Google has been lying about their search results [video]

Towards the beginning, the video’s narrator jokes that Google’s efforts at secrecy are perhaps thwarted by employees that don’t know “how git commit works.” The sad truth is, well, this is often true. The amount of time my peers spent and the number of errors they made, when using git after being directed to begin a fresh project on GitHub instead of g3 was formidable; and broke all illusions I ever have had about Google engineers being in any way categorically superior to others.

Google is, in the average case, so beyond past its prime; and so wildly ineffective at hiring that most of the place should be shut down. It really, truly, has become a joke. The fictional firm Hooli from “Silicon Valley” is scarcely more bizarre, confused, incompetent, and harmful than modern Google.

And hey, if they did shut down most the place, they could stop fucking with search results because they just wouldn’t need so much money anymore.

In an ideal world, Google would have regarded as an experiment. Its founders, investors, employees, and society would look at it critically and ask “what can we ascertain has been good and what has been harmful?” And, in my opinion anyways, everything except search, mail, g-suite, and a couple other things would be ended — including ads. With a more than minimal team, Google’s cash reserves would be more than sufficient to keep all that running for decades if not centuries to come.

Why is it a bad thing if Google uses click rate and dwell time for ranking? It seems like those are pretty natural signals.