Google Showing Itself to Be full of Shit

[Jace]

Interesting article

It has been a time from hell for Google. Once the much-loved and unblemished hero of the web, the giant internet group has suffered a series of blows that have exposed for the first time its feet of clay.

The company that stood for "freedom of the net" is accused of humiliatingly submitting to Chinese censorship, conniving at the suppression of freedom in Tibet, exploiting the work of American writers and of running what is arguably the biggest porn and violence website in the business.

The Association of American Publishers joined Agence France-Presse in suing to protect their copyright, and the United States government complained that Google's much-praised satellite maps are too spy-friendly.

And that's not all: Google faces a batch of lawsuits from companies that once benefited from its search engine and which were then consumed by it.

The biggest worry of all, though, is not commercial.

It also faces suits from the US government. There are disputes over breaches of copyright, trademark infringement and invasion of privacy. Some of Google's aggressive gambits into new businesses have brought angry responses from competitors such as Microsoft and Apple, many of which are now collaborating to stop the steamroller in its tracks.

In media-land, it's Stop Google time, as newspaper groups began talking seriously about locking their content away from Google's "spiders", which raid their sites many times a day, "stealing" their copy to sell on to someone else.

The biggest worry of all, though, is not commercial: it is the abrupt shift in sentiment among Google's almost messianic customers, who are suddenly asking awkward questions.

Google, founded eight years ago by a couple of geeks (each now worth more than $10-billion, or R60-billion), had always presented itself as the superb search engine which gloriously spread the internet - and free access to vast amounts of information - across the world.

It made finding information simple for even the least computer-literate, introduced speedy access to academic books and papers, the ability to search out the best online bargains and a super-fast email site. And then there was Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Book Search and Google just-about-everything-else.

Google broke all the business rules and ignored all the textbooks. It never spent a penny on promoting itself, but grew by word of mouth and the joy of using its irresistible - and free - systems. As a result, it became the epitome of corporate virtue, the good guy prepared to take on big business, all for the greater good of humanity.

Its corporate slogan, as every schoolkid knows, is "Don't be evil", and its concept, pursued with brilliance, captured the world's imagination. One commentator remarked: "As far as the Internet ecosystem is concerned, Google is the weather."

But not anymore - or not so much. The Chinese episode was in many ways the most damaging blow yet received to Google's reputation for virtue, integrity and courage. Google's PR machine could have had little idea of the storm it was about to unleash as it made its explosive statement: "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn in response to local law, regulation or policy."

In other words, Google had agreed to block anything embarrassing to the Chinese regime. For mentions of Tiananmen Square, Tibet or abuse of civil liberties, don't look to Google China.

To be fair, none of its critics seemed to care that Google had actually held out longer against the Chinese than any other media group. Microsoft and Yahoo! surrendered a year ago; CNN is often seen as a Chinese mouthpiece; and even Rupert Murdoch, in his search to get his Star TV established in China, sold his highly profitable South China Morning Post for fear that it would anger the Chinese. (Even then he had to throw in the towel last year after almost 20 years of trying.)

Google's problem is that the world expects better of it. It had stood up to the US government and championed free speech, but now, in a single move, it has lost the high ground. One freedom of expression advocacy group, Reporters sans Frontieres, accused Google of hypocrisy: "They have two standards.

One for the US, where they resist government demands for personal information, and one for China, where they are helping the authorities to block thousands of sites." As a result of the cave-in, China now controls the one medium that many thought would elude them.

"Google were the only ones who held out," remarked Peter Pain, a freedom-of-speech campaigner, last week, "so the Chinese government had to block information itself. But now Google will do it for them."

It seems to Google-watchers that the problems "come not as single spies, but in battalions". Its very size and speed of growth already made it a target for those who favour the underdog. The beginnings of the backlash were apparent well before last week, but now it has begun in earnest.

For over a year, media analysts have been warning that, left unchecked, Google has the ability to demolish entire industries wherever it operates: retailers, book publishers (already in dire trouble) and, of course, newspapers and magazines. It would positively wreck the high street as we know it.

Google's ambitions, they claimed, knew no bounds, and Google was blithely prepared to prove them right. In recent weeks it announced deals that will quickly grow its new media tentacles, from buying and selling magazine and newspaper ad space to the radio and television advertising market. It has threatened Microsoft (no one will blame it for that), Apple, Sun Microsystems and even the big telephone companies with rival systems and a new way to make internet calls. Google has not yet moved into oil or farming, but other than those, no business is out of its reach.

Every company contains the seeds of its own destruction, and it may be that even Google, the miracle of the new media age, reached the tipping point in the past week. Yahoo! and other rival search engines are getting their acts together and working to out-Google Google with new products and even better sites. From South Korea comes the news of a new rival, NHN Corp, which has profits of $86-million against Google's $1,7-billion, but which has seen off Google in its local market, delivering far more relevant search results.

"NHN's user-friendly approach outshined its rivals," said an analyst from Samsung Securities in Seoul. Other local sites are trying to outshine it too - pinpricks in the skin of the giant, but between them adding up to a significant threat.

[Jace]

second part

Until a few weeks ago, Google seemed on track to achieve a mission of world dominance in areas that went way beyond the traditional internet.

Its stock market debut in 2004 was the most successful in history and the performance since has been even more breathtaking.

Its shares started life on the Nasdaq exchange at $179 each, valuing the company at nearly $100 billion - more than the entire American motor industry. Wise old Wall Street hands, who had seen too many bubbles grow and burst, shook their heads in disbelief - no company, they reckoned, could possibly sustain such a valuation on the basis of a mere $4 billion of sales.

But for every soothsayer of gloom, there were a dozen Google buffs who scrambled into the most successful market debut the world has so far seen. The shares moved up - and up, to an extraordinary $471. Even then there were projections of it hitting $600, and one broker projected a price of $1 000. He still does.

And then it stopped. The shares dropped 8,5 percent in one day late last month, knocking $20 billion off Google's market value - the first real setback since the launch. Its fans say it is only a breathing space before the next dizzy climb, and maybe it is. But there are plenty of others who say reality is catching up, it has made too many enemies and has simply grown too unwieldy and arrogant.

In other words, Google has experienced, in just a matter of months, the same phenomenon that overtakes all market leaders over decades. Now it has become the number one target for all the littler guys.

By an odd irony, General Motors, for many years the biggest company in the world and the symbol of American business and capitalism, last week announced record losses of $8,6-billion and sought relief from a pension fund deficit that totals an unpayable $64-billion. The phrase "What's good for General Motors is good for America" has long lost its resonance.

After GM, IBM was the big threat, its control of the emerging computer sector giving it a power far too dangerous for one company. The theory was that IBM engineers were developing computers which in turn would design even bigger computers and eventually create its own form of Big Brother.

Two years ago, what remained of the IBM personal computer business was sold to the Chinese for a pittance. Even Microsoft, the big bad bogy as recently as two years ago, has run out of steam - and threat. It too produced disappointing profit figures caused by glitches in the global launch of its new Xbox 360 video game system. Bill Gates, too, is fallible.

To Google it must seem that, after the magic honeymoon, the world is ganging up on it. Almost every area of its business is being challenged, every potential victim fighting back, every competitor gearing up and new ones emerging.

Here's how it works.

# Google is used by 82 million people a month, many of whom have it as the internet home page on their computer. Keywords are typed into the Google search page: in this case, those being sought are "China" and "democracy".

# The search speeds off to the nearest Google server, which may be in the same country or on the same continent. Google employs 4 183 people. Many of them are engineers who help to service an estimated 100 000 computers at 30 data centres around the world.

# The server sends the query - "China" plus "democracy" - to the Google Index, a database containing details of all the web pages on the company records. Instead of using huge mainframe computers, Google stores information a fragment at a time on thousands of linked machines, similar to ordinary PCs.

# The index identifies the pages it needs, and goes off to look for them. Google does not search the internet.

It searches one of several copies of the internet that it makes for itself and constantly updates. Each copy contains more than 8 billion pages and is stored, again a fragment at a time, on thousands of linked computers.

# Google's copies of the internet are made using its web crawlers, pieces of software that roam all over the net and send what they find back to the company. The pages are evaluated, indexed and ranked according to which words occur where, and how many other sites are linked to them.

# Google generates a summary of each page. It also uses more than 100 criteria to give the page a relevance rating between one and 10. A list is produced, to which is attached advertisements bought by companies wanting their products to appear beside key words.

# The results appear on the Google search page, back at the original computer, usually within half a second. This one took 0,08 seconds to produce 30 600 000 results. Google keeps permanent records of all the searches made.

[newbreed]

Have you ever searched for "all your bitches are belong to newbreed"?

eheheheheheeeeeeeeeee

[Matt 26z]

Has Google effected their users negatively? No. All of this anti-Google stuff is bullshit.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Matt 26z

Has Google effected their users negatively? No. All of this anti-Google stuff is bullshit.

that is bullshit....no one in my family or friends circle will use them anymore because of the massive amounts of spam that comes with a single search term.....I think in the next year or so we will be seeing a major decline in the use of google...the only think i think they have going for them the most is the branding on their name, that is what is keeping people hanging on. While I am not a big coke fan, it is what I think about when going for a soft drink, because it is burned into my brain

[pornguy]

But it will impact thier stock prices in a negative way.

[Doctor Dre]

Google has put up a lot of great products and developed more tools in the last year then any other web compagny... love them or hate them, that's up to you.

[spunkmaster]

GOOG is down $120 the last three weeks !

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Doctor Dre

Google has put up a lot of great products and developed more tools in the last year then any other web compagny... love them or hate them, that's up to you.

shit, I agree with that....I am actively using most of their products

[who]

Type in 'Failure'..

[marketsmart]

Originally Posted by spunkmaster

GOOG is down $120 the last three weeks !

After a two month run up. Goog is down because they didnt meet what the street expected from them. However, Goog beat their stated internal expectations. Goog is one of the few companies that has given dot com day returns in a shell shocked marketplace.

If you take the time to look at the companies financials and look at all the projects they have launched in the last year and what they have in the works, my money is still on Goog as a $500-$600 stock by the end of 2006.

[jollyperv]

All I know is we're on day 111 since the last PR update. The record for the longest time between PR updates is coincidentally 111 days.

[Blizzard]

Anti-Googlism is the IN thing.

[FabianC]

Interesting

[SmokeyTheBear]

GOOGLE IN A NUTSHELL

any company that has alot of money can make good products, they have alot of i.t. workers. If it wasnt for advertising google would be broke. Google made its fame by having good search results, google didnt make money having good search results.. they only started making money as the search results start becoming worse ( thus forcing you to use the advertising )

The whole google adwords circle jerks that are going around are made for one purpose , to get you to spend money because your sick of looking through 100 sites , so eventually you click an ad.

If you found what you wanted on the search engines you wouldnt need the advertising right ..

They are like big killers ( pest control ) if pest control killed all your pests you wouldnt need them anymore would you.. sure wouldnt make sense to LOSE a customer after the first meeting , when you can "control" them

[SmokeyTheBear]

i.e. if i'm searching for "widgets" and the first 10 results give me no usefull information on widgets , i'm alot more likely to click the "FREE WIDGETS HERE" ad on the side..

So to make more money they slowly worsen their algorithm so as not to scare away google users, as they slowly "worsen" the algorithm for legit sites and "increase" the value of adsense circle jerk sites they make the trend seem less , and by slowly changing the way adwords are integrated it doesnt seem like your clicking an ad at all

[chadglni]

Originally Posted by Jace

that is bullshit....no one in my family or friends circle will use them anymore because of the massive amounts of spam that comes with a single search term.....I think in the next year or so we will be seeing a major decline in the use of google...the only think i think they have going for them the most is the branding on their name, that is what is keeping people hanging on. While I am not a big coke fan, it is what I think about when going for a soft drink, because it is burned into my brain

And I bet you talk shit to your family and circle of friends about how google is a piece of shit. Unless all your family and friends are super net savy they'll listen to whatever you suggest. You just posted one big ass conspiracy theory.

[gfx3]

Wanne make money go short on google I see 200 to 250 in a few months from now. After that it will climb again but still some nice cash to be made.

[chadglni]

Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear

GOOGLE IN A NUTSHELL

any company that has alot of money can make good products, they have alot of i.t. workers. If it wasnt for advertising google would be broke. Google made its fame by having good search results, google didnt make money having good search results.. they only started making money as the search results start becoming worse ( thus forcing you to use the advertising )

The whole google adwords circle jerks that are going around are made for one purpose , to get you to spend money because your sick of looking through 100 sites , so eventually you click an ad.

If you found what you wanted on the search engines you wouldnt need the advertising right ..

They are like big killers ( pest control ) if pest control killed all your pests you wouldnt need them anymore would you.. sure wouldnt make sense to LOSE a customer after the first meeting , when you can "control" them

Oh bullshit. They don't purposely fuck up their results so you click on a stupid ad, fucked up results happen when 30 million fucking pages are fighting over the same term. It's not like they are human edited, it's all algos designed to bring relevance. Any algos can be manipulated and results on Yahoo and MSN suck also. Sure people here praise them because they list their 3 week old POS spam site faster but they are not winning the relevancy race period.

[chadglni]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=free+porn

Wow look, links to free porn for the search term "free porn".

[chadglni]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=fica+scores

Wow look, pages about fica scores for the term "fica scores".

[KRL]

Eventually Google will be displaced by something more innovative and better.

This is typical of companies that are great when they are small and growing and under the auspicies and non-stop dynamic energy of the founders, but then grow into bloated corporate monoliths, steered by 9 to 5 corpies, pounded by regulations, lawsuits, and demands from Wall St. for the bottom line.

[Pornwolf]

That's a good way of looking at it Smokey.

I think people are just ready for "the next big thing" right now. We've been loyal to google for over 6 years now. That's 100 years in internet time. It's time for something new.

[SomeCreep]

Who thinks google will drop under $300/share?

[SmokeyTheBear]

Originally Posted by chadglni

Oh bullshit. They don't purposely fuck up their results so you click on a stupid ad, fucked up results happen when 30 million fucking pages are fighting over the same term. It's not like they are human edited, it's all algos designed to bring relevance. Any algos can be manipulated and results on Yahoo and MSN suck also. Sure people here praise them because they list their 3 week old POS spam site faster but they are not winning the relevancy race period.

hey its just my theory thats all. Obviously they are smarter than i am or i would be google, but it just seems that way to me..

I dont think its so absurd to think they would influence results to make more money..

Before adwords what exactly did they make ,money doing ? the ads on top ? not likely.

[chadglni]

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...w.goo gle.com

Wow, look at all the people drop google, they're only up 16% on reach and page views in the last 3 months!

[SomeCreep]

Originally Posted by KRL

Eventually Google will be displaced by something more innovative and better.

This is typical of companies that are great when they are small and growing and under the auspicies and non-stop dynamic energy of the founders, but then grow into bloated corporate monoliths, steered by 9 to 5 corpies, pounded by regulations, lawsuits, and demands from Wall St. for the bottom line.

I agree.

It's so refreshing to take in a breath of fresh wisdom every now and again. Thanks

[chadglni]

Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear

hey its just my theory thats all. Obviously they are smarter than i am or i would be google, but it just seems that way to me..

I dont think its so absurd to think they would influence results to make more money..

Before adwords what exactly did they make ,money doing ? the ads on top ? not likely.

I think them manipulation results to be purposely shitty would be suicide. Not to mention that would put one million stupid sites from gfy members in the top 10 of every big term and I haven't seen any noobs running around yelling about their google rank lately. I haven't seen one SE that was more relevant than google, both Yahoo and MSN are a piece of shit IMO. MSN has gotten some praise lately because an idiot can drop his page online and have good results in 3 or 4 days. I doubt said idiot really has a better site than the other 30 million pages indexed.

[SmokeyTheBear]

Originally Posted by chadglni

I think them manipulation results to be purposely shitty would be suicide. Not to mention that would put one million stupid sites from gfy members in the top 10 of every big term and I haven't seen any noobs running around yelling about their google rank lately. I haven't seen one SE that was more relevant than google, both Yahoo and MSN are a piece of shit IMO. MSN has gotten some praise lately because an idiot can drop his page online and have good results in 3 or 4 days. I doubt said idiot really has a better site than the other 30 million pages indexed.

Well using my theory they wouldnt be commiting suicide they are just changing the way people get used to using it. Thats why they are doing it slowly , to gauge what the results of usage are as they worsen the results.. like are they getting less searches for keywords they worsen the results for..

That being said I think they are hand manipulating some results..

[pocketkangaroo]

Originally Posted by Doctor Dre

Google has put up a lot of great products and developed more tools in the last year then any other web compagny... love them or hate them, that's up to you.

What great products have they put out?

[SmokeyTheBear]

basically they would write something to change the algorithm used for searching keywords that have a high CPC on google adwords and a low CTR

So they might manipulate the algorith when searching for VIAGRA because it has a high cost per click and a low click through for the adwords.. thus the end user still finds what they want because the first 5 results are circle jerk ADSENSE sites. so the top 5 are semi-relevent sites pointing basically to the same links that would show up on the right hand side in ADWORDS

[SmokeyTheBear]

the only thing that changes is the consumer gets less choices

[jjjay]

Originally Posted by Jace

that is bullshit....no one in my family or friends circle will use them anymore because of the massive amounts of spam that comes with a single search term.....I think in the next year or so we will be seeing a major decline in the use of google...the only think i think they have going for them the most is the branding on their name, that is what is keeping people hanging on. While I am not a big coke fan, it is what I think about when going for a soft drink, because it is burned into my brain

i disagree. you think search, you think google, not msn and not yahoo. they're way ahead at the moment and unless they forget to pay their hosting bill I doubt they'll be overtaken for a long time

[jjjay]

Originally Posted by jollyperv

All I know is we're on day 111 since the last PR update. The record for the longest time between PR updates is coincidentally 111 days.

PR is all smoke and mirrors. don't take it so seriously...

[jjjay]

Originally Posted by chadglni

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...w.goo gle.com

Wow, look at all the people drop google, they're only up 16% on reach and page views in the last 3 months!

how many google shares do you have? you sound a bit desperate to talk them up....

[stereolab]

Yahoo's (and eventually MSFT) entrance into the 'network publisher' market are going to drive down keyword prices, since at the moment, Google has no competition in this field. once advertisers have three options for their PPC, the fight will be for publisher real-estate. prices for keywords will go down, and that means each player will need more and more publisher space to keep meeting the bottom line.

at this point, one of the players has to pull the trigger and drop its publisher standards. does this mean adult?

[nick1980]

well, it's up to us whether we'll be using Google still...

[chadglni]

Originally Posted by jjjay

how many google shares do you have? you sound a bit desperate to talk them up....

Ahahaha yeah, because a thread on GFY can effect their market cap of 12 figures.

[Persignup Dustin]

like I said, Google aint goin NOWHERES...

[jjjay]

Originally Posted by chadglni

Ahahaha yeah, because a thread on GFY can effect their market cap of 12 figures.

it can? great. keep talking and I'll start buying stock...

should be at $800 by end of play tomorrow

[Adult_Factory]

good luck!!!

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Adult_Factory

good luck!!!

nice old bump dude....

[jjjay]

Originally Posted by Jace

nice old bump dude....

just realised, he's doing this with loads of old threads...