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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."
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Because they are annoying and intrusive. Google's text ads don't bother me at all, but it seems they are considering flash/video ads.
Ever since the <blink> tag, I'm annoyed by any ad on the page that moves. If you can deliver your message with some text, or even a static image, I don't mind -- I can automatically skip over it without too much irritation, or I might even catch something interesting. But as soon as it animates, it forceably draws my attention, which is annoying as hell. When something draws my attention that way, I block it. Even if that means I have to give up cable in favor of BitTorrent and movie rentals.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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?
Care to provide some evidence that this occured. If I recall correctly, what you claim Google did was actually what other Search Engines were doing.
'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.
you're full of it. Google never accepted money for higher rankings. You could pay to get in the "sponsored links" section. Google in the early days was started based on the idea that you couldn't "buy" popularity, but had to earn it. One of their main differentiators in the early days was exactly this. When Yahoo, Alta Vista, et al were polluting their links with paid ads, Google wouldn't.
I had mod points yesterday, I would have modded you down... but I'll reply instead
Everybody knows to do this? How many non-technical people do you know exactly? I say this for 2 reasons:
1) I have yet to meet a non-geek that has an adblocker installed (excluding the few people who's computer I set up for them)
2) Unless Doubleclick has magic money-growing trees, clearly not everybody knows to block them, considering they are still raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
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.
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?
Then I suggest that the OED is wrong. "To game the system" is a common and not very new phrase. If people are using it, then that's what it means, irrespective of what the OED says.
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
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. Rob Malda is thought to be acquiring some crystal meth, by sucking off dudes.
Funny, the OP addition indicated above in boldface doesn't show in the original. Clearly my browser is in error, and the AC's mirror is correct.
Gotta fix that med dose, AC! Those hallucinations are leaking out.
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they rarely are.
A few weeks ago I would have completely agreed with you. Since then, I've been playing around with Adwords, and suddenly found the sites with which I advertised come in quite a bit higher in the organic search results than before.
Naturally, I could be biased due to me paying more attention. I've since added a domain I hardly use to Adwords, just to see what happens. Do no evil? How about: Do less evil...
This sig is intentionally left blank
Why is it a troll to point out that Doubleclick has an image problem that might hurt Google?