YouTube Algorithm Can Decide Your Channel URL Now Belongs To Someone Else

An anonymous reader writes: In 2005, blogger Matthew Lush registered "Lush" as his account on the then-nascent YouTube service, receiving www.youtube.com/lush as the URL for his channel. He went on to use this address on his marketing materials and merchandise. Now, YouTube has taken the URL and reassigned it to the Lush cosmetics brand. Google states that an algorithm determined the URL should belong to the cosmetics firm rather than its current owner, and insists that it is not possible to reverse the unrequested change. Although Lush cosmetics has the option of changing away from their newly-received URL and thereby freeing it up for Mr. Lush's use, they state that they have not decided whether they will. Google has offered to pay for some of Mr. Lush's marketing expenses as compensation.

Comments

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy. Similar for www.youtube.com/mcdonalds. Not sure what the issue is here. He doesn't own the site.

Re:Makes sense

[squiggleslash]

No, they wouldn't expect that. They'd never go to those links under normal circumstances, unless they saw it written down.

Would you go to slashdot.org/macdonalds and expect a page about hamburgers to come up?

The only people that go to youtube.com/lush are people that have seen it written down or who have bookmarked it, which means, essentially, only people visiting this blogger.

URLs should not change meaning except in extreme circumstances. Google's inability to understand that is baffling given their position as the web's defacto gatekeeper.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I’d agree if he were just squatting on it, maybe even if he just thought it’d be a cool URL. But it’s his actual name; surely he has some claim on it?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of people don't really use urls anymore, they use google. Even fewer people type in youtube urls.

Also, the problem is that the little guy is no longer going to use Google to build up his business, if he thinks they'll just take it away from him. It would be as if the telephone company decided to take my old phone number away and give it to some bigger company because it happens to spell out some shit on the telephone keypad.

Like it or not, Google has built up a reputation for being unreliable outside search with its services. The last one I signed up for was Gmail over a decade back (and it's still good despite all the retarded changes they tried to institute since).

Now I refuse to go onto anything new of theirs, because I know if I come to rely on it, it probably a good chance of being axed and me being left high and dry and my past hours building my piece of it up counting for nothing. No exportable data, zilch. I'm sure that reputation, among other factors, is what kept many people from trying Google+.

You know who else also became very established business friendly? Digg. It practically bent over and opened it's ass cheeks wide for hot injections of business cash in exchange for unfettered access to its web site. Alas, it's dead now.

Bending over to established players, not because of legality (I doubt Lush and others can sue sucessfully for youtube channel names or would even bother) also goes counter to the web. If Google counters that in youtube, people will notice and move on. I know I already look for YT vids last when I want to listen to music, because it will invariable involve a stupid ad and my life I aim for less and less ads as I go on, and there are enough services that will accomodate me.

Re:Makes sense

[masterofthumbs]

He's still accesible at youtube.com/user/lush just like every other channel is. youtube.com/lush just happened to be a shorter URL that apparently isn't always unique to you.

Re:Makes sense

[orasio]

I understand if there were some trademark issue, that they _removed_ yt.com/lush, and replaced it with 301 to yt.com/matthewlush . Replacing the page with something else completely will only harm those who try to access the old link. If the company wants anything, they can get yt.com/lushcosmetics or whatever, but they shouldn't misrepresent their content. Users who have the old link expect the old content, that's what URIs are for.

Breaking links is a bad thing (TM), and google has the knowledge to know that you shouldn't break the web. Not for something this lame, at least.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

GOG doesn't understand it either. They archived "old" forum topics by moving them to another forum.

Problem is, you access topics through their forum name (so what was at general/topic_name is now at general_archive/topic_name), making all pre-2015 topics MitM'able by simply creating a new topic with the same name. All links to the archived topic now go to yours instead.

Some people should just not be allowed to internet.

Re:Makes sense

[Rinisari]

IIRC, there are exceptions in trademark law carved out for peoples' names. That is, someone whose last name is Google could not be prevented from using their name as the name of their company. There are likely some nuances to this, such as that the company couldn't bear the exact same legal name "Google, Inc." or choose the name with intent to cause confusion. Two names that existed in separate industries should be considered safe. This case of naming rights on a privately owned service further complicates the spirit of the law, insomuch as a private entity has control of most of the name and can rightfully choose who uses its service.

ICANN at least honors this sentiment for domains. See the case of Uzi Nissan is Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer, who registered Nissan.com before Nissan Motors. Similarly in nature, Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft existed, but was settled out of court.

Personally, I'd like to see Google and other services that offer naming of pages to follow similar guidelines: no one can be prevented from claiming their name.

Re:Makes sense

[gnasher719]

"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy. Similar for www.youtube.com/mcdonalds. Not sure what the issue is here. He doesn't own the site.

People entering www.youtube.com/lush expect to see marketing information from the same guy who registered the name many years ago, not some random company. Not sure what your thought process is here. Lush cosmetics doesn't own the site.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Also his channel has a lot more followers (subscribers) on YouTube than does the cosmetics brand. So he is definitely not squatting. Considering how long he has had his channel, I would not be surprised if he has also been on YouTube for a lot longer than Lush cosmetics.

Re:Makes sense

[Applehu Akbar]

You're thinking of the Billy Rose's Aquacade case in New York, in which a small business owner named Billy Rose was not allowed to apply his own name to his business, because of confusion with the established brand of Billy Rose's Aquacade. "B-B-But..." sputtered his lawyer, "Billy Rose is my client's real name. The guy who runs the Aquacade is named Rosenstein!" The ruling was still that the established nature of the Aquacade brand superseded the defendant's use of his own name.

But in this case, Mr. Lush registered first, and because it's his own name he can't be accused of domain squatting.

Re:Makes sense

[SQLGuru]

Yeah, if I'm interested in videos from a company, I usually go to the company web site and look for "videos" or "media" or something similar......and if they host those videos on YouTube and embed them or redirect me directly to YouTube, I don't really care.

Re:Makes sense

[moronoxyd]

You think there is only one company by the name of "Lush" in the whole wide world? Or even in America?
Who decides which company gets this nice short URL and which doesn't?

This is usually solved on the first come first served basis, and Google should to the same.
And since this guy was the first and has the right to us his name (he didn't go for "lushcosmetics" nor "whitehousegov") he should keep it.

This decision by Google is stupid and sets a bad precedent.
Not counting the fact that their argument that this can not be reversed is certainly an outright lie.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the canonical URL for a channel is and has always been youtube.com/user/[channel name]. It just so happens that youtube.com/[channel name] defaulted to redirecting to that if there was nothing else of interest there (there will be other subdirectories with specific purposes there that may be valid channel names but would not redirect) - I would be very surprised if this was ever documented as something to be expected, it was just being liberal with accepting URLs. It yields a redirect, so it's immediately clear that your intended destination is elsewhere, and nobody should be copying and pasting a naked URL like that unless they're doing it deliberately.

It seems Google is now inserting more things into that namespace, effectively using it as a shortener, adding aliases for other channels.

This is just a case of relying on an undocumented feature. You should always be prepared for that to bite you in the ass unexpectedly. It sucks for Matthew Lush, but unless he can point at official documentation that stated that the shorter URL was a valid way of referencing a YouTube channel persistently, he really can't blame Google for this one. Nobody took away his actual channel URL, they just changed an undocumented shortcut that he was relying on.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure Lush, the band, is more known worldwide than some cosmetics company. But they must have less marketeers.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not really some "random guy" - seeing that his youtube channel has something like 750.000 subscribers. "Lush" only has about 90.000 subscribers. So by YouTube Standards he should actually be considered more "valuable".

the fact that his content might seem cringeworthy at best doesn't diminish his success on youtube...

Re:Makes sense

[nitehawk214]

If you were looking youtube.com/somename is meaningless. If you want to find something you use the search page. Randomly switching urls around without anyone asking for it and for no apparent reason isn't even evil... its just stupid.

Re:Makes sense

[morgauxo]

That's BS. Only people who use cosmetics and who reside in whatever part of the world Lush sells to would expect that. Furthermore, even they shouldn't be too surprised since Lush is an actual English word AND a common surname. Anybody could have claimed it for valid reasons AND Lush the cosmetics company failed to do so.

Your argument is like going to something named Windows, finding a builder who installs windows in houses and being incredulous that it wasn't Microsoft Windows.

I wish that companies like Google and the world's various court systems would stop pandering to these crying marketing department babies. If they care so much about their precious brands they should be more creative and stop trying to own surnames and real dictionary words. Also, they should have taken the Internet more seriously and claimed their names when they were still available.

Re:Makes sense

[ArcadeMan]

I just tried youtube.com/youtube and my modem imploded.

Re:Makes sense

[DanJ_UK]

I'd be willing to bet upwards of 95% of the US knows nothing of Lush cosmetics, the rest of the world know them very well and, the US isn't *the world*.

Re:Makes sense

[cdrudge]

But in this case, Mr. Lush registered first, and because it's his own name he can't be accused of domain squatting.

Except it's not a domain registration, so there is no chance of domain squatting. It's path/URL within the YouTube.com domain. It's YouTube.com/Google property for them to use as they see fit.

Re:Makes sense

[91degrees]

Who ever said anything about "do no evil"? Google's unofficial policy is "Don't be evil". Different in a subtle but significant way.

Re:Makes sense

[Lennie]

No a smaller marketing budget.

Re:Makes sense

[oldmac31310]

I'm willing to be that there is at least one Lush in Manhattan, because, well because there actually is. Never knew anyone that bought their smelly crap.

Re:Makes sense

[mwvdlee]

Really? Because I would expect to see the musicvideo's for the band "Lush", which was formed in 1987, broken up in 1988, reformed in 1989 and was still active in 1994, when some cosmetics company used the same name for their brand.

Re:Makes sense

[The_PS4_Will_Fail]

Agreed. You should also avoid relying on URLs that third parties are in charge of. If you're trying to make money from your blog or brand, use a domain name that you control. By marketing youtube.com/blahblahblah, you've made a pact with Google and they may just decide it's not a big deal for them to pull the trigger on you and end the pact.

Re:Makes sense

[Chris Mattern]

URLs should not change meaning except in extreme circumstances. Google's inability to understand that is baffling given their position as the web's defacto gatekeeper.

Google's ability to understand this is because of their position as the web's defacto gatekeeper. If people can't find things from their URL, they're forced to Google it to find things.

Re:Makes sense

[ultranova]

This is usually solved on the first come first served basis, and Google should to the same.

First come first served leads to squatting, for example domain squatting. Google has little to gain by hosting garbage channels, in fact they detract from Youtube's overall value by drowning out signal under noise, and frankly I doubt Google's staff likes parasites any more than anyone else does.

On the other hand, any other decision criteria means deciding who has "rights" to a certain name. If this decision process involves human judgement for anything except what are the matters of fact, it's ultimately arbitrary. And if it doesn't, if it's purely algorithmic, then its decisions can't be reversed - because otherwise people can and will do so when they think the loser is more sympathetic.

Re:Makes sense

[Translation Error]

Google wants to change people's expectations of where youtube.com/coke will take them. Their opinion, which your earlier statements actually support, is that currently the URLs don't have any meaning. They want to give them some.

Re:Makes sense

[MisterSquid]

How did you reach that conclusion? Genuinely curious.

Google Fight: "Lush band" vs. "Lush Cosmetics"

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

...the web's defacto gatekeeper.

Perish the thought! We must abolish DNS. It is too corrupt. We have to make the internet more P2P

Re:Makes sense

[TheCarp]

But this isn't even a trademark dispute, its a company policy dispute.

Though, its also an issue of well....trade. What happens when Lush Internetworking Products and Lush Sex toys and Lush tabletop games, all run by different people, all become popular....and half the customers of each have never heard of the others?

If Lush skateboards become more popular than another Lush, will it change to them? Fair is fair right?

Re:Makes sense

[znrt]

"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy.

sorry but this is utter nonsense. what if i'd expect that blogger, or the music band, and not some random cosmetics shop?

this problem is usually addressed with a "first come first serve" policy, as in domain names or trade marks. any conflicts are dealt through an arbitrer with the implicated parts knowing. youtube just grabbing peoples' channel names as they see fit is just ... wow.

Not sure what the issue is here. He doesn't own the site.

the real issue here is that youtube is a service and mr.lush is not the customer, he's the product. that's why he has to suck it up.

Re:Makes sense

[nikhilhs]

Does anyone actually go directly to youtube.com/lush? I doubt it. They would just search for Lush. On a site run by the guys who own the top search engine in the world.

Re:Makes sense

[flargleblarg]

"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy. Similar for www.youtube.com/mcdonalds.

Uh, who are these "people"? I've heard of McDonald's, but I've never heard of Lush cosmetics. If I went to www.youtube.com/lush, I don't know what I'd expect to see. Certainly not a cosmetics company. Porn maybe?

Re:Makes sense

[DutchUncle]

But it was first-come, first-served. He got there first, and it's just a karma bonus that it's his actual name (as opposed to videos of lush . . . whatevers). True that it's a free service and he doesn't own it, but .. Consider if you had already been seated at a table at a restaurant, and were given the bum's rush because a known big spender just walked in. You were there first. It's just shoddy practice.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to auto-transfer ownership of names based on rights ownership, then they should include a suffix indicating the trademark group they belong to.
e.g. LushCosmetics, McDonaldsHamburgers (or McDonaldsFastFood), AppleRecords (aka the Beatles' record label) which is not to be confused with AppleComputers, etc.

p.s. I've never heard of Lush cosmetics until this article. Maybelline, Revlon, Avon: Yes, I've heard of those. Lush? No, never heard of them. But I'm a guy, so maybe that explains it.

Re:Makes sense

[meerling]

Correct. Besides, "Lush" is a standard common usage word that is neither copyrightable, nor trademarkable. IANAL, but damn the requirements for those things have been posted so F-N many times you have to be aware of that limitation. (Of course, with enough money and lawyers, you can often get away with anything)

Re:Makes sense

[DanJ_UK]

You can smell the store a mile away, they're not hard to miss :D

Re:Makes sense

[lgw]

This decision by Google is stupid and sets a bad precedent.

"Precedent" implies this is the first time something like this happened. The trend is quite clear: don't depend on anything offered by Google for your business, as Google will just take it away at a whim. It's one thing to use their service opportunistically: this week they're the best choice, but we could use someone else next week. But to build your business around a Google service shows you're really not paying attention.

Re:Makes sense

[Frobnicator]

Besides, "Lush" is a standard common usage word that is neither copyrightable, nor trademarkable. IANAL

It is absolutely protected by trademark.

The very fact that he had used it in commerce give it automatic, de facto trademark protections. Even if he did not register the mark, it still has protection; defending an unregistered mark has a higher burden of proof, but by his use in commerce he automatically gained several legal rights relating to trademark. If he had registered his mark, the protections would be even stronger.

But moving on from trademark, there is also the issue of YouTube's ToS agreement.

And that is where it gets REALLY interesting.

It is quite possible that Google/YouTube violated YouTube's published ToS in this. Their termination policy (part 7 of the EULA) is for (A) repeat infringement of the rules which doesn't apply here, or (B) if "YouTube reserves the right to decide whether Content violates these Terms of Service for reasons other than copyright infringement, such as, but not limited to, pornography, obscenity, or excessive length. YouTube may at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, remove such Content and/or terminate a user'su account for submitting such material in violation of these Terms of Service."

While they do reserve the right to interpret their ToS, that doesn't mean they can make up reasons outside the ToS.

Re:Makes sense

[Frobnicator]

But this isn't even a trademark dispute, its a company policy dispute.

Exactly. So many people seem to miss it.

YouTube's ToS section 7 gives the method they would need to use to terminate his use of the lush URL. Specifically their ToS says: "A. YouTube will terminate a user's access to the Service if, under appropriate circumstances, the user is determined to be a repeat infringer. B. YouTube reserves the right to decide whether Content violates these Terms of Service for reasons other than copyright infringement, such as, but not limited to, pornography, obscenity, or excessive length. YouTube may at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, remove such Content and/or terminate a user'su account for submitting such material in violation of these Terms of Service." (Typos in original)

So while YouTube gave themselves discretion to remove his access if it violates the ToS, and they gave themselves broad permissions in interpreting the ToS, ending his access still requires a ToS violation.

Their ToS and policy about what is required to change the endpoint are clearly specified in the ToS. The one violating their ToS is YouTube, not Mr Lush.

Re:Makes sense

[Ravaldy]

Exactly.

IMHO the only time a company should reassign a URL or name is when the original taker was doing it to ransom the large company. Most large companies are reasonable and will offer compensation within reason. Maybe I'm old school but I've never been fan of those who hold people/companies ransom.

Re:Makes sense

[DrVxD]

Would you go to slashdot.org/macdonalds and expect a page about hamburgers to come up?

No. I'd expect a link to an article on dice.com.

Re:Makes sense

[suutar]

I had never heard of Lush when I lived on the east coast, but they're in a number of malls in the SF bay area, so it may just be regional.

Re:Makes sense

[RobbieCrash]

https://www.google.ca/search?q...

Re:Makes sense

[Cramer]

I am 99% CERTAIN this is all marketing driven bullshit. Engineers know better -- or at least those that aren't 20-something idiots that want everything to be facebook. (I'd blame that on lame marketing direction, too, but I know it's not. Google's push for young, hip, trend setters means they have a very shallow talent pool that has zero understanding of how to maintain a product brand and identity.)

It's not a matter of "it cannot be changed". They have no intention of undoing what they've done. If I were a judge and this were brought before me... "Put it back. Fine: $25,000 PER MINUTE that it is not restored."

Re: Makes sense

[ArmoredDragon]

It doesn't sound like anybody paid Google, rather this was some automatic process based on trademark registration, or something to that effect.

Which IMO that would be okay if they had that policy posted before he created his account to begin with, but they didn't. So yeah, definitely evil, but at least they're paying his costs to change it.

Re:Makes sense

[omnichad]

But if you go to slashdot.org/~mcdonalds (Slashdot's user URL format), you get someone misappropriating McDonald's trademark. So...bad example.

Re:Makes sense

[N1AK]

This isn't some either/or situation. Google wasn't put in a position where the two options were 1/ Have the site ruined by domain equating parasites or 2/ Automatically and irreversibly kick users who've been on the service for a decade off their URL.

This is a dickish policy by Google. If Google wants to automatically remove accounts pretending to be a brand fine, but that isn't what happened here.

Re:Makes sense

[reboot246]

So Google just did something evil, thereby violating their unofficial policy.

They've always been evil, though.

Re: Makes sense

[bill_mcgonigle]

oh ... so your comment is clear, expository, and lucid - but I was planning to do some stabbin' with this pitchfork, so now what?

Re:Makes sense

[farble1670]

Who decides which company gets this nice short URL and which doesn't?

it's right in the subject of TFA. the youtube algorithm.

Re:Makes sense

[farble1670]

Consider if you had already been seated at a table at a restaurant, and were given the bum's rush because a known big spender just walked in. You were there first. It's just shoddy practice.

i'd probably go somewhere else and not come back. he has that option.

Re:Makes sense

[ayesnymous]

"Lush" is a well known brand. If people go to www.youtube.com/lush they would expect to see Lush cosmetics, not some random guy. Similar for www.youtube.com/mcdonalds. Not sure what the issue is here. He doesn't own the site.

Never heard of Lush before. I suspect you are a Lush employee.

Re: Makes sense

[Jack Griffin]

It doesn't sound like anybody paid Google, rather this was some automatic process

Processes don't write themselves...

Re:Makes sense

[drinkypoo]

But moving on from trademark, there is also the issue of YouTube's ToS agreement.

And that is where it gets REALLY interesting.

I read this, and then waited for the interesting part, which never showed up. The requirements for termination do not apply, because they didn't terminate his account.

Re:Makes sense

[drinkypoo]

I'd be willing to bet upwards of 95% of the US knows nothing of Lush cosmetics, the rest of the world know them very well

You think the UK is "the rest of the world"?

Since you appear to be a Lush stockholder, based on your familiarity with their market penetration, maybe you could share with us the relevant numbers from the latest annual report. Since you appear to have such a vested interest in the success of Lush Cosmetics, that is...

Re:Makes sense

[david_thornley]

You can trademark a standard common usage word, provided it isn't just an actual description. Since Lush is not an obvious description of a band, cosmetics, or anything like that, it's trademarkable. If you were selling cosmetics, you couldn't trademark "lipstick" (although it would be trademarkable in other contexts). You could trademark something like "Garbage" (although I wouldn't), because that's not a description.

Re: Makes sense

[Ravaldy]

I second that. The clause was there for this exact reason. The protected themselves legally by allowing anything to go. Our world, our rules...

BTW Jack, I want to apologize for stepping to a new low when I ask if you were 16 years old in a different subject. I'm usually in tune with what you write (I've seen lots of your comments over the years) and I just forgot to accept that it was your opinion.

Re:Makes sense

[david_thornley]

So, how much was this Lush guy paying to reserve the short URL? If nothing, then he really doesn't have much of a claim, and Google's offer of partial reimbursement for marketing materials is actually generous.

Re: Makes sense

[Jack Griffin]

Hey no problem. I enjoy a robust discussion, and can handle the insults :)

Re:Makes sense

[kmoser]

I would expect the link to go to a page for (or about) people who liked to drink.

Re:Makes sense

[TheRealLifeboy]

AC is a complete idiot, but then we always knew that.

So, when will that apply to domain names, dufus? It's a matter of first come, first serve. If Matthew Lush selected this name 10 years ago, then he gets to use it and stealing is from him by means of a robot (AI scare, as predicted, anyone?) does not make is ethical or right. Lush cosmetics, being a overly expensive bunch of soap-mongers, can use anything that is available, like lush-soap, for instance.

Never belonged to you

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube Algorithm Can Decide Your Channel URL Now Belongs To Someone Else

Never belonged to you in the first place.

Re:Never belonged to you

[Andy Smith]

That's the attitude that allows these companies to get away with their discourteous behaviour.

Re:Never belonged to you

[swb]

But it's naive in the extreme to believe that some kind of informal system of first come, first served meets squatter's rights would prevail when the players in question are large commercial entities.

The Internet as we knew it 15 years ago (or more..) is dead, as is the benevolent giant of Google. It's not run by geeks for geeks under some informal geek code of honor anymore. It's a commercial marketplace run by corporations for a profit.

And anyone with a clue and any exposure to Google would have to understand that their services and systems change as they see fit. If you rely on Google for anything, you'd better be, as the MBAs say, nimble and able to pivot when they change their minds. Their services come and go. Beta, labs, products, whatever, if it's not making ad revenue it's on life support and will disappear whenever they feel like it.

Re:Never belonged to you

[Ravaldy]

And they would deserve a boycott but who boycotts these days? Nobody has the will power to do it.

Re:Never belonged to you

[N1AK]

People are more cynical of the impact, I'm not so sure it has much to do with will power.

Personally I think Google's policies like this are harming them. I know that I think very hard about using Google related services (and a Google controlled URL would certainly count) because although I think they make a lot of very good things I have 0% trust that they won't completely re-arrange them or shut them down

Re:Never belonged to you

[farble1670]

oh boy.

It's not run by geeks for geeks under some informal geek code of honor anymore. It's a commercial marketplace run by corporations for a profit.

no way. i thought that the massive server farms, thousands of developers and QA engineers, millions in hardware, millions in R&D, et. al. were funded out of the magical money tree?

And anyone with a clue and any exposure

and you are the only one that apparently thinks this information isn't so obvious that you need to repeat it here like you're talking to a bunch of children. i also don't expect target to be there tomorrow and i won't go screaming if it isn't. i'll buy my socks somewhere else. done.

i think you forgot to tell everyone that with Google WE ARE THE PRODUCT OMFG!

Re:Never belonged to you

[Ravaldy]

I agree that people being cynical is part of it. Combine the two and you've got yourself a "mission impossible" scenario.

I know people that although they hate aspects of something aren't willing to stop doing it because they like it. To me that's a lack of will power but in this particular case being cynical definitively plays a big role.

What a bunch of douchebags.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, we are google, one of the worlds most massive computer companies, and no we cant change a database value but we will give you a couple thousand to leave it all alone.

Re:What a bunch of douchebags.

[Rasperin]

BS this is insightful.

This stated that it's an algorithm that parses so "let's throw a bunch of engineers on this to add code (for an edge case) (also don't forget to add time for research regarding where and design for the best way to add this edge case), code review, rebuild it, redeploy it to test, test it, pass it back to the developer for a damned edge case that he fat fingered, code review, rebuild it, redeploy it to test, test it, pass it, deploy it to production, maybe production down time, contact the engineer to propagate direct changes to the database through out the environments, test it to make sure it doesn't fuck anything up". The cost in man hours to add an edge case are a lot more than you think in a production environment. The algorithm may or may not need to be re-evaluated. Google has made that determination. There really is no right answer so Google is offering to assist with making updates to the marketing but has no obligation to.

This isn't 1997 anymore, you don't _ever_ just go into production database and make changes.

Re:What a bunch of douchebags.

[N1AK]

The very fact you think Google is going to need to schedule production downtime for a change of this nature given the ridiculously large changes they regularly make without it just highlights your ignorance or reliance on hyperbole to try and make a point.

URLs

[squiggleslash]

It's a shame Google has nobody working for them who knows what a URL does and what it's meant to do.

Maybe they can employ someone to tell them, and explain why changing URLs at random (or "algorithmically" if you'd prefer) to go to entirely different things is a problem.

Perhaps that same person can then tell them what a search engine is...

Re:URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand what a URL is, you think it's something more than just a pointer. Since the web was designed without referential integrity that means they sometimes get broken. People rename pages, get over it, it doesn't mean they "don't understand" what a URL is, and more than I "don't understand" what a pointer is when I call realloc.

Re:URLs

[cdrudge]

In a recent Ask Slashdot, the person asking the question was ridiculed by many for relying on his free ISP email account instead of his own domain hosted with a 3rd party provider to allow for portability. I think a similar argument applies here.

Why doesn't Mr. Lush have his own domain/website instead of relying on Google/YouTube to be his direct URL? Just like your ISP provided email account, it may be your account to use, but you don't own it. It's property of the ISP and is subject to their whim in use.

Yeah it sucks that something that was "his" was taken away what appears to be arbitrarily due to some algorithm. But if he is reliant on that URL perhaps he should use something that he has better control and full ownership of.

Re:URLs

[gstoddart]

But there is no justifiable reason why Google should do crap like this.

Lush isn't a sufficiently unique or trademarked term that there could only be one entity using the word Lush. It's not like it was "Lush Cosmetics" and he was stepping on their trademark.

And since trademarks are only valid in your area of business, there is NO legal justification for saying it's not his anymore.

He's been using it for a decade by the looks of it, so there is no way you can claim he's a late comer or cybersquatting.

Basically this is a bullshit policy, badly implemented by Google/YouTube, which basically says "we're going to arbitrarily decide that the branding you have worked on for years is no longer your own because we say so".

So, take your pick, evil, incompetent, or just plain old assholes -- possibly all three. But Google is the ones doing stupid things here.

This is kind of like Slashdot saying "we've decided the account name cdrudge should belong to someone else now" -- because it makes no sense whatsoever to take it away from someone who has been using it for so long.

This is just random garbage by random algorithms which isn't based on a damned thing than the arbitrary code Google has decided is the arbiter of these things.

Re:URLs

[rhazz]

If I accessed a non-youtube URL and it redirected me to youtube, I would never use the original URL again because it is most likely some click-counting intermediary. YouTube is a well known and trusted video streaming site, while mylamedomain.com/youtubevideos is questionable unless you've already visited it.

YouTube was offering people branding by giving them simple URLs with their account name at the end, now they are taking away their offering from one individual and giving it to a company because money. It's scummy, it's selling out, and YouTube should know better than to treat their users this way.

Re:URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is dumb of him to establish his brand based on an URL which he has no control of.

It's like publishing your office location with second yellow house in main street.

If the owner of the building for some reason decides to repaint the whole thing you're screwed.

Fact is Youtube does not NEED a reason to change URLs. It might hurt their business if they do so often. But they are free to do so.

If you want to have a fixed URL on the internet there are other services providing exactly that.

Re:URLs

[gstoddart]

Actually it is dumb of him to establish his brand based on an URL which he has no control of.

Well, this was his username on YouTube, and even if YouTube changed their URL structure, the channel registered in his name got taken away, assigned to an entity who didn't ask for it, and marked as now being the property of someone else.

This isn't like making a reference to something which should be changing ... this is saying "my channel on YouTube is Lush, and even if YouTube changes its URL, my channel is still Lush".

When YouTube basically exists to make money from showing the content other people have created, suddenly deciding after ten freaking years that the channel should be arbitrarily given to someone else is basically bullshit.

This is entirely about Google being assholes, who are preemptively trying to maximize the branding for people who didn't ask for it, and suddenly deciding that the 10 years he used that account and placed content on YouTube doesn't matter.

Sorry, but this is stupidity on behalf of Google, and has nothing to do with URLs which change. They took away his frigging account name for NO other reason than some algorithm said so.

Basically they picked the entity who they felt deserved the name, instead of the one who had been using it and had a legitimate claim to us.

It's just another example of how Google is full of shit and no longer following their "do no evil" thing -- because this is an asshole move.

Re: URLs

[IMightB]

What I want to know is what happens when their algorithm "desides" to switch again

Re:URLs

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It has nothing to do with trademarks, or anything like that. Google no doubt noticed that the majority of his visitors would then search further for lush cosmetics. They view the URL as akin to a search term that needs to be optimized for the masses.

I'm not going to say it's right or should be done. But it is most certainly not arbitrary. And it is almost certainly legal, because the laws haven't kept up with things like accounts as property rights, etc.

Re:URLs

[drinkypoo]

It's just another example of how Google is full of shit and no longer following their "do no evil" thing -- because this is an asshole move.

You're both right. Google gives you no guarantees they won't steal your URLs or respond to obviously fradulent DMCA takedown requests. When they do those things those are asshole moves, but you also should know better than to base your online reputation on them. Get your own domain. Find a second host for your video content, to use when Google does something bad to the copy on Youtube. Don't trust Google. That's fucking stupid. Yeah, I use gmail. I don't send my secret plans to rule the world through it.

Re:URLs

[TheCarp]

I don't disagree that this is how he could protect himself from such issues.

However why should he have had to? He operated for years under the assumption that it was, as it was when he signed up, first come first serve, and he came first to youtube.

Lush isn't even a particularly unique word. Anyone doing business under such a name, no matter how big a fish they think they are, should fully expect others will also be using it for different things, and should suck it up and deal.

If another company named Lush becomes more popular, will they lose it?

This is yet another case where "having the right" and "being right" are just not the same. They had established operating procedures for many years which people had come to rely on. They may have the right to pull the rug out from under people, but, that doesn't make them right to do it.

Kind of like, maybe you have the right to evict your 90 year old grandmother after she signs the house over to you with no protections, but hey, I still will consider you a prick for doing it.

Re:URLs

[Fwipp]

They didn't get the channel. They just got the shorthand URL - https://www.youtube.com/user/l... still goes to his channel, he still has all his followers, etc. This is just redirection of the shorthand URL https://www.youtube.com/lush/ to Lush Cosmetic's channel.

Probably their algorithm, like most of Google's stuff, is based on usage - they saw that people frequently visited /lush/; then went to the channel for Lush Cosmetics afterwards.

Re:URLs

[Rockoon]

Probably their algorithm, like most of Google's stuff, is based on usage - they saw that people frequently visited /lush/; then went to the channel for Lush Cosmetics afterwards.

Consider the following: I am CTO of Big Traffic Company and we dont do much with videos, but we decided that your username FWIPP happens to be hip and cool and shit and could increase our brand. I have a video espousing the greatness of BigTraffic or one of our products and put it on youtube under the username BigTraffic.

So far nothing evil, but then I place on bigtraffic.com a link to your youtube.com/FWIPP/ shorthand saying "check out this awesome video" and keenly put in enough info on our main page so that while the first users arriving at your channel get nothing about us, they can enter something in the search box that gets them to our video. Soon enough of them do such that youtube algorithms associate your channel with that BigCompany video and start recommending it to anyone that views one of your videos. Now it starts steamrolliong because a lot of traffic that arrives at youtube.com/FWIPP/ goes directly to that recommended link because it no longer even involves a search to get there.

Then more youtube algorithms kick in and give your shorthand to BigCompany. Thanks FWIPP. Now all your traffic is my traffic too. Awesome.

Re:URLs

[allo]

And this can backfire.
Do they know, where it's linked and for what purposes? Maybe there is a link "the channel with the racist videos" somewhere?

Re:URLs

[allo]

No, the visitors do not care about the url, they care about the search field.

Re:URLs

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Do they know the difference?

Bullshit

[Raistlin77]

Really, Google can't undo a change made by a fucking algorithm? Bullshit!

Re:Bullshit

[swillden]

Really, Google can't undo a change made by a fucking algorithm? Bullshit!

My guess is that there's a lot more to this story than what we're seeing.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, but know nothing about it beyond what's in the article.)

Re:Bullshit

[moronoxyd]

Well, how about you tell your colleagues that it is stupid to piss of one of your first customers (that guy has been using YouTube for 10 years!) with no good reason.
He was there first, he has every right to use the name, and there are certainly more than one company by the name of 'Lush'.
Creating the precedent opens a can of worms.

And: Even if we don't know everything. Saying that they can not undo a change they did is definitely bullshit. They might not want to, but if they could change it in one direction they can certainly change it in the opposite direction.

Re:Bullshit

[Khyber]

"My guess is that there's a lot more to this story than what we're seeing. "

Typical backroom dealings as expected from a UK company that practically bribed its way back into relevance.

Re:Bullshit

[barlevg]

I don't think this is so much on Lush, who claims they didn't ask for the URL change. Could be wrong, though.

Full disclosure: Lush bath bombs are the bee's knees.

Re:Bullshit

[TheCarp]

I normally would agree but in this case, for youtube specifically, I call bullshit.

They are not riders on a free service, the service just isn't one that exchanges cash. Fact is, every video uploaded is one youtube is going to use as a way to distribute ads or to otherwise keep eyeballs on its site so it can justify ads.

Youtube provides the distribution for videos IN EXCHANGE FOR the right to attach their advertising. Looks like quid pro quo to me.

Re:Bullshit

[slashdice]

> Full disclosure: Lush bath bombs are the bee's knees.

Especially when you shove a couple up your asshole before jacking off.

Here's my two cents

[rmdingler]

Before this morning, I didn't know either Lush existed (Matthew or the cosmetic company).

Seemingly, Google the omnipotent search engine has a bit of egg on its face,

but both Lush's will benefit largely from this story's exposure.

Re:Here's my two cents

[drinkypoo]

but both Lush's will benefit largely from this story's exposure.

I'm not sure that's true. Lush is positioned as an ethical brand. What's ethical about not giving back the guy's URL, which is something they have the option to do according to the story? Google says they can't do it, but the BBC story suggests that Lush Cosmetics can. If they can and they don't, they're typical immoral address-stealing shitbags, like PETA — it doesn't matter that they allegedly didn't request the change if they can hand it right back. So, can they? And if they can, will they? If not, I think the bad press will hurt them quite a bit, unlike PETA whose supporters are in favor of "victory" at any cost, including exploiting helplessly naive young women by convincing them they want to be locked up naked in cages on streetcorners. (It's photogenic as all hell, but what does it accomplish? Just production of more fap material)

Are computers taking over?

[jfbilodeau]

Since when did we decide that it's OK for computers to make those type of decisions--and not allow human beings to reverse it?

Re:Are computers taking over?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Bennett, is that you?

Re:Are computers taking over?

[Nyder]

Since when did we decide that it's OK for computers to make those type of decisions--and not allow human beings to reverse it?

It hasn't happened. It's an excuse companies are using to get away with bullshit.

Re:Are computers taking over?

[QuasiSteve]

Since when did we decide that it's OK for computers to make those type of decisions--and not allow human beings to reverse it?

Nice try, computer! Your font betrays you.

Re:Are computers taking over?

[NotInHere]

I, for one, welcome our new url overlords!

Re:Are computers taking over?

[alexhs]

Since when did we decide that it's OK for computers to make those type of decisions--and not allow human beings to reverse it?

They didn't say "computer" but "algorithm".

In fact, I can give you a sample of the algorithm actually used :

When following conditions are met :
- entity A gives you $$$$$$$ for URL X
- URL X currently belongs to entity B
- entity B gives you nothing for URL X

Then give URL X to entity A.

If entity B complains more than THRESHOLD, give it $ to shut up. (I wanted the cent sign, but even ¢ isn't accepted by slashcode)

Re:Are computers taking over?

[Translation Error]

Since "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day".

Re:Are computers taking over?

[Ravaldy]

It's really irrelevant that it's the computer deciding. Their policy is flawed right from the beginning. They wanted to make it black and white. Sorry to say but there aren't many things that are black and white when it comes to justice..

No it doesn't

[Viol8]

He registered the channel 10 years ago. Too bad if in the meantime some cosmetics firm with the same name has become successful. Perhaps every word in the english dictionary should be off limits just in case some firm comes along and wants to claim it as their own trademark eh?

Re:No it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Your calendar is a few years off. YouTube has existed for 10 years and 4 months so far.

Re:No it doesn't

[Viol8]

Thats quite a feat, subtracting 2005 from 2015 and getting 8. Hope you don't do IT for a living.

Re:No it doesn't

[I'm New Around Here]

The submitted post says that he registered his /lush in 2005. So now we are officially not reading even the post, much less the article.

Re:No it doesn't

[cdrudge]

I know RTFA is not something that happens often on /., or even reading the entire article summary. But you didn't even need to read the whole summary. The first couple of words of the first sentence of the summary would indicate you're wrong. A history of YouTube would indicate you're wrong. The YouTube WHOIS record would indicate you're wrong. YouTube itself would say you're wrong.

Re:No it doesn't

[Bongo]

Thats quite a feat, subtracting 2005 from 2015 and getting 8. Hope you don't do IT for a living.

It's an off-by-one error.

Re:No it doesn't

[sconeu]

He's just thinking in base 8. Remember, base 8 is just like base 10... if you're missing two fingers!

Re:No it doesn't

[capntao]

is that the rule of no thumbs?

Re:No it doesn't

[mwvdlee]

It's an off-by-one error.

You're off by one.

Re:No it doesn't

[jabuzz]

I think you will find the cosmetics firm has been around far longer than 10 years, a quick Google tells me that the Lush cosmetics brand has been in existence since 1995, and the company itself has an even longer history being a major supplier to the Body Shop before it took production in house.

Granted if you where not living in the UK 20 years ago you might not be aware...

Re:No it doesn't

[DutchUncle]

Sounds like something Bolton-ish from Game of Thrones . . .

Re:No it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not be sure about it, but that's a reflection on your memory, not reality.

Go do a google news search for "youtube" using a date range of 2000 to jan 1 2005. You get essentially nothing. Then do a search through all of 2005. You get a bunch of results (showing that youtube suddenly started appearing in the news in 2005). One of those search results you will find is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This is the first video uploaded to youtube, and it was April 23, 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So please feel free to be sure about anything you want, but if you want to debate this you'll need something a LOT more substantial than how sure you are about what you remember.

Re:No it doesn't

[drinkypoo]

You're off by one.

He ran into a fencepost.

Re:No it doesn't

[meerling]

Or working at a bank, or running a register, or in stocks, or a hospital, or flying a plane, or... well damn, just about any job that uses numbers in any capacity.

Re:No it doesn't

[rickb928]

All this for 5 months' difference.

Whoosh...

Re:No it doesn't

[rickb928]

How long has the person 'Lush' been around? You wanna start that war?

Re:No it doesn't

[phorm]

I bet Lisa Simpson is great at binary math!

Re:No it doesn't

[sconeu]

Sigh... nobody remembers Tom Lehrer and New Math!

Re:No it doesn't

[DrVxD]

YOMANK!

Re:No it doesn't

[Whiteox]

Anyone for Elevenis?
My Fivefathers....
I was one and a half way through the door.

Another Name / Company dispute

[cob666]

Here we go again
Nissan v Nissan

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[geekmux]

Here we go again Nissan v Nissan

Ah, no, not quite. In fact, not even close.

In this case, neither party attempting to dispute this owns the youtube.com domain.

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[elvesrus]

IANAL, but that looks like some pretty damn good precedent there

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[gnasher719]

That one is the ultimate horror story what happens when you get stupid lawyers involved. Short summary: Guy named Uzi Nissan registers and uses www.nissan.com. Nissan car company wants the URL. Lawyers get involved. Judge decides that nobody can use it.

Between reasonable people without lawyers the outcome would have been that Uzi Nissan would have received a generous amount of cash, perhaps a new car made by guess what company, and Nissan car company had used the URL. Instead, everyone lost, except possibly Nissan's lawyers who declared this a victory for Nissan (which obviously it isn't).

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge decides that nobody can use it.

It's still there, and it's still displaying Nissan Computers' page. See for yourself.

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[Bob the Super Hamste]

And today I was reminded that GeoCities style pages still exist with blinking text.

Re:Another Name / Company dispute

[Solandri]

Completely different. Uzi Nissan owned nissan.com. Nissan (the car company) owned the Nissan trademark (though it didn't begin using it in the U.S. until well after Uzi Nissan bought the nissan.com domain).

Neither Matthew Lush nor Lush Cosmetics owns www.youtube.com/lush. It's owned by YouTube (aka Google). And Google is allowed to do anything they want with the youtube.com domain. If one of YouTube's VPs has a last name Lush and wants that URL for his daughter's YouTube channel, he can take it away from these guys and there's nothing either of them can do.

If you passed out marketing materials with someone else's domain as "your" URL, it's your own damn fault if something like this happens. Spend the $10/yr to register your own domain and $20/yr for minimal hosting, and set up a 1-line redirect script so www.yourdomain.com forwards to www.youtube.com/lush (or whatever). Some domain registrars will even let you set up forwarding without you having to buy a hosting plan. TFA is like setting your blanket in a choice spot on someone else's private property to watch July 4th fireworks, then getting upset when the property owner moves your blanket and gives the spot to someone else.

Re: Why do you idiots keep putting trust in google

[AgNO3]

But but my mommy said I'm special.

Re: He didn't own the thing in the first place

[AgNO3]

I am pretty sure my willy nilly can only be seized by the church.

Huh?

[Gription]

Youtube was started in 2005. Hell Google paid over $1.5 billion for Youtube in 2006 so it was quite well established. Article starts with "In 2005 ...". It is now 2015 which makes that 10 years ago...

What are you talking about?

Re:Huh?

[masterofthumbs]

This was also a long time ago when youtube wasn't nearly as popular as it is now. I can't even imagine how much banks you'd have to rob to even get close to amount of money google would want for youtube.

This is why free is anything but.

[geekmux]

Hopefully this kind of shit will make people think twice about relying solely on free services to advertise or run a business.

Bottom line is you control a hell of a lot less of that hosted environment than you think.

Don't be a cheap ass. Buy your own domain. Then you might at least have a fighting chance (ala nissan.com)

Re:Dear Google:

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck yourselves you slimy fucking cunts.

- The Internet

Dear Freeloading Consumer,

You want control? Open your fucking wallet for once, cheap-ass.

Otherwise, enjoy your many free services and the fine print you agreed to.

Hugs and Kisses,

- The Hand that Feeds your Business

Never heard

[Goofy Android]

None of my girlfriends have heard of this brand. It's not Avon or McDonalds. With a name as generic as that, it should be first-come first served. Shame on you, Google.

Re:Never heard

[CronoCloud]

They're a prestige high-end brand like MAC, Nars, or Stila. You won't find their products at your local Walgreens. If my memory serves me well they're around the same vintage as those brands. They've been around longer than Youtube, that's for sure.

Avon's mostly crap, the good Avon stuff is in their Mark sub-brand.

Re:Never heard

[fph il quozientatore]

It's quite popular in Europe. Try to get an European girlfriend next time.

Re:Never heard

[Penguinisto]

My wife is addicted to the damned stuff.

Lush is a cosmetics company that positions itself as the uber-hippie, swears itself against animal testing and such, and promotes pretty much every costmetics-related left-leaning cause you can imagine...

...all while charging about the same prices per gram of product as, oh, I dunno... cocaine.

Re:Never heard

[DanJ_UK]

That they are.

They're an upmarket / prestigious cosmetics manufacturer started here in the UK. If you walk past a lush store you can smell it a mile away, they're known for extremely nice / strong smelling, things.

My other half loves them.

Re:Never heard

[CronoCloud]

Perhaps I should have clarified that they categorize "themselves" as a prestige brand, not that their products are actually better than what one could find at Tarjay. Of course one could say that about many prestige or department store brands...Lancome, I'm looking at you, you know I'm just going to wait for the L'Oreal/Maybelline version of your new product since it won't be overpriced as much.

Also, MAC has been on its way down.

You sound like a former AFer (alt.fashion) or MUAer.

Re:Never heard

[serviscope_minor]

...all while charging about the same prices per gram of product as, oh, I dunno... cocaine.

Nah. If you get cocaine up your nose it wears off. The smell of a Lush shop will linger for months.

Re:Never heard

[Overzeetop]

Sorry, all my girlfriends are Canadian.

Re:Never heard

[tehcyder]

It's quite popular in Europe. Try to get an European girlfriend next time.

As this is slashdot, I think that for "girlfriends" we can safely substitute "my sister and her friends".

Re:Never heard

[bondsbw]

Lush is Apple?

Re:Never heard

[drinkypoo]

They're a prestige high-end brand like MAC, Nars, or Stila.

Not really. They're a self-promoting alternahippie brand. My lady has some of their products, make of that what you will. They're "all-natural" etc etc. That's their claim to fame. That means that you don't find them in department stores, which just want maximum markup and don't give a shit if products are made out of cocoa butter, coconut fat and beeswax... or reclaimed tallow. It's just money to them. You find Lush in head shops and "full-figured" clothing stores, "international" clothing stores, places like that. Mostly places with muted lighting and trendy music.

For my part I find their products to be inoffensive (I can smell a dollar-store body-wash at twenty paces, and it makes my eyes burn and my skin crawl) but if they can and don't hand back this URL, they're a bunch of fucking fucks and I hope they fall in a hole.

Re:Never heard

[FranTaylor]

Sorry, all my girlfriends are Canadian.

so then you must be well acquainted with the word "lush"

Re:Never heard

[FranTaylor]

As this is slashdot, I think that for "girlfriends" we can safely substitute "my sister and her friends".

because slashdotters can get a sister and her friends out of a 3-d printer?

Re:Never heard

[TheCarp]

You know, in my face mashing "OMG why would anyone want to know so much about cosmetic brands" I realized something.... this is exactly what Scott Adams was talking about in one of his old Dilbert books..... "Life is too complicated to be competent all the time"

It doesn't matter what you are an expert in, there are way more things you know jack shit about than you could EVER even be the least bit competent and knowledgeable about. Its amazing how much of our consumer culture is based on this fact and particularly based on the fact that you are ignorant of many things, and each of those is an angle that can be used to sell garbage product.

We (my wife and I) recently watched a great video by a chef on vanilla ice cream, where various brands were directly compared. Its amazing how much quality can differ between brands to the point that, you really may not even be buying anything that you would normally call "vanilla" or even "ice cream" if you knew the difference.

For example, only the ones that actually mention vanilla bean or vanilla extract specifically actually even contain any vanilla, and many have so many stabilizers they don't even melt....and this wasn't "ice cream" it was just a single flavor they compared.

Re:Never heard

[CronoCloud]

You know, in my face mashing "OMG why would anyone want to know so much about cosmetic brands"

Slashdot is the last place one would ever suspect they'd see a comment about makeup brands. ;-)

this is exactly what Scott Adams was talking about in one of his old Dilbert books..... "Life is too complicated to be competent all the time"

Indeed.

It doesn't matter what you are an expert in, there are way more things you know jack shit about than you could EVER even be the least bit competent and knowledgeable about. Its amazing how much of our consumer culture is based on this fact and particularly based on the fact that you are ignorant of many things, and each of those is an angle that can be used to sell garbage product.

I've ran into this tech gear for sure (video cards, mixers, HOTAS), all sorts of things that you almost have to be an expert in to do any informed shopping.

many have so many stabilizers they don't even melt..

What? I knew about the vanilla thing but not that! Do I need a PHD in ice cream to buy non-crap ice cream these days, it's bad enough with tech. The more you know!

Re:Never heard

[TheCarp]

> What? I knew about the vanilla thing but not that! Do I need a PHD in ice cream to buy non-crap ice cream
> these days, it's bad enough with tech. The more you know!

One amusing thing was that the video (if I wasn't in the office I would find it) named names, and as my wife said "Of course the winner was Ben and Jerry's, anyone from the Boston area could have told you they make some of the best Ice Cream around". (although, I have seen some no name store brands that list real ingredients too).

The thing that shocked me wasn't who was best, but how far down the spiritual path of "Bait and Switch" we have gone, and not just a little bit, or in one area, but everywhere. Its not just treats, its not even just food products. We even have $200 headphones that are really $20 jobbers with metal weights inside (Beats, of course).

Or to really go back a ways...... as the old song goes....

I've lived all my life in this weird wonderland;
I keep buying things that I don't understand,
'Cause they promise me miracles, magic, and hope,
But, somehow, it always turns out to be soap.

So maybe its not all that new a problem.

Re:Never heard

[N1AK]

For example, only the ones that actually mention vanilla bean or vanilla extract specifically actually even contain any vanilla, and many have so many stabilizers they don't even melt....and this wasn't "ice cream" it was just a single flavor they compared.

It's one of the things I've never gotten about America. Mickey Mouse has to be defended to ensure only the real Disney thing exists forever (it seems) but it's perfectly ok for something labelled chocolate to not be chocolate, or for something labelled as Champagne to not be from Champagne or even made using the correct method...

Re:Never heard

[barc0001]

If your girlfriends are Canadian and haven't heard of Lush in the last 20 years, I would question their Canadian credentials. There have been Lush stores in major cities for at least 25 years. Hell, if you get within 50 meters of them you can find your way there with your eyes closed by following the increasingly overpowering soapy aroma of their bath bombs.

Re:Never heard

[TheCarp]

I wish I could say I don't get it, fact is there are too many people, and the power to make policy in the hands of so few that its all gamed and nothing really matters.

We have a "country" of 300 million people with a federal government setting international policy....made up of all of ~500 elected positions. Of course it is completely gamed and owned, its almost a given at that point.

About the only saving grace is what remains of the protections that the founders wrote in for fear of falling afoul of their own creation, and even those are slowly being eroded away. We have free speech zones and can be denied a trial indefinitely....hell our police can avoid evidence laws by faking how they found information and even openly call the practice legal.

Overall its so broken its basically unfixable in its current form.

Re:Never heard

[AK Marc]

My two favorite brands are Braum's and Ben and Jerry's. Braum's is cheap and local (at least was when I could get it). B&J is premium. Braum's is priced about the same as the generics in chain grocery stores, but was so much better. http://www.braums.com/ice-crea... was one of my favorites.

I've not heard of an ice cream that didn't melt.

The funny thing about psychology is that people value things more if others do, so Monster cable is worth more to the average person because if it wasn't better, they wouldn't charge 10x the other cables, right? Exclusivity is value, even if the exclusivity is false.

Re:Never heard

[TheCarp]

I made a similar point recently with the suicide girls picture incident where some guy made a huge print of a suicide girls pic he downloaded and sold it at an art show for $90k, and all I could think was....the dude who paid 90k got exactly what he paid for.....he paid 90k to have people tell him he has an eye for art and is a patron of the arts. That is what is was worth to him.

Then the suicide girls priceless response, to make their own prints of the same size and sell them for $90; because why not?

Cool URLs vs Uncool Companies

[Mats Svensson]

Cool URLs never change. Yet another part of the Internet, that Google just don't get. Remember when they bought DejaNews, and proceeded to break every single URL on the web that lead to news-postings? Fuck noobs that break the web.

Re:Cool URLs vs Uncool Companies

[DerekLyons]

Remember when they bought DejaNews, and proceeded to break every single URL on the web that lead to news-postings?

That's not the worst of it - they've also repeatedly (and pointlessly) molested the corpse, and broken the links leading to GoogleNews (or whateverthehell it's called nowadays) postings of Usenet content.

This redirecting of an existing URL is just more of a disturbingly familiar pattern, Google knows better than us. Just ask them.

GO HOME YOUTUBE, YOU'RE DRUNK

[idbeholda]

Seriously, they could have at least picked a different account name other than "LUSH".

Not possible to reverse because bribery

[Khyber]

Lush was a failing company that practically bribed its way back into some sort of social relevance.

You can almost bet top dollar that money exchanged hands between them and Google.

Good old google

[Revek]

Slightly more evil all the time.

Re:He didn't own the thing in the first place

[barlevg]

I just think about all the folks I've seen who've had their accounts unceremoniously deleted by Youtube due to unspecified "copyright violations." Years' worth of content, gone in an instant (make backups, folks!). Big reason to get "partnered," because then your affiliate network usually has the ability to make Youtube give two fucks. But yeah, building a business on top of Youtube is a bad idea.

Re:haha

[geekmux]

My favorite part: "and insists that it is not possible to reverse the unrequested change"

Translation: The check already cleared.

Don't be a sharecropper

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Google is evil for making a change and then bullshitting the public about not being able to change it back.

At the same time, Matthew Lush only has himself to blame for being part of the Google ecosystem. He's being a sharecropper, don't do that. Buy your own domain name; embed the video and don't just rely on Google. Money talks and this was going to happen sooner or later. And this will happen thousands more times, always to the little guy. Meanwhile, this essay by Tim Bray remains as relevant as ever.

The language have changed, but the lesson remains. If you rely on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple. What they give, they can take away. That doesn't mean to not use them, but it does mean going in with your eyes wide open that their business model is not always in your own personal interest. That you are indeed a sharecropper. And that if it's really that important for you, take some damn personal responsibility and have a backup plan.

Re:How many times do we have to say it...

[91degrees]

so?

Not being under any legal obligation does not mean they are not immune to criticism for behavior that is considered poor form.

youtube.com/Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should create a youtube channel like Google2 or something then we can all get together to subscribe to it and maybe eventually the algorithm will give us /Google instead.

Then we can replace all our videos with goatse.

Google giveth, Google taketh away.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Everything in that site is owned by google. User lush never owned anything, never paid for anything. Google just allowed the user to use the URL for a while and then they took it away.

Let it be a lesson to anyone who builds something on any free site. It will be yours only as long as it remains small.

Who's discretion?

[Holi]

So wait. Google took the url from him and gave it to Lush, but it's up to Lush to give it back. Isn't that a big ole FUCK YOU from Google.

Use Your Own Domain

[Jason Levine]

If you are promoting a link, it's always best to use your own domain. Even if it just redirects to another URL. Suppose you post videos under the name "VideoGuy." You could register the domain name "VideoGuy.com" and promote "YouTube.VideoGuy.com" which redirects to "youtube.com/VideoGuy". Then, if Google decides to give your URL to someone else and you need to change to "youtube.com/VideoGuy2", you can change your redirect but keep promoting your "YouTube.VideoGuy.com" URL. This would also work if you decide to move off of YouTube to go to another service. You could do the same for Twitter, Facebook, etc. This way, you are constantly putting your main website ("VideoGuy.com") in front of users instead of other services' sites.

First initial, last name: take away those too?

[DutchUncle]

How many email addresses are out there with first-initial-last-name, and how many mistaken (or fraudulent) emails are they getting because people guessed? People lazily searched for "lush" and picked the first option, not even noticing the difference between "lush" and "lush band" and "lush cosmetics"; Google noticed the second-search activity and switched order. If Google feels OK doing that, how long before they give away jdoe's email address to some other john doe?

Google is lying

[Khashishi]

Some algorithm reassigned the url and they can't change it? Sounds like bullshit. Google reassigned it for a reason... perhaps Lush Cosmetics paid them or something.

Re:Google is lying

[bongey]

"We are 1 billion dollar company" is the line Lush Cosmetics said in a conference call with Mike Lush, so it might be the case the "algorithm" is web form plus who pays the most.

Seriously?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"...insists that it is not possible to reverse the unrequested change"

Yeah, because it's impossible to edit a database. I mean, once it's changed then it's changed forever. Everyone who knows anything about databases knows this.

Re:He didn't own the thing in the first place

[FranTaylor]

they all got what they paid for

Re:He didn't own the thing in the first place

[barlevg]

Youtube isn't hosting videos out of the kindness of their hearts--they get huge chunks of ad revenue, little of which they share with content creators. So, while no one is paying for hosting, Youtube isn't exactly being philanthropic.

Re:haha

[DrVxD]

Mod parent "+1 - it's not cynicism when it's true"

Re:He didn't own the thing in the first place

[david_thornley]

Of course they make money on it. How else would they stay in business? However, if there's no contract with consideration on both sides, there's no legal commitment.

Re:He didn't own the thing in the first place

[barlevg]

Of course not. No one's talking about Youtube's LEGAL obligations here. But it's important to say, "This behavior is unacceptable," and then discuss taking our content elsewhere (Vimeo?).

The secret algorithm is...

[slashdotwannabe]

urlOwner = userARevenue > userBRevenue ? userA : userB;