Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 28-11-2024
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While Google has a long history of being evil, past few years they really cranked up their evilness to a new level. This time by introduction of something as innocent as Page Annotations.
What are Page Annotations? It is a brilliant way to make it easier for the users to find what they want. At least that is the official description. The unofficial description would be rather "a daylight robbery operated by a huge and heartless company".
So what are they? Imagine that you browse a website, read about something, and suddenly stumble upon a link leading to more information about this particular bit of the website. Yeah, just like on Wikipedia. For example, you read about a car and find a link that would explain in details what the engine is. Helpful, isn’t it? Yes and no. Yes, because you might find out something more, and no, because it isn’t a link to more information, it is a link to a search results on Google, most likely filled with ads of the engines.
Oh yeah, and there is another cute angle to this feature - the website owner does not know about that link, did not approve it nor wants that link to exist. Yup, Google started to invade and modify EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE that you browse without any consent from the website owner or yourself. Why? Because they are the biggest search engine in the world, so of course, they are desperate to bring more people to it. Because they still did not gather all the money in the world.
So far, the feature is available only on their iOS app, but taking under consideration their past as an evil company, it will spread to their other products. Still, you might ask, what is the problem? The website owner will get compensated, right? You must be new here. The website owner does not know about this scheme, so of course will not be in any way compensated for providing extra traffic to Google so they could make more money.
As a glimpse of hope, they left the option to opt out of the feature for the webmasters (yes, opt out, not opt in). Where can you find it? On Search Console, a place where webmasters control their website on Google? Of course not, it would be insane. They placed a special form (famous for being the most convenient way) in a very obscure place and if you opt out of the scheme they will comply with your request in... about 30 days.
If you are speechless after reading this, it is time to realize that cutting off Google from your life could be a good thing, and it is still not too late to do it. I know Bing, DuckDuckGo and other alternatives are not perfect, but at least we still have alternatives, so hurry to use them before they will be destroyed as well.
If you are not speechless at this point, then read the article again, perhaps you will understand what is going on. Or perhaps a simple example will explain it for you - imagine that you opened your own business, f.e. a café, you spent your money on making it perfect the way you like it and then an evil company places a huge billboard INSIDE your cafe that will divert clients to other places. They will not ask you for permission, they will not pay you for that advertising, they will not even tell you that the billboard is there. You are not happy with the billboard? No problem, drop by to our office in Bolivia and tell us about it. We will remove it... eventually... I guess... if you ask us nicely.
Are you speechless now?
29-11-2024
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