6 ms·

Don't Be Evil but Intentionally Deceptive is OK

107 points by Gibbon 18y ago

lsb 18y ago
I wonder how many bad customer services experiences it'll take to train their Bayesian models.
- axod 18y ago
  There will always be user error, which this clearly was.
  - slance 18y ago
    Not really user error. Deleted means deleted.
    - axod 18y ago
      It doesn't make sense to "delete" campaigns in the traditional sense. How would you then get stats on your total spend over time, etc. Those stats are needed, and to remove them would cause even more confusion.
      - davidw 18y ago
        Correct, however, it might make sense to have them more or less 'read only' without flipping a switch or two and being alerted to it.
        axod 18y ago
        I've been using adwords for years. Never seen a problem with it. This is nothing new, it's been like this forever. It's pretty obvious how it works in the UI :/ Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it.
        davidw 18y ago
        > Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it. Yeah, something like "you are about to restore these deleted campaigns!".
    - charltones 18y ago
      Deleted means deleted and resume doesn't mean undelete. Pause / resume, and delete / undelete should be kept separate IMHO. So resume should just resume paused campaigns and a new undelete option should allow you to reverse the status of deleted campaigns.
      - axod 18y ago
        >> "Deleted means deleted" Gmail: Delete... oops... undo. Granted though, it should warn you that you're resuming a deleted campaign. But that's a feature request to save people making mistakes IMHO rather than anything inherently wrong with their UI.
alain94040 18y ago
Google is slowly losing the PR war. It starts with the geeks. It may take another two years to propagate to the general public. By then, billions of dollars in ads (think Microsoft) can't undo the damage. I'm watching to see if they are smarter than MS.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Yeah, MS really screwed the pooch. That's why their revenues have climbed steadily year after year to over $60b. Sure hope Google doesn't make that mistake. Only on Hacker News do people think emulating Microsoft (from a business standpoint, that is) is bad.
  - evgen 18y ago
    Their revenues may still be climbing, but the rate of increase has dropped significantly. They are losing market share in operating systems, office suites, and browsers; they have an awful PR image and they have not had a "hit" product in more than a decade. It does not take an idiot to see that Microsoft has passed its peak and that the decline has begun.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      You know, that's exactly the same argument people made to me 10 years ago when I started comp sci classes and made the mistake of asking some of the grad students why they hated Microsoft so much. Luckily for Microsoft, the other 99.99% of the population never got the memo. At the time I didn't know about Silicon Valley groupthink and I actually believed them. Of course their growth has slowed since their startup days, but for a company of their size it's incredibly impressive. See a chart of it here, noting that the next year after this graph was published it topped $60b: http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-ever-surpass-microsofts/ http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-eve... That's about 20% more than the year before it. Show me another company their size that did that last year. They don't have an awful PR image on Main Street, just on social news sites. Despite Apple spending hundreds of millions to tell the world how much they suck, 90%+ of people still use their products and like them just fine. And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book. I would argue that it does take an idiot to look at a company that went from $51b to $60b in revenues and see decline.
axod 18y ago
[show = all but deleted] -> [select all] -> [resume] It's not rocket science :/ The UI is 100% clear. This is a non-story. As soon as you log in, top right shows "Show | all / all active / all but deleted". It's actually quite worrying the poster is spending a lot on adwords, yet doesn't seem to understand the UI and instead suggests setting all your bids to 0.01 to avoid resuming deleted campaigns having a big effect. Choosing [show = all] shows deleted campaigns, and if you select them all, you can resume them... To suggest this is "intentionally deceptive" is laughable. Worrying this has been voted up to #1
- ambition 18y ago
  No. One of the first rules I ever learned about human factors was to translate "user error" into "design flaw." A mistake that is easy to make is a design problem. In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google. It's probably not intentionally deceptive, but it is deceptive and Google should fix the problem. Default actions should not affect deleted items. Think about GMail: "All Mail" excludes your Spam and Trash.
  - llimllib 18y ago
    > In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google. And, worse, it seems to be a pattern. Clicked the wrong button in your adsense campaign? No appeal, we take your money. We detected fraud in your google payments account? No appeal, we take your money. We detected click fraud in your adsense displays? No appeal, we take your money. I'm glad I don't do any business with them.
    - Ardit20 18y ago
      Why would they give you an appeal? They are not a charity organisation they are a business for profit. If something they are doing is illegal then by right you have access to the courts. Use them.
      - jwb119 18y ago
        The market mechanism should step in before the courts (i.e. they would give you an appeal to stop from losing you to the competition). The problem in this case is that there are no significant competitors.
chanux 18y ago
Actually things are just getting worse. If you missed following article anyhow... "Google slips from list of top companies on privacy" - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html
Raplh 18y ago
I think there must be a basic law of nature that when you have a monopoly you get stupid. Perhaps the only way for Google to "not be evil" is to cut itself in half and have the two new companies compete with each other.
iamelgringo 18y ago
Goog has major issues with customer service. If you're running a business, your first inclination 95% of the time, should be to make the customer really happy. If they have a complaint about your service, you bend over backwards to make it right. Especially, when these people are use to paying a CPC of $10 for some of their ad campaigns. Can you imagine that type of response from Amazon web services support staff? Especially, if you had an unresolved $3000 bill with them. I recently set up an online store using Yahoo Merchant solutions. I ran into road blocks two separate times, and when I went to their "help" section, I found a 24 hour customer service phone number, so I called them both times after midnight. On both occasions, within a minute, I was talking to a live person who spoke fluent English. And I had my issue resolved within minutes. Needless to say, I'm going to continue using Yahoo Merchant Solutions. The interface is pretty clunky, but I've been really happy with their customer service. Google could take a lesson or two from Yahoo and Amazon on this.
- KWD 18y ago
  I also run a Yahoo Store, and even in their Search Marketing group, customer service has always been excellent. Clearly there is a lesson Google needs to learn from Yahoo in at least one area.
Raplh 18y ago
As stupid as Google's customer service, and their interpretation of the word "deleted" is, it is pretty obviously not intentional. My reasoning is: it adds virtually nothing to Google's income. If these had not been turned on, the next higher bidder would have gotten those clicks. Presumably this is "dutch auction" -ish pricing, so the high bids on these CPCs only got a high charge per click if there were other high bids out there?
- eru 18y ago
  Wouldn't a Dutch auction work exactly the opposite way? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction: "A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.") Or do you use eBay's definition of the term: "eBay uses the term Dutch auction differently, for a multi-unit auction for several identical goods to be sold simultaneously to potentially multiple bidders."
mattmaroon 18y ago
Wait, he actually got someone at Google to respond to a query in a timely fashion? That seems like a pretty big win to me. He must have a serious ad budget.
- skinnymuch 18y ago
  Yeah the guy is huge. I'm just some random nobody loner who makes his living off the net (not too much $$ though) and I know for almost a fact that this guy is rich as shit through random people talking about him. Pretty modest too.
  - Gibbon 18y ago
    He's got 125 employees. http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-business/ http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-business/ will give you some idea about the size and scope of what he's doing.
    - skinnymuch 17y ago
      I know this is a super late reply, but wow. 125 is insane. Though I wonder how many are employees in first world countries vs third world countries.
- axod 18y ago
  Anyone using adwords can call up a number and speak to a person. If you start spending more, you get a dedicated account manager etc.
eli 18y ago
I don't see how this is intentionally deceptive. It's just typically bad UI design. (Typical among even Google software, I'm afraid)
blasdel 18y ago
"Don't be evil" is a KICK-ME sign on Google's back.

107 points by Gibbon 18y ago

lsb 18y ago

I wonder how many bad customer services experiences it'll take to train their Bayesian models.

axod 18y ago
There will always be user error, which this clearly was.
- slance 18y ago
  Not really user error. Deleted means deleted.
  - axod 18y ago
    It doesn't make sense to "delete" campaigns in the traditional sense. How would you then get stats on your total spend over time, etc. Those stats are needed, and to remove them would cause even more confusion.
    - davidw 18y ago
      Correct, however, it might make sense to have them more or less 'read only' without flipping a switch or two and being alerted to it.
      - axod 18y ago
        I've been using adwords for years. Never seen a problem with it. This is nothing new, it's been like this forever. It's pretty obvious how it works in the UI :/ Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it.
        davidw 18y ago
        > Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it. Yeah, something like "you are about to restore these deleted campaigns!".
  - charltones 18y ago
    Deleted means deleted and resume doesn't mean undelete. Pause / resume, and delete / undelete should be kept separate IMHO. So resume should just resume paused campaigns and a new undelete option should allow you to reverse the status of deleted campaigns.
    - axod 18y ago
      >> "Deleted means deleted" Gmail: Delete... oops... undo. Granted though, it should warn you that you're resuming a deleted campaign. But that's a feature request to save people making mistakes IMHO rather than anything inherently wrong with their UI.

alain94040 18y ago

Google is slowly losing the PR war. It starts with the geeks. It may take another two years to propagate to the general public. By then, billions of dollars in ads (think Microsoft) can't undo the damage. I'm watching to see if they are smarter than MS.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Yeah, MS really screwed the pooch. That's why their revenues have climbed steadily year after year to over $60b. Sure hope Google doesn't make that mistake. Only on Hacker News do people think emulating Microsoft (from a business standpoint, that is) is bad.
- evgen 18y ago
  Their revenues may still be climbing, but the rate of increase has dropped significantly. They are losing market share in operating systems, office suites, and browsers; they have an awful PR image and they have not had a "hit" product in more than a decade. It does not take an idiot to see that Microsoft has passed its peak and that the decline has begun.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    You know, that's exactly the same argument people made to me 10 years ago when I started comp sci classes and made the mistake of asking some of the grad students why they hated Microsoft so much. Luckily for Microsoft, the other 99.99% of the population never got the memo. At the time I didn't know about Silicon Valley groupthink and I actually believed them. Of course their growth has slowed since their startup days, but for a company of their size it's incredibly impressive. See a chart of it here, noting that the next year after this graph was published it topped $60b: http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-ever-surpass-microsofts/ http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-eve... That's about 20% more than the year before it. Show me another company their size that did that last year. They don't have an awful PR image on Main Street, just on social news sites. Despite Apple spending hundreds of millions to tell the world how much they suck, 90%+ of people still use their products and like them just fine. And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book. I would argue that it does take an idiot to look at a company that went from $51b to $60b in revenues and see decline.

axod 18y ago

[show = all but deleted] -> [select all] -> [resume] It's not rocket science :/ The UI is 100% clear. This is a non-story. As soon as you log in, top right shows "Show | all / all active / all but deleted". It's actually quite worrying the poster is spending a lot on adwords, yet doesn't seem to understand the UI and instead suggests setting all your bids to 0.01 to avoid resuming deleted campaigns having a big effect. Choosing [show = all] shows deleted campaigns, and if you select them all, you can resume them... To suggest this is "intentionally deceptive" is laughable. Worrying this has been voted up to #1

ambition 18y ago
No. One of the first rules I ever learned about human factors was to translate "user error" into "design flaw." A mistake that is easy to make is a design problem. In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google. It's probably not intentionally deceptive, but it is deceptive and Google should fix the problem. Default actions should not affect deleted items. Think about GMail: "All Mail" excludes your Spam and Trash.
- llimllib 18y ago
  > In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google. And, worse, it seems to be a pattern. Clicked the wrong button in your adsense campaign? No appeal, we take your money. We detected fraud in your google payments account? No appeal, we take your money. We detected click fraud in your adsense displays? No appeal, we take your money. I'm glad I don't do any business with them.
  - Ardit20 18y ago
    Why would they give you an appeal? They are not a charity organisation they are a business for profit. If something they are doing is illegal then by right you have access to the courts. Use them.
    - jwb119 18y ago
      The market mechanism should step in before the courts (i.e. they would give you an appeal to stop from losing you to the competition). The problem in this case is that there are no significant competitors.

chanux 18y ago

Actually things are just getting worse. If you missed following article anyhow... "Google slips from list of top companies on privacy" - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html

Raplh 18y ago

I think there must be a basic law of nature that when you have a monopoly you get stupid. Perhaps the only way for Google to "not be evil" is to cut itself in half and have the two new companies compete with each other.

iamelgringo 18y ago

Goog has major issues with customer service. If you're running a business, your first inclination 95% of the time, should be to make the customer really happy. If they have a complaint about your service, you bend over backwards to make it right. Especially, when these people are use to paying a CPC of $10 for some of their ad campaigns. Can you imagine that type of response from Amazon web services support staff? Especially, if you had an unresolved $3000 bill with them. I recently set up an online store using Yahoo Merchant solutions. I ran into road blocks two separate times, and when I went to their "help" section, I found a 24 hour customer service phone number, so I called them both times after midnight. On both occasions, within a minute, I was talking to a live person who spoke fluent English. And I had my issue resolved within minutes. Needless to say, I'm going to continue using Yahoo Merchant Solutions. The interface is pretty clunky, but I've been really happy with their customer service. Google could take a lesson or two from Yahoo and Amazon on this.

KWD 18y ago
I also run a Yahoo Store, and even in their Search Marketing group, customer service has always been excellent. Clearly there is a lesson Google needs to learn from Yahoo in at least one area.

Raplh 18y ago

As stupid as Google's customer service, and their interpretation of the word "deleted" is, it is pretty obviously not intentional. My reasoning is: it adds virtually nothing to Google's income. If these had not been turned on, the next higher bidder would have gotten those clicks. Presumably this is "dutch auction" -ish pricing, so the high bids on these CPCs only got a high charge per click if there were other high bids out there?

eru 18y ago
Wouldn't a Dutch auction work exactly the opposite way? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction: "A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.") Or do you use eBay's definition of the term: "eBay uses the term Dutch auction differently, for a multi-unit auction for several identical goods to be sold simultaneously to potentially multiple bidders."

mattmaroon 18y ago

Wait, he actually got someone at Google to respond to a query in a timely fashion? That seems like a pretty big win to me. He must have a serious ad budget.

skinnymuch 18y ago
Yeah the guy is huge. I'm just some random nobody loner who makes his living off the net (not too much $$ though) and I know for almost a fact that this guy is rich as shit through random people talking about him. Pretty modest too.
- Gibbon 18y ago
  He's got 125 employees. http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-business/ http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-business/ will give you some idea about the size and scope of what he's doing.
  - skinnymuch 17y ago
    I know this is a super late reply, but wow. 125 is insane. Though I wonder how many are employees in first world countries vs third world countries.
axod 18y ago
Anyone using adwords can call up a number and speak to a person. If you start spending more, you get a dedicated account manager etc.

eli 18y ago

I don't see how this is intentionally deceptive. It's just typically bad UI design. (Typical among even Google software, I'm afraid)

blasdel 18y ago

"Don't be evil" is a KICK-ME sign on Google's back.