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Google's Stomach Pangs - Adjusting to DoubleClick 98

Posted by Zonk from the hard-to-digest dept.
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on some trouble Google is having integrating DoubleClick into their family of products. External problems, like antitrust allegations and privacy concerns, are bad enough. The worst problems might come from within, though, as a division within DoubleClick was essentially created to game the very systems the Google search engine is founded on. '"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own unbiased organic search results." The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.' The article goes on to say how this Performics division is likely to be sold off to make sure everything stays above board."
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Google's Stomach Pangs - Adjusting to DoubleClick More

Google's Stomach Pangs - Adjusting to DoubleClick

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  • Sold off. Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ai Olor-Wile ( 997427 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:02PM (#18919813) Homepage

    Something says it would be more polite if Google were to close the Performics division outright and then reverse-engineer its tactics to stomp out SEO-spam companies.

    At first glance of the summary, I'd hoped that was their secret do-good motive for buying DoubleClick in the first place. Alas.

    • Re:Sold off. Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Holmwood ( 899130 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:10PM (#18919861)
      I agree, though, even better yet, keep them as a "red team" continuing to work on ways to subvert google's results, and keep on shifting tactics to stop them.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by inode_buddha ( 576844 )
        Seconded. If they were to sell them off then I would at least pick their brains for everything. How do they operate, code, money, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Chacham ( 981 )
      Something says it would be more polite if Google were to close the Performics division outright and then reverse-engineer its tactics to stomp out SEO-spam companies.

      And have someone else pick up where they left off? Sounds like a short-term goal to me.

      Instead, take the division and keep it, which is a way to control it. As in "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer." Unfortunately, there is a conflict of interest, a conflict so important it may raise the public eyebrow. That leaves the solu

      • Re:Sold off. Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by zrobotics ( 760688 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:34PM (#18919995)
        Well yes, there still is a conflict of interest, but only if they sell the services of the Performics team. They can still keep this team, using them in much the same way companies use white hat hackers-to purposely game the system, then hand the results over to Google. It's a conflict of interest if they continue to offer Doubleclick's Performics services, but it's an invaluable tool if they use it properly.
        • > It's a conflict of interest if they continue to offer Doubleclick's Performics services, but it's an invaluable tool if they use it properly.

          How? Performics' main services are affiliate marketing (like AdSense, but commission-based), and re-selling Google ads (Dart Search). Both businesses are a nice compliment to Google, and should make them a lot of money. Dart Search does let clients buy ads from MSN / Ask / Yahoo / etc., though, which could be a problem. That's the only stick bit though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Something says it would be more polite if Google were to close the Performics division outright and then reverse-engineer its tactics to stomp out SEO-spam companies.

      How about they dismantle the whole DoubleClick, and then stop showing AdWords/AdSense! That'll make them popular.
      And kill their share value.

      For a public traded company, selling Performics is hard enough, even more is to close a valuable asset without any compensation.

    • Re:Sold off. Brilliant! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Odiumjunkie ( 926074 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:20PM (#18919921) Journal
      Does anyone know just how underhanded Performics' SEO tactics are? Much as I hesitate to put faith in uncited Wikipedia 'facts', the article on Performics [wikipedia.org] claims that they are a 'Google Qualified Company', and employ 'about two dozen "Google Qualified Professionals"'.

      SEO =! underhanded tactics. Sometimes SEO can be as simple as a sane site structure and standards compliant bot-readable content. It's often lots of other spammy things, but it doesn't necesserily make sense to assume that's what's going on.

      Wouldn't it make sense for Google to run an 'Optimised for Google(tm)' optimisation service? The more sites that Google can spider properly, the more useful it is.
      • I think you have it right. While Google gets to keep their new 'red team' to help them find and stop bad practices, they can use that same team to build the OfG service. That falls well within the doctrine of organizing the world's information! Create a standard that other search organizations will then have to deal with and continue to provide the leading index of the worlds information.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zCyl ( 14362 )

        Wouldn't it make sense for Google to run an 'Optimised for Google(tm)' optimisation service? The more sites that Google can spider properly, the more useful it is.

        Not if they want to maintain an impression of impartiality in their searches, which I believe is more valuable than the fees they could collect from commercial clients looking to optimize results.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Original Replica ( 908688 )
        As far as the conflict of interest goes, if Performics just opitmized sites to be up to the second compliant with Google's bots there would be no conflict. But "gameing the system" is what sells. CEOs and shareholders alike want an "unfair" advantage, because if it's "fair" it's not really much of an advantage it's just what the web design team should have done in the first place.

        • At the moment, so many people are doing this badly, that simply doing it right is enough to gain an advantage which is so great it seems almost "unfair" - and most of the big names in SEO are now stringently advocating white-hat tactics (using good, semantic markup, providing a useful and usable service with good quality content, etc) - they know it's not worth cheating when the likely result is blacklisting.

          I know there's a lot of hatred towards old-school SEO here (and rightly so), but the new breed see

      • We are about to learn. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Erris ( 531066 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @02:26PM (#18920369) Homepage Journal

        SEO =! underhanded tactics. Sometimes SEO can be as simple as a sane site structure and standards compliant bot-readable content. It's often lots of other spammy things, but it doesn't necesserily make sense to assume that's what's going on.

        Now that Google owns them, we will learn just how slimy they were. It's in Google's best interest to expose manipulation of their business model and show how they can fight it, preferably using the very same fraudsters.

        Calling this a conflict of interest assumes first that bad things were going on and second they will continue that way. Doubleclick has a spammy reputation [wikipedia.org] already, so the first assumption may be good. The second assumption is laughable. If Google wanted to sell out they would do so directly but doing so would destroy them.

        • Now that Google owns them, we will learn just how slimy they were. It's in Google's best interest to expose manipulation of their business model and show how they can fight it, preferably using the very same fraudsters.

          I agree that it's in Google's interest to study them and learn how to fight it, but why is it in their interest to release that information publicly? If Google is going to turn it into an internal white-hat organization (which assumes that Google doesn't already have such a thing), I doubt they want to broadcast that research to their competitors or other SEOs. If they're going to sell it, releasing the information publicly undercuts the value of Performics to potential buyers.

          The real decision is how much

      • Re:Sold off. Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 644bd346996 ( 1012333 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @03:08PM (#18920679)

        Wouldn't it make sense for Google to run an 'Optimised for Google(tm)' optimisation service? The more sites that Google can spider properly, the more useful it is.
        No. If anything, Google could publish a set of guidelines for web designers. They could then use their clout to declare flash-based websites profane, standards compliance a necessity, and in general promote common sense design principles. It would work, too. No company would want to know that their google ranking was hurt by the fact that they weren't w3c compliant. Google wouldn't even have to tweak the algorithms in order to make it work.

        Google just can't afford to give anybody a privileged place in the rankings. Doing so would make them no better than AOL and Yahoo. If a company wants more exposure through Google, their only option should be advertising.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by v.dog ( 1093949 )

          No. If anything, Google could publish a set of guidelines for web designers. They could then use their clout to declare flash-based websites profane, standards compliance a necessity, and in general promote common sense design principles. It would work, too. No company would want to know that their google ranking was hurt by the fact that they weren't w3c compliant. Google wouldn't even have to tweak the algorithms in order to make it work.

          I don't know why they haven't done that already. Ranking sites that are MSIE only (ie: those that use embraced and extended markup, or are hacked specifically for IE compatibility) lower, they'll essentially bitch slap Microsoft, and drive users away form their products.

        • Yeah, jeez, why doesn't Google publish a set of guidelines for web designers?

          http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answe r.py?answer=35769 [google.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by markhb ( 11721 )

          If anything, Google could publish a set of guidelines for web designers. They could then use their clout to declare flash-based websites profane, standards compliance a necessity, and in general promote common sense design principles. It would work, too.

          No, it wouldn't, because the masses of people who use Google have no objection to Flash and could care less about W3C standards. OTOH, if movie websites (which are primarily Flash-based in my experience) were to stop showing up in Google searches, the same

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rm69990 ( 885744 )
        Exactly. Doubleclick's SEO/SEM arm is a small fraction of the total company. Google could forgo the profits from it and turn it into exactly what you said (possibly even integrating it into webmaster tools and giving it away) without harming the objectivity of their results one bit. The second Doubleclick/Performics, after the aquisition is completed, starts encouraging people to SPAM Google's index, then there's a problem.
    • > Something says it would be more polite if Google were to close the Performics division outright and then reverse-engineer its tactics to stomp out SEO-spam companies.

      The media is totally blowing this out of proportion. NSO (natural search optimization) is a very very small part of Performics. And even then, they're not doing anything evil. They are doing really simple things like telling people to use text instead of images of text, etc. It's really trivial, and there are maybe 3 employees (out of

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rm69990 ( 885744 )
      I somehow don't see spending $3.1 Billion for a huge company like Doubleclick just to get a small portion of said company is very wise (or a plausible explanation of the aquisition either) when Google could have simply snapped up an independant SEO/SEM firm for a fraction of the cost. So, from my point of view and using common sense, Google didn't buy Doubleclick for this reason. Sorry to burst your bubble.

  • Google is all about your data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simon (S2) ( 600188 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:12PM (#18919875) Homepage
    Google is all about tracking you. Your mails, your locations, your searches, all sites you visit, the books you read, the videos you like, the things you buy, just everything. I think google bought DoubleClick only because they have 1x1 gifs and banners on a very lot of sites. Google can tracks the pages we vist with urchin (yes, google knows you are on slashot right now), but can now track our web behaviour with all doubleclick backlinks as well. I think all google wants is know *everything* about us (or at least as much as possible), and that is why they have free mail, free maps, free everything. The data google has about us is a lot more valuable than 20$ a month for maps or a mail service, and that is the only reason they bought doubleclick. At least IMHO.
    • I know it sounds a bit paranoid but I agree with you. I think Google wants to be the mother of all data sites. After all such knowledge of that many people is worth HUGE amounts of money to companies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rm69990 ( 885744 )
      Thanks captain obvious, I had no idea Google was a data-mining company that wants all of our data. All this time I thought they gave these things away to "not be evil". (Sarcastic btw).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sgtrock ( 191182 )
      Not me. My browser is Firefox, and one of the extensions that I always install is Adblock. Guess which vendor's images are blocked? :)
  • So Google has gone out & captured some seo/ad spammers ? I reckon Matt Cutts [mattcutts.com], their chief anti spam dude is preparing the "interview room". Google will extract their secrets & end up a cycle or 2 ahead in the SEO War.

    Of course doing this will take some of the value out of their acquisition, an option mentioned in the article is selling off Performics, that would be shirking their responsibility. Much better to make it a honest, neutral but quality service. That might win the SEO War.

  • How much can you trust google? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by knivesx11 ( 1085179 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:19PM (#18919901)
    Ever since Googles dealings in China I think we can all agree that there "do no evil" mantra is ruined completely. The have proven once that they are will to do anything for both profits and relevance. I'm not saying that I'm against a company making large profits but at some point someone within such a large organization must have ethics. I have a feeling Google is about to cast a dark shadow on many people privacy concerns and it wont be to pretty.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to know where that mistrust comes from - I'm guessing it's natural cynicism, because there's no basis for it on previous form. Let's not forget that Microsoft and Yahoo openly give up people's data to the US, Chinese and presumably other authorities, whereas Google has fought tooth and nail any time anyone (read: the US government) has tried to get private data from them. Can we also please remember that they don't actively participate in censorship; Google China merely indexes the web that is av

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )
        Now does that mean google wants to protect your privacy or are they just unwilling to give that information away for 'free'. Your data is their product to sell, giving it away does not fatten the bottom line. Whether a private company or a government departments wants it, just like all other 'products' being sold to private or public, it has to be paid for, whether that product is peanuts or your privacy.

        As for censoring freedom and democracy, no matter how hard the googlites try to sell it, it still suck

    • Yes, one can of course speculate in their future, but I'll always find it hard to blame a company on collecting that if their users willingly provide it, such as by using their personalized search engine services, mail services, feed readers, etc, and obviously they're collecting data on search words as well, like any other search engine maintainer.

      I think being evil by obeying Chinese laws can also be disputed. Personally, my worries would still be greater if MSN / AOL / Yahoo Search would somehow grow mor
      • I think being evil by obeying Chinese laws can also be disputed.
        Given their record on human rights, Google gets the rap for "not doing evil" yet they are by assisting in a government that considers human rights an afterthought.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rm69990 ( 885744 )
      Don't be too upset. I know you must be embarrassed that it took you 9 years (how old Google is) to figure out that "Don't be evil" was marketing speak and that Google's #1 concern is profits, not whether a bunch of nerds on Slashdot see them as evil or not. There is a reason their unofficial company motto was made so incredibly vague and subjective in the first place.
  • From TFA: ... Reliable search results are the core of Google's franchise. ...

    Always thought that one sells (the) an image these days.

    CC.

  • Google is already too "SEO-friendly" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @01:55PM (#18920123) Homepage

    Some time in the last two years, Google started becoming much more "SEO friendly". There are meetings at Google for SEO types. Google sponsors "Search Engine Marketing" conferences. [searchengi...tegies.com] It's getting a bit embarassing.

    Google has to keep growing to justify their P/E ratio of 47 and keep their stockholders happy. That's hard to do when they already have most of their primary market. It's common to see dumb merger and acquisition activity in that situation. Search with occasional ads was a terrific business - doesn't take many employees, moderate operating costs, almost no cost of goods, good margins. The things Google has gone into since search (mail, video, office apps, etc.) don't have those properties, and are less profitable than search, if not outright money drains.

    • >>Google has to keep growing to justify their P/E ratio of 47 and keep their stockholders happy

      Google has no such duty. The stockholders are preferred stock. They can either wait for the dividend or dump it. No other option/rights to they have, except to be paid before commonstock holders when google is wound up.
      Google was smart and forward thinking. 5 years from now when its shareholders clamor for board change due to bad losses, google's board can show the finger to them as they can't even sue to ge
  • is it me or the article repeats itself? as if it was pasted twice by someone in a hurry

    • It doesn't repeat itself so much as it gets extremely off-topic mid-article and then tries to bring things home again at the end. Race relations and Crazy Horse Malt Liquor have absolutely nothing to do with the original thesis.

    • hahaha omg i thought i was just high or something
  • Wild speculation without any actual facts to base it on... ...yep, it's a Zonk post.

    Chris mattern

  • Story has been copied, and badly. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday April 29, 2007 @02:08PM (#18920201) Homepage
    Compare The New York Times version of this story [nytimes.com] with the CNet version of this story. [com.com] They're quite different.

    The CNet version looks like it was picked up by a runaway screen scraper, which sucked up two following articles. Then some paragraphs were duplicated. Lame.

  • Everybody knows to put *doubleclick* in every blacklist/adblock list. Now that Google has bought them, the public might wake up to the fact that they are in the same business. True, Google, provides a pretty good search engine, email service, and whatever. But the bottom line is profiling for the purpose of advertising.

    Google's adsense is a major cash cow for web spammers. Although Google purports to clamp down on the worst offenders, they are in conflict of interest because they profit directly from

    • Everybody knows to put *doubleclick* in every blacklist/adblock list.

      Because they are annoying and intrusive. Google's text ads don't bother me at all, but it seems they are considering flash/video ads.

      Ever since the <blink> tag, I'm annoyed by any ad on the page that moves. If you can deliver your message with some text, or even a static image, I don't mind -- I can automatically skip over it without too much irritation, or I might even catch something interesting. But as soon as it animates, it fo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rm69990 ( 885744 )
      Everybody knows to do this? How many non-technical people do you know exactly? I say this for 2 reasons:

      1) I have yet to meet a non-geek that has an adblocker installed (excluding the few people who's computer I set up for them)

      2) Unless Doubleclick has magic money-growing trees, clearly not everybody knows to block them, considering they are still raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
    • Why is it a troll to point out that Doubleclick has an image problem that might hurt Google?
  • Didn't they know to wait three hours after eating to go into the water? They should do like a snake, and sleep it off for a couple of weeks and then puke up the indigestible matter, like the bones, and fur...Then the papers can discuss that.

    Google searches have been overwhelmed by advertising for a long time. I can find hardly anything that's not part of a product for sale somewhere. It only follows I suppose. Look what marketing has done to Christmas. The season is three months long now, not including "Chr
  • 'The article goes on to say how this Performics division is likely to be sold off to make sure everything stays above board.'

    Duh. What is the story here? If Google keeps Performics or adapts their search engine to increase its effectiveness (unlikely since they could have biased search results at any time) that would be news. That Google aquired a company with a division that increases search rankings and recognizes that as a conflict isn't really news at all.

  • Google was put into that position the minute they decided to buy DoubleClick. Before Google was a Big Deal, I had it set as my home page and it was my home page for almost a decade. I changed my browser home page the day I heard about the doubleclick deal. Google is on the inevitable path now that ends in a bad place. The way business works - especially a publicly traded business - they will have no choice but to adopt the evil ways of doubleclick. Shareholders will demand it.

    I know they haven't done a
    • No chance that the 'evil' flashing banner ads are going to be replaced with subdued Google ads, then? I occasionally have to use the web from a computer other than the ones I've put filters on, and those things just piss me right off. I like this deal, because the acquirer is less irritating than the soon to be adjusted acquiree. Kinda like how spreading out across the Wild West didn't cause New York and Boston to grow tumbleweeds and shootouts.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The shareholders of Google include the CEO and his friends who hold the "Class B" stock which has ten votes per share, versus the one-vote-per-share "Class A" stock that everyone else has.

      Currently, the total votes of the "Class B" shares heavily outweigh the "Class A" share votes. Google can, for the most part, do whatever they feel like and be perfectly content. You'd almost think they thought of that before the IPO.
  • The Google motto should have been "Do no evil", not "Don't be evil".

    It is entirely possible to do evil without being evil.
  • And they bought out double click for the sole reason of closing that department. They might get away with it if they can convince their shareholders that the existence of that company is bad for their main revenue source.

    • If i were a shareholder, i would expect google to finetune the division and make it a sort of privileged customer banking.

      Lets see how google reacts.
      Following are the options available:
      1. If it wants to not become another faceless-souless corporation, it will shut down the division. This will make it lose money, thus inviting probable lawsuits from shareholders.
      Since the shareholders are not common stock, their suit will not have merit and is likely to be dismissed.
      2. It continues with the division, albeit

  • The article author ignores (or is unaware) that Performics is not just SEO. A large part of Performics is the affiliate marketing side, which has nothing to do with SEO. There are actually several other areas they work on as well.

    How well vetted was this story?

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