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Google Is Killing Retro Dodo & Other Independent Sites (retrododo.com)

submitted 7 months ago by stsp@azorius.net to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It honestly breaks my heart to write this article,
but I want to be as transparent as possible with
our readers because you are the ones that have quite
literally kept our lights on over the past five years,
and you deserve to know the truth about what’s happening
behind the scenes, so here it is.
Retro Dodo is on the brink of collapse… because of Google.

top 12 comments

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[–] stsp@azorius.net 20 points 7 months ago

This site has been a great source of news about all things retrogaming.
I support them on patreon now and hope they will make it through!

Some of their articles are a bit quirky, with the writing style suffering from occasional diversions which may even turn into rant or two. But I find this somewhat endearing rather than annoying. It conveys that they love doing what they've been doing.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 18 points 7 months ago

And the enshittification continues. Everything to squeeze a little more money for themselves.

Fuck everything about Google

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

This is a good example of why monopoly power is dangerous

[–] Hailstorm8440@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

😔

[–] GrappleHat@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

Google has way too much power & influence. BREAK THEM UP!!! This status quo is ridiculous.

[–] bundes_sheep@lemmy.one 1 points 6 months ago

Google Search brought in lots of revenue (comparatively), but in return they became dependent on the whims of a crazy-large tech company that has turned the corner into a full-on IBM-style corporation. I've seen this kind of thing happen with people advertising local businesses on Facebook and then the algorithm killing their income overnight. You have to treat it as a large risk to your business and do everything you can think of to mitigate it. Which maybe they were, I don't know, but I wouldn't want my business to be reliant on the good nature of a huge tech company like Google.

[+] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world -24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

This just sounds like more people complaining about AI "stealing their work" and "algorithms not pushing my content."

Google does show a summary of sites or information that is generated by a computer. And it does create that summary using the publicly posted and available text on publicly accessible webpages. This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing. The generated text (that I have seen) almost never matches word for word exactly what is on a single webpage.

And regarding the algorithm, trying to do what we used to do before by abusing it with SEO is exactly what Google and other search engine want to stop. And they have every right to change algorithms to do that. Just because it worked in your favor for years and suddenly it doesn't help you specifically anymore doesn't mean Google is targeting you, your site, or small content creators.

And being honest, I have personally never seen RetroDodo on the first page of results of any relevant search I have made, ever.

[–] echo64@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's a shame to see someone taking the side of big business over a small independent. Google has an effective monopoly on search, they take the content of sites and present it as their own, they also rarely do a good job of fighting SEO to show you things you actually want to see, this is likely a result of SEO winning rather than these guys.

You're celebrating the big guy and telling the little guy to just live with it. Whoes going to make content when they are all gone.

[+] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world -15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I am not siding with big business over small business, I am siding with a business deciding to change how they present their services over an author complaining about the change.

Google was not always the market leader, but it gained that position over a long time, with a lot of work by hundreds of thousands of people. Are you saying that the efforts of all those people now suddenly don't count, and that their contributions to making Google what it is today are unimportant? That Google, because all those people worked to make it so big, now has to suddenly be torn down? What does that mean for the value of any employee at any business? Is not the goal of a business to become market leader? What, now the market leader has to be punished for its employees doing their job well and the business becoming the primary preference of people? Why would any employee ever want to do their job well if they know that their hard work will just be destroyed in the end? At that point, why even work at all?

Independents will never vanish. New independents pop up literally every single day. Sometimes even the same people under a new name.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

It's like you didn't read the article, and are specifically focusing on a one-dimensional argument while you can conveniently ignore the greater issues at play.

Go and read your own comments, in fact go read the article, and please try to come back with some meaningful thoughts.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

The big difference is when a user clicks on their content and summarizes it for themselves, the content creator is paid for an ad view. When a computer does it, they aren’t. If a user shares their summary they are plagiarizing and can be sued for damages. When AI does it, the current system is too bad so sad

[–] xyzzy@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

This author seems to lament that its a computer doing it, but the way the summary functions is really no different than if a human did the same thing.

It's entirely different. Scale matters.