nmw

See http://news.google.com/news?q=Google , the second result (“Video: Google courts Yahoo”) is attributed to reutersvideo, but provides no link to Reuters — and it’s actually a youtube.com video!

:O

see >> twitter.com/nmw/statuses/683574582

Google ranks battellemedia.com #2 (after blogsearch.google.com)

Live doesn’t have battellemedia.com on the first page of results

Then I did a single-word search for searchblog:

Google ranks battellemedia.com #1

Live ranks battellemedia.com #1

Of the other 9 results:

5/9 on Google contained the string in the domain name or in the subdomain.

3/9 on Live contained the string in the domain name or in the subdomain — and 1 result matched the authors/searchblog directory of federatedmedia.net.

Now it seems quote clear to me that the ranking algorithms are a little different. Without a doubt, battellemedia.com ranks for the term searchblog (but so does searchblog.com — quite “according to” the above “miserable-failure” hypothesis). But: how come they are nonetheless so different?

I also have a hypothesis for this: Each so-called “search engine” is actually somewhat like the old-fashioned “abstracting / indexing services” — and they each have their particular coverage and/or emphasis. So perhaps Google will emphasize youtube videos more than other videos (this morning I tweeted that Google’s video search was unable to find a video of last night’s democratic debate! [see twitter.com/nmw/statuses/665642422 and my follow-up at twitter.com/nmw/statuses/665651502 ;])

Old-fashioned indexing/abstrating services were also sometimes published by the selfsame publishers as the publishers of the journals covered, so this perhaps should be surprising.

What is surprising is that Google is in a state of denial that it is in fact a media company.

nmw

Eun (Google) says: Some of it may just be fear about what could happen if somehow we decided to get into the content producing space, which again is unfounded.

So let us accept for a moment Google’s own self-created idea of what a media company is, i.e. a company that “produces content”.

The implication, then, by claiming that Google is not a media company is that they do not produce content. Right?

So then I assume that the ranked list of SERPs is not really content? And since this is not something that Google claims to have produced, they should have no problem with me scraping that data and using it in my own search engine, or using it to do metasearch, right? Because it is not really content they have produced, and therefore not content that they would try to claim or assert any sort of ownership over, right?

Oh, wait. Never mind.

And Google wonders why there are misperceptions out there.

Eun (Google): For one reason or another, there is still disinformation and misperception out there. We’re trying to correct it.

IWM: What is the cause of these misperceptions about Google?

Eun (Google): I think for some people it’s self-created. For others, maybe it’s just ill-informed opinion, or things that they hear around the water cooler. I’m not quite sure. If I had a better idea, we’d get closer to the root of it. Some of it may just be fear about what could happen if somehow we decided to get into the content producing space, which again is unfounded.

Um, is this guy from Google serious? This is how he defines being a media company? It is a company that is in the “content producing space”? And he wonders why there is misperception? And he blames it all on us, saying that I/you/we “self-create” the misperception? Or that I/you/we hold “ill-informed” opinions?

Did he ever stop and think that maybe Google is at the source of its own misperceptions, that maybe some “opinions” about itself that Google “self-creates” is causing the rest of us to scratch our heads?

Case in point: The way they self-define what “media company” means. They define it as a company that “produces content”. Tolman Geffs defines it as a company that “brings content to audiences“. John Battelle defines it as a company that “creates experiences for consumers“.

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, Google has got the definition wrong, and not the rest of us? And rather than being so quick to accuse the rest of us of being ill-informed and self-misunderstanding-created, that they might actually take responsibility for some of the things they themselves are ill-informed about?

I am all worked up now. Huff.

Since they produce(d) a product/service (their software/algorithms) that allows people to receive information, it could be argued that they are a media company — basically, simply because this algorithm functions like a “channel” through which the information can pass.

However, since in some cases Google actually prevents information from passing through the channel (such as the fact that an inordinate amount of people have linked to George Bush’s biography with the term “miserable failure”), they are the opposite of a media company — indeed: they actually censor information.

But it would also be wrong to say that many other media companies do not prevent information to pass through, so I guess that they could be characterized as a more/less “run of the mill” media company (rather than as an “ideal” media company).

Beyond that, I would say that it might be neat if they could release a “Google cave” where people could go “inside” and debate philosophical questions and stuff like that.

nmw

ps/btw: in the future, I expect the registrant of miserable-failure.com would tend to be the expert on the topic of commercial miserable failures, miserable-failure.org might be an organisation that deals with miserable failures, and perhaps other country codes might have slightly different nuanced perceptions of the concept “miserable failure”. Note that a community network / networking organization focusing on the idea of “miserable failure” (whether or not the idea is “real”) still doesn’t exist — maybe Mr. Bush could register the domain name, create a support group and also earn some money from advertising? (ah, that reminds me: I always thought that when Google gave up on search that they might try to become an advertising agency — but then again: what were those four things Eric Schmidt mentioned a year or two ago?)

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…