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> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else prov

by zmmmmm 6y ago

> News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage. Perhaps the worst thing seems to me that it prospectively constrains what kinds of algorithms they can actually apply to things they can tell people about. So all kinds of approaches with poor explainability (say, deep learning) will get put aside for things that are empirically worse (more biased, unfair, less equitable, etc.) but compliant with the law because Google can "explain them" to people.

darawk 6y ago
> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage. Because then people would game it.
- uluyol 6y ago
  Exactly, the ranking needs constant tweaking to deal with spam/SEO.
  - schemy 6y ago
    Which is what's happening right now. The only difference would be that you don't need to do industrial espionage on google to see what works first, so the cost of the seo would drop.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  Yes, same as the phone book for AAA Plumbers. Playing devil's advocate, gaming search engines used to be about keywords then it became more about links. SEOs nowadays talk about "EAT", expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It's still possible for marketers to mimic quality signals but it's less easy. It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. Slightly more on topic, marketers used to be able to do accurate keyword research with Google, and also see the keywords that people searched for when landing on their site, which is quite useful for figuring out their intent. Google keeps all that data to themselves now. I find their "concerns" about "use of private data" a bit laughable, considering they used your personal search history to try and target you on sites you visit across the web via ads. They don't mind retaining data about users, they just don't like having to share it with anyone.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    > It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. This was actually done back when Google+ first was launched — people could attach their authorship and it would be displayed on the search page, and you would also see a list of “experts” for particular categories on the right hand side when you searched for things like “python” or “poker”. I believe it disappeared with the rest of Google+, because no one actually cared.
    - ricardo81 6y ago
      Seems like that's one major ingredient they'd like to add to their algo as intent/authority is otherwise measured much more indirectly.
- harry8 6y ago
  >Because then people would game it. ...with slightly more effectiveness allowing better competition with google itself. You can do search. You can provide content. Doing both became rent seeking. And damn does google do rent-seeking very effectively.
wutbrodo 6y ago
> Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment I don't see how this follows: this regulation isn't precipitated by "unfair treatment" of news media, nor are the gov't and media pretending it is. Quite the opposite: this is a plea for giving news media an unfair advantage.
altindag 6y ago
interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care. perhaps because they have inside knowledge that the legislation is a dead duck and the government doesn't intend to follow through but perhaps the government is simply doing this for whatever reasons maybe political points with the population. I have no doubt that the Australian government and Google play a delicate dance with each other while they both cooperate and see that they both get the outcomes they both want. so the gloss that this is all about consumers, spouted by both sides, I think is false. anyway, interesting to watch where this goes.
- foxylad 6y ago
  Google's entire business depends on being squeaky clean. If they ever got caught doing "sophisticated" opinion influencing, they'd lose half their value overnight as customers switched to alternatives. And then every democratic government would join in with a serious kicking, given their elections are so vulnerable to said influencing. I think Facebook sails very close to the wind here, but my impression is that Google's management is a lot more professional about protecting their business long term. So I'd be suprised if they tried any dirty tricks. However, their efforts won't be limited to open letters. There will be some very high-powered lobbying going on, and I bet this letter is mostly to frame that debate to counter the lobbying from Murdoch's empire. All in all, a great time to be an Aussie politician - a lot of very expensive trips, lunches and other inducements coming there way.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - altindag 6y ago
    I doubt this. we are beholden to Google. we can't just go elsewhere even if we disagree with some things some people in Google do. advertiser or consumer. or government. they ain't losing half their business anytime soon, no matter what kind of things they pull.

by zmmmmm 6y ago

darawk 6y ago

> I'm not sure how Google wins this one because it seems like an easy comeback is "well why don't you just be transparent and tell everybody that information". Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment (even if just alleged, not proven), and the minute they don't they will lose their competitive advantage. Because then people would game it.

uluyol 6y ago
Exactly, the ranking needs constant tweaking to deal with spam/SEO.
- schemy 6y ago
  Which is what's happening right now. The only difference would be that you don't need to do industrial espionage on google to see what works first, so the cost of the seo would drop.
ricardo81 6y ago
Yes, same as the phone book for AAA Plumbers. Playing devil's advocate, gaming search engines used to be about keywords then it became more about links. SEOs nowadays talk about "EAT", expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It's still possible for marketers to mimic quality signals but it's less easy. It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. Slightly more on topic, marketers used to be able to do accurate keyword research with Google, and also see the keywords that people searched for when landing on their site, which is quite useful for figuring out their intent. Google keeps all that data to themselves now. I find their "concerns" about "use of private data" a bit laughable, considering they used your personal search history to try and target you on sites you visit across the web via ads. They don't mind retaining data about users, they just don't like having to share it with anyone.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  > It would be much easier if the author of webpages were to declare themselves, sort of a Pagerank but applied on a person/topic level. It could/can be done with structured data. This of course has privacy implications but it keeps the publishers as transparent to the search engine as possible. Verification of sorts would be needed so other people don't use your authorship details on their own site. It's the kind of social fabric/data Google could've perhaps used Google+ for. This was actually done back when Google+ first was launched — people could attach their authorship and it would be displayed on the search page, and you would also see a list of “experts” for particular categories on the right hand side when you searched for things like “python” or “poker”. I believe it disappeared with the rest of Google+, because no one actually cared.
  - ricardo81 6y ago
    Seems like that's one major ingredient they'd like to add to their algo as intent/authority is otherwise measured much more indirectly.
harry8 6y ago
>Because then people would game it. ...with slightly more effectiveness allowing better competition with google itself. You can do search. You can provide content. Doing both became rent seeking. And damn does google do rent-seeking very effectively.

wutbrodo 6y ago

> Ultimately, as long as they have anything resembling "secret sauce" they will be in the cross hairs of regulators for unfair treatment I don't see how this follows: this regulation isn't precipitated by "unfair treatment" of news media, nor are the gov't and media pretending it is. Quite the opposite: this is a plea for giving news media an unfair advantage.

altindag 6y ago

interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care. perhaps because they have inside knowledge that the legislation is a dead duck and the government doesn't intend to follow through but perhaps the government is simply doing this for whatever reasons maybe political points with the population. I have no doubt that the Australian government and Google play a delicate dance with each other while they both cooperate and see that they both get the outcomes they both want. so the gloss that this is all about consumers, spouted by both sides, I think is false. anyway, interesting to watch where this goes.

foxylad 6y ago
Google's entire business depends on being squeaky clean. If they ever got caught doing "sophisticated" opinion influencing, they'd lose half their value overnight as customers switched to alternatives. And then every democratic government would join in with a serious kicking, given their elections are so vulnerable to said influencing. I think Facebook sails very close to the wind here, but my impression is that Google's management is a lot more professional about protecting their business long term. So I'd be suprised if they tried any dirty tricks. However, their efforts won't be limited to open letters. There will be some very high-powered lobbying going on, and I bet this letter is mostly to frame that debate to counter the lobbying from Murdoch's empire. All in all, a great time to be an Aussie politician - a lot of very expensive trips, lunches and other inducements coming there way.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- altindag 6y ago
  I doubt this. we are beholden to Google. we can't just go elsewhere even if we disagree with some things some people in Google do. advertiser or consumer. or government. they ain't losing half their business anytime soon, no matter what kind of things they pull.