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Here are the findings of the investigation, according to the article: >More than 100 interviews and the Journal’s own testing of Google’s search results reveal

Here are the findings of the investigation, according to the article: >More than 100 interviews and the Journal’s own testing of Google’s search results reveal: • Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc., contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action. The company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. • Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results. These features include auto-complete suggestions, boxes called “knowledge panels” and “featured snippets,” and news results, which aren’t subject to the same company policies limiting what engineers can remove or change. • Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results. These moves are separate from those that block sites as required by U.S. or foreign law, such as those featuring child abuse or with copyright infringement, and from changes designed to demote spam sites, which attempt to game the system to appear higher in results. • In auto-complete, the feature that predicts search terms as the user types a query, Google’s engineers have created algorithms and blacklists to weed out more-incendiary suggestions for controversial subjects, such as abortion or immigration, in effect filtering out inflammatory results on high-profile topics. • Google employees and executives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have disagreed on how much to intervene on search results and to what extent. Employees can push for revisions in specific search results, including on topics such as vaccinations and autism. • To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms’ rankings. Even so, contractors said Google gave feedback to these workers to convey what it considered to be the correct ranking of results, and they revised their assessments accordingly, according to contractors interviewed by the Journal. The contractors’ collective evaluations are then used to adjust algorithms

buboard 7y ago
I wonder how its founders feel about this culture? Google used to have a specific role, creating a win-win situation for everyone on the public web, but now it has become a greedy monster having lost its mind. I wonder what caused it ? was it reckless hiring or the fact that the founders no longer seem to care or anywhere to be found? It's a shame really, for such a monumental company.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  The article (which is really long) talks pretty extensively about founder conflict about manual intervention, this is the passage I feel captured the sentiment: >Mr. Brin still opposed making large-scale efforts to fight spam, because it involved more human intervention. Mr. Brin, whose parents were Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union, even personally decided to allow anti-Semitic sites that were in the results for the query “Jew,” according to people familiar with the decision. Google posted a disclaimer with results for that query saying, “Our search results are generated completely objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google.” >Finally, in 2004, in the bathroom one day at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Mr. Page approached Ben Gomes, one of Google’s early search executives, to express support for his efforts fighting spam. “Just do what you need to do,” said Mr. Page, according to a person familiar with the conversation. “Sergey is going to ruin this f—ing company.”
- paganel 7y ago
  > I wonder what caused it ? I guess money caused it. When you have a market-cap of $900+ billion you’re not going to keep up with promises made back when you were “only” a $90 billion company or a $9 billion company. I remember the pre/IPO days when each index update was followed almost religiously on webmasterworld.com and where an user called Googleguy (supposedly Matt Cutts) was implicitly promising all the website owners in there that Google was our friend, that they were never going to become a portal and that they would never steal anyone’s content.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    You’re right on an observational level, but I don’t think we should normalize breaking promises because of money
    - paganel 7y ago
      Being right on an observational level is generally considered to be, well, right when it comes to perceived reality, what should or should not happen from a moral/ethical point of view is another discussion (the OP asked why did this happen, not if what happened was right or wrong).
WalterGR 7y ago
Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results. These moves are separate from those that block sites as required by U.S. or foreign law, such as those featuring child abuse or with copyright infringement, and from changes designed to demote spam sites, which attempt to game the system to appear higher in results. Google has a permanent demotion applied to a site I've run since 1996: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ . I estimate that my traffic would be 2.5x - 3x what it is now, were the demotion not in place. These demotions are hidden, permanent, and cannot be appealed. Moreover, these demotions can be performed by hand internally within Google - for whatever reason they choose, or for no reason at all. That is to say, some demotions are manual and not automated. I have never been officially notified that the demotion exists, in any of Google's available tools or any other way. However, a Google employee checked the internal status of my website and there is, indeed, a permanent demotion in place. There is no reason for my site to be demoted. This demotion was put in place while Matt Cutts was the head of the web spam team. I asked him about it here on HN, and he lied about it. (I know he lied because of my communication with the Google employee.) You can read my thread with Matt here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408087 . I'd like to make the email chain between the Google employee and I public. But I don't want to ruin someone's career / life, just because they did the right thing and told me about the penalty. So... I don't know what to do. Thoughts?
- seminatl 7y ago
  Wait, what is the basis of ranking that you expect for your site? Is it based on Planck's constant or ???
  - WalterGR 7y ago
    Via comparison to similar websites. It's an estimation.
    - seminatl 7y ago
      Is it possible that the sites that outrank yours are preferred by search users?
GordonS 7y ago
> Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results Google absolutely does this. Around 6-9 months ago bluelight.org (a somewhat controversial drug harm reduction forum) disappeared from search results overnight. It will show results if you explicitly use `site:bluelight.org`, otherwise nothing * I feel the need to add a disclaimer here: I don't abuse drugs, but find blue light an interesting source of information regarding side effects and bioavailability of various prescription medications

buboard 7y ago

I wonder how its founders feel about this culture? Google used to have a specific role, creating a win-win situation for everyone on the public web, but now it has become a greedy monster having lost its mind. I wonder what caused it ? was it reckless hiring or the fact that the founders no longer seem to care or anywhere to be found? It's a shame really, for such a monumental company.

creaghpatr 7y ago
The article (which is really long) talks pretty extensively about founder conflict about manual intervention, this is the passage I feel captured the sentiment: >Mr. Brin still opposed making large-scale efforts to fight spam, because it involved more human intervention. Mr. Brin, whose parents were Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union, even personally decided to allow anti-Semitic sites that were in the results for the query “Jew,” according to people familiar with the decision. Google posted a disclaimer with results for that query saying, “Our search results are generated completely objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google.” >Finally, in 2004, in the bathroom one day at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Mr. Page approached Ben Gomes, one of Google’s early search executives, to express support for his efforts fighting spam. “Just do what you need to do,” said Mr. Page, according to a person familiar with the conversation. “Sergey is going to ruin this f—ing company.”
paganel 7y ago
> I wonder what caused it ? I guess money caused it. When you have a market-cap of $900+ billion you’re not going to keep up with promises made back when you were “only” a $90 billion company or a $9 billion company. I remember the pre/IPO days when each index update was followed almost religiously on webmasterworld.com and where an user called Googleguy (supposedly Matt Cutts) was implicitly promising all the website owners in there that Google was our friend, that they were never going to become a portal and that they would never steal anyone’s content.
- jammygit 7y ago
  You’re right on an observational level, but I don’t think we should normalize breaking promises because of money
  - paganel 7y ago
    Being right on an observational level is generally considered to be, well, right when it comes to perceived reality, what should or should not happen from a moral/ethical point of view is another discussion (the OP asked why did this happen, not if what happened was right or wrong).

WalterGR 7y ago

Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results. These moves are separate from those that block sites as required by U.S. or foreign law, such as those featuring child abuse or with copyright infringement, and from changes designed to demote spam sites, which attempt to game the system to appear higher in results. Google has a permanent demotion applied to a site I've run since 1996: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ . I estimate that my traffic would be 2.5x - 3x what it is now, were the demotion not in place. These demotions are hidden, permanent, and cannot be appealed. Moreover, these demotions can be performed by hand internally within Google - for whatever reason they choose, or for no reason at all. That is to say, some demotions are manual and not automated. I have never been officially notified that the demotion exists, in any of Google's available tools or any other way. However, a Google employee checked the internal status of my website and there is, indeed, a permanent demotion in place. There is no reason for my site to be demoted. This demotion was put in place while Matt Cutts was the head of the web spam team. I asked him about it here on HN, and he lied about it. (I know he lied because of my communication with the Google employee.) You can read my thread with Matt here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408087 . I'd like to make the email chain between the Google employee and I public. But I don't want to ruin someone's career / life, just because they did the right thing and told me about the penalty. So... I don't know what to do. Thoughts?

seminatl 7y ago
Wait, what is the basis of ranking that you expect for your site? Is it based on Planck's constant or ???
- WalterGR 7y ago
  Via comparison to similar websites. It's an estimation.
  - seminatl 7y ago
    Is it possible that the sites that outrank yours are preferred by search users?

GordonS 7y ago

> Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results Google absolutely does this. Around 6-9 months ago bluelight.org (a somewhat controversial drug harm reduction forum) disappeared from search results overnight. It will show results if you explicitly use `site:bluelight.org`, otherwise nothing * I feel the need to add a disclaimer here: I don't abuse drugs, but find blue light an interesting source of information regarding side effects and bioavailability of various prescription medications