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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)

#121

Post by eqmvii »

bogomipz wrote: post #118

>"“[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…

I mean, if that one company is Google and the reason is search, you don’t have many options. This specific case is much harder to avoid than the general one of over reliance on one entity.

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

#122

Post by leephillips »

StreamBright wrote: post #81
f_allwein wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is an entirely separate process. The wikipedia link you shared relates to content that is illegal in a country, so consequently Google does not show it. E.g. in my home country (Germany), this includes some types of Nazi propaganda. I would assume all other search engines follow the same rules.

So in your country can you look stuff up about China and Tiananmen Square? Well you can't in China. This is censorship coming from the state. Now go on Youtube and look for PagerU videos. I understand that conservative views are not popular in Google but filtering legitimate content is just bad. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1406441&st... What about Dave Rubin? Does he fall into the same category…

It's important to realize that Google censorship to appease a foreign government sometimes affects search results in all countries, including the U.S. For example, search results worldwide are partly determined by Google's decision to avoid offending the government of Pakistan with content that may be critical of some aspects of Islam: https://lee-phillips.org/youtube/

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

#123

Post by benmmurphy »

StreamBright wrote: post #82
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concrete examples?

Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin, Prager University, all of their content is delisted and demonetized on Youtube. Non of them is illegal content.

I don't think google is to blame for this. This is being driven by what google (rightly) thinks advertisers want and advertisers are worried about their brands being associated with this content. Google is just reflecting the values that a lot of people in society hold. Most people aren't comfortable with people expressing opinions different from what they hold and so this is where we end up.

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

#124

Post by soundwave106 »

StreamBright wrote: post #81
f_allwein wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is an entirely separate process. The wikipedia link you shared relates to content that is illegal in a country, so consequently Google does not show it. E.g. in my home country (Germany), this includes some types of Nazi propaganda. I would assume all other search engines follow the same rules.

So in your country can you look stuff up about China and Tiananmen Square? Well you can't in China. This is censorship coming from the state. Now go on Youtube and look for PagerU videos. I understand that conservative views are not popular in Google but filtering legitimate content is just bad. https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1406441&st... What about Dave Rubin? Does he fall into the same category…

On much of this, it's not Google's political agenda here from what I see... it's advertisers in general.

You are aware that Youtube faced a huge backlash earlier this year from large scale advertisers over "hate videos" and "extremist content": https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-a...

Defining what a "hate video" and is "extremist" can be vague, so it's not surprising that some strong political channels are caught in the crosswinds, even if they are not necessarily "hate speech" or "extreme". (After all, Youtube is probably relying heavily on user feedback to determine what to flag). It's also not surprising that other things are caught in the crosswind (as the Ars Technica article mentions, LGBT content was also caught in the crosswinds.)

Youtube's most recent advertiser-drive purgek came over "inappropriate" videos aimed at children. Again, advertisers are driving what some might call "censorship". https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-deletes-150000-videos-foll...

Basically, I feel like strong advertiser presence in the future is going to heavily focus Youtube towards more "mainstream" oriented material in the future, especially on what can be monetized.

Is it censorship? Not really -- no one is going to force companies to spend money to advertise where they don't want to. Feel free to start your own video platform that doesn't have Youtube's current corporate advertisement pressure.

At this point, in my opinion, the energy some are spending in fighting Youtube's monetization policy ("1st Amendment" lawsuits against Youtube are going to fail, in my opinion) would be better spent in making sure the web remains open. So that any Youtube competitors, some of which might focus on hosting "non-mainstream" content that Youtube might ignore in the future, actually have a chance.

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

#125

Post by huhtenberg »

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,…

> which is frequented both by smart and helpful users

... as well as loud and obnoxious know-it-alls that tag team, upvote their own answers and drown any discussion in irrelevant bickering and deferrals to their own wisdom.

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

#126

Post by pc86 »

coldtea wrote: post #73
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

> 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.

Strawman garbage aside, Google is a private company (in the sense that it is not owned by the government), and you objectively do not have any right to appear in their search results.

If you can make an argument to the contrary that doesn't revolve around "it's not 1776!" I'd love to hear it, but I seriously doubt that it would be in line with any US law. I don't think there's anything "stone age" about not requiring private companies to do things to help other private companies without compensation.

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

#127

Post by pc86 »

coldtea wrote: post #91
fastball wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So what exactly is your solution? What law do you put in place, precisely? Forced (inter-)nationalization of Google under the control of the UN. > Google has to provide consumers with whatever information they want, whenever they want it, free of charge? Pretty much yes. Charges should be bared by the Global Federation of Essential Services.

I can't even put into words how shockingly bad this "idea" is.

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

#128

Post by freeflight »

fastball wrote: post #89
jsiepkes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company gets a big enough marketshare it's not that simple. If Google would have de-listed Protonmail just because "they could" that would be a problem (legal wise) in the EU. Since they also specifically target EU countries (google.nl) they also can't simply say they don't have to comply because they are based in the US.

If this is an anti-trust matter in a certain jurisdiction then it's an anti-trust matter in a certain jurisdiction, and governments have ways to address that. If Google has a monopoly on search then break up their monopoly on search in your country. BUT. Saying that Google needs to bend over backwards to accommodate every possible edge case of EU human rights (of which there are far too many that are overly broad) as…

> Startup search engines that could help lessen the stranglehold Google has will not have the resources.

Until Alphabet buys out that startup for a couple of millions. Imho that's a factor barely mentioned on the issue of "Google monopoly". If anything pops up that looks like it could disrupt the Google dominance, long or short-term, it's quickly acquired and welcomed to the flock.

On one hand that's good because puts the immense resources of Alphabet behind interesting and sometimes important ideas, on the other hand, it leads to a situation where meaningful competition can't grow to a size where it could actually oppose Google's dominance, at least not independently.

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

#129

Post by bogomipz »

eqmvii wrote: post #121
bogomipz wrote: post #118

>"“[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…

I mean, if that one company is Google and the reason is search, you don’t have many options. This specific case is much harder to avoid than the general one of over reliance on one entity.

>"I mean, if that one company is Google and the reason is search, you don’t have many options."

The point is you shouldn't rely on the vagaries of a third party for your business growth period. More especially a third party you don't appear to have any relationship with. They even admit in the blog post that the majority of their growth comes form "word of mouth." Word of mouth and "hoping for the bes"t with Google searches is not really a solid marketing plan.

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