Google is FUBAR

Yes, I clicked the provided link and read the entire article from start to finish. First, I want to say that I hope my first post did not sound like a personal attack on you. I was only trying to present my view of the article that you linked to. Next, I would like to try and back up the comments that I made about the article to hopefully make it a little more clear why I said that.

I referred to the article as opinion, hyperbole, and speculation, and here are some reasons why: When I first opened the article, I noticed that the subtitle starts with "Google’s disastrous decision to muck up its search results...", and then the first sentence of the article is "Google just broke its search engine." Calling this "disastrous" is, in my opinion, both speculation and a big exaggeration. I believe it's speculation because the SPYW option was released only two weeks ago, and it is clearly too early to tell if this will have any kind of a negative impact on Google or Google's users... let alone calling it a disaster (the exaggeration/hyperbole). Google has clearly not broken its search engine (more hyperbole, in my opinion). It works exactly the same as it did before, only with the additional option of being able to use SPYW. I would like to emphasize that SPYW is an option that can be toggled on or off at the top of any search page. It is easy to find these search settings/buttons on any search page, and if you would like more details please refer to [1] below.

Throughout the article, the author gives several made-up scenarios to illustrate what he believes to be critical flaws in Google's new SPYW option (although he ignores that it is in fact an option). The author gives the example of doing a Google search for "Facebook". I performed this search just now, and the number one result is Facebook.com, which is exactly what I would expect. The next several results include the Wikipedia entry for Facebook, a link to Facebook's iPhone app, a link to Facebook's Twitter account, and other websites that provide more information and news about Facebook. This is exactly what I would expect to see. I see absolutely no problem with this. The author tries to make it sound like he didn't see any of this, and that the only thing Google presented him with was a suggestion to add Mark Zuckerberg to one of his G+ circles, but this is simply not true. Try this search for yourself right now and let me know what you see. Go ahead and try it both with SPYW on or off (which can be toggled on/off on-the-fly with a single click at the top of the search page), and please let me know if you saw the same "disaster" that the author is talking about.

The author gives the example of searching for a plumber or information on how to fix a clogged toilet. He then says "What I don’t want to know is which link my boss consulted when his toilet was clogged. I bet I’m not alone." He doesn't want that (good, neither do I) and he doesn't have to ever see that in his results. He is giving his opinion of what he thinks is going to happen, and what he predicts will be the downfall of Google as we know it. Again, I am calling this opinion and speculation, because I have been trying all of these search queries that the author suggests, and I have not seen any of the problems he speaks of. I can only come to the conclusion that his complaints are not real, but are just his opinion of what he thinks Google might become in the future for some reason (some kind of slippery-slope argument, fear-mongering mentality? I can't figure it out).

Later, he gives some links to use cases that Google employees have come up with for SPYW. "Yet even the examples that Google employees have been showing off don’t seem very useful to me." They don't seem useful to him, but apparently they are useful to the person who came up with them.... That is the idea of having a "personalized" search option. If he doesn't find that to be useful, he can turn it off, so he won't see things that are not useful to him. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Then he says "If you don’t follow Lee and you do the same search, you won’t get that post." Again, that's the idea of the personalized search option..... and again, it is an option that can be turned off if you don't think it's useful.

Please, explore your Google search settings and check out the new Google "dashboard". You can fine tune exactly what comes up during "personalized" searches. Or you can turn off SPYW permanently if you wish. Also, if you hate it when Google tries to guess what you want, check out the "Verbatim" search option located under "More search tools" on the left side of any search page. The "Verbatim" option makes Google do only what you tell it to do. It won't even ask you "Did you mean...." anymore.

[1] Scroll down to the section heading "Can I turn off personal results?" here: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

They omitted it this time it seems.

It also increases the effect of grouping people into only social groups of the same philosophy and reducing exposure to other points of view. Not good for society. So even if I could fix it for myself, it is bad in general.

I don't want to sound prickly but you keep putting words in my mouth.

As I said, it's less about the specifics of what they're doing now, and more about the apparent switch of focus from "organising the world's information" [0] to "deliver[ing] online experiences tailored to each individual's interests and social circles" [1] which, I believe, may lead to a bad outcome. And it's obvious many people within the company are uneasy about this too (and do, arguably, think it's wrong) [2]

Does this mean "Google" thinks itself to be evil? Well it becomes meaningless to talk about Google as a monolithic entity at that point because it's made up of individuals.

I'm concerned because going forward I think it's going to be much harder for Google to balance the best interests of their users with their mission and profit motive. When Google launched, our interests were more or less perfectly aligned with theirs. This switch in focus is one of the biggest upsets to that yet.

> Making life difficult for yourself requires no excuse.

If I gave you my word, and then through a series of decisions proceeded to make it almost impossible to keep it, perhaps you would say nothing all the while. At the very least, I think you would have an opinion on it.

But here we have an institution. People build institutions. We can build it in such a way that's it's likely to fail, or build it in such a way that it wont. Surely you can see it's important to make it as easy as possible for Google to do the right thing and difficult, if not impossible, for them do the wrong things.

If we don't, I think history is pretty clear on this one. Sooner or later, a bad outcome is absolutely inevitable.

> I didn't realize that mining personal data counted as evil.

I said a race to the bottom in mining personal data. Is what they're doing now evil? The consensus seems to be, no. Is there a point where we could all agree they've gone too far? Absolutely; obviously, even. So naturally you're going to ask me where the line should be drawn. Well, I honestly don't know and unfortunately I think we'll only know after it has been crossed, by which time it may be far too late to take meaningful action.

Google doesn't need to go down this route. If they choose to they're going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to hold onto their values.

Me, I think there are plenty of other things they could be getting on with. They haven't finished organising the worlds information yet. Maybe when they've done that, we can talk again about them "deeply understanding" who I am [1].

[0] http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/google-ceo-larry-pa...

[2] http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-if-y...