Google Abused Its Power By Quashing a Report Critical Of Its Service, Reporter Says (gizmodo.com) 279
In the wake of claims that Google got a think-tank research team sacked for criticizing the company, a respected journalist is alleging other abuses by the search giant. Kashmir Hill, a reporter at Gizmodo, is claiming that when she worked for Forbes six years ago, Google told the the magazine's staff that if publishers didn't add the "+" Google Plus social network button at the bottom of stories, those articles would come up lower in search results. From her report: I published a story headlined, "Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers," that included bits of conversation from the meeting. (An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can still be found here.) Google promptly flipped out. This was in 2011, around the same time that a congressional antitrust committee was looking into whether the company was abusing its powers. Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn't been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.) It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News. [...] Given that I'd gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately, though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down -- a decision I will always regret. Forbes declined comment about this. But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all. As I recall it -- and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory -- a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google's crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.
Probably true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Power is most easily apparent when it's being abused.
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"Do the right thing" (for Google).
Re:Kafka said, you Become what you hate. (Score:5, Funny)
It has always been "Don't, be evil".
Re:Kafka said, you Become what you hate. (Score:4, Funny)
It's well known that Marissa Mayer came up with the slogan "Don't Be Evil".
When she left Google, she unfortunately only took the "Don't" with her. So Google was left with "Be Evil"; while "Don't" neatly summarizes her tenure at Yahoo.
Re:Kafka said, you Become what you hate. (Score:5, Informative)
The amended version, after their plant on the apple board stole the iphone idea
Another person clueless about history,
IBM did the first smartphone (touch screen phone with applications) in 1992, the 'multitouch' features of the iPhone were from the acquisition of FingerWorks in 2005 - a company that a variety of phone companies had been interested in.
The LG Prada had been released the year before to wide applause by industrial designers for its capacitive touch screen.
Samsung and Nokia both had touch screen smart phones, but were worried about cost, so hadn't released them yet, because they didn't think people would pay 'that much' for a phone.
So the 'iPhone idea' wasn't Apples idea at all and being on Apples board almost certainly didn't impact androids development. Apple simply provided the most refined version of the smartphone idea, one that was being simultaneously pursued by all major phone companies.
http://mashable.com/2012/11/09... [mashable.com]
Re:Kafka said, you Become what you hate. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're correct that all the technology was already in place - but I'm pretty sure I remember reading that Google basically scrapped their existing Android interface and redesigned it from scratch after the iPhone came out.
Apple has never been anything close to a technological innovator, but it's dishonest not to give them credit for producing streamlined user-friendly interfaces that become the standard against which all others are measured. They never do anything new, but they do do user interfaces *right* - at least for the non-techy masses. And even as a techy that avoids Apple products, I appreciate the influence they've had on more capable interfaces.
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Well, there's this - showing a 2007 Android phone's interface versus that of a post-iPhone Android G1:
https://www.technobuffalo.com/... [technobuffalo.com]
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Well, there's this - showing a 2007 Android phone's interface versus that of a post-iPhone Android G1:
You simply can't give Apple all the credit. As much as I hate to admit it (I can't abide their hardware) you have to hand it to LG as well, if not moreso.
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Well, there's this - showing a 2007 Android phone's interface versus that of a post-iPhone Android G1:
https://www.technobuffalo.com/... [technobuffalo.com]
That post-iPhone photo reminds me a lot more of other then existing PDAs than the iPhone, especially looking at the row of buttons at the bottom.
Then again, the corners are more rounded, so maybe there is something to this copying idea ...
Re: Kafka said, you Become what you hate. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why was it a reasonable presumption that the meeting was confidential? Did they say in the meeting that the content of the meeting would be confidential? Did Google ask Forbes to sign an NDA that purported to prevent either party from disclosing the illegal activities of the other party? (It's illegal to abuse your market position in one area to gain an advantage in another market.)
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Did they say in the meeting that the content of the meeting would be confidential?
According to Google, yes, they did. The journalist's defense is that she didn't personally sign the NDA.
Is the NDA real? (Score:2)
In the article [gizmodo.com] she mentions that a Google spokesperson said that there was a NDA for the meeting... but nobody else seems to have heard anything about it. You'd think that if there really was a NDA, somebody other than an anonymous "google spokesperson" would know about it. (In the article, she refers to it as "the claim that the meeting was covered by a non-disclosure agreement." The wording is interesting here: if she had any good evidence tha
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Can you quote someone from Google claiming that a valid NDA covered that meeting? More particularly, can you actually answer the question I asked by pointing to language in the NDA that purports to silence Forbes (or its employees) if they chose to report on Google's attempted abuse of market position and attempted restraint of trade?
Also, the journalist's defense is actually that nobody told her there was an NDA until it became convenient for Google to claim there was one. You are being quite sloppy in y
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Why would any meeting with a marketing department reasonably be assumed to be confidential?
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Also, Google shouldn't penalize site's search results for not putting "+1" on their site. That alone is a huge abuse of their power, whether they kept it secret or not.
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The difference is that the Left says, "surrender to us and we will provide". And the never provide.
The Right says, "here is a tool called capitalism. Employ it and you can succeed." And it usually does.
Re:Probably true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now all the search giants are bad guys. They have the power to both effectively promote and silence, and not a single one of them can resist.
Re:Probably true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google really was a good company in the beginning. That changed when they became a major multinational corporation.
Re:Probably true. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same people running the corporation now as it was then.
No, it isn't. Google became a public company, so the people running it now are the board of directors. Most of those people haven't been on the board for more than 5 years.
Re:Probably true. (Score:5, Informative)
That board of directors doesn't have controlling stakes and don't have voting stake. Neither do the shareholders. Larry Page and Sergey Brin hold 56% and super voting stock. In other words, everything that's happening is happening because of them.
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It's really not that simple at all. What you say would be more true if it were a private company, but it's not and so different rules apply. Brin and Page absolutely have more power than anyone else, but they don't have absolute power. Even taking into account their stock holdings, the board still has more authority than they do. Exerting that authority against B&Ps wishes would cause a great deal of turmoil, but things like that have happened before in public companies situated similarly.
It's a questio
Google? Or some middle manager? (Score:3)
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Yes and no. They didn't suddenly become different people but their behavior and outlook changes. All people are basically selfish and abusive underneath the hood the only thing that changes is circumstances and perspective.
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"All people are basically selfish and abusive underneath the hood the only thing that changes is circumstances and perspective."
This is true to an extent, but just look at all of the selfless people reaching out to help others in the wake of hurricane Harvey. People who actually adhere to Christian teachings believe their highest command is to love others as they love themselves. That creates some very clear guidelines for fairness and charity. They also believe that there will be an accounting after
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Unless they are women, homosexuals, Satanists, peoples of conflicting denominations, etc. It's actually fascinating watching this at work. Of course the "actually adhere to Christian teachings" part is the automatic out to point at any Christians doing something you disagree with or looks bad and suggest they aren't "real Christians." This is a key part of how you not only dodge their
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People who actually adhere to Christian teachings believe their highest command is to love others as they love themselves.
Unless they are women, homosexuals, Satanists, peoples of conflicting denominations, etc.
For some reason, the purported "Christians" who are intolerant get a lot of press. (The Westboro Baptist Church, for example-- a church which isn't even affiliated with the Baptist alliance; they just call themselves Baptist-- has 40 members. That's it: 40. But it has had literally hundreds of thousands of news stories.)
But this is not all Christians, however. I remember back in the day when some churches were putting up big billboards with "God says this, God says that", the church near my house put up
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>, and not a single one of them can resist.
It's like certain journalists from the SF bay area: leftie critic of power one day, typing up hit lists of heretics for Der Stürmer the other.
Bing and Tor (Score:3)
I am very glad that Bing has become so very friendly to Tor in the guise of Duck Duck Go.
Many searches that I test between Bing and Duck Duck Go are identical, and Bing is listed as a search provider for Duck Duck Go. I do not know if Microsoft is an investor in Duck Duck Go, but it would not surprise me.
Many harsh things could and have been said about Microsoft, but at this point they are the champions of anonymous search, and a far better corporate citizen in this regard than Google.
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Duck Duck Go adds a bunch of functionality I like to the search bar, even if the search is itself is still mostly Bing. Plus it hides your search history in general.
Mostly, though DDG "bang codes" are handy. I frequently use "!wa" to send my search to Wolfram Online - best calculator ever.
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yes it might be true but context is everything...
I'll forgive google as I have experience with other software companies
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Well, the content they were quashing was stuff they supposedly released under an NDA. Still, upranking sites that have your +1 button is still pretty shameful.
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According to Google. The reporter says otherwise. Personally, I think that means I don't know if there was a NDA covering the exchange or not.
If I had to choose a "yes/no" answer to that question, the only basis to make the judgment is who is more credible -- and given Google's recent history, that would have to be the reporter.
Re:Probably true. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I propose "red herring" be the term of the day. I used it in a previous story already.
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If I hacked someone to steal financial data for fun and profit that should have different consequences than hacking someone to obtain information for the general good such as revealing corruption in politics or an undercover genocide. If I reveal that your bank is ripping you off, you should consider the content of what I revealed independent of whether I was going for a joyride in bank data and selling it for a profit when I turned up the information that told you this. The bank doesn't suddenly become mor
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The NDA is a separate issue. I agree that in terms of the meat of the story, it doesn't matter.
Where it does matter, though, is if Google really was pulling the NDA card, that strongly implies that the gist of what the reported said is true.
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Was it really malicious though? Everyone knows that Google promotes things your friends have hit +1 on in search results, so naturally putting a handy +1 button on the site will encourage them to do that.
It sounds like a misunderstanding. Can't be sure, need further confirmation.
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It is probably more of side effect than a direct effect. They same would likely be true of any social media link back you put on the site.
Google's very basic ranking algorithm is the more sites that link to yours, and the better those sources are, the higher your page ranks. Given that, I could also say that if you put my button on your site that all it does is register the page in a database and outputs some blurb on a page on my site that links back to the page you clicked AND google crawls my page, the
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Enjoy seeing only what Google allows you to see and never anything else. You didn't really want to decide for yourself anyway.
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My experience is also the ones you yell the loudest are often the ones who have the least to say.
I am not denying that Google didn't abuse its power. But often we get a lot people who say how big old Google has thwarted them because their ranking isn't as high as they think it should be. And may be lowered because their post probably falls under a Ranting filter vs more formal content.
Just like a few years ago where Google infamously flagged a picture of an African American as a guerrilla (where the pic
Seems like Google wants the right to be forgotten. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh the irony.
Monopolies are bad (Score:2)
Same...Barry Lynn (The Washington Post) got fired) (Score:3, Informative)
" I Criticized Google. It Got Me Fired. That's Corporate Power" Barry Lynn.. here is the story
http://m.ndtv.com/opinion/i-criticized-google-it-got-me-fired-thats-corporate-power-1744793
Interesting (Score:2)
As a disclaimer, I happen to think that Google is no different than most other multinational corporations -- that is, they are as evil as it is profitable to be.
But so many of the criticisms I read of Google seem to be oblique -- that is, instances of Google playing hardball, but with little indication of actual malice or illegal behavior.
This story is very different from that. This behavior is indefensible and unambiguously abuse of monopoly.
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I agree with this sentiment and it applies to all large corporations, multi-national or not. That is why we should never consider "trust" or "ethics" with regard to large entities (including governments) and just assume any and all position and power they have can and will be abused. All decisions with regard to regulations and legal powers should
Facts or didn't happen (Score:3, Insightful)
While everyone is up in arms about Google being evil I am a little on the wary side of this. Not because the story is untrue, but rather the implication that only Google is involved with attempting to influence rankings for search results. Everyone has been looking at gaming the system, companies regularly hired people to do just this. I admit that this is blatant but it is not like only Forbes could put the Google button on their page. They appeared to do it with anyone that was willing to participate.
The other issue I have with this piece is that from a story she did 6 years ago, did they change during this time or is still true? In this case I would like to see a little less complaining and a few more facts about the current state of the problem rather than a rehash of an old article.
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the implication that only Google is involved with attempting to influence rankings for search results.
Where is that implied?
There's no such implication that I can see. However, Google manipulating search rankings to its benefit is a worse thing than anyone else doing it, since it's Google who creates the search rankings.
Re:Facts or didn't happen (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean Google, explains how it adjusts it search rankings based upon what is the on the page. I don't get it, people seem to think Google is a public utility that it needs to treat everyone and everything equally. They are in the business to make money too. Google, is working with Forbes, to sell Ads and they stated that the Google button increases the rankings of those pages.
It is not like Google hasn't integrated or adjusted their search results to promote other web sites. A great example is Wikipedia, if I ask a question like P-38 lightning what is [google.com] that Wikipedia is not only at the top of the search results, but they have a special summary box at the top of the page and another box to the right. Another example is if you are looking for an actor/actress they not only pop-up their Wiki information but their profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Myspace. Google has never been perfectly objective or fair.
We live in the age of caveat emptor . People need to be aware of what they are looking at and maybe do a little more work instead of complaining that Google isn't perfect and is not treating everything fairly.
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You mean Google, explains how it adjusts it search rankings based upon what is the on the page.
No, I mean Google dropping critical articles down the memory hole.
Re:Facts or didn't happen (Score:5, Insightful)
While everyone is up in arms about Google being evil I am a little on the wary side of this.
Not because the story is untrue, but rather the implication that only Google is involved with attempting to influence rankings for search results. Everyone has been looking at gaming the system,
Surprise... every last solitary time a specific action of a specific company is being criticized you will always find a fan stepping up to cry foul by means of asserting everyone is picking on their favorite company. Your all ignoring X, Y and Z who are essentially "doing it too" as if such information is somehow relevant to the topic at hand.
First your factually incorrect. Nobody else gets to "do it too". They can only game algorithms. Nobody except Google has the power to directly alter results. If Google changed their index the hard way by following the same rules applied to EVERYONE except Google that would be a different matter. This isn't what was being alleged here.
Second you seem to be quite focused on a narrow and questionable assertion of search engine manipulation when real issue is Google leveraging it's monopoly position to force the press to quash stories of Google leveraging it's monopoly position.
Is an action any less defensible because more people do it? Hey officer why yes I was speeding but I shouldn't get ticketed because the guy in front of me was going even faster.
Yes judge I stole a million dollars when I hijacked that armored car bbuutt someone else did the same thing a week ago and they didn't get caught so I shouldn't have to go to jail either.
This particular line of thought crops up quite often. Unfortunately no matter how often and passionately repeated is still completely nonsensical.
The NDA probably didn't exist [Re:Facts or did...] (Score:2)
There is at least one part of her claims that is factually untrue.
This would be interesting if it were true. But apparently you can't read, since you assert facts that aren't in the article.
Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. (I had signed no such agreement, hadn't been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.)
I know for a fact Forbes has an employee handbook, a legal contract, that must be agreed to and signed in front of an HR representative before your employment start-date is even chosen. That contract explicitly states an employee is also agreeing to uphold all other Forbes contracts and agreements. So she did sign such an agreement (or optionally is lying about ever working at Forbes, but the former seems much more likely)
No. First, you haven't given me the text of the agreement you "know for a fact" she signed. Second, the statement we're talking about is about the purported NDA, which you haven't shown even exists.
Additionally, when she states she "hadn't been told the meeting was confidential", that may have been true while she was speaking to Google PR, but isn't true in the long run. She even admits it:
I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down
Right there she was informed by her boss of the internal Google agreement.
This is the part where you are showing that you are unable to read or comprehend English. This statement is very interesting: the boss does not mention a NDA (!)
This is actually the stro
"Don't be evil" (Score:2)
Fishy (Score:3)
Why wait 6 years to come out with this stuff?
Got an axe to grind with Google?
While the story doesn't seem very far fetched, the delay is highly suspect.
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Who cares about suspicious timing.
Anyone with half a brain should definitely be suspicious. Why wait? And more importantly, why now? What's the motivation for coming out with this stuff NOW, instead of 6 years ago when it actually happened? Motivation is everything. And in this case, it's very suspect because of the lengthy amount of time that's elapsed.
Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
ANY organization becomes more evil, (from the standpoint of the average citizen), when it becomes bigger and/or more powerful. That 'and/or' qualifier I put there was intentional. Mozilla didn't have the kind of power that Google has, but after they reached a certain size their own internal power struggles, empire-building tendencies, and sheer hubris led to ignoring their users' needs and desires. As for Google, they are both very big and very powerful. "Might makes right" became a cliché for a very good reason, and Google is a fine example of this.
I've long argued that laissez-faire ought to apply to small businesses, with a sliding scale of progressively more government interference as a company gets larger. The catch-22 here is that government will become bigger and more powerful as a result, with the same consequences. So what we really need is an educated, thoughtful, politically engaged populace. But governments and corporations have that covered: schooling that teaches knee-jerk obedience to authority and frowns upon truly critical thinking, combined with bread and circuses and copious advertising, ensure that most people will take what they're given and do as they're told, even as they imagine themselves to be rebels.
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"Might makes right"
I never liked that phrase because of its obvious untruth -- might gets you your way, might makes victory, but being victorious and getting your way does not imply that you're right.
I prefer the redefinition of the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
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"Might makes right"
I never liked that phrase because of its obvious untruth -- might gets you your way, might makes victory, but being victorious and getting your way does not imply that you're right.
Actually, I considered exactly that point as I was writing the comment. Then it occurred to me that I had misunderstood the saying all along - that maybe it meant 'right' in the legal sense, (i.e. 'rights'), rather than in the moral and philosophical sense.
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No, but I was making a distinction between "right" and "making the rules".
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> what we really need is an educated, thoughtful, politically engaged populace
In other words, we're doomed.
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... States should get more power. That can be accomplished for instance by abolishing the federal income tax. Have states collect it all in the exact same amount that's currently being collected by the Fed + States. Then have States share the money with the Fed government. An individual has very little power to affect taxes and budget spending. 50 States would have a lot more leverage.
Why stop there? Why not take it down to the regional level, or even municipal? If I recall my history correctly, city-states have some significant advantages when it comes to individual autonomy.
Reason is simple, Google Plus is struggling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google told the the magazine's staff that if publishers didn't add the "+" Google Plus social network button at the bottom of stories, those articles would come up lower in search results.
They had to somehow "push" Google Plus down our throats. I would give some advice to Google if they want some traction.
Improve its interface. Have consumers continue to consume video content on the screen even while scrolling and consuming other material.
In other words, borrow a leaf from Facebook. They seem to be doing pretty well. Emulate the successful.
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Have consumers continue to consume video content on the screen even while scrolling and consuming other material... In other words, borrow a leaf from Facebook.
Ugh, please not that leaf. Especially not on mobile. Well, allowing video to keep playing (and stay visible) is fine (the new Oreo PiP mode might be great), but please, please do not autoplay video.
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They were feeling competition from Facebook because Facebook could tell advertisers about age and gender. Now Google can too.
Seems unlikely. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hear me out because i'm trying to be objective about this.
Google has +1 buttons on a fuckload of pages and it indexes them all. The question is, how much additional computational power would it require to identify the few pages that are not fond of Google? Given all that power used, how much money would they be paying just to suppress a negative articles?
I don't know the numbers but it seems to me that it would be rather costly to correctly identify which pages to avoid putting a +1 button on. I get the creeping feeling it's more likely that they left an html tag open or something which resulted in eating the button and thus not being displayed.
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That not how it would work. You don't find pages not using the +1 button and punish them specifically. Instead, you reward the pages that do use the +1 button.
The end result is exactly the same, but the latter is easier to implement.
Re: Seems unlikely. (Score:2)
Google has for a long time been able to de-index web pages on request, and apparently they are able to also de-index pages with similar content. They do that for legal reasons and because they think some pages are trying to game their search results. It's not far-fetched to think they might de-index pages for other reasons as well.
and in the news yesterday... (Score:2)
Google Critic Ousted From Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant [nytimes.com] and New Think Tank Emails show "How Google Wields its Power" in Washington [theintercept.com]
Quashing reports, manipulating search results, and throwing its weight around seem par for the course for Google. After all, they want some return on their investment in politicians, the media, and intellectuals.
1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
Orwell's 1984. If there were ever a more prescient book I can't identify it.
1984 should be required reading for our children. But soon, just like "Gone With the Wind", "1984" will be more and more banned in the public sphere.
Thought, initially not banned by your government, but by the Wizards of Silicon Valley. The ones who hide behind a digital curtain, leading you down a yellow brick road, and adorning you with stories of how you too can have a heart.
But as the curtain of "Do No Evil" devolves into "We Tell You What is Evil" even the most dense among us realize they live in chains.
Chains not denoted by iron and steel, but by plastic, silicon, and lithium.
It is incumbent upon good women and men, who believe in freedom of thought, to take a stand. For if they don't children who never read 1984 will live in 1984.
Dogs Bites Man (Score:2)
Not News: Big, powerful corporation uses influence to remove criticism from its records.
News: Google re-adopts the motto "Don't Be Evil" and lives by it.
Time for a new slogan (Score:3)
Net neutrality will protect our freedom of express (Score:2)
Not
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Re:fuck google with a big rubber dick (Score:4, Insightful)
anyone still using the internet in 2017 is willfully giving their data directly to the NSA
Fixed that for you.
Re:Google needs to be regulated (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easy and painless to do without Google's search. I was skeptical that this was true myself, but I switched away (to DDG) and have found that my search results have actually improved.
Yes, my results have more "false positives" than Google, but the hits tend to much closer to what I was searching for than with Google.
My theory is that it's because Google's "personalization" absolutely ruins the quality of search results. At least, it seems that way, since Google's results started declining in quality when they started doing that, and have been getting worse every year.
Firefox Focus... (Score:2)
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I switched to DDG and it sucked (Score:2)
Most of my search results were lacking in relevance vs what I could find in Google. Sure I could probably refine them but its not 1999 and Google as much as I hate them and think they are not good for the internet does give me the results that I need up the top of the search listing.
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I'm fascinated that so many people find DDG to be inferior. For me, it's night and day, with DDG putting Google to shame.
This just makes me suspect the personalization even more. Perhaps there's just something about me that makes Google's algorithms completely fail.
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I dunno. By my reading, A and B are saying precisely the same thing.
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I dunno. By my reading, A and B are saying precisely the same thing.
If you squint hard enough. The main difference is that B claims that not adding the buttons will hurt traffic, but the correct interpretation of A is that adding the buttons might help or hurt traffic, and that the effect of not adding them when everyone else does is unpredictable.
Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content. Without the buttons, the only signal you have is whether or not users click the link to go to the page based on the title and snippet. That'
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Yes, I agree with most of this. I have a little quibble, though...
If there's a +1 button on the bottom of the page, then you're getting a real content quality signal. Not everyone who likes the content will click, but no one who hates it will click.
If the goal is to find the highest quality content, the +1 button seems dubious. It's not measuring quality, it's measuring popularity. And it's a poor measure of popularity at that because of the heavy selection bias involved (most people aren't going to click it no matter how they feel about it.)
In other words, it's not really telling you much more than tracking who clicks on what links tells you. That this stuff figures so much in search r
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Yes, I agree with most of this. I have a little quibble, though...
If there's a +1 button on the bottom of the page, then you're getting a real content quality signal. Not everyone who likes the content will click, but no one who hates it will click.
If the goal is to find the highest quality content, the +1 button seems dubious. It's not measuring quality, it's measuring popularity. And it's a poor measure of popularity at that because of the heavy selection bias involved (most people aren't going to click it no matter how they feel about it.)
I'd say it's actually less biased towards measuring popularity than it is toward measuring agreement. Neither of those is exactly what you want, but it's still additional data about users' opinions of the articles. And it actually does contain an implicit measure of relevance and utility (which are the primary qualities sought): Most people who find it irrelevant or useless won't even get to the bottom, and so will never see the +1 button.
In other words, it's not really telling you much more than tracking who clicks on what links tells you.
This is wrong. It's an entirely separate decision based on entirely d
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Your assessment is anecdotal and subjective.
Absolutely true. I have no data beyond my own experience. (And truthfully, my own experience is the only thing that matters to me on this count.) But I do know, even if I'm in the minority, that I'm not the only one who has noticed this.
It irritates me because I remember when it wasn't true and I long for a search engine that is as good as Google's used to be. But, as near as I can tell, it doesn't exist.
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Well, that concept has legs. Let's try some more of this.
"Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content: if you don't spend half an hour giving them detailed feedback on the pages you visit, they can't uprank the best content; it is therefore perfectly legitimate to give you the choice of either complying or doxxing you and releasing your porn browsing habits."
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Well, that concept has legs. Let's try some more of this.
"Look at this from the perspective of a search engine trying to uprank the best content: if you don't spend half an hour giving them detailed feedback on the pages you visit, they can't uprank the best content; it is therefore perfectly legitimate to give you the choice of either complying or doxxing you and releasing your porn browsing habits."
Those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean.
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Not at all.
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Can you explain how A does not imply B? It seems to me that if pages are upranked based on Google+ likes then pages without Google+ buttons would obviously get their rankings lowered.
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(A) implies something like that going into a hospital puts you in an environment where there are sick people, and so you might get sick. It's just what happens because you're breathing in air that they're trying to keep sterile because people are filling it with virulent pathogens.
(B) implies something like that the hospital despots are twirling their moustaches as they watch you sit in the waiting room, slowly leaning closer to the monitor. The smell of insurance money. They push the big red button, an
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It's like saying that if you insure your restaurant with Big Vinnie Protection & Security Inc it's less likely to burn down.
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In related news, Google abuses it's power in advertising [pjmedia.com]. And Google abuses it's power in video [dailycaller.com]. And Google bullies a leftist think tank [thefederalist.com].
Read the links now, while you still can. If you have Google Fiber, maybe read them on your phone. (Of course you can't read one of the articles in question -- Google made sure of that.)
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The other interesting part is the article being in Google's search until it was taken down. Then, suspiciously, it disappeared from Google's cache very quickly.
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A) Google to web site person: "By putting these +1 buttons on articles, we get to know what articles are liked better so the search algorithms work better".
B) Web site person to Google: "Surprise! I'm a journalist. Here's my headline: 'Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers' ".
The first is a natural consequence of how computers work. They are stupid and need data to help them.
The second is an accusation of abuse of power. These are not the same things. The first is true, the second is a twisting of the truth by a journalist to create a false perception.
Here's how I imagine it went down...
Engineer: I have a good idea! Let's use +1 indications from Google Plus so we can improve the quality of search results by knowing what articles are liked.
-- EITHER --
DataScientist: I share your goal of higher quality search results, but tying it to Google Plus is a poor way to achieve it. That's because Google Plus isn't widely adopted. First we will get a signal of "which articles are liked by the biased subgroup that are Google Plus enthusiasts" rather than what articl
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I'm sorry, but a "Google +" button does not add one single solitary piece of information to search results.
It merely provides a sort order.
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I don't see what's "false" about the perception. It's reasonable for Google to claim that adding G+ buttons will improve search results, while at the same time viewing it as an abuse of Google's search predominance to push an otherwise bad product.
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You have less evidence of what really happened than the reporter. You talk about biases and then proceed to describe how your past experience with an unrelated reporter on an unrelated subject caused you to decide this piece is false. Are you retarded?
It is one of four times where I have direct knowledge of facts showing the reporter twisting facts to a false narrative. That is every single time I've had direct, first hand knowledge of something reported in the press. So that strongly suggests a lot of press reports are twisting facts.
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At this time I don't think an anti-trust breakup is necessary. I, along with thousands of others, are working hard to circumvent Google. I'm quite sure some of these efforts will take hold and be successful. It's just a matter of time.
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I really wish I could understand a word of what you just said.
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Ok, I'll give you that. Have a great day!