Comments on: Is Google Objective?

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:50:26 +0000

In some ways I’m not sure we really want Google to be objective. With so many working so hard to game the algorithm, so much of search results is garbage these days, as shown at http://searchengineland.com/google-sewage-factory-the-chocomize-story-47403.

It’s a bit like net neutrality: it’s great, but on the other hand it sure would be nice if the infrastructure could help eliminate spam.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:52:13 +0000

Regardless of whether Google excluding/including Yelp is good/evil, I think it's interesting that we're even talking about this.

When they were just indexing the HTML web, one of the things that made Google so "objective" was the enormous amount of content. When you have an infinite amount of content to index, you don't have to sit there and worry about / generate interest from us observers when your algorithm now excludes some site on the 10th page of your results.

When they develop "special" indexes for things like places and reviews, there's simply not as much authoritative content and the content is grouped into mostly a few services. That's the kind of stuff that makes Bing seem not as objective. It pushes towards the Yahoo-style organizing of the web into categories.

Just my thoughts...

By: John

John — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 01:02:53 +0000

I don’t agree. Yelp was unhappy because Google was taking its listings and showing them in Places, which is a direct competitor to Yelp. That kind of proves my point, I think.

By: mattmc

mattmc — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:59:45 +0000

Mitsu is right- Batelle has it backwards. Yelp complained their data was being used- mostly because places was seen as a competitor.
The real story is the use of walled gardens against Google's growing sophistication in aggregation. If Yelp opposes the data's use in the structured results of places, what happens when Google's regular SRP evolves to show the same data? What's even more ironic, is that Yelp didn't create the data- the users did.

Techcrunch is so breathless and tabloid. My life is better for ignoring it.

By: Rick Vidallon

Rick Vidallon — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:26:16 +0000

Get over it folks. Google is a business that can be counted on to do what is in the best interests of it's share-holders.

When it comes to Google building O&Os ( TV talk for owned and operated) they sort of remind me of a big goofy kid loose in a toy store with gobs of cash buying everything up in site. Once they get bored with their new toy, they drop it in search of another shiny new ball.

On a side note: I really don't think their will be any Google killer in the near immediate future either, but we are likely to see more challengers akin to those who claim to build a better burger. Yum. Lots of pickles on mine please.

By: JG

JG — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:01:32 +0000

John,

Your "Is Google Objective" question reminds me of this thread from two years ago:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2008/10/oreilly_launches_found_conference#comment_134658

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:21:55 +0000

But then how can Google say that their results are the best to find on the net and most realiable, when they remove results from Yelp and such, which are very representable.

I’m sorry but now that i’ve read The Book i’m a bit doubtful whether “Don’t be evil”, still stands.

By: John

John — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:21:49 +0000

I wonder if this could be considered a shift away from the underlying philosophy that Google once espoused: that any use of the Internet was good for their business. Now it seems that they're preferring users stick with their apps.

I wonder just how much that really helps their bottom line.

By: Mitsu

Mitsu — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:55:05 +0000

Well, if you read the article it doesn’t really sound quite that sinister… Yelp is the one who apparently objected to Google crawling its site without permission. They used to have a content deal but they don’t anymore, and they’re still negotiating it. So Google removed Yelp’s results because Yelp objected to them including Yelp reviews without permission.

By: Vici

Vici — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:04:54 +0000

Well Google is very objective. I use Google to search forums becouse google find better than local search. The problem arise when the commercial service interference between the objective search, as everywhere.