I disagree. I never saw an ad for gmail. The initial exclusivity was a gimmick, but it was dropped pretty quickly. As I recall any user could invite 10 people, including their own email accounts. Also I got like 25 more invites for reasons I can't remember after 3 people signed up with my codes. If you couldn't find someone with an invite code, you weren't asking the right people.
I remember having to actively manage my storage space on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Some email clients would delete your email unless yous said otherwise or paid after like 60 days. Google gave way more for free. And the promise of "more storage" has continued, because I've only had to manage my email space once in a decade, mostly deleting daily reports that included big attachments. Also I'd have to sort through spam emails, which I don't think I even have the time for today. And then there were no annoying banner ads.
That's similar to the whole reason Google search caught on. They had a clean interface, fewer ads, and slightly better results. They did next to 0 advertising back then, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista. They just released a marginally better and significantly less annoying product.
The few products Google hasn't killed succeeded because they were legitimate improvements before their time or at least "good enough" alternatives back when people trusted Google more than Microsoft or other companies.
Hotmail and Yahoo mail were the primary contenders at the time. Both featured banner ads at the top. Because CSS and HTML were in their infancy, the height was generally fixed, and on smaller monitors it could take up 1/3 of the screen or more.
As I recall, Google had no ads. A small text ad, maybe, but I think that was added later. They also did a much better job of removing spam from my inbox. In addition they offered a lot more storage for free, which was actually a concern at the time. I'd have to go through and purge my email because simple emails with images were forcing me to manage my old emails. This became a problem over time with Hotmail, which I used, because I wanted to save some emails for their historical value or value to me.
Gmail jumped right on common features like folders and tags, and continued to expand further than other free email clients with better search functionality, easier multi-account SMTP and POP management through a single account, which I use for my 15 email accounts to this day, and automated filters that allowed me to make sure I saw certain emails or didn't see others unless I wanted to.
I think for most people it was just a clean interface, more storage, and better spam. But it also had features for more advanced users that made both tech amatuers and pros prefer it.
Not leaving Twitter, just not reading or posting and using alternative platforms.
Not to play word police, but I think that's what people meant when they said 'leaving'. But if you mean that it's not necessarily forever, I understand what you're saying.
You mean like every study I've ever read? I can't recall the last time the conclusion didn't say something like, "In our study X appears to be associated with Y, but more research is needed to understand the relationship."
You're right, though, that this article leaves many questions unasked. We know that people who are schizophrenic are far more likely to smoke cigarettes, but there is evidence to suggest they're more likely to smoke before their first episode as well. So is tobacco causal? Probably not. Instead, there are probably precursor symptoms to diagnosable schizophrenia that drive tobacco use: anxiety being the main one. Anxiety and marijuana has already been studied with conflicting results, probably because it's hard to determine out whether people with anxiety are drawn to marijuana (or heavier usage) or whether heavy usage causes anxiety.
There are reasons to think marijuana use can cause schizophrenic episodes - sometimes a first episode - but that use may not increase the risk of developing the disorder when viewed in a 20-year window. In other words, it happens sooner. So according to the article the number of schizophrenia cases linked to cannabis use disorder increased by 4x. I'd like to know whether schizophrenia diagnoses overall changed significantly.
I am not saying there are no risks. But I am agreeing that the article does a bad job of analyzing the science.
If the state law and city law conflict, shouldn't state law take precedence?
I'm actually not too upset about what the sheriff did. How many people do you think would do differently if they had to take out a $150k loan to cover their predecessor's obligations and then had the chance to feed inmates for less?
My takeaway is the state law clearly needs further modernization. First, it doesn't matter if it costs more. A direct personal incentive to feed people as cheaply as possible directly incentivizes low food quality. There should be some standard of food quality in a developed country. Second, if up to $750k (maybe more) is up for grabs, the sheriff's position because too valuable, which entices corruption. Not that they can't and aren't already be crooked, but they don't need further incentives.
These incentives aren't theoretical. There was a sheriff arrested for essentially starving inmates while pocketing $220k. Of course he only spent a night there.
Only on HN would you find people seriously arguing that focusing on product development is a good reason to remove analytics from a site. I've worked almost exclusively at companies where the product is the website, and initially this idea struck me as laughably naive. But let me be fair and think through this.
Tech startups do definitely have this problem of focusing on website analytics where the product is NOT a website or app. If we're generous we can assume many people here develop for these kinds of companies. Some waste a lot of time looking for up-and-to-the-right arrows for investors or trying to be data-focused when data about the website isn't actually all that important. Many of these companies might actually be better off with no analytics to waste time on. I'd still argue it's better to check in every once in a while to look for problems and ask yourself some questions.
The idea of removing analytics where the product is an app or a website is silly. This would be like arguing a grocery store shouldn't track what people are buying from their stores, and instead just source good products. You need to do both. What are you going to do when I ask what is or is not working? Tell me your feelings? Shake an 8-ball? Aside from detecting problems, analytics can be a jumping off point for innovation if you're smart about it. What can we do that's more like what's working? How can we improve this page type?
There are for sure people who over-focus on analytics (often on the wrong data points) instead of creativity, but these are not mutually exclusive. If I were to list the millions of dollars I've earned and saved via analytics this would be a very long post. Sadly, most of those millions were for other people, but it's a very valuable tool for optimizing and creating if you use it correctly.
Long story short, Google is using its search dominance to provide unfair advantage to other Google and Alphabet products. This is primarily done through features or "snippets" competitors cannot earn or even pay for.
Many of the details are not yet public. The individual investigations (some being conducted by states) are said to focus on multiple issues, but the one with the most discussion and evidence centers on the issue I described.
For example, google a flight you may take regularly, or just "LAX to JFK". Your first result after ads will probably be a Google widget. Can sites like Kayak or Expedia get that widget? No. Can they compete with Google showing real-time prices right in the SERP? No. It's the definition of anti-competitive behavior.
Google originally argued they don't advantage their own products. They've since admitted they do. Meanwhile they company is moving into more and more verticles and squeezing others out using its search engine as the weapon.
The vast majority of qualified traffic comes from search engines, and for my sites it's more like 95-97% Google. Many have argued the 90% market share figure is too low, because Yahoo and Microsoft include their internal searches to sound better. If Google decides to create a search widget competing with some function of my site, even if Google's version is really shitty, my business suffers badly. This isn't theoretical. Go Google "speed test." Your first result is a Google widget they added to search results. Ookla IMO has a much better product. But Google's widget is first for basically everyone who searches for a speed test. The M-Lab/Google test caps out for me well short of my real bandwidth. But I guarantee Ookla's traffic took a beating when Google decided to insert their own product at the top.
Unfortunately, Google has a lot of lawyers, and it's also reported that Barr is trying to rush this thing forward to provide a win for Trump. The actual career lawyers are arguing they can build a solid case, but they need more time. My fear is we'll see this thing rushed through and the changes will be cosmetic. And I do think Google's actions are a real problem. The most recent testimony before congress was pretty shocking. Facebook and Alphabet execs were basically admitting to anti-competitive behavior.
I think you're confusing internet marketing with the people who talk about internet marketing.
Marketing done right is basically the 'what people want' in 'build things people want' with a focus on what they're actually willing to pay for. I routinely kill ideas because the market is too small or profitability is too hard to achieve. Understanding your audience then building content and product around it is harder and more valuable than HN seems to believe. I've been very successful by developing this skill and learning how to build things. Good marketers have domain and industry specific knowledge that doesn't go viral in marketing circles because it's too specialized. I'm also not about to get on a public forum and tell my competition how I'm beating them.
Internet marketers who idolize internet marketing speakers are insufferable, I'll give you that. It comes from a good place of wanting to learn by listening to the experts. Unfortunately, these experts spend more time talking about how to be like them rather than how to build something people want. I think this also comes from a good place: let me help you achieve success like I have found.
Meanwhile the more technical marketers roll their eyes, get to work, and quietly make their companies money.
I know this is a bit cheeky, but HN sometimes has this comically simplistic view of other professions. It's as bad as the older C_Os who refer to all of dev and IT as "computer people." As someone who is both a developer and a marketer I can tell you both fields have depth and value, and neither is easy to do well.
Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.
To take it back to the original point, I will never move to AMP. I spend a lot of time speeding up my pages through simplification, caching, and any other trick that makes sense (deferment, lazy loading, minification, combining, etc.) But there are a lot of reasons to not want your link to start with amp.google.com when someone shares my page.
* Any links to that URL rely on the good graces of the search engines to "count" for rankings and continue sending traffic. This is especially worrying if I decide to change standards. Will my rankings tank? Will the crawlers get totally confused and think I have a bunch of 404s? Both have been reported. These are not risks I'm willing to take with my sites that took so much work to build and promote.
* When someone shares my page I want my URL to be clear - not some google.com URL. That's both confusing for the user and bad for building a brand. Even if it was a cname to my own subdomain I'd feel better, e.g. amp.mysite.com
* Aside from the reason above, the lock-in is philosophically problematic. I intentionally use cross-platform apps on my phone because I don't want to be locked into an ecosystem. I don't foresee switching to Apple, but I didn't foresee switching to Android either. The point is that I could. This freedom is important to me.
* I don't trust that Google is committed to me and my content. Just look at the YouTubers getting screwed over by Google's lazy copyright policy. What makes you think they're going to suddenly staff up and/or care more on web content?
Anyway, as a writer, marketer, business owner, and web developer: fuck AMP.
It speaks to a poor understand of kids, schools, and reality. I think we often underestimate kids and their intellectual capacity, but this is just ridiculous. I started outlining how bad this would be for kids, but the list was getting so long that I had to stop. Let's just rely on common sense here.
I never felt I was "ravaged by capitalism," but I was never forced as a kid to compete in cutthroat markets where I was pretty likely to fail against adults who had fully-developed brains and more experience in every relevant field.
Yes, let's get kids more hands-on experience. But the feeling of failing as a kid is brutal. Don't set them up to fail. More importantly, let's teach them critical thinking skills so they can adapt. Focus less on facts and more on solving problems and finding their own solutions. This is possible without forcing them into a high-stress environment where many adults (with far more experience in markets and as consumers) fail.
I'm not sure many people would be interested, but I'd have no problem doing a write up with the relevant source. I'll try to get to it next week after fixing all these bugs people are finding.
No, sadly. I had to use a scraper. I think that's part of the reason the tourist volume data was sub-par, so I really need to find a better data source.
Ooops... looks like the scale on my graph somehow got thrown off. Thanks for the find! I've fixed Cuba manually but will go back through looking for the source of this problem.
Yeah, you've uncovered one where the average month in Google was not reported. Generally that means few people searching. In a few cases, sadly, that may be because the hotels are all full and there's no point to searching.
As I've said elsewhere, I think the solution to this is better data on travel volume. I have a lead thanks to this thread on some better data, which is very exciting for me and exactly what I was hoping for in HN.
I remember having to actively manage my storage space on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Some email clients would delete your email unless yous said otherwise or paid after like 60 days. Google gave way more for free. And the promise of "more storage" has continued, because I've only had to manage my email space once in a decade, mostly deleting daily reports that included big attachments. Also I'd have to sort through spam emails, which I don't think I even have the time for today. And then there were no annoying banner ads.
That's similar to the whole reason Google search caught on. They had a clean interface, fewer ads, and slightly better results. They did next to 0 advertising back then, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista. They just released a marginally better and significantly less annoying product.
The few products Google hasn't killed succeeded because they were legitimate improvements before their time or at least "good enough" alternatives back when people trusted Google more than Microsoft or other companies.