Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab Users are reporting banner ads such as "New! Track your health and fitness with the..." below the search box on both google.com and chrome://newtab. Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? |
If only we could create a digital token that would be in such demand it would generate its own network and infrastructure effect.
Oh wait... they ruined that, too.
Yes, things need funding to survive. That's the core of the problem. I bookmarked an interesting older HN comment to that effect.
I lost you there, who is "they" referring to?
Do we know more? E.g. do we know if this is an A/B test or a rollout in progress? Where are the users reporting this? Are there any screenshots?
Google Search has had ads since the beginning. What do you mean?
Tbh, I really want Apple do something innovation for browser. However, looking back to Webkit on both iOS and macOS, I can see no hope...
Now I daily find myself saying "Fuck You, Google".
It's strange how our brains work - I actually never look there, but somehow I did notice it.
The newtab on Chrome is not even considered a web page so you can see those ads that show up there as a part of Chrome which is not so surprising either
##[class*=slot-promo]Might be exclusive to a portion of users or locations.
Probably they are testing on a selected range of users.
Probably for the same reason that Google is shutting down Stadia [1] and cutting staff [2], and the same reason that we see roughly one announcement of layoffs here on Hacker News every week: most people expect that we are going into a recession. For example, see the price of major indexes like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ and plot it on a 10+ year timescale.
What surprises me the most actually is how quickly Google can adapt to the situation. Basically, they have been giving out candy for free when there was lots of money coming and now that they expect less, they quickly put on extra income streams and cut out money losers.
Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).
But despite that not being how we've always determined recessions here, if you read the reply above, the user has literally invented a political conspiracy about their ignorance about economics. The layman's definition isn't right? It's more complicated than a one-liner on the news? No! It's a conspiracy!
This is EXACTLY how the propaganda is designed to affect them. Empower the ignorance such that layman's understanding is the only valid understanding, impugn the experts until economics is nothing more than an election year conspiracy.
For anyone interested in the truth of how recessions have been determined in the United States for the past sixty years, it's only about three paragraphs of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
Unreasonable shareholder expectations of continued double-digit percentage YoY growth. Growth that exceeds internet usage growth in general.
The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. I would guess at this point, they've hit the wall on alternatives like better targeting, placement, etc.
Or eeking out more dollars per ad through better targetting, or through diversifying the business and scaling new revenue streams, or ...
I think it's reasonable to expect Google to grow faster than general internet usage. Believing otherwise means you believe Google is in maintenance mode, incapable of improving their existing product or unlocking new revenue streams through innovation. Given the sheer size of Google, that's quite a bold belief to hold.
I think the only difference this time around is that people didn't realize Fitbit was acquired by Google.
by the standard definition we are already in one, odds are we are actually going to enter a global depression and probably one worse than 2008
Those look like ads for Google's own product.
I don't think this is the first time. IIRC, Google used to show an ad for Chrome if you used the search from any other browser.
If I were Googles legal team, I would immediately put an end to such cross-product advertising (at least from Search/Chrome/Android).
There's a lot of law like that, and Google has the war chest to ask the question when merely that act alone could bankrupt smaller companies.
Having that stuff in Chrome would cost millions in terms of normal display ads for the number of impressions they would get
My sense is that it's a test. If Google decides it went well we'll see ads for other Google products. That's a dangerous path though, at some point some one will make a nice offer for that spot, and I'm not sure the current management at Google have enough integrity to say no.
Side note: It might be Fitbits, because Fitbit is a subsidiary of Google LLC, and not Alphabet directly.
This is textbook "how empire falls" and why things that seem indestructible eventually dies like anything else.
This will be the mile stone people will remember as the first sign of google decline.
> The component updater, responsible for delivering out-of-band security updates to the various components of the browser, is disabled within ungoogled-chromium. It’s responsible for updating Chrome’s CRLSets, which are necessary for meaningful certificate revocation. Most of the components are delivered via the component updater because they have a need for out-of-band security updates, and it’s not helpful nor necessary to disable them.
> Furthermore, the extensions that users rely on aren’t updated automatically, posing an additional risk to users of the browser.
Not connecting to google services unles you explicitly request it is almost the entire point of ungoogled-chromium, so this is really misplaced criticism. Especially for the CRLs, giving Google the power to take third party websites offline is not something everyone agrees with.
The missing hardening is also not something to be summed up as "significant security regressions". Ironically it might even improve your security if it means that attacks depending on Chromes upstream toolchain configuration won't work - no one is realistically going to specifically target a niche project like ungoogled-chromium.
Browsers don't seem to serve users anymore. They, like everything else, are mostly ad delivery mechanisms.
edit: turns out I was wrong.
2nd edit: this used to be the case many years ago, thanks for those who confirmed
Firefox seems to be going everywhere at once, so it wouldn't surprise me to discover there is a 105.0.2 with ads, or that ads exist on a few regions only. But at least for me, the trend seems to be on the other way, they are backing down from that decision.
Wake me when I can't do that anymore (and point me to a decent fork).
For example the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II had a hyperlink to "See todays events" on both places.
* I think I read that in some book about Marissa Mayer and her decisions around the homepage.
https://web.archive.org/web/20020703150514/http://www.google...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800175 ("Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment" (2019))
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022 ("Why am I seeing this adorable red panda?") (2022)
I've ended up installing one of those "inspirational new tab page" extensions, just so I don't see an ad. I am sure that means someone else is siphoning my data.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from-go...
it's just an .html file with an empty body, no tracking & 5 lines of JS:
window.addEventListener("load", () => {
if (chrome.extension.inIncognitoContext) {
document.body.style.background = "#53718e";
}
});It actually reminds me of old Google announcing "New! You can now search for images" or such except repurposed for things outside of Search. The first one is reasonable (there are people that do want to search for images or research papers), but the current incarnation reminds me of a corporation solely running on inertia.
Google hasn't been above self-promotion via those channels for approximately a half-decade. On my newtab and on google.com, I'm seeing an ad for Google's new search features.
Even creating a custom search engine in chrome settings, pointing at google does not work, they detect the google url.
I have yet to create my own "search engine" url which would redirect to google, to put this search engine in the chrome settings!
It's very annoying, because despite it being Chrome from google, chrome is quite reasonable with data protection and settings in many areas and can be tamed with group policies. In our company GPO we have to turn off the new tab page, but my goal is to have one without ads.
They are also seeing the results will be far more varied and scrolling down will likely give you a result that you are looking for, and the traditional way of looking with the top result, being the one that you wanted may not be the case anymore
I think they are maybe trying to replicate the TikTok experience when looking for a result, you will end up scrolling different content relative to your search keyword
All of this will benefit content creators. If you have an ability to create video content, this will give you a competitive edge.
Could they do something to benefit the users instead?
I’ve been unfortunate enough to see this, it’s absolute hot garbage and made it way harder to find what I wanted.
Is this a knee jerk response to TikTok kids using TikTok as their generations google?
I don’t think many understand how much Google land is up for grabs right now. Google Images is right there for the taking if you just supply the same experience as 10 years ago Google Images.
As far as I know, Orion browser is the only browser on the market today that you can pay for with your wallet instead of your data.
Sure, and folks putting lead paint in children's toys don't call their wares "poison". Doesn't change anything.
Advertisers wouldn't buy all that fancy ad tooling "product" on a platform with zero users.
Anyone have a screenshot of said banner ad?
If I want to submit high quality work on time, it makes sense to use the best (most performant) tool for the job. Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and other alternative tools are helpful for personal use, but I have less to worry about when using Google and Chrome for work.
There are entire categories of search I perform on a daily basis in which Bing ignores the most relevant result (usually from a domain that just doesn't appear on Bing for some reason).
Google search does the job well. Chromium browsers are faster than Firefox, equivalent if not better resource usage, excellent web compatibility and ecosystem integration.
People want to get stuff done. Yes Firefox and DDG will not handicap you, but for the general population, search and Chromium do an excellent job over competition.
Now shut up and watch the ads.
https://techdows.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Chrome-dismi...
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
No, they’ll place it at the top, just like Amp.
You know that doing X will harm the company in the long term (defined as anything past your likely tenure in this role, so usually 2 years max). But doing X will bump revenue in the short term, and get you your bonus and your happy life.
WDYD? Given that to get to a level where you have the power to make this decision, you had to have a particular personality type and set of priorities, it's extremely likely that you decide to do the thing that helps you and hurts everyone else.
EDIT: and I should mention that I am a die-hard Firefox fanboy, that I've been using it since like Firefox 2 or something, and that seeing it fail to properly render certain web apps and having to use chromium, which I consider to be uglier from a UI point of view as a fallback pains me dearly.
Alas, life ain't always perfect.
So I'm using Vivaldi in mobile, and decided to try it on desktop too. I like the reading list feature, basically a twist on bookmarks.
That is an ad for Pocket ?
According to statcounter[1], Chrome had 65.52% of the browser market share in August 2022.
Horizontal tabs are objectively inferior - why are vertical tabs so rare???
Brave has vertical tabs coming soon as they are in nightly I believe.
Firefox has ads on their new tab too.
We need better and more respectful competitors.
On the Android phone it's easy choice since only Kiwi Browser supports extensions.
The internet is a bubble. Reality is Firefox usage is pathetic. 32 MILLION people have *STOPPED* using Firefox in the past 4 years. The browser only has a 3.16% market share.
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Chrome is a good browser. Can be considered objectively better than Firefox given its superior performance, equivalent if not slightly better resource usage, web compatibility and integration with the Google ecosystem (which the vast majority of internet population use (excluding niche tech circles)).
I have no vendetta against Firefox. At the end of the day, it is just a browser and that is a personal preference. But people act like it is some sort of saviour that will bring them to the light. There is such an aggressive tribal mentality with browsers. It makes no sense as all browsers look the same, feel the same and have the same functionality. Just a matter of preference given your needs, and for 70% of the population, Chromium delivers.
All was fine until Microsoft didn't start to add their own standards, without any regard for everyone else. If they succeeded, web today would be mess of ActiveX controls and other propertiary extensions.
Web is simply way too important to allow it to become walled garden controlled by single corporation. This is about a lot more than tribalism.
The niche tech circle you speak of /is/ the audience here on HN. If we can’t be bothered to stop using Chrome then all is lost.
- unlocking new revenue streams. Some success here, but modest, going from ~90% of revenue from ads to ~80%. But it all moved to GCP, which still operates at a loss. That doesn't take any pressure off the ads.
- revenue gains with targeting or other things that don't push real content down. It's pretty easy to find historical screen shots of how much the organic content gets pushed down below the fold. Today, most of the lucrative queries have almost nothing but ads above the fold. ("iphone", "vegas hotels", "robot vacuum").
Besides, look at context. We are talking about what a company does and the agents of the company. Of course it all collapses to serving capital. I read GP as "why would company take short money over long?"
You don’t need capitalism for that (as non-capitalist systems have clearly shown).
(And which also shows that this "Apple is protecting Browser Diversity by not allowing another browser on iOS" narrative is wrong: Without even improving Safari, by "just" supporting it on Windows and Linux, they would move the needle for browser diversity)
I think its all doable but community forks tend to be one person doing a job of 10 people and will never keep up.
The US similarly defines monopoly as having significant control over a market, not as a literal 100% stake.
Google Stadia case in point. Nobody serious backed Stadia because almost everyone expected Google to kill it off so nobody jumped to it and then it was inevitably killed off because it didn't bring in the cash Google was expecting. Even when the stars had aligned for them with the pandemic and supply shortages that should have given them tons of players Google just couldn't convince enough people to go for it.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are high level talks going on about the sustainability of some of this exact lines of thinking. Chasing growth organically is fine. Artificially generating it by shifting costs or cutting corners elsewhere to maintain the illusion of growth eventually sinks the whole ship.
Browsers are incredibly expensive technologies to produce. If Microsoft of all companies could not find success with Edge classic, a browser that they wrote from scratch. Added with the ability to advertise and bundle with the worlds most popular OS, then Firefox has no chance to be the bastion against Chromium.
One part of me is curious what a realistic web landscape would look like if it was all Chromium (including Firefox). I guess at first it would be great to see cool new browser APIs, but then something will be added would cause an uproar.
In any case the type of people joining Firefox is very different from that of other companies.
To me FF is just as fast in general browsing than anything else. I routinely try other browsers and I just feel "wrong" using any of the Chromium based others of Edge/Brave/Vivaldi when FF needs us right now. It needs the us to stand against non-open source web browsers and as an alternative engine to the web. I really like Vivaldi and would be my 2nd choice (then Edge then Brave, refuse to use Chrome) but it isn't open-source nor does it do anything to protect privacy.
If FF is giving crashes, issues at sites etc please try at least refreshing your install in the options and don't install so many extensions. Even better backup your bookmarks and uninstall it while making sure to also delete all users\$username\Appdata folders as well then reinstall.
I fall back to edge if I have an issue but it's not common.
This is on desktop.
That doesn't make it any better really!
Afaik both Firefox and Chrome are advertising their own products in the browser at this point in time, so there isn't a whole lot of options to escape this. Maybe Linux distros could patch some of this stuff out or disable it via default settings at least.
Hope its domination, just like anything Google, ends soon though.
If you are on Windows or Linux I'd give Chromium a try. While still bloaty as its the basis of Chrome, it's essentially de-Googlified without anything extra that Brave might bring.
If there is one thing good about Chrome dominance, its that at the end of the day its core Chromium is open source so we can have a non-Google version of it while still being supported.
This idea is the idea of someone at Google, it was implemented by someone at Google, the decision to go ahead was approved by someone at Google.
Pretending the two are at arms length is a bit silly.
The bonus might be significant, the increase in share price might be a percent or 2. Google dishes out this bonus, not Wall Street.
I switched to Firefox earlier this year, but the blatant memory leaks are making me strongly consider switching back to an old version of Chrome (v70 or so), which did not require a monstrous page file to run days or months without crashing.
Edit: See https://imgur.com/a/wQhvFF9
It also has a stupid name.
Given that we're in a thread underneath someone endorsing Bing as a good option, that sounds like a plus.
> with some graphics to tell you how much they love privacy every 2 seconds.
That is their differentiator, yes.
> It also has a stupid name.
As... Opposed to Google or Bing? This is your argument?
Yeah, but why not just cut out the middleman?
> As... Opposed to Google or Bing? This is your argument?
I'm half kidding, but seriously "duck duck go"? What kinda goofy ass name is that? No wonder nobody takes it seriously.
The equivalent there would be GoGoBaby for Google or RingADingDing for Bing. I guess GoDaddy is a thing, but that doesn't make it any less weird.
Firefox is the superior browser, but if you must use Chromium I strongly suggest ungoogled-chromium over Brave.
Everything in tech is shady. I think advertising is super shady. So I use an ad-blocker and move on with my life.
The bottom line is that your choice today is between Firefox, and something that is Chromium-based. Mozilla is a wreck of an organization, and their browser has compatibility issues all over the place because it's just not large enough to be relevant anymore (I'm sorry, it's true).
So people choose Chromium-based. If you don't want to go with Google or Microsoft, then this means you can use "ungoogled-chromium" or Brave. Brave is available on all devices (Vivaldi doesn't support iOS), and syncs bookmarks and passwords across all your devices.
So yeah. It makes a ton of sense for a lot of people to gravitate toward Brave. Why do I care whether their business model is showing NFT ads to people who don't turn that off? Just turn it off.
It's also not faster, if that is what you read in my comment: Chrome/ium and Firefox keep improving. And depending on what month and what benchmark, one will outperform the other. Slightly.
It could be anecdotal? For any of both browsers, though. E.g. some plugins/addons will slow down the browser significant. Or usage specific? Maybe one handles having 2000 tabs open better than the other? Or page-specific?
By visiting sites I visit often/everyday in both Brave and Firefox and comparing DomContentLoaded/Load/Finish timings in Developer Tools. Brave (but also Chromium in the past when I used it) is consistently faster.
Not much, but I noticed even before I measured, I did it to check if my feeling is wrong, and it isn't.
But this is the definition of "anecdotal". I can see all sorts of biases luring in your methodology. And the body is way too small to have any statistic meaning.
Again: performance, measured or perceived, may be bad for you. But that is completely different from "Firefox is slower than Chrome".
You cannot make such a statement based on measurements on a few websites where Firefox appeared slow to you.
Firefox don't play MKV videos, I use some site that has embed MKVs.
Slack calls didn't work on it (they workaround it). But I had trouble with other sites that use WebRTC in Firefox.
This is things I recall at this moment, but I don't want to have to use backup browser when something like this happens, so I use Chromium based browser and get on with my life.
The MKV thing sounds like a Firefox or codec issue, but I couldn't say. I haven't had issues with MKV or WebM, which is effectively a MKV profile, in many years.
Because DDG acts as a privacy screen and doesn't tell Microsoft what I personally search for. They are, as you note, fairly pointed about this being their purpose.
> I'm half kidding, but seriously "duck duck go"? What kinda goofy ass name is that? No wonder nobody takes it seriously.
It's a play on a commonly-known phrase (duck duck goose), and while this is all subjective I don't see how it's any weirder than anything else in the space.
It's like Firefox haters, they find one little bug or one negative thing happens, and "Welp, just might as well use Chrome." If Firefox isn't 100% absolutely perfect, then people say they're clearly just as bad as Google.
They say DuckDuckGo is just Bing, and has a dumb name, so it's clearly no better than Google. The truth is that they fucking love Google's products, integration and ecosystem...
There are a list of alternatives in Safari that the user themselves can choose from, including Favorites, Frequently visited, and so on.
None of the choices are the Apple AppStore.
Our family Mac we got in ~2011 did show Apple as the new tab page, or at least the start page when you opened Safari after booting. However this must have changed in the last few (read: >5-7) years.
Pretty certain this is also incorrect.
My recollection seems to accord with the Wikipedia page on the history of the Safari browser which (although it doesn’t itemize the default StartPage for each version) doesn’t cite any inclusion of an AppStore link, as far as I can see.
No - what other posters 'confirmed' is that www.apple.com was one of the choices that could be made for a new tab or homepage - absolutely not the Apple store as you said.
Worth correcting yet again because of what's become a knee-jerk 'but whatabout Apple?' in comment threads about Google on HN.
I think you're being pedantic if you say apple.com is not the apple store. If I wanted to go to the apple store I'd go to apple.com.
It didn't have two quarters of real GDP growth, but it did have massive job losses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
Looked at national review, can't even find an article about the subject; https://www.google.com/search?q=recession+site:nationalrevie...
Everyone was preoccupied with other questions mostly at that time, and a lot of the debate was if policy X was too costly economically, more so than "are we in a recession?"
You need only to glance at the markets to see the reality of the situation we are in.
The argument the WH made for us not being in a recession is that employment is high. That situation is quickly changing.
> The NBER uses a broader definition of a recession than commonly appears in the media. A definition of a recession commonly used in the media is two consecutive quarters of a shrinking gross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales". Business cycle dates are determined by the NBER dating committee. Typically, these dates correspond to peaks and troughs in real GDP, although not always so.
...
> Though not listed by the NBER, another factor in favor of this alternate definition is that a long term economic contraction may not always have two consecutive quarters of negative growth, as was the case in the recession following the bursting of the dot-com bubble.
There are ZERO changes or decision anyone can make (including policy) based on whoever's definition of recession is.
It's really weird that humans come up with these arbitrary definitions that doesn't matter but choose that hill to die on.
Thought experiment: Knowing and feeling all the economic news around you, what decision would you make if (or what decision should policy makers make)
a) we are in some arbitrary definition of Recession?
b) we are not in some arbitrary definition of Recession?
There really is none
That there could and should be some more sophisticated, objective definition of a recession than “two years of GDP decline” isn’t in question. But, at least according to your own source, NBER fails to provide that definition and is commonly criticized for is subjectivity during political years.
1/5 indicators shows significant decline (real GDP) I'll give you. but 1/5 is slight decline (real income 1% down), the other 3 (employment, industrial production, retail sales) are up. this is based on data available from FRED, do you have data showing otherwise?
links at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33032470#33036403
Going off how much you have positioned yourself as an expert on economics and human psychology, I was expecting this to end with “Here is a link to my dissertation on this very issue!”
It is still pretty funny to see someone spend 80% of a post describing their acumen at spotting a social phenomenon (conspiracy theories and ignorance) only to follow it up with a wiki link about something wholly unrelated to ignorance or conspiracy theories.
For example, here’s a link to how to gather information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Which we have right now. But don't trust objective observations of reality. Just Trust the Experts™ and call anyone who disagrees a conspiracy theorist.
> real GDP
> real income
real income is down ~1% since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [1]. hardly seems like a "significant decline".
> employment
employment has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [2] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.
> industrial production
industrial production has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [3] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.
> wholesale-retail sales
retail sales has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [4] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.
so 1 of 5 indicators shows significant decline, 1 shows minor decline, 3 show increase.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS
AFAIK the big ones have always been free, except for Netscape between 1995 and 1998.
Netscape was sold for $50 [2]
Opera was sold (can't find the price) [3]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Plus!#Microsoft_Plus!_for_Windows_95
[2]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/netscape-navigator-2-0-hits-the-streets/
[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20081013235150/http://my.opera.com/Rijk/blog/2006/02/15/rendering-engines-and-code-namesthere have been countless examples of watch-ads-get-X schemes. I remember back in the dialup era it was seen as a way to get online. (then fortunately technology and the market progressed and these died out.)
also, let's not forget that the browser market was always fucked up.
Ads should show you things that you needed anyway; things you wouldn't have known to look for, or didn't find when you did. Things that actually solve problems that you actually have, where you see the utility as soon as you see them.
For example, 45drives has their ads down. They contain nothing more than a little joke, a product image, and a link to their website. You'll know if you need it; they're not trying to market to you or convince you of anything. They know you will come when you're ready.
Advertising culture is currently extremely hostile and I hate it.
I believe it is correct. It was back when we didn't call it a new tab page, but 'homepage' and it was set to an actual website.
Of course Safari defaulted to apple.com, what else was it supposed to default to?
I’m not sure how long they did that for, but like you said, what else were they supposed to do? It was a different time, homepages were treated differently.
about:blank until the user sets something else.
[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-browser-market-sha...
Issuing debt to buy back shares is a strategy that works great when interest rates are very very low.
But when the money supply is scarce, only so much leverage can exist, so issuing debt to buy shares would be far far riskier.
Stock options with a strike price below market also have tax implications for both the company and the employee.
Equity based compensation essentially comes out of the hides of shareholders: As long as they are happy (and people aren’t playing Thiel-type games), it’s not as terrible as you make it out to be. There’s a limit to what buybacks can do to juice prices and equity generally puts people into a long term mindset.
The problem, ultimately, cannot be solved without disassembling neoliberal capitalism. It is more or less endemic to the system. To a large extent that short termist, get returns and move on before the cost is due, mode of being is how we managed to run an economy that requires constant growth (rather than stability) to function. It's also why we won't solve any of our climate or many social issues.
There's no way to change this without drastically restructuring the utility function people apply to decisions, and that just won't happen until the aftermath of whatever collapse is inevitably going to happen when the planet floods.
Personally I'm a bigger fan of "encourage competition" than "reorganize control," at least in the search engine market, but I fully agree with you that what we see here is the system working exactly as designed.
"Reward long term" is easier to say than to do.
Easier said than done, but the basic idea would be something like what the Founding Fathers of the US did with the Constitution - make a system where incentives are set up in such a way as to align success for the individual and the group.
If you start a company, you can experiment with alternatives to the current "increase da KPI" style of organization that is so prevalent nowadays.
I think Steve Jobs was a good example of someone who governed by pointing people to a beautiful vision, rather than mindless "ya, numbers go up" type thinking prevalent amongst investors nowadays.
I totally get your point, and I understand the "me first!" attitude that it comes from. But we can't have nice things if everyone does this.
My point is, if you are going to claim we are in a recession now, to be intellectually consistent, you also have to claim that 2020 wasn't one of the shortest and sharpest recessions ever in history...
I just looked and National Review even wrote this on the subject at the time - https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/recession-are-we-there... so maybe I need a better representative for the right and left to measure intellectual consistency.
IDK I'm not that interested in finding partisan hacks in the online debate on the subject. I will say just looking around, observing metrics and being told this isn't a recession the country is going through right now seems absurd.