5 ms·

This is misleading. The article cites a single company that inadvertently violated Google's rules by failing to mark paid links. This seems to be part of the on

This is misleading. The article cites a single company that inadvertently violated Google's rules by failing to mark paid links. This seems to be part of the ongoing saga of companies making errors, sometimes honest, and being penalized. Is the company even a major player in the smart thermostat space? It's not even listed in this market analysis from last fall: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-thermostat-leaderboard/ http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/14/honeywell-leads-smart-th.... It looks more like a competitor in the home automation systems space that sells smart thermostats mainly as part of a more comprehensive system. Given the absence of action against any of their more major competitors, this seems like a coincidence.

lallysingh 12y ago
It's Pando. What did you expect? I don't know why Pando links so show up on HN.
- ansimionescu 12y ago
  As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. (Speaking of shitty high-profile news site, my favourite pick is ReadWrie. 80% of what I've read on their site is utter garbage.)
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    Wow, I was actually about to comment the exact same thing as lallysingh until I saw his comment. > As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. This may not be a satisfying answer but it's the same reason as the one behind your opinion of ReadWrite: when you read enough of their articles (or at least enough of the ones that make it onto HN) and they're almost _all_ crap, it's a simple matter of numbers. As far as _how_ they got this way, just take a look at their pedigree; the founding members include the boot-scrapings of the tech-press: Sarah Lacy, Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler, Farhad Manjoo, etc
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      I actually find the Lacy, etc articles to be the good ones. It's the lesser-known writers churning out several articles a day on the site that are consistently laughably wrong about nearly everything. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that's because they churn out several a day. Lacy's interviews are pretty decent quality, and I like the monthly in-depth interviews with the high-profile tech ceos. I think Pando's obsession with "speaking truth to power" has led them to make some poor choices in desperate attempts to create controversy. It's a seductive path for a journalist, but you've got to learn to do it right, and I don't think they have yet.
      - wutbrodo 12y ago
        You probably have a more nuanced view of the site than I do. I noticed the tendency I described very early on and more or less limited my further exposure to them, so maybe they've matured into what you're describing.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    i actually often see pretty good articles on pando.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I would say it is more link-baity than misleading, Google did delist the smart thermostat maker Vivint, and they did buy the smart thermostat maker Nest. The article attempts to paint a picture of intrigue and conspiracy, but I suspect it was just bad SEO on their part, or even Counter-SEO at work by another of Vivint's competitors. That said, three major things stand out, which are not link baity and really do indicate a problem. First, Google is how people find things, that gives them extraordinary power to direct the market, and that power is operating completely unchecked. Second, searching for Vivint, is what we at Blekko call a 'navigation search'. If you've typed in Vivint it is pretty clear the result you want, and in the article Google auto-corrects it away to vivino. Now I just typed vivint and it found it, but if Pando was accurate that a navlink wasn't found when they tried it, that would be a pretty egregious failure of a search engine, I could see 'smart thermostat' not listing them but not a search on their name. And the final thing is of course the opacity of it all and the challenge of the algorithm. It really is a dead end until some sort of AI comes along, human curation did wonders for our index and Microsoft's. Google might do well to stop investing a billion dollars a quarter in acquiring traffic and instead spend that money making a cleaner index.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Google doesn't help me find things on eBay or Amazon. Both those sites have terrible site searches, although for dofferent reasons. For example, searching eBay for "16 GB MicroSD cards" and then sorting by price returns a huge list of people selling a choice of an adapter for micro-SD to SD for 99pence or a MicroSD card for £X. Thus, sorting hy price just returns the proce for the adapter card (which I am not interested in). Searching Amazon is a hideous experience where results are stuff with sometimes hundreds of irrelevant near duplicate results with no way to rapidly jump past them. One way Blekko or DDG or Bing could earn my undying love is by making site specific search better. I would gladly click on result links even if you presented me with affiliate links.
danso 12y ago
I posted this in a flippant comment already, but it bears worth reiterating that Vivint, or someone friendly to Vivint, also sockpuppet-edited their Wikipedia page, in such an egregious fashion that since March 2014 (not long after Google's alleged action), Vivint's Wikipedia entry has a banner-warning: > This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (March 2014) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint
deleted 12y ago
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lallysingh 12y ago

It's Pando. What did you expect? I don't know why Pando links so show up on HN.

ansimionescu 12y ago
As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. (Speaking of shitty high-profile news site, my favourite pick is ReadWrie. 80% of what I've read on their site is utter garbage.)
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  Wow, I was actually about to comment the exact same thing as lallysingh until I saw his comment. > As someone who knows nothing about Pando, I'd love some more insight into why they supposedly suck. This may not be a satisfying answer but it's the same reason as the one behind your opinion of ReadWrite: when you read enough of their articles (or at least enough of the ones that make it onto HN) and they're almost _all_ crap, it's a simple matter of numbers. As far as _how_ they got this way, just take a look at their pedigree; the founding members include the boot-scrapings of the tech-press: Sarah Lacy, Michael Arrington, M.G. Siegler, Farhad Manjoo, etc
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I actually find the Lacy, etc articles to be the good ones. It's the lesser-known writers churning out several articles a day on the site that are consistently laughably wrong about nearly everything. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that's because they churn out several a day. Lacy's interviews are pretty decent quality, and I like the monthly in-depth interviews with the high-profile tech ceos. I think Pando's obsession with "speaking truth to power" has led them to make some poor choices in desperate attempts to create controversy. It's a seductive path for a journalist, but you've got to learn to do it right, and I don't think they have yet.
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      You probably have a more nuanced view of the site than I do. I noticed the tendency I described very early on and more or less limited my further exposure to them, so maybe they've matured into what you're describing.
- zobzu 12y ago
  i actually often see pretty good articles on pando.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I would say it is more link-baity than misleading, Google did delist the smart thermostat maker Vivint, and they did buy the smart thermostat maker Nest. The article attempts to paint a picture of intrigue and conspiracy, but I suspect it was just bad SEO on their part, or even Counter-SEO at work by another of Vivint's competitors. That said, three major things stand out, which are not link baity and really do indicate a problem. First, Google is how people find things, that gives them extraordinary power to direct the market, and that power is operating completely unchecked. Second, searching for Vivint, is what we at Blekko call a 'navigation search'. If you've typed in Vivint it is pretty clear the result you want, and in the article Google auto-corrects it away to vivino. Now I just typed vivint and it found it, but if Pando was accurate that a navlink wasn't found when they tried it, that would be a pretty egregious failure of a search engine, I could see 'smart thermostat' not listing them but not a search on their name. And the final thing is of course the opacity of it all and the challenge of the algorithm. It really is a dead end until some sort of AI comes along, human curation did wonders for our index and Microsoft's. Google might do well to stop investing a billion dollars a quarter in acquiring traffic and instead spend that money making a cleaner index.

DanBC 12y ago
Google doesn't help me find things on eBay or Amazon. Both those sites have terrible site searches, although for dofferent reasons. For example, searching eBay for "16 GB MicroSD cards" and then sorting by price returns a huge list of people selling a choice of an adapter for micro-SD to SD for 99pence or a MicroSD card for £X. Thus, sorting hy price just returns the proce for the adapter card (which I am not interested in). Searching Amazon is a hideous experience where results are stuff with sometimes hundreds of irrelevant near duplicate results with no way to rapidly jump past them. One way Blekko or DDG or Bing could earn my undying love is by making site specific search better. I would gladly click on result links even if you presented me with affiliate links.

danso 12y ago

I posted this in a flippant comment already, but it bears worth reiterating that Vivint, or someone friendly to Vivint, also sockpuppet-edited their Wikipedia page, in such an egregious fashion that since March 2014 (not long after Google's alleged action), Vivint's Wikipedia entry has a banner-warning: > This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (March 2014) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivint

deleted 12y ago

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