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Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

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Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#41

Post by teddyh »

The primary case here made against Google might be questionable behavior from Google, but might not be illegal, since simple numbers like a dollar amount can’t be copyrighted, and AFAIK there is no other legal impediment to Google doing what they did (IANAL).

What looks far more inculpatory to me is this, on the last page:

[…] Because it controls essentially the entire internet, Google has endless levers at its disposal to significantly harm or snuff out a rival.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our organic rankings have continued to suffer since I’ve become a vocal critic of their practices. Earlier this year, within weeks of the publication of a Wired magazine article that included quotes from me and a recap of our story, the CNW mobile app was banned from the Google Play store without explanation or recourse. As a result we were also banned from using the Google’s dominant Ad Mob mobile ad platform.

This is far more damning of Google abusing its monopoly, not only on search, but also on the Android platform.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#42

Post by philprx »

renewiltord wrote: post #36

Information wants to be free, man.

Yes, that's OK if it's symmetrical: why can't we easily automate Google search results?

It's asymetry here that is the problem, not Information Freedom.

And i'm pretty sure this is the line/dark pattern Google is hoping for: that people give credit to Google for "Information Freedom"... missing the real issue.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#43

Post by system2 »

huffmsa wrote: post #38
system2 wrote: post #32

I felt sad reading the whole thing. I searched "will smith net worth" and after wikipedia snippet, the first result was celebrity net worth. CNW depends on google, uses them to make money. Google is a search tool and wants to show whatever results makes users happy. CNW can simply remove itself from the platform and tell google never to use their data. It almost sounds like CNW is trying to bite the hand of only comp…

"Google Takes My Data and Presents It as Their Own" a better title for you?

No of course not. My point is that google will change things as they did in the past. The way google snippet works is simple, they scan the data and sum it up.

I searched multiple results right now. "bill gates net worth" data was taken from Wikipedia and CNW didn't even exist on the first page.

"Beyonce net worth" showed a detailed snippet for businessinsider, and second link was CNW. Same for Eminem, 210M from groovewallet, and second result was CNW.

I just couldn't find what CNW is complaining about.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#44

Post by bachmeier »

errantmind wrote: post #20

It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results? From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publ…

> It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise?

That question kind of misses the point. This was a US House hearing. The right question, in the context of such a hearing, is whether it should be legal. The other thing to keep in mind is that this was the action of a company with considerable market power. There's not much that's off limits in principle once it turns into an antitrust case.

Having said that:

> it just looks like a bad business model

seems about right to me. No other companies had done this, and that might be because of the difficulty of monetizing numbers. Few people are going to pay for the information, but it's ultimately just a number. Consumers are better off the faster they get the number they're looking for.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#46

Post by huffmsa »

system2 wrote: post #43
huffmsa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google Takes My Data and Presents It as Their Own" a better title for you?

No of course not. My point is that google will change things as they did in the past. The way google snippet works is simple, they scan the data and sum it up. I searched multiple results right now. "bill gates net worth" data was taken from Wikipedia and CNW didn't even exist on the first page. "Beyonce net worth" showed a detailed snippet for businessinsider, and second link was CNW. Same for Eminem, 210M from groo…

And the wikipedia page cites https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=billionaires...

As the source for Bill Gates' net worth. Why can a free, community edited website successfully attribute it's sources but a trillion dollar company cannot?

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#47

Post by teddyh »

philprx wrote: post #39
errantmind wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft. I don't quite see the legal basis for it being theft. Can you explain?

IANAL: 1. Google doesn't show in-line'd data box with Net worth 2. Google asks site (CNW) for access, is denied. 3. Google then shows site's data in data box (with CNW site proof of theft with canary tokens being the fake celebrity's net worth) that are now presented as Google's data (no source or fake source), without license from original site. If that isn't theft of data, what is it? From the PDFs, there is no lic…

You keep calling it “theft”. It is obviously not literally theft, since no physical object has been taken. The only thing you could possibly mean is “copyright infringement” (which is commonly called theft in imprecise and inflammatory language), but copyright does not apply to a simple fact like a dollar amount, no matter how much research lies behind it.

You might be of the opinion that it should, but that is a different argument, which you did not make.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#48

Post by manish_gill »

I have Zero respect for the Google engineers and PMs who worked on this project, scraping content without attributing to the original source, and subsequent change in the search ranking of the original source.

A very bad taste in the mouth indeed.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#49

Post by system2 »

huffmsa wrote: post #46
system2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No of course not. My point is that google will change things as they did in the past. The way google snippet works is simple, they scan the data and sum it up. I searched multiple results right now. "bill gates net worth" data was taken from Wikipedia and CNW didn't even exist on the first page. "Beyonce net worth" showed a detailed snippet for businessinsider, and second link was CNW. Same for Eminem, 210M from groo…

And the wikipedia page cites https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=billionaires... As the source for Bill Gates' net worth. Why can a free, community edited website successfully attribute it's sources but a trillion dollar company cannot?

Can you or anyone show me an example? I searched over ten celebrities and only found CNW as either 2nd or 3rd result. All snippets were giving full details to the sites.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#50

Post by Phaedor »

markalexander wrote: post #23
gberger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden, Finland, and Norway, everyone's income tax records are public. Is that unethical?

Ethical is a bit of a wide term but I’m sure it’s easy to construct situations that are problematic. E.g. an abusive ex partner can check whether you’re likely to have switched job, even from the most basic info. If tax paid is revealed then you can work out what government benefits a person might be on, including those relating to health and disability. Isn’t the implementation in Norway such that the press have spe…

Everyone have access but you have to log in with your ID and the ones you check can see that you checked them. You can check 500 people each month.

Your scenario seems pretty far fetched to me since this information will be published in October for the previous year. It contains the income and tax for the whole year only. It would be pretty difficult to know the information you suggest from the limited, delayed records.

As a Norwegian I fully support our system with public tax records.

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