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I checked the article's claim for myself -- "Results 1 - 10 of about 12,700,000 for read russian." "How to read Russian in 75 minutes" knol at #5 -- but it was

by Erwin 18y ago

I checked the article's claim for myself -- "Results 1 - 10 of about 12,700,000 for read russian." "How to read Russian in 75 minutes" knol at #5 -- but it was created yesterday. Google does not seem so objective now.

babul 18y ago
It is greed that will become the downfall of Google as they comprise many aspects of their service to generate revenue. Honesty, integrity, reliability, trust, et al, are values they should not compromise to push their products. We know "don't be evil" is dead, but perhaps be less evil than you are being now.
- omouse 18y ago
  It is the poisoning of culture that will be their downfall. Do you really think if Google was run by engineers they'd release something like this upon the world? Heck no. There's no technical challenge in Knol. Google! If you ever see this, bring back the old Google...the Google that created GMail and a damn good search engine.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
albertcardona 18y ago
#1 as of Fri Jul 25 09:03:39 EDT 2008.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Yes, this seems like a foolish way to erode the Google brand. They were already serving ads on every search that returned Wikipedia entries; is the long-term damage to their brand really worth the extra money? Given that it's probably impossible to design a simple PageRank algorithm (because it will be gamed, overnight, by SEO experts), and because Google has to keep the algorithm secret anyway (for the same reason), the only reason to trust PageRank is Google's impartiality: Because they're haven't been in the publishing business themselves (at least not conspicuously) they don't have a particular incentive to favor their own content as they tweak the PageRank settings. It's just not possible for Google to become a publisher and still retain consumer confidence in their core product. Nothing will happen in the short term. Brand erosion is like soil erosion: you don't notice the individual grains trickling downhill, but then you wake up one day and the mountain is missing. There was a time when Yahoo was the king of search, and that time is over for a reason. Early adopters are going to start scanning the skies once again, waiting for the arrival of Google's competition.
sratner 18y ago
Having checked out the top five, I have to say I found the knol to be most useful in actually teaching someone to read Russian. The current #1 may have been there for a long time, but it is a very poor resource. The knol certainly has the right to be ranked among these pages, if not higher. Objective or not, Google is giving me the information I am looking for, hence it is behaving exactly as I would want it to.

by Erwin 18y ago

babul 18y ago

It is greed that will become the downfall of Google as they comprise many aspects of their service to generate revenue. Honesty, integrity, reliability, trust, et al, are values they should not compromise to push their products. We know "don't be evil" is dead, but perhaps be less evil than you are being now.

omouse 18y ago
It is the poisoning of culture that will be their downfall. Do you really think if Google was run by engineers they'd release something like this upon the world? Heck no. There's no technical challenge in Knol. Google! If you ever see this, bring back the old Google...the Google that created GMail and a damn good search engine.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

albertcardona 18y ago

#1 as of Fri Jul 25 09:03:39 EDT 2008.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Yes, this seems like a foolish way to erode the Google brand. They were already serving ads on every search that returned Wikipedia entries; is the long-term damage to their brand really worth the extra money? Given that it's probably impossible to design a simple PageRank algorithm (because it will be gamed, overnight, by SEO experts), and because Google has to keep the algorithm secret anyway (for the same reason), the only reason to trust PageRank is Google's impartiality: Because they're haven't been in the publishing business themselves (at least not conspicuously) they don't have a particular incentive to favor their own content as they tweak the PageRank settings. It's just not possible for Google to become a publisher and still retain consumer confidence in their core product. Nothing will happen in the short term. Brand erosion is like soil erosion: you don't notice the individual grains trickling downhill, but then you wake up one day and the mountain is missing. There was a time when Yahoo was the king of search, and that time is over for a reason. Early adopters are going to start scanning the skies once again, waiting for the arrival of Google's competition.

sratner 18y ago

Having checked out the top five, I have to say I found the knol to be most useful in actually teaching someone to read Russian. The current #1 may have been there for a long time, but it is a very poor resource. The knol certainly has the right to be ranked among these pages, if not higher. Objective or not, Google is giving me the information I am looking for, hence it is behaving exactly as I would want it to.