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Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

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Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#251

A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read? My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product. Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do…

I'm sure this is going to be unpopular, but sorry, when it comes to corporate success, values don't mean shit. The HBS case study on Google won't even mention "don't be evil" except maybe as an example of how amateurs shouldn't be permitted to do corporate communications. There are plenty of companies that we love (hello, Apple) that don't pretend to have lofty corporate values. Yet we keep buying their products and…

> I'm sure this is going to be unpopular, but sorry, when it comes to corporate success, values don't mean shit. The HBS case study on Google won't even mention "don't be evil" except maybe as an example of how amateurs shouldn't be permitted to do corporate communications.

...Huh?

You appear to be replying to me, but I'm puzzled by what you've typed. Who mentioned anything about values? This is about ruining a core product's user experience and the repercussions of any strategy that allows that.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#252
post #196
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is impressing me. Really? All that to get what I used to get for free? Not to mention that German is just one language, and "translated foreign pages" sounds like it might search the translated text, which is nice, unless it doesn't deliver results in untranslated pages, which leaves me wondering whether Google translates all pages or just some, and whether it's sufficiently integrated with Google Translate to…

Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected for search. You can also test your questions with specific queries (e.g. using terms that seem unlikely to be translated). Also, consider that you didn't know what results Google wasn't returning in the first place, years ago (e.g. by not having indexed them).…

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Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this is going to be unpopular, but sorry, when it comes to corporate success, values don't mean shit. The HBS case study on Google won't even mention "don't be evil" except maybe as an example of how amateurs shouldn't be permitted to do corporate communications. There are plenty of companies that we love (hello, Apple) that don't pretend to have lofty corporate values. Yet we keep buying their products and…

There are plenty of companies that we love (hello, Apple) Speak for yourself... there are plenty of us who cheerily invite Apple to go straight to hell. You can certainly count me among their number, for one. I have no use whatsoever for their anti-hacker ethos, their locked-down, proprietary, "no user repairable parts inside" attitude, and the arrogance with which they presume to know more about what the customer ne…

"Plenty of us" where plenty equals...how many? Apple was crowned as the biggest PC maker in the world this week.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#255
First, I honestly do not understand the notion that Google is being “Evil” with Search Plus Your World. How is changing your product, whether it ends up being good or bad, evil?

Second, my friends and family have no idea what SPYW is and don’t notice a difference. Heck, the majority of the searches I do are not drastically change to any large degree.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost all of the best products are restricted/closed/proprietary systems." This makes me really sad. It might be necessary, but you also miss out on a lot of innovation that happens when people can build off the work of others. To steal your examples, would there be a market for the Mac or OS X if IBM had not licensed PC clones? Would there be Facebook/Twitter/GMail if the Internet had not been public-domain?

I don't think it's necessarily sad. Think how much better Ubuntu is because of OS X or how awesome it is that Android exists in its current form because of iOS. Proprietary technology may even give back more to open technology than it takes.

I think it should be pointed out that both OS X and Android are based upon Linux. That point probably makes the discussion about who gives more to who a lot more complex.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#257
post #247
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention that German is just one language You can add more than one language. If you'd checked up on it, you would have seen that. I perceive this as complaining about advice without following it, and I find it annoying. If you're still angry (and it sounds legitimate, especially if there was a subtle hint of a problem, but not enough to register fully), that explains where you're coming from, which puzzled m…

Not sure why I thought I couldn't respond to you directly, but I deleted the other comment and moved it here where it belongs: Re the "just one language" thing, I can imagine I'm not making sense, because I'm not really communicating the context of how irrationally enraged I am over this. The truth is that I only enabled a couple of languages because I was just too angry and frustrated to enable the rest. I know it d…

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I'm with you on the inappropriately triggered jerking-me-round neuron. I am definitely there from time to time :-). You put it well. When in that state, I don't really believe that someone in the real world is messing with me - but inside my world, I believe someone is. I think that I can't quite see the real world in that state (or don't want to). Funny thing is, if I find out someone is messing with me, I also feel less angry...

Oh man, that's awful. And that "limited to 8" dialog pops up for each checkbox. Seems a really badly designed interface in general. I wonder why the limit? Maybe they keep languages separate, because effective pagerank criteria differ across languages/cultures; and they're limiting internal bandwidth needed to combine the results from distant databases.

I was going to say you could just include the languages you can read (and where you often found useful info before); but I appreciate your point about seeing the whole web (I guess, the www), across languages.

I've had a play with google translate, and I noted that untranslated words seem to pass through, unaltered (using the text-based one, eg: http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT#auto|en|Je%20n... ) You could probably see by trying example pages til you find a word it doesn't know. It seems much more useful to include an untranslated word than to omit it, so hopefully they do it that way.

Given the 8 limit, this seems the best option for seeing the whole web - and if the translation is any good at all, it might be better. I might try this (though I recall reading something that I didn't notice was auto-translated, and after reading for a while, suddenly becoming aware that I had no idea what it meant...)

I wonder if just plain more information about a situation reduces anger, because anger relies on one's internal view of the world? The more acquainted we get with the real world, the harder it is to sustain anger. (Aside: The Buddhists say all negative emotion is based on ignorance or misconception - of seeing something as 100% absolutely negative - and so negative emotion can be reduced by deeper understanding.)

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#258
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of antitrust suits for abuse of market-power. i.e. not about how you got it, but what you do with it. So the analogy is microsoft using their market-power to bundle their media player. BTW Bill Gates thought as you did, that this was perfectly legitimate. Your point about alternative search engines, and Windows being hard to avoid, is relevant for another kind of antitrust. Aside: though, I think googl…

On Microsoft, (to close the loop), I think it is legitimate for them to include the software they want with Windows (such as IE, media player and all), however it is not normal that hardware manufacturers sell you computers only bundled with Windows and nothing else. That is where the abuse is, for this case. I think the term "abuse of market power" has very thin legal ground. Anything that becomes popular tend to ap…

I was saying it means antitrust litigation; you're saying it shouldn't. :-)

Yes, change may bring new competitors that could upset google - disruption seems the destiny of most tech companies, it's just a matter of time. Interestingly, what we're seeing right now is a valiant effort on Google's part to shift from pagerank to "social-rank", in response to facebook, a new competitor. Going by history (as in "The Innovator's Dilemma", google as the incumbent will succeed if the technological innovation serves their business model - which it does.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#259

A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read? My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product. Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do…

Just to confirm what you say about Google trying to be too smart I just searched for "SPYW" because to be honest I have no idea what is that word or abbreviation. So Google decided that I am searching for the word SPYWare and I was no able to find a definition for SPYW. That's why I am reading the comments in case I can guess what it is.

Even if this was the case, the little of this article gives you enough info to google "SPYW google" which is even more likely to get what you want. Personally the second result down for me was on this topic for your search.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it's fine for Twitter and FB to withhold that data. But they can't then complain about not being ranked fairly. Conversely, Google started off complaining about not getting access to FB and Twitter data. Then they shut up and made a competing product. FB and Twitter are free to do the same, but I think what Google has just showed is that it's a lot easier for Google to make a compelling social network than…

:) no data is being witheld ! Both facebook.com/zuck and plus.google.com/zuck are public pages. As with all other docs in google's index, they should just use signals like click-data to decide which page shows up. This has nothing to do with private data or not getting access. That's just all PR bullshit.

Normal ranking algorithms apply normally. Social networking profiles have extra data, you know, like social activity and social graph, that Google doesn't have access to. The pages you're talking about already show up and are ranked normally like all other pages. G+ pages show up higher because they have a lot of extra google juice from social signals. Those are the ones Twitter and FB are complaining about.
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