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Google's Stomach Pangs - Adjusting to DoubleClick
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on some trouble Google is having integrating DoubleClick into their family of products. External problems, like antitrust allegations and privacy concerns, are bad enough. The worst problems might come from within, though, as a division within DoubleClick was essentially created to game the very systems the Google search engine is founded on. '"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own unbiased organic search results." The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.' The article goes on to say how this Performics division is likely to be sold off to make sure everything stays above board."
Google's $3.1 billion deal for the online advertising firm DoubleClick could put the company at odds with itself.
Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.
The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and IBM and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google's search managers.
But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick's Performics division.
Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
"Google is treading in dangerous waters right now," writes Ross Dunn of WebProNews.com. Google's search results "are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant," but with Performics, "Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own 'unbiased' organic search results."
The worry, in other words, is that Google's search results could be compromised by operating a division with an interest in skewing those results in favor of clients.
This seems unlikely. Reliable search results are the core of Google's franchise. Industry-watchers, including Kevin Newcomb of SearchEngineWatch.com, tend to think Google will likely sell off part or all of Performics.
That's an easy choice for the leading company in a growing industry. What about a struggling company in a deeply troubled industry? Warner Music is thought to be preparing to acquire Front Line Management, the nation's largest artist-management firm whose roster includes Aerosmith and Christina Aguilera.
Traditionally, record labels and artist-managers negotiate with one another. Putting them under the same roof is a radical notion. If the deal goes through, it could "offer a new economic model for the major record companies," Tim Arango of Fortune magazine wrote this week. The idea, he added, "has its skeptics."
One of them is Bruce Houghton. "Can two sides that have traditionally been adversaries live under one roof?" he asked on Internet Financial News this week. "How protected is an artist if so much of his career is controlled by a signal entity?"
Ads and Stereotypes The recent promotion of the rice mascot Uncle Ben from chief cook to chief executive prompted Slate this week to offer a fascinating slide-show essay on "the strange history of racist spokescharacters."
"Nasty stereotypes have helped move the merchandise for more than a century," David Segal writes, "and the history of their use and abuse offers a weird and telling glimpse of race relations in this country."
The essay shows that while things have improved since the turn of the 20th century, there is still a way to go. Back then, a maker of rat poison could get away with depicting a Chinese man in Confucian-era garb gobbling up a rat (to "exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats," Segal explains). But as recently as the early 1990s, Stroh Brewery was peddling Crazy Horse malt liquor -- disregarding the fact that the 19th-century American Indian leader Crazy Horse was a teetotaler who preached abstinence. In 2001, the brewery sold off the brand and apologized.
Well, Duh! A new study has confirmed what most of us already knew: Wealth and intelligence have little to do with each other.
ScientificAmerican.com spoke with Jay L. Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State University, who analyzed the data. There seems to be a correlation between income and intelligence, Zagorsky said, but "for wealth, there is no relationship." H
Something says it would be more polite if Google were to close the Performics division outright and then reverse-engineer its tactics to stomp out SEO-spam companies.
At first glance of the summary, I'd hoped that was their secret do-good motive for buying DoubleClick in the first place. Alas.
Here's a mirror
Google is all about tracking you. Your mails, your locations, your searches, all sites you visit, the books you read, the videos you like, the things you buy, just everything. I think google bought DoubleClick only because they have 1x1 gifs and banners on a very lot of sites. Google can tracks the pages we vist with urchin (yes, google knows you are on slashot right now), but can now track our web behaviour with all doubleclick backlinks as well. I think all google wants is know *everything* about us (or at least as much as possible), and that is why they have free mail, free maps, free everything. The data google has about us is a lot more valuable than 20$ a month for maps or a mail service, and that is the only reason they bought doubleclick. At least IMHO.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
So Google has gone out & captured some seo/ad spammers ? I reckon Matt Cutts , their chief anti spam dude is preparing the "interview room". Google will extract their secrets & end up a cycle or 2 ahead in the SEO War.
Of course doing this will take some of the value out of their acquisition, an option mentioned in the article is selling off Performics, that would be shirking their responsibility. Much better to make it a honest, neutral but quality service. That might win the SEO War.
Ever since Googles dealings in China I think we can all agree that there "do no evil" mantra is ruined completely. The have proven once that they are will to do anything for both profits and relevance. I'm not saying that I'm against a company making large profits but at some point someone within such a large organization must have ethics. I have a feeling Google is about to cast a dark shadow on many people privacy concerns and it wont be to pretty.
When Google was just first learning to crawl, it took in money by providing 'favored' links as part of otherwise standard searches done by users. Results routinely reflected hits that ranked/displayed higher simply because their owners paid for that to happen. These salted links seemed innocent enough, but anyone spending time using various search engines back then could easily spot the ringers.
:)
Anyone that believes otherwise needs to take off the blinders
From TFA: ... Reliable search results are the core of Google's franchise. ...
Always thought that one sells (the) an image these days.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Just tell this performics division to keep SEO^H spamming MSN and yahoo results?
It wouldn't even register on the evilness scale when compared to microsoft's tactics and if it's not performics it'll be someone else.
Game is not a verb.
Some time in the last two years, Google started becoming much more "SEO friendly". There are meetings at Google for SEO types. Google sponsors "Search Engine Marketing" conferences. It's getting a bit embarassing.
Google has to keep growing to justify their P/E ratio of 47 and keep their stockholders happy. That's hard to do when they already have most of their primary market. It's common to see dumb merger and acquisition activity in that situation. Search with occasional ads was a terrific business - doesn't take many employees, moderate operating costs, almost no cost of goods, good margins. The things Google has gone into since search (mail, video, office apps, etc.) don't have those properties, and are less profitable than search, if not outright money drains.
is it me or the article repeats itself? as if it was pasted twice by someone in a hurry
Wild speculation without any actual facts to base it on... ...yep, it's a Zonk post.
Chris mattern
The CNet version looks like it was picked up by a runaway screen scraper, which sucked up two following articles. Then some paragraphs were duplicated. Lame.
This is nothing new, Google have been "doctoring" their supposed organic search results for months nay years to promote Ad Words and mak ethem appear as organics ... Everyone knows what a sponsored link is, and prefer to click on supposedly unbiased searches ... in my industry, trying to search for some relevant keywords places our site in position 7, whilst the top 3 are identical copies (supposedly penalised for duplicate content), page rank lower than ours (again supposedly penalised), but hey ... they are heavy adwords users also, and pay Google lots of lovely dollars ... so let's sneak them into the organics and hope nobody notices.
Doubleclick won't do anything to tarnish their reputation any more than it is already.
SEO =! underhanded tactics. Sometimes SEO can be as simple as a sane site structure and standards compliant bot-readable content. It's often lots of other spammy things, but it doesn't necesserily make sense to assume that's what's going on.
Now that Google owns them, we will learn just how slimy they were. It's in Google's best interest to expose manipulation of their business model and show how they can fight it, preferably using the very same fraudsters.
Calling this a conflict of interest assumes first that bad things were going on and second they will continue that way. Doubleclick has a spammy reputation already, so the first assumption may be good. The second assumption is laughable. If Google wanted to sell out they would do so directly but doing so would destroy them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Google's adsense is a major cash cow for web spammers. Although Google purports to clamp down on the worst offenders, they are in conflict of interest because they profit directly from this sort of thing -- exactly what earned Doubleclick its well-deserved reputation.
Didn't they know to wait three hours after eating to go into the water? They should do like a snake, and sleep it off for a couple of weeks and then puke up the indigestible matter, like the bones, and fur...Then the papers can discuss that.
Google searches have been overwhelmed by advertising for a long time. I can find hardly anything that's not part of a product for sale somewhere. It only follows I suppose. Look what marketing has done to Christmas. The season is three months long now, not including "Christmas in July".
What?
'The article goes on to say how this Performics division is likely to be sold off to make sure everything stays above board.'
Duh. What is the story here? If Google keeps Performics or adapts their search engine to increase its effectiveness (unlikely since they could have biased search results at any time) that would be news. That Google aquired a company with a division that increases search rankings and recognizes that as a conflict isn't really news at all.
Google was put into that position the minute they decided to buy DoubleClick. Before Google was a Big Deal, I had it set as my home page and it was my home page for almost a decade. I changed my browser home page the day I heard about the doubleclick deal. Google is on the inevitable path now that ends in a bad place. The way business works - especially a publicly traded business - they will have no choice but to adopt the evil ways of doubleclick. Shareholders will demand it.
I know they haven't done anything really bad yet, but that will change. Slowly. Maybe too slowly for the change to be perceptible on a month-to-month basis. The writing is on the wall. Google's motto was, "Do No Evil". Then they turn around and buy DoubleClick. It's not hard to figure out.
The Google motto should have been "Do no evil", not "Don't be evil".
It is entirely possible to do evil without being evil.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Back then, a maker of rat poison could get away with depicting a Chinese man in Confucian-era garb gobbling up a rat (to "exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats," Segal explains).
Huh?
Oh in case you didn't read it the first time, it is repeated.
"How protected is an artist if so much of his career is controlled by a signal entity?"
signal entity? WTF is that?
And they bought out double click for the sole reason of closing that department. They might get away with it if they can convince their shareholders that the existence of that company is bad for their main revenue source.
More Caffeine. NOW
"slashdot.org. Who is this m1.2mdn.net? Some advertising company I can't identify."
.com and .net domains can now be registered
You mean...Google?
themusicgod1@chthulhu:~$ whois 2mdn.net
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Domain Name: 2MDN.NET
Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.register.com
Referral URL: http://www.register.com/
Name Server: NS1.DOUBLECLICK.NET
Name Server: NS2.DOUBLECLICK.NET
Name Server: NS3.DOUBLECLICK.NET
Name Server: NS4.DOUBLECLICK.NET
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 02-may-2005
Creation Date: 02-may-2005
Expiration Date: 02-may-2007
Last update of whois database: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:07:47 UTC
NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is
currently set to expire. This date does not necessarily reflect the expiration
date of the domain name registrant's agreement with the sponsoring
registrar. Users may consult the sponsoring registrar's Whois database to
view the registrar's reported date of expiration for this registration.
Registrant:
DoubleClick Inc
Host Master
111 Eighth Avenue 10th Floor
New York, NY 10011
US
Email: hostmaster@doubleclick.net
Registrar Name....: REGISTER.COM, INC.
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: www.register.com
Domain Name: 2mdn.net
Created on..............: Mon, May 02, 2005
Expires on..............: Wed, May 02, 2007
Record last updated on..: Mon, May 02, 2005
Administrative Contact:
DoubleClick Inc
Host Master
111 Eighth Avenue 10th Floor
New York, NY 10011
US
Phone: 1--2126557699
Email: hostmaster@doubleclick.net
Technical Contact:
DoubleClick Inc
DNS Tech
111 Eighth Avenue 10th Floor
New York, NY 10011
US
Phone: 1--2126557699
Email: dnstech@doubleclick.net
DNS Servers:
ns3.doubleclick.net
ns1.doubleclick.net
ns2.doubleclick.net
ns4.doubleclick.net
Visit AboutUs.org for more information about 2mdn.net
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The article author ignores (or is unaware) that Performics is not just SEO. A large part of Performics is the affiliate marketing side, which has nothing to do with SEO. There are actually several other areas they work on as well.
How well vetted was this story?
They loosen up their "don't be evil" mantra with every acquisition.
If i were a shareholder, i would expect google to finetune the division and make it a sort of privileged customer banking.
Lets see how google reacts.
Following are the options available:
1. If it wants to not become another faceless-souless corporation, it will shut down the division. This will make it lose money, thus inviting probable lawsuits from shareholders.
Since the shareholders are not common stock, their suit will not have merit and is likely to be dismissed.
2. It continues with the division, albeit secretly, much like as in "Liar's Poker" profits will increase but customers will migrate...Shareholders will be happy next one year, in long run google will suffer.
3. Third choice would be to publicize the division's secrets at the same time prevent such things from happening. This will throw the search-engine optimization into a tizzy, as their dark deeds come to light. It will also make them think google will buy them out if they find more ways to debunk the search engine. Long term effect will be good for google. Short term: None.
Which way are U going to go google?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Why is it a troll to point out that Doubleclick has an image problem that might hurt Google?