keyword is missing one specific and important concept... There are alternative search engines if it actually bothered users.
That's what matters! And Google keeps consistently offering the most user value. Otherwise an upstart would displace them with better results.
If you think wedding online advertising to search is evil I won't stop you. But that makes Google no more evil than DuckDuckGo or literally every other player in the space.
@mtomczak I don't think there's anywhere else to go with this conversation if you're seriously able to claim Google isn't a monopoly with a straight face, lol. 🤣
Anyways, above was another example of Google making a profit serving malware that cost someone a lot of money. Main reason for tagging you in.
@ocdtrekkie > claim Google isn't a monopoly.
Uh huh. Get back to me when DuckDuckGo stops resolving on my Android phone. Or my Chromebook.
@mtomczak Sigh. You really need to get the Google corporate language training removed. That's not how monopoly is defined.
@ocdtrekkie exclusive possession or control. Unless you're using the European definition, which is quite different from the American definition.
@mtomczak DDG even can suffer from this issue, yes, just less frequently. But blaming Google is indeed correct, they have set the trends for ad behavior again and again. Bear in mind they are a monopoly in both search and advertising. In advertising, they play both buy side and sell side and rig the deal between to favor themselves. Before Google, ads were never inline with organics.
Yeah, all of this is Google's fault. We just need to fix it by obliterating the behavior industry wide.