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Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

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Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#111

Post by oelmekki »

f_allwein wrote: post #7

[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot in robots.txt,…

I think you nail it, here: the biggest problem of google is support :)

This is something notorious and traversal to all its products.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#112

Post by mmrezaie »

rusk wrote: post #106
fastball wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it would be ok with you if Google said "we exclude any search results we want, you can pay for Google premium to have uncensored results"?

That would actually be okay for me. But it wouldn't be okay for google as it would directly affect their revenue model of using traffic analysis as a means to promote advertising. There's probably more money in it for them that way. But Google's right to make money doesn't trump all other rights.

Well said, making us pay them for the quality/uncensored search results basically destroys the main source of how they can create insights on data by letting people use their services for free. Google's search business is now a public utility but so far I do not see regulatory systems capable of regulating it without destroying it (catch 22 so far).

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#113

Post by cjcole »

fastball wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... It should be, though. It's not 1776. A website like Google is more than a company, it's a public service with immense power of manipulation and influence over countless industries. The law shouldn't be written like we live in the stone age.

So what exactly is your solution? What law do you put in place, precisely? Google has to provide consumers with whatever information they want, whenever they want it, free of charge? Because that seems to be what you're gunning for.

When they, by virtue of their overwhelming market share, nuke a competitor's product off the face of the internet, whether algorithmically or intentionally, it feels reasonable to me to compel them to provide more detail than "we fixed the glitch".

Google does not have the right to avoid being regulated in the public interest.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#114

Post by mark_l_watson »

There are many major actors, both corporate and governmental, that don’t like privacy enhancing services like ProtonMail. No conspiracy theory, just large actors acting ruthlessly in their own self interest.

This year old article is a bit bogus though. As other pointed out, the hit on SEO came from changing from .ch to .com

ProtonMail, and other similar services, deserve to be supported in my opinion. I have recommended ProtonMail to friends and family. I use them out of personal choice, and I also rely on Fastmail.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#115

Post by [deleted] »

wallace_f wrote: post #33
Quarrelsome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we complaining that you can't put up a poster explicitly designed to incite violence against anti-fascists with a ProtonMail email address? I'd imagine they might also disable your account if you use swastikas as your logo, is that "awful censorship"? If you wanna do that sort of stuff then roll your own ffs. Consider that they might have some form of legal liability.

I thought the complaint was that someone else could put up a poster of your email address with a swastila next to it, and you'd get banned for it.

[deleted]

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#116

Post by crankylinuxuser »

dvdkhlng wrote: post #87
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one way I know to stop that. Ipfs. Its immutable, for a given key. And its easy to see what an IPNS link points to. It may not be a way to verify, but others could do that hard work. But it strictly shows proof that codebase for a web app hasn't changed.

The only real antidote against unauthorized access is using end-to-end encryption between email's sender and recipient(s), via PGP/GPG or S/MIME. Unfortunately this requires the sender's cooperation. As long as the sender does not cooperate, there will always be some leg of the communication path that is vulnerable.

Indeed. But that problem has been to "Show clients how to install the relevant plugins, make their certs, and then appropriately use certs." That's been error-prone since the beginning with PGPMail and PGPphone.

That's why this was switched to doing it in a webapp, to streamline the process and remove user error out of the equation. There's one problem, and that the owner of the script can change it to a bad one that does X.

With an immutable data structure, like what IPFS uses, can provide that chain of custody with a script they make that simplifies PGP usage, while still maintaining "We didn't change anything" - and you can prove that.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#117

Post by Retric »

f_allwein wrote: post #68
Retric wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, but this is probably one of the reasons google has become so terrible. It's treating searches as a game, not something it needs to improve. Resulting in a steady decline year after year.

I don't understand. Google is putting considerable resources and effort into improving search quality.

And yet they are failing.

For any given search many websites have an economic incentive to be at the top and are willing to understand the process and jump though some hoops. However, jumping though hoops has zero correlation with quality and only minimal correlation with relevancy.

It's not an easy job to find a useful mattress review website or whatever, but Google's users don't care about easy they care about how useful something is. Even worse Google's actions end up changing the websites they are linking to. It's a slow but vicious cycle that I don't have a solution to, I just finally realized what the problem was.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#118

Post by bogomipz »

>"“[E]ven though Google is an American company, it controls over 90% of European search traffic. In this case, Google directly caused ProtonMail’s growth rate worldwide to be reduced by over 25% for over 10 months,” he adds."

If a substantial part of your funnel is attached to another company's whims then maybe it was past time to think about your strategy for building product and brand awareness.

>"“The only reason we survived to tell this story is because the majority of ProtonMail’s growth comes from word of mouth, and our community is too loud to be ignored."

Again it was up to you to diversify what sounds like an over reliance on Google for 25% of your growth. Portraying that as into "victim survivor" story is a bit dramatic.

This sounds like a yarn they are spinning for potential investors. And not a very good one.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#120

Post by ptero »

fastball wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... It should be, though. It's not 1776. A website like Google is more than a company, it's a public service with immense power of manipulation and influence over countless industries. The law shouldn't be written like we live in the stone age.

So what exactly is your solution? What law do you put in place, precisely? Google has to provide consumers with whatever information they want, whenever they want it, free of charge? Because that seems to be what you're gunning for.

I am pretty sure Google derives a lot of its revenue from advertisers who operate on the assumption that the users see Google searches as mostly efficient and impartial. There can be special cases, but they should not be statistically significant. Thus it is in Google's own interest to keep providing efficient, unbiased search or at least the appearance of it. Break this and the customers will flee to other search engines and advertisers will follow. So yes, I expect Google to provide information to consumers free of charge as this is a key part of its business model.

Which, however, has nothing to do with the article's point -- disappearance of a single entry with competitive advantage over Google. No statistical significance for search, but instead wielding its enormous power to squelch a small competitor. IMO, if true, this is the case for the government to address via rulemaking, courts or some other means.

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