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Education

Google/EdX Are Charging $298 For Their Remake of a Free 2012 How-to-Google Course 22

Posted by EditorDavid from the feeling-unlucky dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: After near death, MOOCs are booming during the coronavirus pandemic, reported the NY Times in May. That news apparently wasn't lost on Google and EdX, who on Thursday announced they've teamed up and are asking $298 (temporarily reduced to $268.20!) for Google's Power Searching with Google XSeries Program (learn "how to create an effective search query to yield the most relevant results").

In case that seems familiar to some, Google offered a free 5-hour online course called Power Searching with Google with the same instructor way back in 2012 (followed by the free Advanced Power Searching with Google in 2013). But before dismissing the new program as tone-deaf pandemic price gouging, check out the $0 course audit option for yourself or your kids.

The instructor for both Power Searching with Google and Advanced Power Searching With Google is Google's Daniel Russell, author of The Joy of Search, who gives students an engaging lesson in how to conduct fast and effective online research. Sure beats card catalog, and Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature searches, kids!
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Google/EdX Are Charging $298 For Their Remake of a Free 2012 How-to-Google Course More

Google/EdX Are Charging $298 For Their Remake of a Free 2012 How-to-Google Course

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  • Sure, I suppose I could google what an MOOOC is but it's a weekend and I like to be lazy

  • SEO course for users. Google is a pain... (Score:4, Informative)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Saturday October 17, 2020 @05:54PM (#60620064) Journal

    The way it works now, you need to study a whole new language. I remember the old days when it would just search for stuff that I typed in the box. Now, ad partners have top priority, not just in the "ads" section at the top. Using quotes is worthless now, all sorts of advertising gibberish shows up

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Spot on, if I had mod points you'd get one.

      It's getting harder and harder to find anything, especially if it's not the average thing people are clicking on, e.g. recently I tried to search for repair hints on an appliance and first few result pages were commercials and reviews, even with: '.... +"repair" -"review"' - still the same, this pseudo AI is pretty annoying if one has to find anything out of the box - one is always churned into an average consumer by their algorithms.

  • Where's the news? (Score:3)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Saturday October 17, 2020 @06:03PM (#60620088)

    A company is charging for a course that nobody needs to take. So?
    Just because they offered something for free 7 years ago doesn't mean they are required to keep it free forever. It's not like it's just a download you can do in your own time. They're paying the guy to teach the course.

    • It's adware. Get people to audit the course for free - in return for yet more personal info - and encourage them to use google search.

      If you're looking for I information on a topic, cut out the middleman and just try Wikipedia. You'll skip all the ads offering to sell you crap.

      Google and Facebook are finding their ad business under pressure because once you've decided what you want to buy, most people just go directly to Amazon. So since buyers won't choose to buy from based on Google or Facebook ads,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        First step in internet search.

        https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=duckduckgo&ia=web they do not need to pay $300 and it protects your privacy, clearly if they do not know that by now, they do need internet searching lessons.

    • Of course on top of that, buried at the bottom of the summary is the fact that you take the course for free:

      https://coursebuilder.withgoog... [withgoogle.com]

      What costs $268 is the certificate to prove you passed the course. Which might be interesting to some company that wants to have some employees take the course and note which ones passed.

    • It also seems like an admission that they are failing to provide useful search.

      I shouldn't need a 5 hour course to effectively use their product. Especially since they market themselves as easy to use.

  • show what an rip off that college / higher ed is!

  • Why would anyone pay anything like this for something like this ?
    • If they tell you how to avoid or remove advertiser ratings and bought positions If they tell you (Via reverse /Diff) WHO is paying to be promoted to the top If they tell you why results were censored (China, other tinpot countries) If they offer-up other search modifiers, or hint how your 'profile' has influenced the results How to disable unique hardware fingerprint and cookies when searching I have noticed Google is NOT returning results for very narrow searches, such as getting around paywalls. It is i
      • I hope you paid less than $268 to your English teacher!
        • Yes, DB2 SQL, as a contractor does depart from English. But have you ever considered COBOL sentences and paragraphs. Just wait when you get stuck into COBOL report writer language. I suppose Google got rid of the NOT clause, to stop paid keyword sponsors finding out who is their competition, OR if Google is playing games. BTW, in punched card days, everything was uppercase and greenbar on band impact printers.

  • A large percentage of the time Google ignores double quotes and the "allintext" operator. It can also get pretty ignorantly insistent on its cheesy mind-reading act by offering up what it thinks are synonyms for my search terms. And because I'm forced to do multiple repeats of a search with slightly different terms as a result of their 'more hits is better' approach, (and because I'm not logged in), I keep getting Captcha'd to death. (BTW, if you get stuck in Captcha hell while doing Google searches, just n

  • Actually they are charging for certification, the course is still free. Did you get a reasonably well authenticated certificate for the original course? I suspect not.

  • When brackets were gone, it stopped being possible to do full boolean logic.
    It even often ignores quotes nowadays.
    Let alone the ability to search for operators or punctuation.
    The fucking thing is worse than Clippy, with its condescending "I'm sure you did not mean what you freakIng TYPED, and am gonma show you someting superficially slightly different but actually completely unrelated". Especially with it WON'T LET YOU SEARCH FOR THE THING YOU ACTUALLY ENTERED ANYMORE! Where it doesn't even ask "Did you mea

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