Salesforce to MSFT: We Are Coming, Baby Cakes
November 18, 2024
No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
Salesforce, an outfit that hopped on the “attention” bandwagon, is now going whole hog with smart software. “Salesforce to Hire More Than 1,000 Workers to Boost AI Product Sales” makes clear that AI is going to be the hook for the company for the next hype cycle riding toward Next Big Thing theme park.
The write up says:
Agentforce is a new layer on the Salesforce platform, designed to enable companies to build and deploy AI agents that autonomously perform tasks.
Now that’s a buzz packed sentence: “Layer,” sales call data as a “platform”, “AI agents”, “autonomously”, and smart software that can “perform tasks.”
The idea is that sales are an important part of a successful organization. The exception is that monopolies really don’t need too many sales professionals. Lawyers? Yes. Forward deployed engineers? Yes. Marketers? Yes. Door knockers? Well, probably fewer going forward.
How does the Salesforce AI system work? The answer is simple it seems:
These AI agents operate independently, triggered by data changes, business rules, pre-built automations, or API signals.
Who writes the rules? I wonder if AI writes it own rules or do specialists get an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to become essential cogs in the Salesforce customers’ machines?
What do customers do with smart Salesforce? Once again, the answer is easy to provide. The write up says:
Companies such as OpenTable, Saks and Wiley are currently utilizing Agentforce to augment their workforce and enhance customer experiences. Over the past two years, Salesforce has focused on controlling sales expenses by reducing jobs and encouraging customers to use self-service or third-party purchasing options.
I think I understand. Get rid of pesky humans, their vacations, health care, pension plans, and annoying demands for wage increases. Salesforce delivers “efficiency.”
I am not sure what to make of this set of statements. Underpinning Salesforce is a database. The stuff on top of the database are interfaces. Now smart software promises to deliver efficiency and obviously another layer of “smart stuff” to provide what software and services have been promising since the days of the punched card.
Smart software, like Web search, is a natural monopoly unless specific deep pocket outfits can create a defensible niche and sell enough smart software to that niche before some other company eats their lunch.
But that’s what some companies do? Eat other individual’s lunch. So whose taking those lunches tomorrow? Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Salesforce? Maybe the lunch thief will be a pesky start up essentially off the radar of the big hungry dogs?
With AI development shifting East, is the Silicon Valley AI way the future. Heck, even Google is moving smart software to London which is a heck of a lot easier flight to some innovative locations.
Hopefully one of the AI companies can convert billions in AI investment into new revenue and big profits in a sprightly manner. So far, I see marketing and AI dead ends. Is Salesforce, as the long gone Philco radio company used to say, “The leader”? On one hand, Salesforce is hiring. On the other, get rid of employees. Okay, I think I understand.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2024
Will Tim Apple Vacation in Sochi?
November 18, 2024
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No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
I love the idea that “It’s just business.” Forget special operations, people falling from windows high above the cobbles, and wheeling and dealing with alleged axis of evil outfits. Focus on doing what is going to sell product. That is the guiding light.
Immanuel Kant, in the midst of pondering his philosophical treatise about ethics, considers the question of the apple on his desk. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
I read the allegedly accurate write up “Apple Removes Another RFE/RL App at Request of Russian Regulator.” The story reports as actual factual:
Roskomnadzor notified Apple that the Russian Service app contains materials from an organization whose activities in Russia have been declared “undesirable.”
What did Apple do (hey, that’s a t-shirt slogan, WDAD)? According to the the cited article:
U.S. technology giant Apple has notified RFE/RL that it has removed another of its apps following a request from Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The newly removed RFE/RL app is that of the Russian Service, which in turn hosts the websites of its regional projects Siberia.Realities and North.Realities. Apple had previously removed the apps for RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service and Current Time, the Russian-language TV and digital network run by RFE/RL.
The acronym RRE/RL is GenX speak for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. In case you are not familiar with these efforts, the US government funds the broadcasting organizations. The idea is to provide “real” news, information, and analysis (insight) to avid listeners in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
The write up adds:
RFE/RL President Stephen Capus called the decision “yet another example of how the Russian government sees truthful reporting as an existential threat.” Besides RFE/RL’s apps, Apple also removed or hid several Russian-language podcasts produced by independent journalists.
From my point of view, the US government wants to provide information to citizens in some countries. Russian authorities do not want that information to flow to residents of those countries. So the Russian authorities told Apple to remove an app which allowed iPhone owners to access certain information deemed unsuitable to citizens in some countries of interest to Russia. I think I am following this … mostly.
Then Apple said, “No problem.” The extremely well-loved Cupertino, California, outfit removed the applications offensive to Russian authorities. Then — let me get this straight in my dinobaby brain — Apple notified Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty professionals, “Yo, dudes, we rolled over for Vlad and his agents.”
Have I got this right? Apple wants to government to disseminate the information Russia does not like. That’s helpful, Apple.
Several observations:
- Is Apple more powerful in terms of information dissemination than Google and its allegedly reviled video service which has notable performance problems in Russia and parts of the Russian Federation?
- Is the US government supposed to amp up its dissemination of information to the affected nation states? (Well, thanks for the guidance Apple.)
- Is Apple supporting the US government or actively assisting a nation state whose leadership continues to talk about nuclear bombs and existential threats to Mr. Putin’s home base?
My hunch is that Apple, like a handful of other commercial entities, perceives itself as a nation state. The pesky government officials — regardless of where they lives —have to be kept happy. The real objective is keeping those revenues flowing.
Did Immanuel Kant cover this angle in his “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”? Oh, the apple on Kant’s desk has disintegrated.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2024
Microsoft: That Old Time Religion Which Sort of Works
November 15, 2024
Having a favorite OS can be akin to being in a technology cult or following a popular religion. Apple people are experienced enthusiasts, Linux users are the odd ones because it has a secret language and handshakes, while Microsoft is vanilla with diehard followers. Microsoft apparently loves its users and employees to have this mantra and feed into it says Edward Zitron of Where’s Your Ed At? in the article, “The Cult Of Microsoft.”
Zitron reviewed hundreds of Microsoft’s internal documents and spoke with their employees about the company culture. He learned that Microsoft subscribed to “The Growth Mindset” and it determines how far someone will go within the hallowed Redmond halls. There are two types of growth mindset: you can learn and change to continue progressing or you believe everything is immutable (aka the fixed mindset).
Satya Nadella even wrote a bible of sorts called Hit Refresh that discusses The Growth Mindset. Zitron purports that Nadella wants to setup himself up as a messianic figure and used his position to claim a place at the top of the bestseller list. How? He “urged” his Microsoft employees to discuss Hit Refresh with as many people as possible. The communication methods he had his associates use was like a pyramid scheme aka a multi-level marketing ploy.
Microsoft is as fervent of following The Growth Mindset as women used to be selling Mary Kay and Avon products. The problem, Zitron reports, is that it has little to do with actual improvement. The Growth Mindset can’t be replicated without the presence of the original creator.
“In other words, the evidence that supports the efficacy of mindset theory is unreliable, and there’s no proof that this actually improves educational outcomes. To quote Wenner Moyer:
‘MacNamara and her colleagues found in their analysis that when study authors had a financial incentive to report positive effects — because, say, they had written books on the topic or got speaker fees for talks that promoted growth mindset — those studies were more than two and half times as likely to report significant effects compared with studies in which authors had no financial incentives.’
Turning to another view: Wenner Moyer’s piece is a balanced rundown of the chaotic world of mindset theory, counterbalanced with a few studies where there were positive outcomes, and focuses heavily on one of the biggest problems in the field — the fact that most of the research is meta-analyses of other people’s data…”
Microsoft has employees write biannual self-performance reviews called Connects. Everyone hates them but if the employees want raises and to keep their jobs then they have to fill out those forms. What’s even more demeaning is that Copilot is being used to write the Connects. Copilot is throwing out random metrics and achievements that don’t have a basis on any facts.
Is the approach similar to a virtual pyramid scheme. Are employees are taught or hired to externalize their success and internalize their failures. If something the Big Book of MSFT provides grounding in the Redmond way.
Mr. Nadella strikes me as having adopted the principles and mantra of a cult. Will the EU and other regulatory authorities bow before the truth or act out their heresies?
Whitney Grace, November 15, 2024
A Digital Flea Market Tests Smart Software
November 14, 2024
Sales platform eBay has learned some lessons about deploying AI. The company tested three methods and shares its insights in the post, “Cutting Through the Noise: Three Things We’ve Learned About Generative AI and Developer Productivity.” Writer Senthil Padmanabhan explains:
“Through our AI work at eBay, we believe we’ve unlocked three major tracks to developer productivity: utilizing a commercial offering, fine-tuning an existing Large Language Model (LLM), and leveraging an internal network. Each of these tracks requires additional resources to integrate, but it’s not a matter of ranking them ‘good, better, or best.’ Each can be used separately or in any combination, and bring their own benefits and drawbacks.”
The company could have chosen from several existing commercial AI offerings. It settled on GitHub Copilot for its popularity with developers. That and the eBay codebase was already on GitHub. They found the tool boosted productivity and produced mostly accurate documents (70%) and code (60%). The only problem: Copilot’s limited data processing ability makes it impractical for some applications. For now.
To tweak and train an open source LLM, the team chose Code Llama 13B. They trained the camelid on eBay’s codebase and documentation. The resulting tool reduced the time and labor required to perform certain tasks, particularly software upkeep. It could also sidestep a problem for off-the-shelf options: because it can be trained to access data across internal services and within non-dependent libraries, it can get to data the commercial solutions cannot find. Thereby, code duplication can be avoided. Theoretically.
Finally, the team used an Retrieval Augmented Generation to synthesize documentation across disparate sources into one internal knowledge base. Each piece of information entered into systems like Slack, Google Docs, and Wikis automatically received its own vector, which was stored in a vector database. When they queried their internal GPT, it quickly pulled together an answer from all available sources. This reduced the time and frustration of manually searching through multiple systems looking for an answer. Just one little problem: Sometimes the AI’s responses were nonsensical. Were any just plain wrong? Padmanabhan does not say.
The post concludes:
“These three tracks form the backbone for generative AI developer productivity, and they keep a clear view of what they are and how they benefit each project. The way we develop software is changing. More importantly, the gains we realize from generative AI have a cumulative effect on daily work. The boost in developer productivity is at the beginning of an exponential curve, which we often underestimate, as the trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning.”
Okay, sure. It is all up from here. Just beware of hallucinations along the way. After all, that is one little detail that still needs to be ironed out.
Cynthia Murrell, November 14, 2024
Smart Software: It May Never Forget
November 13, 2024
A recent paper challenges the big dogs of AI, asking, “Does Your LLM Truly Unlearn? An Embarrassingly Simple Approach to Recover Unlearned Knowledge.” The study was performed by a team of researchers from Penn State, Harvard, and Amazon and published on research platform arXiv. True or false, it is a nifty poke in the eye for the likes of OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, who may have overlooked the obvious. The abstract explains:
“Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable proficiency in generating text, benefiting from extensive training on vast textual corpora. However, LLMs may also acquire unwanted behaviors from the diverse and sensitive nature of their training data, which can include copyrighted and private content. Machine unlearning has been introduced as a viable solution to remove the influence of such problematic content without the need for costly and time-consuming retraining. This process aims to erase specific knowledge from LLMs while preserving as much model utility as possible.”
But AI firms may be fooling themselves about this method. We learn:
“Despite the effectiveness of current unlearning methods, little attention has been given to whether existing unlearning methods for LLMs truly achieve forgetting or merely hide the knowledge, which current unlearning benchmarks fail to detect. This paper reveals that applying quantization to models that have undergone unlearning can restore the ‘forgotten’ information.”
Oops. The team found as much as 83% of data thought forgotten was still there, lurking in the shadows. The paper offers a explanation for the problem and suggestions to mitigate it. The abstract concludes:
“Altogether, our study underscores a major failure in existing unlearning methods for LLMs, strongly advocating for more comprehensive and robust strategies to ensure authentic unlearning without compromising model utility.”
See the paper for all the technical details. Will the big tech firms take the researchers’ advice and improve their products? Or will they continue letting their investors and marketing departments lead them by the nose?
Cynthia Murrell, November 13, 2024
The Bezos Bulldozer Could Stalls in a Nuclear Fuel Pool
November 11, 2024
Sorry to disappoint you, but this blog post is written by a dumb humanoid. The art? We used MidJourney.
Microsoft is going to flip a switch and one of Three Mile Islands’ nuclear units will blink on. Yeah. Google is investing in small nuclear power unit. But one, haul it to the data center of your choice, and plug it in. Shades of Tesla thinking. Amazon has also be fascinated by Cherenkov radiation which is blue like Jack Benny’s eyes.
A physics amateur learned about 880 volts by reading books on his Kindle. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Are these PR-tinged information nuggets for real? Sure, absolutely. The big tech outfits are able to do anything, maybe not well, but everything. Almost.
The “trusted” real news outfit (Thomson Reuters) published “US Regulators Reject Amended Interconnect for Agreement for Amazon Data Center.” The story reports as allegedly accurate information:
U.S. energy regulators rejected an amended interconnection agreement for an Amazon data center connected directly to a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, a filing showed on Friday. Members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the agreement to increase the capacity of the data center located on the site of Talen Energy’s Susquehanna nuclear generating facility could raise power bills for the public and affect the grid’s reliability.
Amazon was not inventing a function modular nuclear reactor using the better option thorium. No. Amazon just wanted to fun a few of those innocuous high voltage transmission line, plug in a converter readily available from one of Amazon’s third party merchants, and let a data center chock full of dolphin loving servers, storage devices, and other gizmos. What’s the big deal?
The write up does not explain what “reliability” and “national security” mean. Let’s just accept these as words which roughly translate to “unlikely.”
Is this an issue that will go away? My view is, “No.” Nuclear engineers are not widely represented among the technical professionals engaged in selling third-party vendors’ products, figuring out how to make Alexa into a barn burner of a product, or forcing Kindle users to smash their devices in frustration when trying to figure out what’s on their Kindle and what’s in Amazon’s increasingly bizarro cloud system.
Can these companies become nuclear adepts? Sure. Will that happen quickly? Nope. Why? Nuclear is specialized field and involves a number of quite specific scientific disciplines. But Amazon can always ask Alexa and point to its Ring door bell system as the solution to security concerns. The approach will impress regulatory authorities.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2024
Instragram Does the YouTube Creator Fear Thing
November 11, 2024
Instagram influencers are enraged by CEO Adam Mosseri’s bias towards popular content. According to the BBC in, “Instagram Lowering Quality Of Less Viewed Videos ‘Alarming’ Creators”, video quality is lowered for older, less popular videos. More popular content gets the HD white glove treatment. Influencers are upset over this “discrimination,” especially when they concentrate on making income through Instagram over other platforms.
The influences view the lower quality output as harmful and affects the quality of original art. Mosseri argues that most influencers have their videos watched soon after publication. The only videos being affected by lower quality are older and no longer receive many views. While that sounds logical, it could also create a cycle that benefits only a few influencers:
Social media consultant Matt Navarra told the BBC the move ‘seems to somewhat contradict Instagram’s earlier messages or efforts to encourage new creators’.
"How can creators gain traction if their content is penalized for not being popular," he said. And he said it could risk creating a cycle of more established creators reaping the rewards of higher engagement from viewers over those trying to build their following.”
Instagram is lowering the quality to save on costs. It always comes down money, doesn’t it? When asked to respond about that, Mosseri said viewers are more interested in a video’s content over its image quality. Navarra agreed to that statement:
“He [Navarra] said creators should focus on how they can make engaging content that caters to their audience, rather than be overly concerned by the possibility of its quality being degraded by Instagram.”
Navarra’s right. Video quality will be decent and not poor like a cathode-ray tube TV. The creators should focus on building themselves and not investing all of their creative energy into one platform. Diversify!
Whitney Grace, November 11, 2024
FOGINT: Crypto Is a Community Builder
November 9, 2024
CreationNetwork.ai: A One-Stop Shop for All Your Digital Needs. And Crypto, Too!
Here is an interesting development. “CreationNetwork.ai Emerges As a Leading AI-Powered Platform, Integrating Over Twenty Two Tools,” reports HackerNoon. The AI aggregator uses Telegram plus other social media to push its service. Furthermore, the company is integrating crypto into its business plan. We expect these “blending” plays will become more common. The Chainwire press release says about this one:
“As an all-in-one solution for content creation, e-commerce, social media management, and digital marketing, CreationNetwork.ai combines 22+ proprietary AI-powered tools and 29+ platform integrations to deliver the most extensive digital ecosystem available. … CreationNetwork.ai’s suite of tools spans every facet of digital engagement, equipping users with powerful AI technologies to streamline operations, engage audiences, and optimize performance. Each tool is meticulously designed to enhance productivity and efficiency, making it easy to create, manage, and analyze content across multiple channels.”
See the write-up for a list of the tools included in CreationNetwork.ai, from AI Copywriter to Team-Powered Branding. The hefty roster of platform connections is also specified, including obvious players: all the major social media platforms, the biggest e-commerce platforms, and content creation tools like Canva, Grammarly, Adobe Express, Unsplash, and Dropbox. We learn:
“One of the most distinguishing features of CreationNetwork.ai is its extensive integration network. With over 29 integrations, users can synchronize their digital activities across major social media, e-commerce, and content platforms, providing centralized management and engagement capabilities. … This integration network empowers users to manage their brand presence across platforms from a single, unified dashboard, significantly enhancing efficiency and reach.”
Nifty. What a way to simplify digital processes for users. And to make it harder for new services to break into the market. But what groundbreaking platform would be complete without its own cryptocurrency? The write-up states:
“In preparation for its Initial Coin Offering (ICO), CreationNetwork.ai is launching a $750,000 CRNT Token Airdrop to reward early supporters and incentivize participation in the CreationNetwork.ai ecosystem. Qualified participants can secure their position by following CreationNetwork.ai’s social media accounts and completing the whitelist form available on the official website. This initiative highlights CreationNetwork.ai’s commitment to building a strong, engaged community.”
Crypto — The community builder.
Cynthia Murrell, November 11, 2024
Let Them Eat Cake or Unplug: The AI Big Tech Bro Effect
November 7, 2024
I spotted a news item which will zip right by some people. The “real” news outfit owned by the lovable Jeff Bezos published “As Data Centers for AI Strain the Power Grid, Bills Rise for Everyday Customers.” The write up tries to explain that AI costs for electric power are being passed along to regular folks. Most of these electricity dependent people do not take home paychecks with tens of millions of dollars like the Nadellas, the Zuckerbergs, or the Pichais type breadwinners do. Heck, these AI poohbahs think about buying modular nuclear power plants. (I want to point out that these do not exist and may not for many years.)
The article is not going to thrill the professionals who are experts on utility demand and pricing. Those folks know that the smart software poohbahs have royally screwed up some weekends and vacations for the foreseeable future.
The WaPo article (presumably blessed by St. Jeffrey) says:
The facilities’ extraordinary demand for electricity to power and cool computers inside can drive up the price local utilities pay for energy and require significant improvements to electric grid transmission systems. As a result, costs have already begun going up for customers — or are about to in the near future, according to utility planning documents and energy industry analysts. Some regulators are concerned that the tech companies aren’t paying their fair share, while leaving customers from homeowners to small businesses on the hook.
Okay, typical “real” journospeak. “Costs have already begun going up for customers.” Hey, no kidding. The big AI parade began with the January 2023 announcement that the Softies were going whole hog on AI. The lovable Google immediately flipped into alert mode. I can visualize flashing yellow LEDs and faux red stop lights blinking in the gray corridors in Shoreline Drive facilities if there are people in those offices again. Yeah, ghostly blinking.
The write up points out, rather unsurprisingly:
The tech firms and several of the power companies serving them strongly deny they are burdening others. They say higher utility bills are paying for overdue improvements to the power grid that benefit all customers.
Who wants PEPCO and VEPCO to kill their service? Actually, no one. Imagine life in NoVa, DC, and the ever lovely Maryland without power. Yikes.
From my point of view, informed by some exposure to the utility sector at a nuclear consulting firm and then at a blue chip consulting outfit, here’s the scoop.
The demand planning done with rigor by US utilities took a hit each time the Big Dogs of AI brought more specialized, power hungry servers online and — here’s the killer, folks — and left them on. The way power consumption used to work is that during the day, consumer usage would fall and business/industry usage would rise. The power hogging steel industry was a 24×7 outfit. But over the last 40 years, manufacturing has wound down and consumer demand crept upwards. The curves had to be plotted and the demand projected, but, in general, life was not too crazy for the US power generation industry. Sure, there were the costs associated with decommissioning “old” nuclear plants and expanding new non-nuclear facilities with expensive but management environmental gewgaws, gadgets, and gizmos plugged in to save the snail darters and the frogs.
Since January 2023, demand has been curving upwards. Power generation outfits don’t want to miss out on revenue. Therefore, some utilities have worked out what I would call sweetheart deals for electricity for AI-centric data centers. Some of these puppies suck more power in a day than a dying city located in Flyover Country in Illinois.
Plus, these data centers are not enough. Each quarter the big AI dogs explain that more billions will be pumped into AI data centers. Keep in mind: These puppies run 24×7. The AI wolves have worked out discount rates.
What do the US power utilities do? First, the models have to be reworked. Second, the relationships to trade, buy, or “borrow” power have to be refined. Third, capacity has to be added. Fourth, the utility rate people create a consumer pricing graph which may look like this:
Guess who will pay? Yep, consumers.
The red line is the prediction for post-AI electricity demand. For comparison, the blue line shows the demand curve before Microsoft ignited the AI wars. Note that the gray line is consumer cost or the monthly electricity bill for Bob and Mary Normcore. The nuclear purple line shows what is and will continue to happen to consumer electricity costs. The red line is the projected power demand for the AI big dogs.
The graph shows that the cost will be passed to consumers. Why? The sweetheart deals to get the Big Dog power generation contracts means guaranteed cash flow and a hurdle for a low-ball utility to lumber over. Utilities like power generation are not the Neon Deions of American business.
There will be hand waving by regulators. Some city government types will argue, “We need the data centers.” Podcasts and posts on social media will sprout like weeds in an untended field.
Net net: Bob and Mary Normcore may have to decide between food and electricity. AI is wonderful, right.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2024
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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