Gauging Google's Gaffes

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece looking at some of the recent faux pas of Google and what implications they might have. The articles's conclusion: They should hire a chief marketing officer to avoid such gaffes. From the article: 'Recent missteps that have whipsawed or irked investors include the inadvertent release of sales projections and an agreement to censor its own search results in China. Then on Mar. 8, Google used a vaguely worded blog on its site to disclose a settlement of as much as $90 million in a case concerning click fraud. That came days after the company said the case was without merit and told investors the impact of click fraud on advertisers is immaterial.'"

Comments

Conspiracy

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Call me a conspiratorialist- But I think that things like the "accidental" release of the slides showing the planned online hard drive backup thing, are planned.
And another thing- They may or may not be a great company- I am not here to argue that, but they are made up of people- and as such, mistakes will be made.
The real question is, is it hubris to think that google can do what it wants, instead of what wal street wants, and still stay so valuable (on paper)?

Re:Conspiracy

[AuMatar]

No, the real question is- do they care? There has been no voting stock issued, the founders still own the company. The company is making millions. In reality, the price of stock has no effect on a company unless the people making decisions want to dump their ownership for cash- stock sales give no new cash to the company. In fact, google has billions in the bank. Since I don't think Larry and Sergey want to sell their holdings entirely anytime soon, I don't think they give a shit about the share price. They're already millionaires on what they already sold, they don't need to care about short term profit/loss.

Re:Conspiracy

[farble1670]

if you think google does any other than try to maximize its profits, you are mistaken. public corporations simply do not do anything but exactly that. public corporations are owned and by investors that have one single goal.

i'm really sick of folks thinking that google is some sort of atruistic entity fighting for superior technical solutions. nothing could be further from the truth. i think we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.

Re:Conspiracy

[general_re]

They still have a fiduciary duty to the other shareholders, and given the explosion of shareholder lawsuits over the last few years, they'd be wise to care at least a bit - "I got mine so fuck you people" is not going to fly.

Re:Conspiracy

[tehdaemon]

"public corporations are owned and by investors that have one single goal."

Not at all. investors, like any other large group of people, have lots of diverse goals. In practice though you can't satisfy all of these goals. Most are mutually exclusive to some extent. So it comes down to the least common denominator - max profits - like you said. It is the nature of corporate law that is the problem here, not the investors.

Re:Conspiracy

[farble1670]

Public corporations can have many goals, and profit is usually one of them -- but there is no law requiring this.

people invest in for-profit companies to make money. it's not a law (duh), but that's the whole purpose of a for-profit corporation: to make money. if corporations, as part of their marketing (read: propaganda) make you believe that they have some other interest in mind, well, it worked on you. i have no doubt there are some people on google's board of directors that believe in the free exchange of information, but those people do not control the direction of google. it's survival of the fittest and darwin in action. if those people did control google, google would go out of business. the path of maximum profits and doing the "right thing" may overlap sometimes, but not always.

what really cracks me up is that things like ipods and OSX have become almost a political philosphy to people. folks, it's a PRODUCT. you've been brainwashed into thinking that it defines who you are and what you believe in. well, the end result of your "beliefs" is higher profits for a few people at Apple Corp. i'm using Apple here, but the same thing applies to google. there's nothing wrong with mutual benefit. who cares if google is making a profit it it helps you? i agree, but please let's not pretend that google is some friendly group of people that have our best interests at heart.

Those controlling Google can easily argue that they have a goal to maximise profits, but that their means to achieve this requires reducing short term profits in favour of greater long term profits.

yes, so?

Re:Conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

They also need to maintain the value of stock options issued to employees in order to maintain employee retention. If their stock price drops, the options will become worth less/nothing, and they'll face the same problems Microsoft faced when their stock price became stagnant.

Stock options are still a popular tool to lure and maintain valued employees within the tech industry. How many of Google's key people will look for greener pastures without proper incentive to stay?

Search took...

[master_gopher]

...0.07 seconds, + another 20 while we took out the ones you weren't supposed to know that we just found for you.

In other news...

[LandownEyes]

businessweek.com now has a PageRank of 0.

Panty Bind

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Recent missteps that have whipsawed or irked investors...

I think statements by Google have made it clear that they will not be playing the normal Wall Street Game. What's really going on here is that because of this, Wall Street is getting its collective panties in a bind. I for one am enjoying the show. Google should just keep doing what it wants and ignore the people in New York who seem to think they can't be ignored...

Re:Panty Bind

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should just keep doing what it wants and ignore the people in New York who seem to think they can't be ignored...

Ahh, so they should continue to misrepresent information to shareholders? They should reap the financial benefits of the system but not be held accountable by the same system? Remember, "the investors" aren't just the guys trading in NY, there are tons of folks and organzations that invest other folks money that are also "investors" and they are being just as irked and feel like Google is not operating is a straight forward manner.

It continues to amaze me that crap that Google does is seen as innovative and being a maverick shaking up the establishment, but the same deeds done by other companies would be universally condemned. If M$ did similar stuff everyone would be all up in arms. It's funny what cult of personality will do for you, that and a catchy tag line "do no evil". Reminds me of the schlocky 80's flick where Dolf Lundgren plays the alien that blows people away while stating (quite deadpan may I add) "I mean you no harm". I picture Dolf with the words "Google" tatooed to his head and all the gFanBoys drooling while mesmerized and chanting "I mean you no harm" while Dolf casually blows them into oblivion, all the while the other gFanBoys stating that "he must of deserved it".

Re:Panty Bind

[Watson Ladd]

If more compainies start doing this, analysists will be out of a job, and need to learn calculus first. A lot of analysists just do seat-of-the-pants based on reports. Google isn't giving them any material, which stabalizes GOOG.

Re:Panty Bind

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The shairholders walked into this FULLY INFORMED, or at least the should have. Google said they would not be giving guidence in the treditional way that Wall Street has become accustom. None of this should come as a surprise. There has bee full disclosure, and now that a few of the buyers don't like the situation, they want to change the rules.

Re:Panty Bind

[shawb]

By and large it is not the shareholders that are asking for guidance, it's financial advisors looking for guidance. Google issued statements on what they will and will not do before the stock was available public, so if people bought stock without looking at these statements, then they don't have anything to complain about. The people who bought stock second hand from those that actually got in on the IPO (back when it was what... $50 a share?) have even less to complain about, as they should have actually taken a look at the terms that Google set forth and what rights the initial stockholders were allowed to transfer.

Re:Panty Bind

[GoofyBoy]

>The shairholders walked into this FULLY INFORMED,

Read the parent post again.

there are tons of folks and organzations that invest other folks money that are also "investors" and they are being just as irked and feel like Google is not operating is a straight forward manner.

I would be too. $90 million dollar settlement is at least noteworthy and should be professionally communicated to the shareholders. Comments like "Guess if I'm talking about revenue or market capitalization" from one of the CEOs is just being arrogant.

I'm not sure where the IPO document Google said that they would act in an irresponsible way to people who hold their shares.

Google's Hiring

[Slipgrid]

Don't know if they advertise their "chief" positions, but it looks like they want a whole marketing department.

Re:Google's Hiring

[LunaticTippy]

My mother is working for google marketing "unofficially."

I sent her a new computer with a firefox homepage of her shiny new google account. She is seriously computer illiterate and already she has fallen in love with it. (she used to have mail.com - ugh!)

Now she wants all her friends to use gmail. It's kinda cute.

Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationship

[keilinw]

Gone are the days when Google was just a tadpole startup company with little more than a unique name. Over the years, the company has proven its worth time and time again with technology advancements cool new features. Until very recently I too was a hardcore Google fan... I was in love with the company that vowed to change the world, and succeeded.

We're all familiar with the recent news about Google's policies on privacy, finance, and the Department of Justice. And, it has admittedly made a few mistakes. But who are we to argue? Isn't the company successful? Aren't they doing what the set out to do -- change the world? In a nutshell: YES... I may be disappointed that Google does things a little differently than I expected, but isn't the end result that I have cool new and "free" technologies... and isn't their stock still work a lot more than their IPO days?

All of these thoughts are SOMEWHAT comforting... but I've started to develop somewhat of a love / hate relationship with them. Very recently (a few days ago) I fell into some sort of keyword promotion site over optimization scam. There is a company that wrote code that a person can insert into their websites in order to "show the location" of who's browsing their sites. This code had a cleverly embedded keyword in it that made a vague reference to "MySpace.com." As a result of including such code on my site, I was getting A LOT of Google hits.. and people were asking me how they could do the same thing. I answered by posing a copy of the code on my website... and then I got hit by a Google Site Ranking Penalty... something that I did not know even existed! Now, I am trying to recover my site's ranking and I'm not even sure how to do this.

Prior to this experience I thought Google was great... but it appears to me that much of their company is "automated" and that my site somehow tripped some automated flags and hence automatically punished me... for something someone else did. So, in the end isn't it Google's responsibility to protect the small end user from abuses of their automatic systems?

I personally won't suffer any great loss from my sites loss in status, but its just that -- a loss in status... and frankly its quite annoying. Luckily for me there were a few lessons learned:

1. I enjoy posting on Slashdot more than on my blog because people actually read it.
2. I know know how to avoid Search Engine Optimization Errors.

So, there you have it... that's the story of my love / hate relationship with Google.

--Matthew Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com

Good Google

[Device666]

How can a company which is depending on the advertise business, stockholders and operation on world level between all the cultural disputes (China) stay an not evil company? Who decides: the clients, a nation or the stockholders?

Besides that, what good is a google application which shares as a unwanted side-effect sensitive business documents without the knowledge of the respected companies?

When it comes down to money,some evil stockholders, countries or clients will take on the power game. And I guess it will heappen when google has a real bad financial quarter. So we have to wait for that for a while I guess. We'll see how google will evolve.

Re:Good Google

[rm69990]

The shareholders have no say whatsoever with Google, as the shares are non-voting. The shares held by the insiders have 10 times the voting power of the public shares.

Google Print

[bcrowell]

Google Print is a good example of this. I'm participating in it as a publisher, and it's been a mess. They've gone through so many conniptions trying to avoid getting sued that it's crippled the program. Nobody uses it, because it doesn't show up in normal google searches anymore.

CMO? Of course!

[uradu]

Because--as we all know--companies that do have Chief Marketing Officers never commit any PR gaffes. You can never have enough management!

I'm to blame

[vinn]

Years ago I realized I had terrible luck with stocks. I learned all kinds of stuff like P/E ratios, etc, etc. But more than anything, I just had bad luck. Well, it's been quite a few years since I've invested directly in a stock. I had some cash laying around in a money market and decided it was time to bite the bullet and buy some Google stock - mostly because I really believe in what they do. Well, that was when the stock was at $390 (60x earnings... ow) Therefore I'm certain you can all blame me for the recent performance.

Oh, a "Google done bad" story.

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Great. It's been a while since I read 750 comments with the words "don't be evil."

Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh

[pilkul]

So you used dishonest techniques to increase your pagerank on Google (you claim unintentionally, but that's irrelevant) and Google knocked your site off its listing as a result. I don't see what the problem is.

You have a "love/hate relationship" with Google because you're running a website. My experience is that it's mainly webmasters and advertisers that have any dislike of Google, because they're so relentless at protecting the interests of their users.

Regarding click fraud...

[Josh teh Jenius]

What I can't understand is how it is legal for Google and Overature to continue downplaying the effects of click fraud.

Here is one such effect: I recently spent $150 on an advertising campaign, without finding a single sale (I usually get 5-10 for $150). Later I found out why: an ex-employee who had since become a competitor already knew all of my "favorite" keywords, and was working diligently to click every ad he could find. But what happens when someone applies a DDoS-technique to click fraud? At what point would Google and Overature have no choice but face this issue head-on?

Using only IP logs and a date stamp, any "PHP-for-dummies" graduate could eliminate 90% of click fraud overnight. With the amount of data Google has, I simply *have* to think they already know the average time "between clicks" for any given keyword/ad placement anyway, and how often the same IP will "normally" click on the same ad. Anything outside those "norms" should go unbilled. It's not as if Google is facing any variable costs per click (nominal at best).

I don't want to believe that Google and Overature are "evil". However, I'm not really sure what alternative makes sense. Consider: Google and Overature currently have the power to (1) bill clients whatever they want (2) settle lawsuits with more ad credits and (3) use "leading technology" to justify absurd market-caps, only to turn-around and plead helpless to stop "click fraud".

Be 100% honest for a second: if *you* were in *their* shoes, would you run to the press and say "something must be done!" or would you walk directly into an attorney's office and ask flat-out: "How much should I take before I retire?".

Eh, I disagree with TFA

[TubeSteak]

Analysts and marketing gurus say that when it comes to communicating with the public and shaping its image, Google has some growing up to do. "It's inevitable that at some point [Google's technological edge] is going to be neutralized, and online search is going to become a Pepsi-and-Coke market -- that's when marketing becomes much more important,"

Except... Google is (currently) like Wal-Mart. You can't afford not to do business with them.

I don't think it's inevitable at all. As long as Google's results are relevant, there is no incentive to switch. Google makes sure you've got no reason to switch, by introducing a million and one free extras to tie you into their web.

G-mail, Google Talk, Google Chat, Google Calendar, Google homepages, Google maps... and they're still innovating.

Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh

[farble1670]

Over the years, the company has proven its worth time and time again with technology advancements cool new features

really, like what? web-based email? instant messaging? web-based maps? a search engine? i hate to tell you this, but all of this was done 5-10 years before google existed. granted, google has (mostly) made advancements in these areas, but please, let's not pretend these ideas are "new".

everything google does is available elsewhere, and in a form such that the quality of our lives would not significantly change if google dried up and died.

Selling shares was a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Google went public when it became a corporation and sold shares on the open market. They now have an implacable stakeholder, the share owners. Their duty (by law) is now to maximize shareholder value. They can no longer behave as they did previously. If they think they can they should consider the example of Conrad Black who was brought low by the shareholders of Holinger.

Corporations generally behave like psychopaths. The people running them may be wonderful decent people but the corporations still behave in an anti-social manner. It will be not too many years before "Do no evil" becomes just a pleasant corporate memory.
(/rant)

Fuck Wall Street.

[mikelieman]

Playing the Wall Street Game isn't Google's game.

Just be glad, Wall Street, that they even let you in to play.

Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh

[keilinw]

Actually I don't see a problem with Goolge penalizing for using dishonest techniques... and quite frankly I'm happy that they did because I got to learn something new... and I have something interesting to write about :)

You are right, the only people who really have a "beef" with Google are the stock brokers, web site operators, and anyone whos privacy might be at stake...but in the end, I still love the company.

Matt Wong
http://www.themindofmatthew.com

Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh

[Bing Tsher E]

Well, Google bought and monopolize huge Usenet archive that goes back years and years. So it would such if google dried up and died. Actually, since they're really keen on all kinds of other publishers 'giving it up for the public good' they should do as well. I would think a ten volume DVD-ROM set would probably cover the Usenet archive (minus binaries) up 'til about 1998 or so... So google should release that, to anybody who wants to buy a copy. At a reasonable 'people friendly' price... What does a Ten DVD box set cost at WalMart again???

Naive

[XMilkProject]

It's sort of naive to assume that these things are 'gaffes'. There is no reason to believe that they are not all intentional.

The article is saying these gaffes are hurting google, but personally, I'm not seeing google hurt at all... Maybe they are alot smarter than they are getting credit for.

Re:Please, they sold out to the Chinese

[That's Unpossible!]

Sold out to the Chinese? How so? They aren't preventing Chinese people from getting to google.com, China may be, though. All they did was add servers in China that make trade-offs: you get better, faster access to our site, but we filter some results (and tell you about it).

they are required to do as corporation

Typical ignorant statement repeated ad nauseum by Slashdot socialists. It's wrong on so many levels. You guys like to think that a corporation is legally required to do whatever it takes to make a profit, and you're flat out fucking wrong about that point. But you just never let it go. One of these days you should take Economics 101.

Remember folks, Do No Evil is a marketing slogan, not legal contract.

Actually it's a mission statement, which most companies have. Theirs is just succinct. Good and Evil is black and white. Operating your servers in China is a shade of grey. They never said Don't Be Grey, they said Don't Be Evil. Just because you have a problem with something doesn't make it evil across the board.

I think the China move was a smart one, I don't have a problem with it. Then again, I seem to be one of the few that can look past the B.S. and see what they actually did -- added some services for Chinese users, while leaving existing services alone. If that's evil, call me Darth Vader.

Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh

[shawb]

like their relentlessly protected the interest of their chinese users?

Google made compromises which they felt were in the best interest of the Chinese Users. Their options were 1)be banned by the chinese government or 2)censor the results. Now google censors the results, but at the very least tells the users that results are being cesored per Chinese Law. This is information that, as far as I know, other search engines do not reveal. Letting the Chinese people know which information is being censored is the first step in getting that censored information to them, as it will spark curiosity in the rebelious who know that something is wrong with the system, and now have actual evidence.

Seems like someone needs a job...

[guruevi]

Earlier this week suggestions that Apple needs a Security Czar, now that Google needs a CMO. Next week: Microsoft needs a good CEO, CTO, CSO and CMO, RedHat needs a Chief Hackers Officer and Novell a Kernel Czar.

I am also looking for a job, but I'm not suggesting new (unnecessary/redundant) jobs to any company's I would like to work at.

Stop with the chief officers already

[Ed Avis]

Let me see... in the past few days BusinessWeek have suggested that Apple's recent security problems mean they should hire a security czar. And now if Google have public relations 'gaffes', obviously the answer is to hire a chief public relations officer. It's pretty clear how to create new BusinessWeek editorials:

- Pick a company X;
- Suggest the company has had vaguely defined 'problems' in field Y;
- Therefore, X must hire a chief Y officer!

I look forward to many more of these editorials linked from Slashdot in the future!