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Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up

Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then. Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible. Then came Chrome and Android, which grew to collect so much information on people that it was genuinely baffling. Then my agency work and work with previous Google employees telling me about Google sales tactics to SMBs in Adwords. Intentionally not focusing on ROI because they knew the companies had such high burn out rates. They would, and continue, to milk them for whatever they are worth. They know the company is statistically going to go out of business in a year, so just take them for whatever they are worth! Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread. But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend. Now they have growing and creeping monopolies in advertising, and their only real competitors are Amazon and Facebook... which to me are both on or near the level of sleaze that Google has crept to. Now things are accelerating, with Chrome's increasing intrusion, Android's increasing intrusion, deals with Chinese governments to stifle freedom of expression and speech. Google AMP being a closed system that's only goal is to push Google into controlling more of the web. Add to that, let me preface that I am not a Trump voter and never will be and probably lean more towards the politics of Google leadership, but the video that leaked out (it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real new organization, maybe it would have been taken a lot more seriously) of the Google town hall also baffled me. I think Facebook might even take their moral obligation of objectivity more seriously than Google...and that's a serious problem. Algorithms can determine electoral outcomes, and Google is one of the top tech lobbyists in Washington. Doesn't that bother anyone? This is no longer a company I can advocate anyone using. Unfortunately because of their monopoly status in advertising I have to deal with them.

naringas 8y ago
I used to think that google today is like microsoft back in the late 90s and early 00s but your comment makes me think it might be even worse.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Way worse. Microsoft didn’t control the information people see.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  Microsoft got smacked down by the DoJ hard. Here's hoping that Trump in his second term hits the digital monopolies with the anti-trust legislation they have been flaunting for the last 10 years. Just because they are somewhat closer to me socially doesn't mean I want to sell out my freedoms to them.
  - acdanger 8y ago
    Why would he have to wait for a second term? Why couldn't he start on this tomorrow?
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      If you think the coverage of him is bad now, wait till you see what happens when the digital monopolies are fighting for their lives. One only has to look at what the Murdoch paper monopolies did to any politician who dared stand against him: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-heart-of-australian-democracy-20180826-p4zzum.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-he...
      - EpicEng 8y ago
        >If you think the coverage of him is bad now He could solve that problem by simply ceasing to say and do dumb things. I'm not convinced the media is out to get him, he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day. I wish the news were focused more on policy than politics (though not sure that would help him), but people like drama and news orgs like money.
        mgkimsal 8y ago
        > he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day as much as I dislike trump, i do think some of the negative media coverage of him is over the top, and does its part in destroying credibility of real issues. my own gut would be on those '20 times/day' things, probably 5-10 of them are overblown or taken out of context (the 'fist bump' on 9/11 was overblown, imo, when you look at the complete footage and context).
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
AMP was what did it for me.
- JoshMnem 8y ago
  Same here. AMP and the current move to get rid of URLs were the last straw.
  - reticulan 8y ago
    What do you mean by get rid of urls? I just have missed it
    - JoshMnem 8y ago
      https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/07/google_kills_www/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/07/google_kills_www/
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  When Gmail came out, I said to people "as long as it stays on gmail.com then they can't use email scraping with your search history. No privacy issues." (or minmal ones) Within a few months of Gmail going public it changed from gmail.com to gmail.google.com or google.com/gmail or some such thing, and I knew instantly they had bamboozled everyone. That was years ago, the rest has been the expected trend.
  - hexane360 8y ago
    Why does the front-facing domain have anything to do with what data they can or cannot collect?
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Cookies
everdev 8y ago
> Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread I ran such an agency. As someone who is proficient in PPC, the AdSense sales team was inexcusably poor at their jobs. They'd offer to setup campaigns for free with thousands of barely relevant keywords and would push upping the budget past what was reasonable. Their tactics were so bad for my clients that I stopped accepting their "free" help and did the campaigns in house. I hate to think how many agencies simply went along with their advice to the detriment of their clients.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  If what I've been told by people that used to work on those very Google Adwords teams, it's not that they are "bad" at their job, it's that they are meant to meet a certain quota of spend and nothing like ROI etc matters. What's the solution to campaign doing badly? Up the budget! They know it's not optimal, their managers know it's not optimal, but the goal is for Google's bottom line. This stops once you reach a certain spend tier and they know the burn out rates for those companies improve and they want the longer term revenues. (This is also good for larger agencies, since they will also get the good treatment from being a premier partner.) The lower tier spends are basically "boiler rooms" peddling fake penny stocks. People trust them because "It's Google!" but that is so so far from the truth. Sometimes it's not even Google, it's a company they've outsourced to, and sometimes they even work in the same building as Google.
  - everdev 8y ago
    Yes, I figured as much. I'm sure the reps were "just doing their jobs", but the result was poor service/advice as you mention.
    - dwd 8y ago
      Doing there jobs basically entails increasing your spend: whether by broadening your keyword phrases, adding irrelevant keywords, expanding your geo-location region, or increasing your bids. Worse is when you get billed for clicks for inactive campaigns, even ones that were never enabled.
tananaev 8y ago
I'll add my very recent negative experience with Google. I have a couple of apps on the Google Play that use Firebase analytics and crash reporting. This weekend both apps were removed by Google without any warnings. The issue was that apps were in "Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID" because by default Firebase collects Advertising ID. I don't really need Advertising ID in my app or my analytics and there is a way to opt out [1], but I think the way Google handled this is just wrong. Collecting information that most people probably don't care about and then removing apps without notice for basically their own default configuration. [1] https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/disable-analytics https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/disable-analytics
- bad_user 8y ago
  > Collecting information that most people probably don't care about I care about that information and I’m glad they removed your apps, maybe now you’ll start taking privacy more seriously.
  - gaius 8y ago
    The issue is that Google are shipping something with a default configuration that violates their own policy, then blaming the user of it
  - tananaev 8y ago
    I think you misunderstood my comment. I don't want to collect that information. All I need is anonymous crash stacks and possibly some general statistics (number of users on various app versions and Android versions). Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it, until they removed my apps for the store. I want to collect as minimum information as possible for me to effectively maintain the apps. I have no use for personal information or any identifiers. But Google probably wants it and that's why Firebase collects it by default.
    - patates 8y ago
      > Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it I think the point is that you should be aware of it. It is your application after all. Yes, what Google does is weird, but the app developer needs to be more careful in general what 3rd party code they load. On the other hand, I understand you. Probably you do your due diligence when you load some random dependency but you (like everyone else) used to expect better from Google. Not anymore I guess.
clarkmoody 8y ago
Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. I've noticed the straight search results making a marked decline in quality over the past few months. If one of the keywords within your search is anything remotely profitable, it will drown out all other terms. Then the search results ended after ~4 pages. Definitely changed from the Google I "grew up on."
- jakecopp 8y ago
  Might just be more web pages about profitable products?
  - bigiain 8y ago
    Also the people selling things via their webpages are very much more likely to be investing effort in SEO than "non commercial" web pages... (And, as much as Matt Cutts might deny it, it seems inconceivable that Google do not use revenue generated by advertising as a search signal...)
    - skgoa 8y ago
      That's part of the issue, but Google also automatically extends your search terms with words that it believes are relevant to your search. I will also give certain words a higher relevance based on what ti believes you are really searching for. Unfortunately this often leads to search result pages full of entirely irrelevant results, while pages containing the exact words in your search term are few and far between, if they are shown at all. This is my biggest gripe with Google's search engine. It used to be that you could specify exactly what you want to get and it would find it for you. Now it thinks it knows what I want better than I do, so it refuses to show me things I know exist and that every other search engine will find with very simple, straight-forward search terms.
- brandonjm 8y ago
  > Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear arms", "right to guns" and "arms rights".
stephenhuey 8y ago
I was excited by “Don’t be evil” back in the early days. But maybe they should’ve chosen “Don’t be stupid or evil” because their amnesia, arrogance and carelessness remind me of so many hilarious sad stories from the early days in the tech industry as recounted in this book which I own: In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters
- randomsearch 8y ago
  “Don’t forget not to be evil” I don’t believe the founders have had personality transplant, so why has google become evil?
  - zdkl 8y ago
    It's not evil it's shareholder... value... optimisation ! I blame corporate on that one.
    - gldalmaso 8y ago
      Seems like given enough time, any company will lose whatever value it tried to uphold in the past in favor of shareholders. Once it reaches that point, every business optimization is in detriment of either the final user or society, quite often both.
    - MrEfficiency 8y ago
      Shareholders= You and your parents and your grandparents retirement. This need to have 7-13% yearly returns force companies to grind their employees and customers. I like capitalism, but I can easily see capitalism doing evil things to create short term profit.
      - smolder 8y ago
        "I can easily see" sounds like it's a hypothetical, but destruction of real value for short term monetary gain is plainly visible all around. I've probably ran into 1000s of real world examples.
noncoml 8y ago
I stopped trusting Google the day they announced they would use Gmail email content for displaying ads. Sometime in the late 00’s it was I think.
- zavi 8y ago
  Do they really use email content for ad targeting or are you spreading misinformation?
  - namdnay 8y ago
    They did, for a few years. It was a bit scary, but also really good. It was really easy to test, if you sent an email discussing a weekend trip with some friends you'd immediately get hotel and flight ads for that destination. Actually quite useful...
  - romanovcode 8y ago
    Yep.
    - zavi 8y ago
      Nope. See other comment.
- pavlov 8y ago
  Your memory is a bit off. Algorithmic reading of emails for targeted ads was a feature of Gmail from day one. Here's an article from June 2004: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/gmail_spook_heaven/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/gmail_spook_heaven/ The privacy implications were widely discussed when Gmail launched, but then the media interest just faded out because people were apparently OK with it and Google promised to "do no evil". So here we are, 14 years later.
briandear 8y ago
> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real news organization. That right there is the issue. “Real” news organizations share ideological views and their choice of what to investigate is a result of that ideology. When a newsroom cheers or is despondent over an election result, it’s unrealistic to expect them to provide hard-hitting coverage that potentially undercuts their own biases. The coverage of Russian “collusion” is a great example. Hillary Clinton’s people met with the ambassador of China as well as Russian officials during the campaign. But there was not even cursory coverage in mainstream media outlets or any investigation into Hillary’s campaign while similar alleged actions by members of the Trump campaign have led to a years long special prosecutor. I am not going to relitigate the collision case here, but alleged Trump collusion or alleged Clinton collusion would both be considered crimes, that Clinton didn’t win is immaterial since the crimes being alleged are collusion before the election. However, there hasn’t even been any cursory investigative reporting of the actions of the Clinton campaign despite secretly meeting with both Chinese and Russian officials. Just those meetings alone would be grounds for concern, but media outlets, in their disdain for Trump, ignored a potentially identical crime committed by Clinton’s campaign, not because it wasn’t newsworthy, but because it didn’t fit the ideological ambitions of many major “reputable” news outlets. I am not claiming Clinton did or didn’t collide; only that there was enough evidence to inspire at least some investigative reporting by the media — but the problem is that such reporting would weaken the “case” against Trump in terms of public opinion. Keith Ellison a congressman with multiple, credible sexual assault accusations against him gets a pass in the media despite him running for Attorney General of Minnesota and he’s the deputy Chairman of the DNC. Yet, the media goes after the Kavanaugh story despite a far weaker accusation than the police-record supported claims against Ellison. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Again, I am not litigating the Kavanaugh case here, only pointing out that the media has a propensity to cover news with an intensity to suits an obvious agenda as opposed to covering news impartially. With the Google politics situation, why would the “reputable” media care when it’s a sentiment they already share. I was a contract journalist for Reuters from 1996-2002 and, in my opinion, journalism has declined prodigiously since then. It has become a click-bait driven industry that preys on tribalism and emotion. My first real exposure to the 24 hour news cycle was during Desert Storm and I remember the coverage of CNN was not only reputable, but explemplary. The NY Times was an extraordinary paper along with the Seattle PI, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe And Miami Herald. My old hometown paper where I interned before going to Reuters was also great — attacking left and right with equal aplomb, passion and fairness. But something happened along the way. We could blame Trump as is the fashion, but Trump was a product of this, not the cause. There have always been fringe media outlets like Breitbart, however they really didn’t have much of an audience because the majority of people of all political stripes had a reasonable trust in the major media outlets. The issue of media bias isn’t even one of specific stories and how they are written, but something far most sinister — the quiet influence of the assignment editor who decides what stories are even worth considering. The NY Times for example, well written, generally solid stories however, the real bias comes from what they choose not to cover. The Trump stories are certainly worth ink, but so are the stories about Clinton Foundation irregularities, quid pro quo arrangements with foreign governments, the Moroccan phosphate deals, Russian Uranium and campaign money laundering to the time of $84 million. In full disclosure, I didn’t vote for Trump, didn’t support him at all, but I am a libertarian-leaning conservative frustrated that ridiculousness like modern Breitbart even needs to exists. (I say “modern” Breitbart because under Andrew Breitbart, it was actually a pretty decent new source, albeit from a right perspective — it was the conservative answer to the Huffington Post, though now, it’s pretty close to Infowars territory. I apologize for the rant, but I agree, it’s a shame that fringe media has done more investigating into google than the “reputable” media.
joering2 8y ago
My good buddy was within circles of “Team L” back then and nagment always laughted when someone mention “dont do evil” mantra. Google never said they wont do evil, they just stated a fact in general. Similar like Subway says “eat fresh” and you think “oh i guess they have fresh subs” meanwhile just recently there was a case when someone sued Subway for chemicals used in their bread, and reasoned their lawsuit on fact they assumed Subway has fresh sandwitches, but actually Subway lawyers explained the slogan is for others and “in general”, not that they as a company produce or serve “fresh” subs themselves.
earenndil 8y ago
> the video that leaked out [...] of the Google town hall also baffled me Which video?
- namdnay 8y ago
  I think it was after the US election results, senior leadership was discussing with employees what it could mean for them, and what Google's stance would be. Quite reasonable for a company that is open to diversity to reassure their diverse workforce when a president who is explicitly against diversity is elected. Typical Breitbart trying to create much ado about nothing, I've had similar "town hall" discussions in the UK since Brexit - "what does this mean for our employees? etc"
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    I don't agree that the content of the leaked video[0] was reasonable. Google essentially controls information, so they have tremendous power. Their staff have openly called to subvert democracy, which I think most reasonable people find incredibly dangerous. And no, I don't like Trump. [0]: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...
    - namdnay 8y ago
      Where did Google leadership call to subvert democracy? At no point in the video do they instruct or encourage employees to do that. They're discussing what Trump means for their employees, not for their customers
      - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
        I said Google staff had, and I didn't say they did that in this video. But then to be fair, I don't have any hard evidence for this. EDIT: As it turns out, sources for this are pretty easy to come across online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-travelban/google-staff-discussed-tweaking-search-results-to-counter-travel-ban-wsj-idUSKCN1M103O https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-travelban/google-s...
palant 8y ago
Yes, the intention behind Chrome was very obvious pretty much from the start: it has to benefit Google by giving its web services an advantage over competition. I wrote about that seven years ago: https://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chrome-and-pre-installed-web-apps https://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chrome-and-pre-installed...
amelius 8y ago
If we'd ban targeted advertising, this would take away the perverse incentives, and we could help transform Google and other companies into something better. I'd say let's start with a petition.
- mlinksva 8y ago
  I'd prefer to tax rather than ban ads. Ads are like (indeed contribute to) carbon emissions, not murder.
mda 8y ago
How is your comment relevant to the article?
hrrsn 8y ago
> But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend. Any more details on this?
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  I'm interested in this as well. My current company uses AdWords directly and is almost certainly below that "certain spend". I'm suspicious that we might be getting taken to the cleaners too, but not sure the co-founder would believe me.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    Unfortunately the only way to really know is to have a PPC expert audit your account. IMO having a good in-house PPC person is crucial, or at least go through a reputably agency (as an in-house PPC expert can be pricey.) Even though agencies charge a service fee, your results will almost certainly outperform just using Google's in-house service or doing it yourself. There are also classes some people offer on the topic, which can help you tell if you are being had. I'm not saying it's going to happen every campaign, but it is a common practice.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  I can't enumerate on it much more without likely making an error, as I am not on the PPC team myself. I know several people in the Michigan Ann Arbor hub at Google that have told me this directly.
CppCoder 8y ago
Google too shut down AdSense just a few weeks ago for a project I work on/for. We only use AdMob to serve ads as alternative monetization. No warning, no reason given, no way to contact anymore. This is definitely not the right way to go about this.
YouAreGreat 8y ago
> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real new organization Lack of reporting from others is no reason to believe Breitbart was first to know, e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/jacknicas/status/1040014678263386112 https://mobile.twitter.com/jacknicas/status/1040014678263386... > Doesn't that bother anyone? I think it actually helps insulate Google from closer scrutiny of its monopoly position and deplorable business model. Why would any self-respecting country suffer an all-powerful ad-financed private Alphabet Agency? Because they think Evil is "on our side".
axilmar 8y ago
also, that atrocity named Go...
sli 8y ago
> Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible. Same thing happened to me shortly after Adsense started up. They banned my account when I was 17/18 for clicking on my own ads, which I'd never done because I knew you'd get banned for it. I'm now 32, so in two years my Adsense account will have been banned for literally half my life.
fouc 8y ago
It's kind of irritating that we're always trying to keep up with the latest version. In a way, it's actually putting the power into their hands. Making it easier for them to get away with sleazier stuff because the majority are on the most recent version. And because everyone's on the latest version, it's harder for individuals to downgrade or stay on old versions for longer without getting obsoleted. It's actually closing the web. The excuse for aggressive upgrades & auto-updates are mainly for security purposes, with the side benefit of reducing the work of web developers. But on the flip side, it's actually huge centralization move.

naringas 8y ago

I used to think that google today is like microsoft back in the late 90s and early 00s but your comment makes me think it might be even worse.

rayiner 8y ago
Way worse. Microsoft didn’t control the information people see.
zeth___ 8y ago
Microsoft got smacked down by the DoJ hard. Here's hoping that Trump in his second term hits the digital monopolies with the anti-trust legislation they have been flaunting for the last 10 years. Just because they are somewhat closer to me socially doesn't mean I want to sell out my freedoms to them.
- acdanger 8y ago
  Why would he have to wait for a second term? Why couldn't he start on this tomorrow?
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    If you think the coverage of him is bad now, wait till you see what happens when the digital monopolies are fighting for their lives. One only has to look at what the Murdoch paper monopolies did to any politician who dared stand against him: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-heart-of-australian-democracy-20180826-p4zzum.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-he...
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      >If you think the coverage of him is bad now He could solve that problem by simply ceasing to say and do dumb things. I'm not convinced the media is out to get him, he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day. I wish the news were focused more on policy than politics (though not sure that would help him), but people like drama and news orgs like money.
      - mgkimsal 8y ago
        > he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day as much as I dislike trump, i do think some of the negative media coverage of him is over the top, and does its part in destroying credibility of real issues. my own gut would be on those '20 times/day' things, probably 5-10 of them are overblown or taken out of context (the 'fist bump' on 9/11 was overblown, imo, when you look at the complete footage and context).

qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago

AMP was what did it for me.

JoshMnem 8y ago
Same here. AMP and the current move to get rid of URLs were the last straw.
- reticulan 8y ago
  What do you mean by get rid of urls? I just have missed it
  - JoshMnem 8y ago
    https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/07/google_kills_www/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/07/google_kills_www/
RobertRoberts 8y ago
When Gmail came out, I said to people "as long as it stays on gmail.com then they can't use email scraping with your search history. No privacy issues." (or minmal ones) Within a few months of Gmail going public it changed from gmail.com to gmail.google.com or google.com/gmail or some such thing, and I knew instantly they had bamboozled everyone. That was years ago, the rest has been the expected trend.
- hexane360 8y ago
  Why does the front-facing domain have anything to do with what data they can or cannot collect?
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Cookies

everdev 8y ago

> Luckily agencies act as a middle man, if not for that, the abuse would be so much more widespread I ran such an agency. As someone who is proficient in PPC, the AdSense sales team was inexcusably poor at their jobs. They'd offer to setup campaigns for free with thousands of barely relevant keywords and would push upping the budget past what was reasonable. Their tactics were so bad for my clients that I stopped accepting their "free" help and did the campaigns in house. I hate to think how many agencies simply went along with their advice to the detriment of their clients.

partiallypro 8y ago
If what I've been told by people that used to work on those very Google Adwords teams, it's not that they are "bad" at their job, it's that they are meant to meet a certain quota of spend and nothing like ROI etc matters. What's the solution to campaign doing badly? Up the budget! They know it's not optimal, their managers know it's not optimal, but the goal is for Google's bottom line. This stops once you reach a certain spend tier and they know the burn out rates for those companies improve and they want the longer term revenues. (This is also good for larger agencies, since they will also get the good treatment from being a premier partner.) The lower tier spends are basically "boiler rooms" peddling fake penny stocks. People trust them because "It's Google!" but that is so so far from the truth. Sometimes it's not even Google, it's a company they've outsourced to, and sometimes they even work in the same building as Google.
- everdev 8y ago
  Yes, I figured as much. I'm sure the reps were "just doing their jobs", but the result was poor service/advice as you mention.
  - dwd 8y ago
    Doing there jobs basically entails increasing your spend: whether by broadening your keyword phrases, adding irrelevant keywords, expanding your geo-location region, or increasing your bids. Worse is when you get billed for clicks for inactive campaigns, even ones that were never enabled.

tananaev 8y ago

I'll add my very recent negative experience with Google. I have a couple of apps on the Google Play that use Firebase analytics and crash reporting. This weekend both apps were removed by Google without any warnings. The issue was that apps were in "Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID" because by default Firebase collects Advertising ID. I don't really need Advertising ID in my app or my analytics and there is a way to opt out [1], but I think the way Google handled this is just wrong. Collecting information that most people probably don't care about and then removing apps without notice for basically their own default configuration. [1] https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/disable-analytics https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/disable-analytics

bad_user 8y ago
> Collecting information that most people probably don't care about I care about that information and I’m glad they removed your apps, maybe now you’ll start taking privacy more seriously.
- gaius 8y ago
  The issue is that Google are shipping something with a default configuration that violates their own policy, then blaming the user of it
- tananaev 8y ago
  I think you misunderstood my comment. I don't want to collect that information. All I need is anonymous crash stacks and possibly some general statistics (number of users on various app versions and Android versions). Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it, until they removed my apps for the store. I want to collect as minimum information as possible for me to effectively maintain the apps. I have no use for personal information or any identifiers. But Google probably wants it and that's why Firebase collects it by default.
  - patates 8y ago
    > Google was collecting extra information without me even being aware of it I think the point is that you should be aware of it. It is your application after all. Yes, what Google does is weird, but the app developer needs to be more careful in general what 3rd party code they load. On the other hand, I understand you. Probably you do your due diligence when you load some random dependency but you (like everyone else) used to expect better from Google. Not anymore I guess.

clarkmoody 8y ago

Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. I've noticed the straight search results making a marked decline in quality over the past few months. If one of the keywords within your search is anything remotely profitable, it will drown out all other terms. Then the search results ended after ~4 pages. Definitely changed from the Google I "grew up on."

jakecopp 8y ago
Might just be more web pages about profitable products?
- bigiain 8y ago
  Also the people selling things via their webpages are very much more likely to be investing effort in SEO than "non commercial" web pages... (And, as much as Matt Cutts might deny it, it seems inconceivable that Google do not use revenue generated by advertising as a search signal...)
  - skgoa 8y ago
    That's part of the issue, but Google also automatically extends your search terms with words that it believes are relevant to your search. I will also give certain words a higher relevance based on what ti believes you are really searching for. Unfortunately this often leads to search result pages full of entirely irrelevant results, while pages containing the exact words in your search term are few and far between, if they are shown at all. This is my biggest gripe with Google's search engine. It used to be that you could specify exactly what you want to get and it would find it for you. Now it thinks it knows what I want better than I do, so it refuses to show me things I know exist and that every other search engine will find with very simple, straight-forward search terms.
brandonjm 8y ago
> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear arms", "right to guns" and "arms rights".

stephenhuey 8y ago

I was excited by “Don’t be evil” back in the early days. But maybe they should’ve chosen “Don’t be stupid or evil” because their amnesia, arrogance and carelessness remind me of so many hilarious sad stories from the early days in the tech industry as recounted in this book which I own: In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters

randomsearch 8y ago
“Don’t forget not to be evil” I don’t believe the founders have had personality transplant, so why has google become evil?
- zdkl 8y ago
  It's not evil it's shareholder... value... optimisation ! I blame corporate on that one.
  - gldalmaso 8y ago
    Seems like given enough time, any company will lose whatever value it tried to uphold in the past in favor of shareholders. Once it reaches that point, every business optimization is in detriment of either the final user or society, quite often both.
  - MrEfficiency 8y ago
    Shareholders= You and your parents and your grandparents retirement. This need to have 7-13% yearly returns force companies to grind their employees and customers. I like capitalism, but I can easily see capitalism doing evil things to create short term profit.
    - smolder 8y ago
      "I can easily see" sounds like it's a hypothetical, but destruction of real value for short term monetary gain is plainly visible all around. I've probably ran into 1000s of real world examples.

noncoml 8y ago

I stopped trusting Google the day they announced they would use Gmail email content for displaying ads. Sometime in the late 00’s it was I think.

zavi 8y ago
Do they really use email content for ad targeting or are you spreading misinformation?
- namdnay 8y ago
  They did, for a few years. It was a bit scary, but also really good. It was really easy to test, if you sent an email discussing a weekend trip with some friends you'd immediately get hotel and flight ads for that destination. Actually quite useful...
- romanovcode 8y ago
  Yep.
  - zavi 8y ago
    Nope. See other comment.
pavlov 8y ago
Your memory is a bit off. Algorithmic reading of emails for targeted ads was a feature of Gmail from day one. Here's an article from June 2004: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/gmail_spook_heaven/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/gmail_spook_heaven/ The privacy implications were widely discussed when Gmail launched, but then the media interest just faded out because people were apparently OK with it and Google promised to "do no evil". So here we are, 14 years later.

briandear 8y ago

> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real news organization. That right there is the issue. “Real” news organizations share ideological views and their choice of what to investigate is a result of that ideology. When a newsroom cheers or is despondent over an election result, it’s unrealistic to expect them to provide hard-hitting coverage that potentially undercuts their own biases. The coverage of Russian “collusion” is a great example. Hillary Clinton’s people met with the ambassador of China as well as Russian officials during the campaign. But there was not even cursory coverage in mainstream media outlets or any investigation into Hillary’s campaign while similar alleged actions by members of the Trump campaign have led to a years long special prosecutor. I am not going to relitigate the collision case here, but alleged Trump collusion or alleged Clinton collusion would both be considered crimes, that Clinton didn’t win is immaterial since the crimes being alleged are collusion before the election. However, there hasn’t even been any cursory investigative reporting of the actions of the Clinton campaign despite secretly meeting with both Chinese and Russian officials. Just those meetings alone would be grounds for concern, but media outlets, in their disdain for Trump, ignored a potentially identical crime committed by Clinton’s campaign, not because it wasn’t newsworthy, but because it didn’t fit the ideological ambitions of many major “reputable” news outlets. I am not claiming Clinton did or didn’t collide; only that there was enough evidence to inspire at least some investigative reporting by the media — but the problem is that such reporting would weaken the “case” against Trump in terms of public opinion. Keith Ellison a congressman with multiple, credible sexual assault accusations against him gets a pass in the media despite him running for Attorney General of Minnesota and he’s the deputy Chairman of the DNC. Yet, the media goes after the Kavanaugh story despite a far weaker accusation than the police-record supported claims against Ellison. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Again, I am not litigating the Kavanaugh case here, only pointing out that the media has a propensity to cover news with an intensity to suits an obvious agenda as opposed to covering news impartially. With the Google politics situation, why would the “reputable” media care when it’s a sentiment they already share. I was a contract journalist for Reuters from 1996-2002 and, in my opinion, journalism has declined prodigiously since then. It has become a click-bait driven industry that preys on tribalism and emotion. My first real exposure to the 24 hour news cycle was during Desert Storm and I remember the coverage of CNN was not only reputable, but explemplary. The NY Times was an extraordinary paper along with the Seattle PI, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe And Miami Herald. My old hometown paper where I interned before going to Reuters was also great — attacking left and right with equal aplomb, passion and fairness. But something happened along the way. We could blame Trump as is the fashion, but Trump was a product of this, not the cause. There have always been fringe media outlets like Breitbart, however they really didn’t have much of an audience because the majority of people of all political stripes had a reasonable trust in the major media outlets. The issue of media bias isn’t even one of specific stories and how they are written, but something far most sinister — the quiet influence of the assignment editor who decides what stories are even worth considering. The NY Times for example, well written, generally solid stories however, the real bias comes from what they choose not to cover. The Trump stories are certainly worth ink, but so are the stories about Clinton Foundation irregularities, quid pro quo arrangements with foreign governments, the Moroccan phosphate deals, Russian Uranium and campaign money laundering to the time of $84 million. In full disclosure, I didn’t vote for Trump, didn’t support him at all, but I am a libertarian-leaning conservative frustrated that ridiculousness like modern Breitbart even needs to exists. (I say “modern” Breitbart because under Andrew Breitbart, it was actually a pretty decent new source, albeit from a right perspective — it was the conservative answer to the Huffington Post, though now, it’s pretty close to Infowars territory. I apologize for the rant, but I agree, it’s a shame that fringe media has done more investigating into google than the “reputable” media.

joering2 8y ago

My good buddy was within circles of “Team L” back then and nagment always laughted when someone mention “dont do evil” mantra. Google never said they wont do evil, they just stated a fact in general. Similar like Subway says “eat fresh” and you think “oh i guess they have fresh subs” meanwhile just recently there was a case when someone sued Subway for chemicals used in their bread, and reasoned their lawsuit on fact they assumed Subway has fresh sandwitches, but actually Subway lawyers explained the slogan is for others and “in general”, not that they as a company produce or serve “fresh” subs themselves.

earenndil 8y ago

> the video that leaked out [...] of the Google town hall also baffled me Which video?

namdnay 8y ago
I think it was after the US election results, senior leadership was discussing with employees what it could mean for them, and what Google's stance would be. Quite reasonable for a company that is open to diversity to reassure their diverse workforce when a president who is explicitly against diversity is elected. Typical Breitbart trying to create much ado about nothing, I've had similar "town hall" discussions in the UK since Brexit - "what does this mean for our employees? etc"
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  I don't agree that the content of the leaked video[0] was reasonable. Google essentially controls information, so they have tremendous power. Their staff have openly called to subvert democracy, which I think most reasonable people find incredibly dangerous. And no, I don't like Trump. [0]: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl...
  - namdnay 8y ago
    Where did Google leadership call to subvert democracy? At no point in the video do they instruct or encourage employees to do that. They're discussing what Trump means for their employees, not for their customers
    - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
      I said Google staff had, and I didn't say they did that in this video. But then to be fair, I don't have any hard evidence for this. EDIT: As it turns out, sources for this are pretty easy to come across online: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-travelban/google-staff-discussed-tweaking-search-results-to-counter-travel-ban-wsj-idUSKCN1M103O https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-travelban/google-s...

palant 8y ago

Yes, the intention behind Chrome was very obvious pretty much from the start: it has to benefit Google by giving its web services an advantage over competition. I wrote about that seven years ago: https://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chrome-and-pre-installed-web-apps https://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chrome-and-pre-installed...

amelius 8y ago

If we'd ban targeted advertising, this would take away the perverse incentives, and we could help transform Google and other companies into something better. I'd say let's start with a petition.

mlinksva 8y ago
I'd prefer to tax rather than ban ads. Ads are like (indeed contribute to) carbon emissions, not murder.

mda 8y ago

How is your comment relevant to the article?

hrrsn 8y ago

> But if you deal directly with Google ad sales (and this is something I never knew existed tbh) they will intentionally screw you if you are under a certain spend. Any more details on this?

brobdingnagians 8y ago
I'm interested in this as well. My current company uses AdWords directly and is almost certainly below that "certain spend". I'm suspicious that we might be getting taken to the cleaners too, but not sure the co-founder would believe me.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Unfortunately the only way to really know is to have a PPC expert audit your account. IMO having a good in-house PPC person is crucial, or at least go through a reputably agency (as an in-house PPC expert can be pricey.) Even though agencies charge a service fee, your results will almost certainly outperform just using Google's in-house service or doing it yourself. There are also classes some people offer on the topic, which can help you tell if you are being had. I'm not saying it's going to happen every campaign, but it is a common practice.
partiallypro 8y ago
I can't enumerate on it much more without likely making an error, as I am not on the PPC team myself. I know several people in the Michigan Ann Arbor hub at Google that have told me this directly.

CppCoder 8y ago

Google too shut down AdSense just a few weeks ago for a project I work on/for. We only use AdMob to serve ads as alternative monetization. No warning, no reason given, no way to contact anymore. This is definitely not the right way to go about this.

YouAreGreat 8y ago

> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real new organization Lack of reporting from others is no reason to believe Breitbart was first to know, e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/jacknicas/status/1040014678263386112 https://mobile.twitter.com/jacknicas/status/1040014678263386... > Doesn't that bother anyone? I think it actually helps insulate Google from closer scrutiny of its monopoly position and deplorable business model. Why would any self-respecting country suffer an all-powerful ad-financed private Alphabet Agency? Because they think Evil is "on our side".

axilmar 8y ago

also, that atrocity named Go...

sli 8y ago

> Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting off their blacklist, is literally impossible. Same thing happened to me shortly after Adsense started up. They banned my account when I was 17/18 for clicking on my own ads, which I'd never done because I knew you'd get banned for it. I'm now 32, so in two years my Adsense account will have been banned for literally half my life.

fouc 8y ago

It's kind of irritating that we're always trying to keep up with the latest version. In a way, it's actually putting the power into their hands. Making it easier for them to get away with sleazier stuff because the majority are on the most recent version. And because everyone's on the latest version, it's harder for individuals to downgrade or stay on old versions for longer without getting obsoleted. It's actually closing the web. The excuse for aggressive upgrades & auto-updates are mainly for security purposes, with the side benefit of reducing the work of web developers. But on the flip side, it's actually huge centralization move.