Short Cuts? Nah, Just Business as Usual in the Big Apple Publishing World
June 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
One of my team alerted me to this Fortune Magazine story: “Telegram Has Become the Go-To App for Heroin, Guns, and Everything Illegal. Can Crypto Save It?” The author appears to be Niamh Rowe. I do not know this “real” journalist. The Fortune Magazine write up is interesting for several reasons. I want to share these because if I am correct in my hypotheses, the problems of big publishing extend beyond artificial intelligence.
First, I prepared a lecture about Telegram specifically for several law enforcement conferences this year. One of our research findings was that a Clear Web site, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a browser, could buy stolen bank cards. But these ready-to-use bank cards were just bait. The real play was the use of an encrypted messaging service to facilitate a switch to a malware once the customer paid via crypto for a bundle of stolen credit and debit cards. The mechanism was not the Dark Web. The Dark Web is showing its age, despite the wild tales which appear in the online news services and semi-crazy videos on YouTube-type services. The new go-to vehicle is an encrypted messaging service. The information in the lecture was not intended to be disseminated outside of the law enforcement community.
A big time “real” journalist explains his process to an old person who lives in the Golden Rest Old Age Home. The old-timer thinks the approach is just peachy-keen. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Close enough like most modern work.
Second, in my talk I used idiosyncratic lingo for one reason. The coinages and phrases allow my team to locate documents and the individuals who rip off my work without permission.
I have had experience with having my research pirated. I won’t name a major Big Apple consulting firm which used my profiles of search vendors as part of the firm’s training materials. Believe it or not, a senior consultant at this ethics-free firm told me that my work was used to train their new “experts.” Was I surprised? Nope. New York. Consultants. What did I expect? Integrity was not a word I used to describe this Big Apple publishing outfitthen, and it sure isn’t today. The Fortune Magazine article uses my lingo, specifically “superapp” and includes comments which struck my researcher as a coincidental channeling of my observations about an end-to-end encrypted service’s crypto play. Yep, coincidence. No problem. Big time publishing. Eighty-year-old person from Kentucky. Who cares? Obviously not the “real” news professional who is in telepathic communication with me and my study team. Oh, well, mind reading must exist, right?
Third, my team and I are working hard on a monograph about E2EE specifically for law enforcement. If my energy holds out, I will make the report available free to any member of a law enforcement cyber investigative team in the US as well as investigators at agencies in which I have some contacts; for example, the UK’s National Crime Agency, Europol, and Interpol.
I thought (silly me) that I was ahead of the curve as I was with some of my other research reports; for example, in the the year 1995 my publisher released Internet 2000: The Path to the Total Network, then in 2004, my publisher issued The Google Legacy, and in 2006 a different outfit sold out of my Enterprise Search Report. Will I be ahead of the curve with my E2EE monograph? Probably not. Telepathy I guess.
But my plan is to finish the monograph and get it in the hands of cyber investigators. I will continue to be on watch for documents which recycle my words, phrases, and content. I am not a person who writes for a living. I write to share my research team’s findings with the men and women who work hard to make it safe to live and work in the US and other countries allied with America. I do not chase clicks like those who must beg for dollars, appeal to advertisers, and provide links to Patreon-type services.
I have never been interested in having a “fortune” and I learned after working with a very entitled, horse-farm-owning Fortune Magazine writer that I had zero in common with him, his beliefs, and, by logical reasoning, the culture of Fortune Magazine.
My hunch is that absolutely no one will remember where the information in the cited write up with my lingo originated. My son, who owns the DC-based GovWizely.com consulting firm, opined, “I think the story was written by AI.” Maybe I should use that AI and save myself money, time, and effort?
To be frank, I laughed at the spin on the Fortune Magazine story’s interpretation of superapp. Not only does the write up misrepresent what crypto means to Telegram, the superapp assertion is not documented with fungible evidence about how the mechanics of Telegram-anchored crime can work.
Net net: I am 80. I sort of care. But come on, young wizards. Up your game. At least, get stuff right, please.
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2024
Ah, Google, Great App Screening
June 19, 2024
Doesn’t google review apps before putting them in their online store? If so, apparently not very well. Mashable warns, “In Case You Missed It: Bank Info-Stealing Malware Found in 90+ Android Apps with 5.5M Installs.” Some of these apps capture this sensitive data with the help of an advanced trojan called Anasta. Reporter Cecily Mauran writes:
“As of Thursday [May 30], Google has banned the apps identified in the report, according to BleepingComputer. Anatsa, also known as ‘TeaBot,’ and other malware in the report, are dropper apps that masquerade as PDF and QR code readers, photography, and health and fitness apps. As the outlet reported, the findings demonstrate the ‘high risk of malicious dropper apps slipping through the cracks in Google’s review process.’ Although Anatsa only accounts for around two percent of the most popular malware, it does a lot of damage. It’s known for targeting over 650 financial institutions — and two of its PDF and QR code readers had both amassed over 70,000 downloads at the time the report was published. Once installed as a seemingly legitimate app, Anatsa uses advanced techniques to avoid detection and gain access to banking information. The two apps mentioned in the report were called ‘PDF Reader and File Manager’ by Tsarka Watchfaces and ‘QR Reader and File Manager’ by risovanul. So, they definitely have an innocuous look to unsuspecting Android users.”
The article reports Anasta and other malware was found in these categories: file managers, editors, translators, photography, productivity, and personalization apps. It is possible Google caught all the Anasta-carrying apps, but one should be careful just in case.
Cynthia Murrell, June 19, 2024
Googzilla: Pointing the Finger of Blame Makes Sense I Guess
June 13, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Here you are: The Thunder Lizard of Search Advertising. Pesky outfits like Microsoft have been quicker than Billy the Kid shooting drunken farmers when it comes to marketing smart software. But the real problem in Deadwood is a bunch of do-gooders turned into revolutionaries undermining the granite foundation of the Google. I have this information from an unimpeachable source: An alleged Google professional talking on a podcast. The news release titled “Google Engineer Says Sam Altman-Led OpenAI Set Back AI Research Progress By 5-10 Years: LLMs Have Sucked The Oxygen Out Of The Room” explains that the actions of OpenAI is causing the Thunder Lizard to wobble.
One of the team sets himself apart by blaming OpenAI and his colleagues, not himself. Will the sleek, entitled professionals pay attention to this criticism or just hear “OpenAI”? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough art.
Consider this statement in the cited news release:
He [an employee of the Thunder Lizard] stated that OpenAI has “single-handedly changed the game” and set back progress towards AGI by a significant number of years. Chollet pointed out that a few years ago, all state-of-the-art results were openly shared and published, but this is no longer the case. He attributed this change to OpenAI’s influence, accusing them of causing a “complete closing down of frontier research publishing.”
I find this interesting. One company, its deal with Microsoft, and that firm’s management meltdown produced a “complete closing down of frontier research publishing.” What about the Dr. Timnit Gebru incident about the “stochastic parrot”?
The write up included this gem from the Googley acolyte of the Thunder Lizard of Search Advertising:
He went on to criticize OpenAI for triggering hype around Large Language Models or LLMs, which he believes have diverted resources and attention away from other potential areas of AGI research.
However, DeepMind — apparently the nerve center of the one best way to generate news releases about computational biology — has been generating PR. That does not count because its is real world smart software I assume.
But there are metrics to back up the claim that OpenAI is the Great Destroyer. The write up says:
Chollet’s [the Googler, remember?] criticism comes after he and Mike Knoop, [a non-Googler] the co-founder of Zapier, announced the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize. The competition, which Chollet created in 2019, measures AGI’s ability to acquire new skills and solve novel, open-ended problems efficiently. Despite 300 teams attempting ARC-AGI last year, the state-of-the-art (SOTA) score has only increased from 20% at inception to 34% today, while humans score between 85-100%, noted Knoop. [emphasis added, editor]
Let’s assume that the effort and money poured into smart software in the last 12 months boosted one key metric by 14 percent. Doesn’t’ that leave LLMs and smart software in general far, far behind the average humanoid?
But here’s the killer point?
… training ChatGPT on more data will not result in human-level intelligence.
Let’s reflect on the information in the news release.
- If the data are accurate, LLM-based smart software has reached a dead end. I am not sure the law suits will stop, but perhaps some of the hyperbole will subside?
- If these insights into the weaknesses of LLMs, why has Google continued to roll out services based on a dead-end model, suffer assorted problems, and then demonstrated its management prowess by pulling back certain services?
- Who is running the Google smart software business? Is it the computationalists combining components of proteins or is the group generating blatantly wonky images? A better question is, “Is anyone in charge of non-advertising activities at Google?”
My hunch is that this individual is representing a percentage of a fractionalized segment of Google employees. I do not think a senior manager is willing to say, “Yes, I am responsible.” The most illuminating facet of the article is the clear cultural preference at Google: Just blame OpenAI. Failing that, blame the users, blame the interns, blame another team, but do not blame oneself. Am I close to the pin?
Stephen E Arnold, June 13, 2024
Google and Microsoft: The Twinning Is Evident
June 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Google and Microsoft have some interesting similarities. Both companies wish they could emulate one another’s most successful products. Microsoft wants search and advertising revenue. Google wants a chokehold on the corporate market for software and services. The senior executives have similar high school academic training. Both companies have oodles of legal processes with more on the horizo9n. Both companies are terminating with extreme prejudice employees. Both companies seem to have some trust issues. You get the idea.
Some neural malfunctions occur when one get too big and enjoys the finer things in life like not working on management tasks with diligence. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough
Google and Microsoft are essentially morphing into mirrors of one another. Is that a positive? From an MBA / bean counter point of view, absolutely. There are some disadvantages, but they are minor ones; for example, interesting quasi-monopoly pricing options, sucking the air from the room for certain types of start ups, and having the power of a couple of nation-states. What could go wrong? (Just check out everyday life. Clues are abundant.)
How about management methods which do not work very well. I want to cite two examples.
Google is scaling back its AI search plans after the summary feature told people to eat glue. How do I, recently dubbed scary grandpa cyber by an officer at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference in Wilmington, North Carolina, last week? The answer is that I read “Google Is Scaling Back Its AI Search Plans after the Summary Feature Told People to Eat Glue.” This is a good example of the minimum viable product not be minimal enough and certainly not viable. The write up says:
Reid [a Google wizard] wrote that the company already had systems in place to not show AI-generated news or health-related results. She said harmful results that encouraged people to smoke while pregnant or leave their dogs in cars were “faked screenshots.” The list of changes is the latest example of the Big Tech giant launching an AI product and circling back with restrictions after things get messy.
What a remarkable tactic. Blame the “users” and reducing the exposure of the online ad giant’s technological prowess. I think these two tactics illustrate the growing gulf between “leadership” and the poorly managed lower level geniuses who toil at Googzilla’s side.
I noted a weird parallel with Microsoft illustrating a similar disconnect between the Microsoft’s carpetland dwellers and those working in the weird disconnected buildings on the Campus. This disaster of a minimum viable product or MVP was rolled out with much fanfare at one of Microsoft’s many, hard-to-differentiate conferences. The idea was one I heard about decades ago. The individual with whom I associate the idea once worked at Bellcore (one of the spin offs of Bell Labs after Judge Green created the telecommunications wonderland we enjoy today. The idea is a surveillance dream come true — at least for law enforcement and intelligence professionals. MSFT software captures images of a users screen, converts the bitmap to text, and helpfully makes it searchable. The brilliant Softie allegedly suggested in “When Asked about Windows Recall Privacy Concerns, Microsoft Researcher Gives Non-Answer
Microsoft’s Recall feature is being universally slammed for the privacy implications that come from screenshotting everything you do on a computer. However, at least one person seems to think the concerns are overblown. Unsurprisingly, it’s Microsoft Research’s chief scientist, who didn’t really give an answer when asked about Recall’s negative points.
Then what did a senior super manager do? Answer: Back track like crazy. Here’s the passage:
Even before making Recall available to customers, we have heard a clear signal that we can make it easier for people to choose to enable Recall on their Copilot+ PC and improve privacy and security safeguards. With that in mind we are announcing updates that will go into effect before Recall (preview) ships to customers on June 18.
The decision could have been made by a member of the Google leadership team. Heck, may the two companies’ senior leadership are on a mystical brain wave and think the same thoughts. Which is the evil twin? I will leave that to you to ponder.
Several observations are warranted:
- For large, world-affecting companies, senior managers are simply out of touch with [a] their product development teams and [b] their “users.”
- The outfits may be Wall Street darlings, but are their other considerations to weigh?The companies have been sufficiently large their communication neurons are no longer reliable. The messages they emit are double speak at best and PR speak at their worst.
- The management controls are not working. One can delegate when one knows those in other parts of the organization make good decisions. What’s evident is that a lack of control, commitment to on point research, and good judgment illustrate a breakdown of the nervous system of these companies.
Net net: What’s ahead? More of the same dysfunction perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2024
OpenAI: Deals with Apple and Microsoft Squeeze the Google
June 6, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Do you remember your high school biology class? You may have had a lab partner, preferably a person with dexterity and a steady hand. Dissecting creatures and having recognizable parts was important. Otherwise, how could one identify the components when everything was a glutinous mash up of white, red, pink, gray, and — yes — even green?
That’s how I interpret the OpenAI deals the company has with Apple and Microsoft. What are these two large, cash-rich, revenue hungry companies going to do? The illustration suggest that the two was to corral Googzilla, put the beastie in a stupor, and then take the creature apart.
The little Googzilla is in the lab. Two wizards are going to try to take the creature apart. One of the bio-data operators is holding tweezers to grab the beastie and place it on an adhesive gel pad. The other is balancing the creature to reassure it that it may once again be allowed to roam free in a digital Roatan. The bio-data experts may have another idea. Thanks, MSFT. Did you know you are the character with the tweezers?
Well, maybe the biology lab metaphor is not appropriate. Oh, heck, I am going to stick with the trope. Microsoft has rammed Copilot and its other AI deals in front of Windows users world wide. Now Apple, late to the AI game, went to the AI dance hall and picked the star-crossed OpenAI as a service it would take to the smart software recital.
If you want to get some color about Apple and OpenAI, navigate to “Apple and OpenAI Allegedly Reach Deal to Bring ChatGPT Functionality to iOS 18.”
I want to focus on what happens before the lab partners try to chop up the little Googzilla.
Here are the steps:
- Use tweezers to grab the beastie
- Squeeze the tweezers to prevent the beastie from escaping to the darkness under the lab cabinets
- Gently lift the beastie
- Place the beastie on the adhesive gel.
I will skip the part of process which involves anesthetizing the beastie and beginning the in vivo procedures. Just use your imagination.
Now back to the four steps. My view is that neither Apple nor Microsoft will actively cooperate to make life difficult for the baby Googzilla, which represents a fledgling smart software activity. Here’s my vision.
Apple will do what Apple does, just with OpenAI and ChatGPT. At some point, Apple, which is a kind and gentle outfit, may not chop off Googzilla’s foot. Apple may offer the beastie a reprieve. After all, Apple knows Google will pay big bucks to be the default search engine for Safari. The foot remains attached, but there is some shame attached at being number two. No first prize, just a runner up: How is that for a creature who views itself as the world’s smartest, slickest, most wonderfulest entity? Answer: Bad.
The squeezing will be uncomfortable. But what can the beastie do. The elevation causes the beastie to become lightheaded. Its decision making capability, already suspect, becomes more addled and unpredictable.
Then the adhesive gel. Mobility is impaired. Fear causes the beastie’s heart to pound. The beastie becomes woozy. The beastie is about to wonder if it will survive.
To sum up the situation: The Google is hampered by:
- A competitor in AI which has cut deals that restrict Google to some degree
- The parties to the OpenAI deal are out for revenue which is thicker than blood
- Google has demonstrated a loss of some management capability and that may deteriorate at a more rapid pace.
Today’s world may be governed by techno-feudalists, and we are going to get a glimpse of what happens when a couple of these outfits tag team a green beastie. This will be an interesting situation to monitor.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2024
The Leak: One Nothing Burger, Please
June 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Everywhere I look I see write ups about the great Google leak. One example is the poohbah publication The Verge and its story “The Biggest Findings in the Google Search Leak.” From the git-go there is information which reveals something many people know about the Google. It does not explain what it does or its intentions. It just does stuff and then fancy dances around what the company is actually doing. How long has this been going on? Since the litigation about Google’s inspiring encounter with the Yahoo, Overture, GoTo pay-to-play advertising model. In one of my monographs about Google I created this illustration to explain how the Google technology works.
Here’s what I wrote in Google: The Calculating Predator (Infonortics, UK, 2007):
Like a skilled magician, a good stage presence and a bit of misdirection focus attention where Google wants it.
The “leak” is fodder for search engine optimization professionals who unwittingly make the case for just buying advertising. But the leak delivers one useful insight: Google does not tell what it does in plain English. Some call it prevarication; I call it part of the overall strategy of the firm. The philosophy is one manifestation of the idea that “users” don’t need to know anything. “Users” are there to allow Google to sell advertising, broker advertising, and automate advertising. Period. This is the ethos of the high school science club which knows everything. Obviously.
The cited article revealing the biggest findings offers these insights. Please, sit down. I don’t want to be responsible for causing anyone bodily harm.
First snippet:
Google spokespeople have repeatedly denied that user clicks factor into ranking websites, for example — but the leaked documents make note of several types of clicks users make and indicate they feed into ranking pages in search. Testimony from the antitrust suit by the US Department of Justice previously revealed a ranking factor called Navboost that uses searchers’ clicks to elevate content in search.
Are you still breathing. Yep, Google pays attention to clicks. Yes, that’s one of the pay-to-play requirements: Show data to advertisers and get those SEO people acting as an advertising pre-sales service. When SEO fails, buy ads. Yep, earth shattering.
An actual expert in online search examines the information from the “leak” and realizes the data for what they are: Out of context information from a mysterious source. Thanks MidJourney. Other smart services could not deliver a nothing burger. Yours is good enough.
How about this stunning insight:
Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true.
Why would Google spend money to build a surveillance enabled software system? For fun? No, not for fun. Browsers funnel data back to a command-and-control center. The data are analyzed and nuggets used to generate revenue from advertising. This is a surprise. Microsoft got in trouble for browser bundling, but since the Microsoft legal dust up, regulators have taken a kinder, gentler approach to the Google.
Are there more big findings?
Yes, we now know what a digital nothing burger looks like. We already knew what falsehoods look like. SEO professionals are shocked. What’s that say for the unwitting Google pre-advertising purchase advocates?
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2024
Publication Founded by a Googler Cheers for Google AI Search
June 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
To understand the “rah rah” portion of this article, you need to know the backstory behind Search Engine Land, a news site about search and other technology. It was founded by Danny Sullivan, who pushed the SEO bandwagon. He did this because he was angling for a job at Google, he succeeded, and now he’s the point person for SEO.
Another press release touting the popularity of Google search dropped: “Google SEO Says AI Overviews Are Increasing Search Usage.” The author Danny Goodwin remains skeptical about Google’s spiked popularity due to AI and despite the bias of Search Engine Land’s founder.
During the QI 2024 Alphabet earnings call, Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that the search engine’s generative AI has been used for billions of queries and there are plans to develop the feature further. Pichai said positive things about AI, including that it increased user engagement, could answer more complex questions, and how there will be opportunities for monetization.
Goodwin wrote:
“All signs continue to indicate that Google is continuing its slow evolution toward a Search Generative Experience. I’m skeptical about user satisfaction increasing, considering what an unimpressive product AI overviews and SGE continues to be. But I’m not the average Google user – and this was an earnings call, where Pichai has mastered the art of using a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing.”
AI is the next evolution of search and Google is heading the parade, but the technology still has tons of bugs. Who founded the publication? A Googler. Of course there is no interaction between the online ad outfit and an SEO mouthpiece. Un-uh. No way.
Whitney Grace, June 5, 2024
Google Demos Its Reliability
June 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
Migrate everything to the cloud, they said. It is perfectly safe, we were told. And yet, “Google Cloud Accidentally Deletes $125 Billion Pension Fund’s Online Account,” reports Cyber Security News. Writer Dhivya reports a mistake in the setup process was to blame for the blunder. If it were not for a third-party backup, UniSuper’s profile might never have been recovered. We learn:
“A major mistake in setup caused Google Cloud and UniSuper to delete the financial service provider’s private cloud account. This event has caused many to worry about the security and dependability of cloud services, especially for big financial companies. The outage started in the blue, and UniSuper’s 620,000 members had no idea what was happening with their retirement funds.”
As it turns out, the funds themselves were just fine. But investors were understandably upset when they could not view updates. Together, the CEOs of Google Cloud and UniSuper dined on crow. Dhivya writes:
“According to the Guardian reports, the CEOs of UniSuper and Google Cloud, Peter Chun and Thomas Kurian, apologized for the failure together in a statement, which is not often done. … ‘UniSuper’s Private Cloud subscription was ultimately terminated due to an unexpected sequence of events that began with an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning,’ the two sources stated. ‘Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has confirmed that the disruption was caused by an unprecedented sequence of events.’ ‘This is a one-time event that has never happened with any of Google Cloud’s clients around the world.’ ‘This really shouldn’t have happened,’ it said.”
At least everyone can agree on that. We are told UniSuper had two different backups, but they were also affected by the snafu. It was the backups kept by “another service provider” that allowed the hundreds of virtual machines, databases, and apps that made up UniSuper’s private cloud environment to be recovered. Eventually. The CEOs emphasized the herculean effort it took both Google Cloud and UniSuper technicians to make it happen. We hope they were well-paid. Naturally, both companies pledge to do keep this mistake from happening again. Great! But what about the next unprecedented, one-time screwup?
Let this be a reminder to us all: back up the data! Frequently and redundantly. One never knows when that practice will save the day.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2024
Does Google Follow Its Own Product Gameplan?
June 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
If I were to answer the question based on Google’s AI summaries, I would say, “Nope.” The latest joke added to the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show is the one about pizza. Here’s the joke if I recall it correctly.
Sundar: Yo, Prabhakar, how do you keep cheese from slipping off a hot pizza?
Prabhakar: I don’t know. Please, tell me, oh gifted one.
Sundar: You have your cook mix it with non-toxic glue, faithful colleague.
Prabhakar: [Laughing loudly]. That’s a good one, luminescent soul.
Did Google muff the bunny with its high-profile smart software feature? To answer the question, I looked to the ever-objective Fast Company online publication. I found a write which appears to provide some helpful information. The article is called “Conduct Stellar User Research Even Faster with This Google Ventures Formula.” Google has game plans for creating MVPs or minimum viable products.
The confident comedians look concerned when someone in the audience throws a large tomato at the well-paid performers. Thanks, MSFT. Working on security or the AI PC today?
Let’s look at what one Google partner reveals as the equivalent of the formula for Coca-Cola or McDonald’s recipe for Big Mac sauce.
Here’s the game winning touchdown razzle dazzle:
- Use a bullseye customer sprint. The idea is to get five “customers” and show them three prototypes. Listen for pros and cons. Then debrief together in a “watch party.”
- Conduct sprints early. The idea is to get this feedback before “a team invests a lot of time, money, or reputational risk into building, launching, and marketing an MVP (that’s a minimum viable product, not necessarily a good or needed product I think).
- Keep research bite size. Avoid heavy duty research overkill is the way I interpret the Google speak. The idea is that massive research projects are not desirable. They are work. Nibble, don’t gobble, I assume.
- Keep the process simple. Keep the prototypes simple. Get those interviews. That’s fun. Plus, there is the “watch party”, remember?
Okay, now let’s think about what Google suggests are outliers or fiddled AI results. Why is Google AI telling people to eat a rock a day?
The “bullseye” baloney is bull output for sure. I am on reasonably firm ground because in Paris the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Act showed incorrect outputs from Google’s AI system. Then Google invented about a dozen variations on the theme of a scrambled egg at Google I/O. Now Google is faced with its AI system telling people dogs own hotels. No, some dogs live in hotels. Some dogs deliver outputs in hotels. Dogs do not own hotels unless it is in a crazy virtual reality headset created by Apple or Meta.
The write up uses the word “stellar” to describe this MVP product stuff. The reality is that Googlers are creating work for themselves. Listening to “customers” who know little about AI or anything other than buy ad-get traffic. The “stellar” part of the title is like the “quantum supremacy” horse feather assertion the company crafted.
Smart software can, when trained and managed, can do some useful things. However, the bullseye and quantum supremacy stuff is capable of producing social media memes, concern among some stakeholders, and evidence that Google cannot do anything useful at this time.
Maybe the company will get its act together? When it does, I will check out the next Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Act. Maybe some of the jokes will work? Let’s hope they are more effective than the bull’s-eye method. (Sorry. I had to fix up the spelling, Google.)
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2024
A Different View of That Google Search Leak
May 30, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
As a dinobaby, I can make observations that a person with two young children and a mortgage are not comfortable making. So buckle your seat belt and grab a couple of Prilosec. I don’t think the leak is a big deal. Let me provide some color.
This cartoon requires that you examine the information in “Authorities: Google Exec Died on Yacht after Upscale Prostitute Injected Him with Heroin.” The incident provides some insight into the ethical compass of one Google officer. Do others share that directionality? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. You unwittingly produced a good cartoon. Ho ho ho.
Many comments are zipping around about the thousands of pages of Google secret information are flying around. The “legend” of the leak is that Search API information became available. The “spark” which lit the current Google fire was this post: “An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me; Everyone in SEO Should See Them.” (FYI: The leaker is an entity using the handle “Erfan Azimi.”)
That write up says:
This documentation doesn’t show things like the weight of particular elements in the search ranking algorithm, nor does it prove which elements are used in the ranking systems. But, it does show incredible details about data Google collects.
If you want more of this SEO stuff, have at it. I think the information is almost useless. Do Googler’s follow procedures? Think about your answer for a company that operates essentially without meaningful controls. Here’s my view which means it is time to gulp those tabs.
First, the entire SEO game helps Google sell online advertising. Once the SEO push fails to return results to the client of the SEO expert, Google allows these experts to push Google ads on their customer. Why? Pay Google money and the advertiser will get traffic. How does this work? Well, money talks, and Google search experts deliver clicks.
Second, the core of Google is now surrounded by wrappers. The thousands of words in the leak record the stuff essentially unmanaged Googlers do to fill time. After 25 years, the old ideas (some of which were derived from the CLEVER method for which Jon Kleinberg deserves credit.) have been like a pretty good organic chicken swathed in hundreds of layers of increasingly crappy plastic wrap. With the appropriate source of illumination, one can discern the chicken beneath the halogenated wrap, but the chicken looks darned awful. Do you want to eat the chicken? Answer: Probably no more than I want to eat a pizza with non-toxic glue in the cheese.
Third, the senior management of the Google is divorced from the old-fashioned idea of typing a couple of words and getting results which are supposed to be germane to the query. When Boolean logic was part of the search game, search was about 60 percent effective. Thus, it seemed logical over the years to provide training wheels and expand the query against which ads could be sold. Now the game is just to sell ads because the query is relaxed, extended, and mostly useless except for a narrow class of search strings. (Use Google dorks and get some useful stuff.)
Okay, what are the implications of these three observations? Grab another Prilosec, please.
First, Google has to make more and more money because its costs are quite difficult to control. With cost control out of reach, the company’s “leadership” must focus on extracting cash from “users.” (Customers is not the right word for those in the Google datasphere.) The CFO is looking for her future elsewhere. The key point is that her future is not at the Google, its black maw hungry for cash, and the costs of keeping the lights on. Burn rate is not a problem just for start ups, folks.
Second, Google’s senior management is not focused on search no matter what the PR says. The company’s senior leader is a consultant, a smooth talking wordsmith, and a neutral personality to the outside world. As a result, the problems of software wrappers and even the incredible missteps with smart software are faint sounds coming from the other side of a sound-proofed room in a crazy college dormitory. Consultants consult. That’s what Google’s management team does. The “officers” have to figure out how to implement. Then those who do the work find themselves in a cloud of confusion. I did a blog essay about one of Google’s odd ball methods for delivering “minimum viable products”. The process has a name, but I have forgotten it, just like those working on Google’s “innovative” products which are difficult for me to name even after the mind-numbing Google I/O. Everything is fuzzy and illuminated by flickering Red Alert and Yellow Alert lights.
Third, Google has been trying to diversify its revenue stream for decades. After much time and effort, online advertising is darned close to 70 percent of the firm’s revenue. The numerous venture capital initiatives, the usually crazy skunk works often named X or a term from a weird union of a humanoid and a piece of hardware have delivered what? The Glasshole? The life-sized board game? The Transformic Inc.s’ data structure? Dr. Guha’s semantic technology? Yeah, failures because the revenue contributed is negligible. The idea of innovation at Google from the Backrub in the dorm has been derivative, imitative, and in the case of online advertising methods something for which Google paid some big bucks to Yahoo before the Google initial public offering. Google is not imitative; it is similar to a high school science club with an art teacher in charge. Google is clever and was quick moving. The company was fearless and was among the first to use academic ideas in its commercial search and advertising business until it did not. We are in the did not phase. Think about that when you put on a Google T shirt.
Finally, the company lacks the practical expertise to keep its 155,000 (estimated to be dropping at a cadence) full-time equivalents on the reservation. Where did the leaked but largely irrelevant documents originate? Not Mr. Fishkin: He was the lucky recipient of information from Mr. Ezimi. Where did he get the documents? I am waiting for an answer, Mr. Ezimi. Answer carefully because possession of such documents might be something of interest to some government authorities. The leak is just one example of a company which cannot coordinate information in a peer-reviewed journal paper. Remember the stochastic parrot? If not, run a query and look at what Google outputs from its smart software. And the protests? Yeah, thanks for screwing up traffic and my ability to grab a quick coffee at Philz when the Googlers are milling around with signs. Common sense seems in short supply.
So what?
For those who want search traffic, buy advertising. Plan to spend a minimum of $20,000 per month to get some action. If you cannot afford it, you need to put your thinking cap in a USB C socket and get some marketing ideas. Web search is not going to deliver those eyeballs. My local body shop owner asked me, “What can I do to get more visibility for my Google Local listing?” I said, “Pay a friend to post about your business in Nextdoor.com, get some customers to post about your dent removal prowess on Facebook, and pay some high school kid to spend some time making before and after pictures for Instagram. Pay the teen to make a TikTok video of a happy customer.” Note that I did not mention Google. It doesn’t deliver for local outfits.
Now you can kick back and enumerate the reasons why my view of Google is wrong, crazy, or out of touch. Feel free to criticize. I am a dinobaby; I consulted for a certain big time search engine; I consulted for venture firms investing in search; and I worked on some Fancy Dan systems. But my experience does not matter. I am a dinobaby, and I don’t care how other people find information. I pay several people to find information for me. I then review what those young wizards produce. Most of them don’t agree with me on some issues. That’s why I pay them. But this dinobaby’s views of Google are not designed to make them or you happy.
Net net: The image of Google to keep in mind is encapsulated in this article: Yacht Killing: Escort to Be Arraigned in Google Exec’s Heroin Death. Yep, Googlers are sporty. High school mentalities make mistakes, serious mistakes.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2024
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
