Google: The Intellectual Oakland Because There Is No There There, Just Ads
November 7, 2024
The post is the work of a humanoid who happens to be a dinobaby. GenX, Y, and Z, read at your own risk. If art is included, smart software produces these banal images.
I read a clever essay titled “I Attended Google’s Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral.” Be aware that the text can disappear as a big gray box covers the essay. Just read quickly.
The report explains that a small group of problematic content creators found their sites or other content effectively made invisible in Google search results. Boom. Videos disappear. Boom. Key words no longer retrieve a Web site. So Google did the politically correct thing and got a former conference organizer to round up some of the disaffected and come to a meeting to discuss content getting disappeared. No real reasons are given by Google, but the essay recounts the experience on one intrepid optimist who thought, “This time Google will be different.”
A very professional Googler evades a question. A person in the small group meeting asks it again. She is not happy with Google’s evasiveness. Well, too bad. Thanks, Midjourney. MSFT Copilot is still dead.
Nope.
The write up does a good job of capturing the nothingness of a Google office. If you have not been to one, try to set up a meeting. Good luck.
I want to focus on a couple of points in the essay and then offer a handful of observations.
I noted this statement:
During this small group discussion, I and others tried to get our Googlers to address the biggest problem facing our industry: Google giving big brands special treatment. Each time a site owner brought up the topic, we were quickly steered in another direction.
Google wants or assumes that it is control of everything most of the time. Losing control means one is not a true Googler. The people at this Google event learned that non-Googlers and their questions are simply not relevant. Google goes through certain theatrical events to check off a task.
Also, I circled this comment:
…we then asked the only question that mattered: Why has Google shadow banned our sites? Google’s Chief Search Scientist answered this question using a strategy based around gaslighting and said they hadn’t. Google doesn’t ever derank an entire site, only individual pages, he said. There is no site-wide classifier. He insisted it is only done at the page level.
This statement is accurate. A politically correct answer is one that does not reveal Google’s intent for anything. Individuals in charge of a project or program usually do not know what is going on with that program. Information is shared via the in house communications systems, email or text messages which are viewed as potential problems if released to those outside the Google, and meetings which are often ad hoc or without an agenda. The company sells advertising and reacts to what appear to be threats, legal actions, or ways to make money.
I noted this statement:
someone bluntly asked, since nothing is wrong with our sites, how do we recover? Google’s elderly Chief Search Scientist answered, without an ounce of pity or concern, that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do. Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared. He’d gotten the information he wanted. The conference was over. I don’t think he even said thanks.
This is accurate. Why should a member of leadership care about a “user”? Clicks produce data. The data and attendant content are processed to make more money. That’s why customer service is limited to big budget advertisers who spend real money on Google advertising.
Several observations:
- Google is big (150,000 or more employees). Google is chaotic. Individuals, groups, and entire divisions are not sure what is going on. How many messaging apps did Google have at one time? Lots. Why? No one knows or knew. The people coming to the meeting about finding themselves invisible in the Google finding systems assumed that a big company was not chaotic. Now the attendees know.
- People who create content have replaced people who used to get paid to create content. Now the “creators” work for the hope of Google advertising money. What’s the percentage paid to a “creator”? Try to find those data, gentle reader. Google does what it does: Individual Googlers or a couple of Googlers set up a system and go to play Foosball. That means 149,998 colleagues have zero idea what’s happening. Content “creators” expect someone to be responsible and to know how systems work. The author of the essay now knows only a couple of people may know the answer to the question. If those people quit, one will never know.
- The people who use Google to find relevant information are irrelevant as individuals. The person who wants to find a pizza in Cleveland may find only the pizza a person working on Google Local for Cleveland may like. If that pizza joint spends a couple of thousand per month on Google ads, that pizza may be findable. Most people do not understand the linkages between search engine optimization, Google advertising sales, and the Google mostly automated Google ad auctioning system. One search engineer working from home can have quite an impact on people who make content and assume that Google will make it findable. The author of the article knows this assumption about Google is a fairy tale.
Google has be labeled a monopoly. Google is suggesting that if the company is held accountable for its behaviors, the US will lose its foothold in artificial intelligence. Brilliant argument. Google has employees who have won a Nobel Prize. People not held accountable often lose sight of many things.
That’s why the big meeting was dumped into the task list of a person who ran search engine optimization conferences. One does not pray for that individual; one does not go to meetings managed by such a professional.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2024
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