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Does anybody really believe that Google engineers are stupid enough to think that it is good for them to serve spam to their users? This cockamamie conspiracy t

Does anybody really believe that Google engineers are stupid enough to think that it is good for them to serve spam to their users? This cockamamie conspiracy theory is getting really old.

deleted 16y ago
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larrik 16y ago
Perhaps it isn't up to the engineers. If Google's outward appearances seem to be deteriorating so profoundly, then it may be a reflection of something happening internally. Has anyone from inside Google said anything about this yet?
- spiffworks 16y ago
  Okay, then do you think that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are stupid enough? > Has anyone from inside Google said anything about this yet? Matt Cutts and moultano are here all the time, saying that they're working on a solution. But for some reason, it is better to make up shit and then believe it than to actually listen to the people who talk.
  - anonymous246 16y ago
    > Okay, then do you think that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are stupid enough? People don't say "follow the money" in TV shows for no reason.
  - rorrr 16y ago
    The problem has been out for a long time. Mahalo.com is a good example. Google will lose a lot of money if they remove them from the search results. If their engineers have been working, as you say, it's the slowest fucking project ever. What you don't realize is that since Google went IPO, it's not all about building an amazing search engine. It's a lot about revenues and net profits. There are lots of businessmen in charge who want to make lots of money quickly, and couldn't care less about the quality of the search results.
    - spiffworks 16y ago
      >What you don't realize is that since Google went IPO, it's not all about building an amazing search engine. It's a lot about revenues and net profits. There are lots of businessmen in charge who want to make lots of money quickly, and couldn't care less about the quality of the search results. First of all, Google went public in 2004. I would like you to point me to a study showing the steady decline in quality since that time. Who are these 'lots of businessmen' you talk about? One of the complaints about Google has actually been that they prefer to have engineers in all sorts of roles including management. Now, since you've gone all conspiracy theorist, I have a theory of my own, I hope you will excuse it. My theory is that the pro-Apple blogging community has gone ape-shit over a perceived threat to iOS from Google, and are now looking at them as 'The enemy', and this whole rash of blog posts maligning Google is part of a larger 'Death by a thousand paper cuts' strategy to make Google seem uncool, and therefore, as we all concur, dead. I also believe that said bloggers are in fact undercover employees of Apple who get paid by the number of times they mention Apple products in reviews of their competitors' products, but that's just me being nuts.
      - rorrr 16y ago
        You seriously believe financial and strategical decisions are made by tech people at Google? That's just silly. Look at glassdoor. They have finance people, directors and executives of all kinds. They also have shareholders. Those are the people who make important decisions. And then you call me a conspiracy theorist, immediately followed by a pretty insane conspiracy theory about Apple community. I'm not even an Apple fan.
        spiffworks 16y ago
        First, let me just say sorry for the previous comment. Clearly, my attempt at humour fell flat. I never intended to imply that you were an apple fan or anything of the sort. What I meant to say was that I've seen many reports which show a large percentage of executives at Google to be engineers and programmers, although I can't find a link right now. However, I seriously doubt that Google engineers would have gone along without revolt down a slippery slope as the one implied in the original article.
- vannevar 16y ago
  I brought up this exact issue with Peter Norvig from Google, that Google is essentially subsidizing spammers to corrupt the search results that his group is charged with improving. He diplomatically sidestepped the question.
rorrr 16y ago
1) It's not up to the engineers. 2) Google makes a ton of money from spam sites.
pornel 16y ago
I think it's two issues: • As a matter of policy, Google doesn't want to remove borderline spam sites (content mills, "$keyword free download" aggregators). Like Experts Exchange they might be spared as long as they bend, but not break the rules. • Google really doesn't want to start mass manual banning (because that might be manual banning vs automated generator), and some spammers found way to sneak past Google's dupe detection algorithm.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

Does anybody really believe that Google engineers are stupid enough to think that it is good for them to serve spam to their users? This cockamamie conspiracy theory is getting really old.

deleted 16y ago

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deleted 16y ago

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larrik 16y ago

Perhaps it isn't up to the engineers. If Google's outward appearances seem to be deteriorating so profoundly, then it may be a reflection of something happening internally. Has anyone from inside Google said anything about this yet?

spiffworks 16y ago
Okay, then do you think that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are stupid enough? > Has anyone from inside Google said anything about this yet? Matt Cutts and moultano are here all the time, saying that they're working on a solution. But for some reason, it is better to make up shit and then believe it than to actually listen to the people who talk.
- anonymous246 16y ago
  > Okay, then do you think that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are stupid enough? People don't say "follow the money" in TV shows for no reason.
- rorrr 16y ago
  The problem has been out for a long time. Mahalo.com is a good example. Google will lose a lot of money if they remove them from the search results. If their engineers have been working, as you say, it's the slowest fucking project ever. What you don't realize is that since Google went IPO, it's not all about building an amazing search engine. It's a lot about revenues and net profits. There are lots of businessmen in charge who want to make lots of money quickly, and couldn't care less about the quality of the search results.
  - spiffworks 16y ago
    >What you don't realize is that since Google went IPO, it's not all about building an amazing search engine. It's a lot about revenues and net profits. There are lots of businessmen in charge who want to make lots of money quickly, and couldn't care less about the quality of the search results. First of all, Google went public in 2004. I would like you to point me to a study showing the steady decline in quality since that time. Who are these 'lots of businessmen' you talk about? One of the complaints about Google has actually been that they prefer to have engineers in all sorts of roles including management. Now, since you've gone all conspiracy theorist, I have a theory of my own, I hope you will excuse it. My theory is that the pro-Apple blogging community has gone ape-shit over a perceived threat to iOS from Google, and are now looking at them as 'The enemy', and this whole rash of blog posts maligning Google is part of a larger 'Death by a thousand paper cuts' strategy to make Google seem uncool, and therefore, as we all concur, dead. I also believe that said bloggers are in fact undercover employees of Apple who get paid by the number of times they mention Apple products in reviews of their competitors' products, but that's just me being nuts.
    - rorrr 16y ago
      You seriously believe financial and strategical decisions are made by tech people at Google? That's just silly. Look at glassdoor. They have finance people, directors and executives of all kinds. They also have shareholders. Those are the people who make important decisions. And then you call me a conspiracy theorist, immediately followed by a pretty insane conspiracy theory about Apple community. I'm not even an Apple fan.
      - spiffworks 16y ago
        First, let me just say sorry for the previous comment. Clearly, my attempt at humour fell flat. I never intended to imply that you were an apple fan or anything of the sort. What I meant to say was that I've seen many reports which show a large percentage of executives at Google to be engineers and programmers, although I can't find a link right now. However, I seriously doubt that Google engineers would have gone along without revolt down a slippery slope as the one implied in the original article.
vannevar 16y ago
I brought up this exact issue with Peter Norvig from Google, that Google is essentially subsidizing spammers to corrupt the search results that his group is charged with improving. He diplomatically sidestepped the question.

rorrr 16y ago

1) It's not up to the engineers. 2) Google makes a ton of money from spam sites.

pornel 16y ago

I think it's two issues: • As a matter of policy, Google doesn't want to remove borderline spam sites (content mills, "$keyword free download" aggregators). Like Experts Exchange they might be spared as long as they bend, but not break the rules. • Google really doesn't want to start mass manual banning (because that might be manual banning vs automated generator), and some spammers found way to sneak past Google's dupe detection algorithm.

deleted 16y ago
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