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This actually doesn't seem terrible to me: If I published a public review on a product, why should Google not auto-match this up to a search result? That's the

This actually doesn't seem terrible to me: If I published a public review on a product, why should Google not auto-match this up to a search result? That's the logical next step. It's what I'd expect from Google. I don't see anything privacy breaking about it of it's own... As long as the review was public, ofcourse -- or only being shown to those it was published to. That said, I just went ahead and opted-out of it because I don't know if it means what I think it means... and I don't want Google publishing things that I didn't say.

minikites 13y ago
What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. What if you're in a marginalized group? Now online harassment can move into real world harassment if you've reviewed local places you enjoy. Lots of people are harmed by a "real names" policy: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...
- cloudwalking 13y ago
  Why would Google show a negative review as an "endorsement"? If you rate a restaurant 1 out of 5 stars, Google isn't going to show "Cloudwalking rated this 1/5 stars!" in an ad.
  - minikites 13y ago
    Who's to say they won't start doing that in the future, where a competitor could purchase the negative review? And, what about my second point, which applies to any kind of review?
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Because people form a stronger rapport with those who share negative experiences than positive experiences. Granted, trying to take advantage of this is walking a very narrow tightrope, however if executed well then it could be hugely profitable. Confirmation bias tells us that negative reviews will always be more numerous than positive reviews, however those people writing negative reviews will feel a stronger cohesion with each-other. As such, negative reviews will be more valuable to how people form first impressions.
    - Permit 13y ago
      I don't think anything you've mentioned is relevant at all. Google isn't going to show your negative review beside a paid ad because it'd help you build rapport with friends... Keep in mind these are paid ads, Google is trying to further promote/endorse the advertiser.
      - vdaniuk 13y ago
        It would certainly be interesting to analyze a game theory model for ads if one could surface negative reviews about competitors.
  - spankalee 13y ago
    Actually, I would really hope they do. One of the principles behind Google's ad systems is that they're useful for users and advertisers, that a good ad can benefit everyone involved. If they show me an ad for something that my friends have negatively reviewed, I damn well want to see those negative reviews right along-side the ad. Disclaimer: Googler
    - cloudwalking 13y ago
      Better yet, Google should not show ads for products that my friends rate poorly...
      - spankalee 13y ago
        Good point. I've always thought that ads that were reviewed, and could be reviewed very negatively, would be an interesting check on scams and bad products. You gladly take the advertisers money, but if people rate the ad poorly it's a waste and possibly negative value. This might encourage good ads and ads for good products.
      - nooneelse 13y ago
        But I (and probably no one) trust(s) all my friends about every topic or type of product/service. So better to show me the ad and which friend(s) gave the review so I can determine if that is actually a mark against the ad or not.
      - notatoad 13y ago
        that sounds like a really good idea, both from a consumer perspective and an advertiser perspective. i don't want to see ads for things that my friends don't think i'd be interested in, and i don't want to pay to have my ads shown to people whose friends are just going to warn them away from me.
    - md224 13y ago
      Honest question: how do you rationalize the influence of bid amount on AdWords ad positioning? In other words, if two companies buy ad space, and one of the ads has a slightly lower quality score but a much higher bid price, it will be placed above the higher quality ad. How does this benefit users? Isn't this detrimental to the quality of the information being presented? If a recommendation service prioritizes a recommendation because it was paid more to do so, isn't that akin to bribery? Why have we normalized the morality of this kind of business practice?
  - bjterry 13y ago
    The new strategy for negative reviews on Google products will be to offer five star reviews (for visibility) where the text talks about their terrible experience (for truth).
- thezilch 13y ago
  What if you publish an anonymous negative-review for a competitor? Now it's super easy for you to harass them. What if you're in a non-marginalized group? Now online harassment can ...
- avar 13y ago
  > What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's > super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. That's already the case if you publish restaurant reviews on Google Maps, isn't the only difference here that those reviews will be presented on search results? Like Afterlife I really don't see what the big deal is. They're taking data that's already public and presenting it slightly differently.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    But it's not presenting them in search results. What you opt out of isn't search result featuring, but instead featuring on a little shaded section of the page someone else is paying for. That's money Google collects because I'm the product. And in this case, they're cashing in twice -- featuring my smiling face, using one product to sell another. That's too much. I care about other people's search experience and I want them to have less ad space on a page, not more. So I opt out so my friends can more easily ignore ads and focus on content. If I recommend something, social search should mean it appears in search results for friends anyway, why should I give Google extra cash for using my face to advertise to my friends if they're not paying me?
- jonknee 13y ago
  If you are scared that someone will come after you it's blindingly obvious to not publish a review under your name. Google's change here has nothing to do with the issue either--you can certainly be recognized by a review on Amazon, Yelp, Google, Facebook or any other public venue. Google does allow easy to use privacy controls though, so that's at least a step in the right direction.
- colmvp 13y ago
  What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. That actually happened to a friend of mine, and he enjoyed it. Made the restaurant look even worse when he posted their infantile response.
  - thret 13y ago
    Happened to me too. I got an email from their lawyer making vague threats and I thought about it, and replied that they could sue me if they so wished. They had no case (obviously) and I've the time and money so I was kind of curious to explore the legal system in that light.
- chrischen 13y ago
  What you mean like how people publish negative reviews right on the restaurant's Yelp profile?
- riquito 13y ago
  So you publish a PUBLIC negative review, with your name and photo, and then you're surprised it this same review appears somewhere else (in ads, this time)?
  - threeseed 13y ago
    I would be very surprised if my name, photo and review appeared in advertising. Who wouldn't ?
  - makomk 13y ago
    No, you'd publish a public review with your Google account, which has a Google+ profile attached (otherwise Google won't let you leave reviews for Android applications on their app store anymore), and that account will have your name and photo.
davexunit 13y ago
Why there are so many Google apologists?
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  Does not bashing everything Google does immediately make someone a Google apologist? The fact that they do a lot of very questionable things does not mean everything they do should be immediately condemned. Judging a single action as neutral or useful does not preclude disapproving of the actor in general, and general disapproval should not preclude viewing specific actions neutrally and in context.
  - probably_wrong 13y ago
    > Does not bashing everything Google does immediately make someone a Google apologist? Of course not. However, there is no denying that HN as a community is really biased in favor of Google. Just for comparison: when the news came that you'd be searchable by name in Facebook, half the discussion focused on "delete your account!" and "they are trying to kill privacy!". Google puts your name and picture on ads online, something that in the "real" world requires a ton of paperwork and usually money exchanging hands (including yours)? Nah, dude, that's fine. I know they are only slightly comparable, but my point is: the bias in favor of Google is there. May not be everyone, may not be an organized PR campaign, but it is definitely there.
- peteretep 13y ago
  I dunno. Why are there so many people so angry with Google that anyone who doesn't think this is "THE END OF THE DAMN WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?!?" is an apologist?
- notatoad 13y ago
  i prefer to think of myself as reasonable, rather than an apologist. if i publish a public review of something, i do it specifically so that other people can see that review. I'm not going to get mad because google has done with my review exactly what i wanted to happen with it. if you don't want people to see what you write, maybe you should consider using a diary rather than a publishing service.
oscargrouch 13y ago
I think the issue here is not much about privacy, but about your image being associated with a product without your prior consent(for each product), and for free.. when they do this, you become the product together with the thing you are endorsing.. To make this more clear, imagine you signup for a new cable television channel, and you watching it, suddenly your image shows up with a product in your hands, smiling, and saying: "This is the best product i ever used", and you realize that its being broadcasted to everybody watching it.. would you fell comfortable about that? Once we settle down for this kind of things, and think its normal, we are contributing to a world where we are constantly sold as a product; and that my friend completely diminish the human nature.. its a slow and erosive dead of humanity (in the confucian sense of it).. All values we give importance today as freedom, truth.. will lose more and more value, and the only thing valuable in society will be money.. I know it may look like a exacerbation, but this is a systemic process, going on from several front lines.. and that one is one of them.. This is not much about privacy implications (despite it has some too), but more in a ethical degree.. and the failure to detect it properly can have severe consequences to us all in the long term
- magicalist 13y ago
  As I said below, I've opted out (I was already opted out, actually, but I also don't write reviews with my name in the first place), but my only real problem with this is the +1s part of it. I have no problem with quoting a review that you wrote with your name and face associated and putting your name and face next to it for your friends to see. For context, see the ads that appear at the top of yelp search results. They usually quote someone's review and have their profile picture next to it, which is fine, because all they're saying is "here's a good review someone gave of this place", and using a review that was intended for people to see publicly. The person didn't "become an ad", their review was just quoted in an ad with their public profile picture next to it. I have more of a problem with the +1 thing, but it's theoretical right now, and will come down to how they actually execute it. It's the same problem as the ambiguity of the "like" endorsements on Facebook. A +1 on a restaurant is probably fine to show (in the same way as with reviews), as long as they say something like "magicalist +1-ed this restaurant!". If, however, I +1 a cool photo that Red Bull posted about Felix Baumgartner's skydive, for instance, and my friends start getting ads saying "magicalist +1-ed Red Bull!", then we're in false statement territory, since that is not at all what I meant. +1s (and "likes") are inherently ambiguous (which aspect of the thing I'm +1-ing am I approving of? It's often not all aspects), so they really should tread carefully. The rest I don't really have a problem with.
abraxasz 13y ago
"That said, I just went ahead and opted-out" Right, that's my problem. Here's something that's been bugging me for some time, and that applies to all services that turn in features by default: do they do it because they believe most people will want this feature, or do they do it because that's important for their business and they hope that most people won't bother to turn it off / won't know the thing is turned on. Note that I'm not being cynical here, I'm honestly wondering which it is. So to go back to our specific case: why is that thing not turned off by default? When google created gmail, they didn't say: "look if you want to use google now, you will have to use gmail too, that's how it is". Gmail was simply great, so people adopted it. If this new feature is so great, people will see it and turn it on, why force it down on the user?
- meepmorp 13y ago
  > If this new feature is so great, people will see it and turn it on, why force it down on the user? Because they're trying to expand the way they monetize their user base and they suspect that most people won't give a shit either way. So if you're looking to roll out this new thing that you think will be more useful to your customers (advertisers), you want maximum value from your product (users). So, on by default. A few people will complain and threaten to leave Google services, nothing will come of it, and Google expands the sophistication of it's core money generation platform.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
But it's hard to say what extent this can have. What if you like a video on youtube that happens to be related to a product and google decides to spin that into an ad? Product endorsements can be a valuable component of a social service but there is a great potential for manipulation here.

minikites 13y ago

What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. What if you're in a marginalized group? Now online harassment can move into real world harassment if you've reviewed local places you enjoy. Lots of people are harmed by a "real names" policy: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...

cloudwalking 13y ago
Why would Google show a negative review as an "endorsement"? If you rate a restaurant 1 out of 5 stars, Google isn't going to show "Cloudwalking rated this 1/5 stars!" in an ad.
- minikites 13y ago
  Who's to say they won't start doing that in the future, where a competitor could purchase the negative review? And, what about my second point, which applies to any kind of review?
- ihsw 13y ago
  Because people form a stronger rapport with those who share negative experiences than positive experiences. Granted, trying to take advantage of this is walking a very narrow tightrope, however if executed well then it could be hugely profitable. Confirmation bias tells us that negative reviews will always be more numerous than positive reviews, however those people writing negative reviews will feel a stronger cohesion with each-other. As such, negative reviews will be more valuable to how people form first impressions.
  - Permit 13y ago
    I don't think anything you've mentioned is relevant at all. Google isn't going to show your negative review beside a paid ad because it'd help you build rapport with friends... Keep in mind these are paid ads, Google is trying to further promote/endorse the advertiser.
    - vdaniuk 13y ago
      It would certainly be interesting to analyze a game theory model for ads if one could surface negative reviews about competitors.
- spankalee 13y ago
  Actually, I would really hope they do. One of the principles behind Google's ad systems is that they're useful for users and advertisers, that a good ad can benefit everyone involved. If they show me an ad for something that my friends have negatively reviewed, I damn well want to see those negative reviews right along-side the ad. Disclaimer: Googler
  - cloudwalking 13y ago
    Better yet, Google should not show ads for products that my friends rate poorly...
    - spankalee 13y ago
      Good point. I've always thought that ads that were reviewed, and could be reviewed very negatively, would be an interesting check on scams and bad products. You gladly take the advertisers money, but if people rate the ad poorly it's a waste and possibly negative value. This might encourage good ads and ads for good products.
    - nooneelse 13y ago
      But I (and probably no one) trust(s) all my friends about every topic or type of product/service. So better to show me the ad and which friend(s) gave the review so I can determine if that is actually a mark against the ad or not.
    - notatoad 13y ago
      that sounds like a really good idea, both from a consumer perspective and an advertiser perspective. i don't want to see ads for things that my friends don't think i'd be interested in, and i don't want to pay to have my ads shown to people whose friends are just going to warn them away from me.
  - md224 13y ago
    Honest question: how do you rationalize the influence of bid amount on AdWords ad positioning? In other words, if two companies buy ad space, and one of the ads has a slightly lower quality score but a much higher bid price, it will be placed above the higher quality ad. How does this benefit users? Isn't this detrimental to the quality of the information being presented? If a recommendation service prioritizes a recommendation because it was paid more to do so, isn't that akin to bribery? Why have we normalized the morality of this kind of business practice?
- bjterry 13y ago
  The new strategy for negative reviews on Google products will be to offer five star reviews (for visibility) where the text talks about their terrible experience (for truth).
thezilch 13y ago
What if you publish an anonymous negative-review for a competitor? Now it's super easy for you to harass them. What if you're in a non-marginalized group? Now online harassment can ...
avar 13y ago
> What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's > super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. That's already the case if you publish restaurant reviews on Google Maps, isn't the only difference here that those reviews will be presented on search results? Like Afterlife I really don't see what the big deal is. They're taking data that's already public and presenting it slightly differently.
- lstamour 13y ago
  But it's not presenting them in search results. What you opt out of isn't search result featuring, but instead featuring on a little shaded section of the page someone else is paying for. That's money Google collects because I'm the product. And in this case, they're cashing in twice -- featuring my smiling face, using one product to sell another. That's too much. I care about other people's search experience and I want them to have less ad space on a page, not more. So I opt out so my friends can more easily ignore ads and focus on content. If I recommend something, social search should mean it appears in search results for friends anyway, why should I give Google extra cash for using my face to advertise to my friends if they're not paying me?
jonknee 13y ago
If you are scared that someone will come after you it's blindingly obvious to not publish a review under your name. Google's change here has nothing to do with the issue either--you can certainly be recognized by a review on Amazon, Yelp, Google, Facebook or any other public venue. Google does allow easy to use privacy controls though, so that's at least a step in the right direction.
colmvp 13y ago
What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. That actually happened to a friend of mine, and he enjoyed it. Made the restaurant look even worse when he posted their infantile response.
- thret 13y ago
  Happened to me too. I got an email from their lawyer making vague threats and I thought about it, and replied that they could sue me if they so wished. They had no case (obviously) and I've the time and money so I was kind of curious to explore the legal system in that light.
chrischen 13y ago
What you mean like how people publish negative reviews right on the restaurant's Yelp profile?
riquito 13y ago
So you publish a PUBLIC negative review, with your name and photo, and then you're surprised it this same review appears somewhere else (in ads, this time)?
- threeseed 13y ago
  I would be very surprised if my name, photo and review appeared in advertising. Who wouldn't ?
- makomk 13y ago
  No, you'd publish a public review with your Google account, which has a Google+ profile attached (otherwise Google won't let you leave reviews for Android applications on their app store anymore), and that account will have your name and photo.

davexunit 13y ago

Why there are so many Google apologists?

mildtrepidation 13y ago
Does not bashing everything Google does immediately make someone a Google apologist? The fact that they do a lot of very questionable things does not mean everything they do should be immediately condemned. Judging a single action as neutral or useful does not preclude disapproving of the actor in general, and general disapproval should not preclude viewing specific actions neutrally and in context.
- probably_wrong 13y ago
  > Does not bashing everything Google does immediately make someone a Google apologist? Of course not. However, there is no denying that HN as a community is really biased in favor of Google. Just for comparison: when the news came that you'd be searchable by name in Facebook, half the discussion focused on "delete your account!" and "they are trying to kill privacy!". Google puts your name and picture on ads online, something that in the "real" world requires a ton of paperwork and usually money exchanging hands (including yours)? Nah, dude, that's fine. I know they are only slightly comparable, but my point is: the bias in favor of Google is there. May not be everyone, may not be an organized PR campaign, but it is definitely there.
peteretep 13y ago
I dunno. Why are there so many people so angry with Google that anyone who doesn't think this is "THE END OF THE DAMN WORLD AS WE KNOW IT?!?" is an apologist?
notatoad 13y ago
i prefer to think of myself as reasonable, rather than an apologist. if i publish a public review of something, i do it specifically so that other people can see that review. I'm not going to get mad because google has done with my review exactly what i wanted to happen with it. if you don't want people to see what you write, maybe you should consider using a diary rather than a publishing service.

oscargrouch 13y ago

I think the issue here is not much about privacy, but about your image being associated with a product without your prior consent(for each product), and for free.. when they do this, you become the product together with the thing you are endorsing.. To make this more clear, imagine you signup for a new cable television channel, and you watching it, suddenly your image shows up with a product in your hands, smiling, and saying: "This is the best product i ever used", and you realize that its being broadcasted to everybody watching it.. would you fell comfortable about that? Once we settle down for this kind of things, and think its normal, we are contributing to a world where we are constantly sold as a product; and that my friend completely diminish the human nature.. its a slow and erosive dead of humanity (in the confucian sense of it).. All values we give importance today as freedom, truth.. will lose more and more value, and the only thing valuable in society will be money.. I know it may look like a exacerbation, but this is a systemic process, going on from several front lines.. and that one is one of them.. This is not much about privacy implications (despite it has some too), but more in a ethical degree.. and the failure to detect it properly can have severe consequences to us all in the long term

magicalist 13y ago
As I said below, I've opted out (I was already opted out, actually, but I also don't write reviews with my name in the first place), but my only real problem with this is the +1s part of it. I have no problem with quoting a review that you wrote with your name and face associated and putting your name and face next to it for your friends to see. For context, see the ads that appear at the top of yelp search results. They usually quote someone's review and have their profile picture next to it, which is fine, because all they're saying is "here's a good review someone gave of this place", and using a review that was intended for people to see publicly. The person didn't "become an ad", their review was just quoted in an ad with their public profile picture next to it. I have more of a problem with the +1 thing, but it's theoretical right now, and will come down to how they actually execute it. It's the same problem as the ambiguity of the "like" endorsements on Facebook. A +1 on a restaurant is probably fine to show (in the same way as with reviews), as long as they say something like "magicalist +1-ed this restaurant!". If, however, I +1 a cool photo that Red Bull posted about Felix Baumgartner's skydive, for instance, and my friends start getting ads saying "magicalist +1-ed Red Bull!", then we're in false statement territory, since that is not at all what I meant. +1s (and "likes") are inherently ambiguous (which aspect of the thing I'm +1-ing am I approving of? It's often not all aspects), so they really should tread carefully. The rest I don't really have a problem with.

abraxasz 13y ago

"That said, I just went ahead and opted-out" Right, that's my problem. Here's something that's been bugging me for some time, and that applies to all services that turn in features by default: do they do it because they believe most people will want this feature, or do they do it because that's important for their business and they hope that most people won't bother to turn it off / won't know the thing is turned on. Note that I'm not being cynical here, I'm honestly wondering which it is. So to go back to our specific case: why is that thing not turned off by default? When google created gmail, they didn't say: "look if you want to use google now, you will have to use gmail too, that's how it is". Gmail was simply great, so people adopted it. If this new feature is so great, people will see it and turn it on, why force it down on the user?

meepmorp 13y ago
> If this new feature is so great, people will see it and turn it on, why force it down on the user? Because they're trying to expand the way they monetize their user base and they suspect that most people won't give a shit either way. So if you're looking to roll out this new thing that you think will be more useful to your customers (advertisers), you want maximum value from your product (users). So, on by default. A few people will complain and threaten to leave Google services, nothing will come of it, and Google expands the sophistication of it's core money generation platform.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

But it's hard to say what extent this can have. What if you like a video on youtube that happens to be related to a product and google decides to spin that into an ad? Product endorsements can be a valuable component of a social service but there is a great potential for manipulation here.