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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.