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."

Comments

Sold off. Brilliant!

[Ai Olor-Wile]

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.

Re:Sold off. Brilliant!

[Chacham]

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.

And have someone else pick up where they left off? Sounds like a short-term goal to me.

Instead, take the division and keep it, which is a way to control it. As in "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer." Unfortunately, there is a conflict of interest, a conflict so important it may raise the public eyebrow. That leaves the solution of keep them around, but wound them. Removing them from their erstwhile connections should disorient them enough to not move perfectly smoothly, and give Google the time it needs to get one step ahead.

That is, of course, assuming they want to cripple it. They may just want to leave it alone and make some cash off of it. Regardless, the worst of all scenarios would be to close them, as it helps noone.

Re:Sold off. Brilliant!

[Original Replica]

As far as the conflict of interest goes, if Performics just opitmized sites to be up to the second compliant with Google's bots there would be no conflict. But "gameing the system" is what sells. CEOs and shareholders alike want an "unfair" advantage, because if it's "fair" it's not really much of an advantage it's just what the web design team should have done in the first place.

Re:Sold off. Brilliant!

[644bd346996]

Wouldn't it make sense for Google to run an 'Optimised for Google(tm)' optimisation service? The more sites that Google can spider properly, the more useful it is. No. If anything, Google could publish a set of guidelines for web designers. They could then use their clout to declare flash-based websites profane, standards compliance a necessity, and in general promote common sense design principles. It would work, too. No company would want to know that their google ranking was hurt by the fact that they weren't w3c compliant. Google wouldn't even have to tweak the algorithms in order to make it work.

Google just can't afford to give anybody a privileged place in the rankings. Doing so would make them no better than AOL and Yahoo. If a company wants more exposure through Google, their only option should be advertising.

Google is all about your data

[Simon (S2)]

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.

Re:Google is all about your data

[zrobotics]

Wait juuuust a second: did you say that "people who search"="a small demographic"??? It took me 2 years to convince my mom that she could type www.weather.com into the bar at the top. For 2 years her homepage was set to Google and she would navigate via Google searches. Once she was done checking the weather, she would close the browser, start another session, and do another Google search. So no, it's not a small demographic. It is, almost literally, everyone who uses the web. At some point or another, nearly everyone who uses the web will use one search engine or another. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it follows that Google has reams upon reams of data that advertisers find highly desirable.

Re:How much can you trust google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to know where that mistrust comes from - I'm guessing it's natural cynicism, because there's no basis for it on previous form. Let's not forget that Microsoft and Yahoo openly give up people's data to the US, Chinese and presumably other authorities, whereas Google has fought tooth and nail any time anyone (read: the US government) has tried to get private data from them. Can we also please remember that they don't actively participate in censorship; Google China merely indexes the web that is available behind the Great Firewall. If you think they shouldn't deal with the Chinese regime, that's fair enough; my personal view is that any information being made more readily available is a good thing, although obviously I'd far rather there wasn't any censorship at all. Either way, it's a freedom of speech issue rather than a privacy one.

I'm not saying they won't become our evil overlords, I'm just saying their current conduct, when compared to their immediate rivals, has been pretty good.

Re:Why so shocked now...?

[jfengel]

Can you cite some evidence of that? I've never heard of Google taking money for higher rankings, and I've been using it since it was google.stanford.edu.

Wikipedia doesn't mention it, not that that necessarily means much. I'm willing to "take off the blinders" but thus far I'm not seeing anything except your allegation.

Re:mirror

[rm69990]

I'm sure C|Net can afford the bandwidth for this article. No reason to rip-off their article. The whole reason companies publish stuff for free is because ads help pay for it.

Re:How much can you trust google?

[rm69990]

Don't be too upset. I know you must be embarrassed that it took you 9 years (how old Google is) to figure out that "Don't be evil" was marketing speak and that Google's #1 concern is profits, not whether a bunch of nerds on Slashdot see them as evil or not. There is a reason their unofficial company motto was made so incredibly vague and subjective in the first place.

Re:"Google is put into the conflicted position..."

[Anonymous Coward]

The shareholders of Google include the CEO and his friends who hold the "Class B" stock which has ten votes per share, versus the one-vote-per-share "Class A" stock that everyone else has.

Currently, the total votes of the "Class B" shares heavily outweigh the "Class A" share votes. Google can, for the most part, do whatever they feel like and be perfectly content. You'd almost think they thought of that before the IPO.