Google to put auto-playing videos in its search result

[GoodBytes]

In the early days of search engines, Google popularity wasn't form its search engine, but really for the fact that Google page was dead simple, and search results didn't feature promoted entries on page 1 at the top. 2x things that were critical back in the days of, at best, 56k internet. Pages took long time to load, and getting the results you are looking for in the first or second page was the at most importance. While it did have a unique way of crawling the web to index sites where other search engine where following the yellow pages approaches, where sites where added by the site creators and the search engine would "manually" evaluate the entry and add it in a category (the web was much smaller then), and uses a machine learning algorithm store identify what people actually looking for and move the results higher up, with other algorithms at plays, it wasn't really because of that. At least, not at first. The search results where not great until popularity grew where mass amount of search were done and algorithms where improved over time.

 

Oh how time have changed. We now have paid first spot results (although identified as "ads"), we have side column content and ads.... and now Google is testing putting videos that auto-plays in your search result. They are doing an A/B testing where some will get the video playing automatically, others not.

 

 

Neowin reports:

Quote

According to The SEM Post, search queries that are related to movies and TV shows may soon start playing a video upon the page loading. This works even when the user is not asking for a specific video. Previously, the upper right results of such pages would include snippets of relevant information; however, the results acquired by The SEM Post indicate Google's new vision: autoplaying videos where possible.

 

Queries like "The Lego Ninjago Movie" and "Justice League release date" are currently showing the trailers of the respective movies in a special content result box. Some users have found these videos start playing as soon as the page stops loading. It's evident that the search giant is currently A/B testing the feature as many users are not seeing these videos play without a prompt.

 

Google claims that it wants to improve search results this way. A spokesperson from Google says:

Quote

We are constantly experimenting with ways to improve the Search experience for our users, but have no plans to announce at this time.

 

Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/google-may-introduce-autoplaying-videos-to-its-search-results-page

 

What do you think about auto-playing videos in your search result, or even if it not auto-playing? Will that make you switch to Bing?

Would video ads be the next step? Or people exploiting the system to show ads when people search for popular results?

 

[emosun]

4 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

What do you think about auto-playing videos in your search result, or even if it not auto-playing?

can't wait for when you start to type something and it starts playing a video related to whatever you didn't finish typing and it starts to lag like hell trying to play ten different videos that are all titled half finished words

[frankyrobin69]

Probably a bad idea for more questionable search results

 

[sazrocks]

Never really understood autoplaying videos. If I want to watch a video I will click on it. Its not like it takes much effort.

[ARikozuM]

I wouldn't mind, but I think they should make a new option for movies and such, this way would narrow results down quite a bit before proceeding to serve a video. 

 

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

can't wait for when you start to type something and it starts playing a video related to whatever you didn't finish typing and it starts to lag like hell trying to play ten different videos that are all titled half finished words

Who doesn't want to watch The Room  by Tommy Wiseau?

[goodtofufriday]

I already feel as though googles search engine is not as good as it used to be. I get completely irrelevant results simply because of a single key word. And google will automatically ignore certain words if the number of results are low.

Auto playing videos will only continue to grate on my poor experience with google lately. 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Easy solution : use DuckDuckgo or Ixquick.

[Zodiark1593]

RIP data cap. 

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

RIP data cap. 

Use Bing. I started when Win10 came out, and it's often been the better choice.

[WelshDdraig]

Much like FlashBlock, I will just install an add-on: *cough*

Spoiler

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-autoplay/efdhoaajjjgckpbkoglidkeendpkolai?hl=en

to disable HTML5 video auto playing (I assume it's going to be implemented with HTML5 - if not, oh well, someone will get pissed enough to create an add-on to disable it)

 

While it may make all other sites that use HTML5 require another click or 2, I'd rather that than have a video autoplay, not knowing what it's playing, what tab it's playing in or if it's going to deafen me with loud volume.

[KuJoe]

Thank god for DNS based ad blocking.

[Dash Lambda]

A few years ago, I think, I noticed that my searches in the Omnibar started autocompleting, even when it didn't make sense to autocomplete. With URLs you visit repeatedly it makes sense, and it always seemed useful, but it started autocompleting everything. So I would search, say, "Steam Controller," and the next time I went to search "Steam" I would look at the results in confusion and then look up and see that it stuck "Controller" on the end. I scoured everywhere I could for a fix, posted on a couple forums, even submitted a user feedback form or two trying to either find the option to reverse this or get one added, and I found tons of other people that were getting fed up with it -All I ever heard back, though, was a short response in a feedback thread where somebody from Google explained that it was to improve the search experience and that they wanted everyone to use the same 'Google', so there would be no option.

It still irritates me. It's never been useful, it always slows me down, I have to type things over and over again, and it's still there. They haven't even given the option to make it an opt-in selection, rather than opt-out. That's how Google is with this stuff. I don't know if they'll actually add this feature, but if they do, they won't let you turn it off.

 

I have so remarkably few issues with that company, but the ones I do have really, really grind my gears...

 

EDIT: Not to say there won't be a fix, I get the feeling there'll be an extension or something. Just won't be Google.

[Sauron]

Disgusting. I hope adblockers can pick that up and hide it. Google, if you keep this up I'll start using DuckDuckGo instead.

 

-edit-

actually screw it, I'm doing it right now.

[dtaflorida]

Meh, just another filter to add to Ublock.

 

I added this  line for Tom's Hardware.

 

www.tomshardware.com##div.jw-loaded

 

Goodbye video ad in the middle of the content.

[MadModder]

I once made the mistake (long ago) of trying to find out when cooking pork, what temperature it was safe to eat. I got as far as p o r, and was bombarded with porn sites. They were popping up so fast the only way I could stop it was reach over and disconnect from my router. I learned to type "when cooking" first. Now it will be video's. Hope some little innocent kid doesn't make that mistake.

[Ithanul]

1 hour ago, sazrocks said:

Never really understood autoplaying videos. If I want to watch a video I will click on it. Its not like it takes much effort.

Agree, plus I dislike auto play videos for the pure fact they eat bandwidth and a data cap (back home I only have 20GB cap, yep it sucks).

 

Seems I need to start installing video blocking plug ins on mine and my parents computers now.

[Coaxialgamer]

Ok . This was enough . I'm using duckduckgo now.

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, Captain Chaos said:

Easy solution : use DuckDuckgo or Ixquick.

13 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Ok . This was enough . I'm using duckduckgo now.

 

I've been forcing myself to use DDG on my home computer for a while now.  I sometimes find the need for Google (because admittedly, their algorithm is often better), but this may be the final straw that leads me to abandon Google completely.  I'll probably keep my Gmail account (switching e-mails is a pain), but I won't put up with auto playing videos on any site.

[Coaxialgamer]

Just now, Jito463 said:

 

I've been forcing myself to use DDG on my home computer for a while now.  I sometimes find the need for Google (because admittedly, their algorithm is often better), but this may be the final straw that leads me to abandon Google completely.  I'll probably keep my Gmail account (switching e-mails is a pain), but I won't put up with auto playing videos on any site.

tbh , i've been looking at it for some time . Most of the time the results of both search engine are similar , and both are relevant to the search query .

[Sakkura]

I tried duckduckgo a few years ago and it was pretty bad. If it's gotten better and google starts doing disruptive stuff like this, I'll be switching over.

[Bananasplit_00]

autoplay anything is a pice of shit IMO. if i want to see it id rather click it then haveing it start playing out of nowhere.

[LAwLz]

Dick move.

Autoplaying videos is cancer even when they aren't ads. Them being ads just makes the whole thing even worse.

 

12 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Will that make you switch to Bing?

Haha

I don't think people are that desperate.

[mr moose]

news just in,  google loses search engine market share for first time since dinosaurs invented the internet.

 

 

It would be good if this was something that people would avoid thus forcing google to not be so controlling etc, but the reality is they are so entrenched with android and gmail that people will just keep using them becasue they don't know how to find alternatives.

[LAwLz]

18 minutes ago, mr moose said:

news just in,  google loses search engine market share for first time since dinosaurs invented the internet.

 

 

It would be good if this was something that people would avoid thus forcing google to not be so controlling etc, but the reality is they are so entrenched with android and gmail that people will just keep using them becasue they don't know how to find alternatives.

Not being able to find alternatives is certainly one factor, but for me the biggest factor is that there are no competitors that are even remotely close to being as good.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Not being able to find alternatives is certainly one factor, but for me the biggest factor is that there are no competitors that are even remotely close to being as good.

 

Chicken egg issue nowadays.  If people start using the alternatives they will get better, but people aren't going to swap until they are better.  

 

I miss the old yahoo and altavista.