81–90 of 130 posts
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Not sure, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt that RG is a YC company.
Google just proved all that when someone breaks their laws they punish him, even if it's a YC company. Who knows maybe because they are a well funded YC company Google decided to make an example out of them and won't forgive them so quickly.
Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.
Moreover, I think many people are upset with the scope of Google's punishment. De-weighting RG is one thing, nuking it into the ground is entirely different, and is in my opinion unwarranted. Even searching directly for the name of the site does not yield any Rap Genius results.
If I type "Rap Genius" into Google, I am justified in expecting Rap Genius to be the first result. Period. When Google goes out of its way to effectively expunge a site from existence (to the extent that Google can expunge a site), they are doing a massive disservice to their users and are degrading the quality of their search results.
There is no reason that a response of this magnitude by Google is justified, and by issuing such a draconian response, Google has lessened the usability of their product and done a disservice to their users.
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Part of it might be Schadenfreude since HN does not seem to think much of RG.
I think this is exactly it. Their affect is another example of cultural appropriation of "urban" culture by three very affluent guys (Stanford & Yale grads), which I think turns a lot of people off, including myself. As someone who genuinely grew up in that culture, it is painfully cringe worthy and just sad to see people who have no background in it adopt it. Their Disrupt interview was a genuine display of the gene…
It's one of the clearest examples of cultural appropriation and exploitation by a corporation. Really fucking disgusting.
Imagine if an American corporation wants to sell vacations to Mexico, and as a publicity stunt the CEO dresses up like a latino stereotype and adopts a Spanish accent.
This is how the Rap Genius douchebags-in-chief come off. Racist fuckheads.
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Part of it might be Schadenfreude since HN does not seem to think much of RG.
I think this is exactly it. Their affect is another example of cultural appropriation of "urban" culture by three very affluent guys (Stanford & Yale grads), which I think turns a lot of people off, including myself. As someone who genuinely grew up in that culture, it is painfully cringe worthy and just sad to see people who have no background in it adopt it. Their Disrupt interview was a genuine display of the gene…
It's one of the clearest examples of cultural appropriation and exploitation by a corporation. Really fucking disgusting.
Imagine if an American corporation wants to sell vacations to Mexico, and as a publicity stunt the CEO dresses up like a latino stereotype and adopts a Spanish accent.
This is how the Rap Genius douchebags-in-chief come off. Racist fuckheads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you are not using that word correctly. If Google was the only company doing search and prevented others from entering the market you would be correct. Being the best through a superior product and innovating is not a monopoly.
Doesn't matter how you achieve a monopoly: it's defined by dominance, not bad-behavior. And once you have monopoly power, things that used to be legal for you to do – for example certain pricing or bundling strategies – can become illegal.
Thats a huge drop. How accurate is Quantcast?
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I disagree somewhat. Yes, I think that if people are creating value then their own personal behaviors should have little to no bearing on how that work is translated. I think their affects do set a bad standard for tech founders, and just how people behave in general and those attitudes spread into how they run their business. I can envision other future founders looking at these guys as successful and thinking, "yea…
It is kind of funny how people think that only white rap-fans/rappers came from non-poverty backgrounds. Rap industry markets itself slickly.
Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.
In one of the other threads, some stated that Google do not have monopoly status. The claim they used was that google only has 25% of the search market. This topic is interesting because it shows how much in a monopoly status google really is in in controlling where traffic goes on the net.
Google's search team has been famously resistant to any influence by Google's sales/marketing teams on ranking decisions. Search quality gave rise to the 'golden goose', after all, and the self-conception of the team, and its individual members, is based on independence from purely money-grubbing considerations.
But I wonder, what happens when Google's antitrust lawyers came to the ranking team, and say: "soften this penalty [or otherwise tweak these quality-rankings], because otherwise we'll be in more trouble with regulators or leave too much evidence of market-power."
Could the search team still say, "buzz off, we're sticking to what we know from the numbers is what's best for our users"? Or does keeping regulators happy, and avoiding smoking-gun fact-patterns, trump everything? I suspect it often will, because of the unique risks of state enforcement and appearing unlawful. It's also easier to rationalize "we're sacrificing our own idea of what's best because the law seems to require it" (even if the actual risk is fuzzy before losing in a formal legal process) than "we're doing this to make the guys over in ads/mobile/etc a bit more money this quarter".
As a total aside, how do sites like Quantcast and Alexa get traffic information from other websites that they don't have code on? (or do they?) I feel like getting accurate traffic statistics on one's own website is tough enough.
Many of them just make it up: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our-...