Seems somewhat true, but I assume the cost of paying for a referral is generally higher than the cost of perceived lower conversion rank in the display algorithms.
So users would have an incentive to have a reasonable converstion rate, but they would probably benefit financially from shaving off as many referrals as they can.
GBuy would allow Google to verify any purchases that were made with GBuy, but it seems like one problem they'll run into is how to make sure that users aren't diverted to other payment methods. If site has a 5% conversion rate, it seems like it would be a challenge to keep them from directing most of that 5% to some other payment method.
I assume Google will probably have to enforce most of this through contracts and some policing, and probably just have to eat the cost of acquisitions that they refer but don't get credit for.
When I preview the new Mail functionality on the front page (the preview only works in IE) I see the new interface. When I actually log in (with an old account or with a new test account) I get the old interface. Is anyone seeing the new interface? Man, this whole thing blows. Especially in FireFox.
Who are you accusing a double standard though? I don't see the Bush administration particularly concerned about Google or Yahoo's role in China. It seems they would be more concerned about capitalism "flourishing" than China asking for this info.
They are both bad positions, but they seem consistent.
In a sense that seems totally reasonable. Capitalism generally doesn't have the benefits of an auction model where the people who really value a product (or have a lot of money/resources) can subsidize the experience for those who don't. So for people who really wish things are cheaper, they can get things for a lower price at the expense of those who are more indifferent and won't go through the hassle of mailing in a coupon for $30.
And whether or not Google has direct influence of China's access policies, they certainly influence the world's perception of the the ethicalness of obeying them.
If Google had chosen to refuse business in China as statement, it would certainly put pressure on MSN and Yahoo. It might be good for their stocks, but it would certainly be bad for their P.R. and make it more difficult for other visible companies to make compromises in China. This doesn't make the decision easy or obvious, but Google is certainly not powerless to influence policy in one direction or another. And how ever big this influence is, the direction they chose was to the benefit, not detriment of censorship.
And we can't forget that the information the government is censoring allows them to get away with human rights violations. Theis is a much worse scenario than the censorship scenarios we usually discuss in the U.S. (porn for example).
But the problem is not that clever people can't find accurate information about Tienamen Square if they do some clever search sleuthing, its that the government has censored this information from as many mainstream channels as possible. None of this information is fully protected from citizens in China, but being able to keep dissent out of most mainstream channels (print, television, radio, top results on major search engines) has a huge affect on the perception of the government's human rights violations and facilitates their continued practices.
And it also exposes listeners to the very best that they have to offer and gets potential students excited about the possibility of their entire experience being this well taught. "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" and well as some of the others are considered some of the most interesting lectures on campus and are often presented in forums outside of the classroom. And listening to these gems might keep people from realizing that if they posted "Powerpoint Physics Lecture by Bored Uber-Genius #22", they wouldn't be in for such a treat.
No, because I also don't think France or Germany is being "evil" by disallowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia. While I am glad we do not have this limitation in the U.S., the disservice it does to German and French citizens is miniscule compared to the affects of the Chinese governments laws on its citizens human rights. While doing business in China is not as evil as these particular Chinese laws, serving as a censor for the Chinese government is much much more evil than agreeing to not facilitate the sale of nazi memorabilia.
Its a relevant analogy, but it fails to support your point since the crux of our arguments is not that Google should never compromise anything to do business, but that they should not be this evil to do business.
A company cease to do business in a country when performing this business passes a certain threshold of compromised morality. Most people on this thread seem to think that the Chinese have requested Google go past this threshold. In your example, you lowered the bar significantly. While the situations could be called analagous, most of us are arguing that the Chinese side of the analogy is a much graver moral compromise than just turning over untraceable search results.
"or watch someone else do it, to the exact same effect, except you don't get the money."
Yep, that's how ethics work. Not that it would be easy to do, but if something is determined to be "evil", it doesn't mean that it is evil only for the first person to do it.
Whether its "evil" is debatable, but whether they have a choice is not.
I have to disagree with the people who are arguing that Yahoo's and MSN's presences in China make this a non-issue for Google. By censoring results they are relieving a great deal of pressure from Yahoo and MSN by reinforcing the "not so evil" nature of being beholdent to the Chinese governments request. While I recognize that few people here would have the balls to put their multibillion dollar corporation on the line for this, its an unethical decision either way.
Imagine if they had decided to allow the Chinese government to block their search servers. There would be big headlines tomorrow about how Google took the ethical approach while leaving MSN and Yahoo to compromise their ethics for making money. It would be great P.R. for Google and bad P.R. for MSN and Yahoo. Even if it wouldn't directly change the Chinese government's policy, it would put more pressure on MSN, Yahoo, and any other company put in a position to compromise their ethics to make money in China.
You could interpret there comments that way. They know they will remain Avis, yet they will try harder because of it. But with the hope to be number one.
But maybe Avis expects to be number one real soon.
Glad it was helpful. I didn't mean to imply I'd assume everyone would know about it, but in a past discussions there are a lot of people who know about it who still compare the Yahoo Front Page to the Google Front/Search Page. Admittedly, the style of the front page affects other parts of Yahoo as well, but it seems the search front pages are pretty comparable on Yahoo and Google.
Its been said many times before, but I might as well point out again that http://search.yahoo.com/ provides the same interface as Google.
The philosophy of the front page does affect other areas of the site, but the lack of a clean search front page would be resolved by search.yahoo.com if that were your only reason to switch.
I think it is important encourage posters to reread their posts for grammatical and spelling errors so that they can also catch errors that might actually confuse readers. When I spell check my posts, I sometimes catching places where I typed the wrong word or transposing two words that make the sentence confusing. I'm trying to stick to my habit of rereading everything I post.
I guess to respond to the Bush-Cheney point (which I would certainly still support, though throwing it out there rather casually does come from being insulated in an environment of disdain for this administration). But to be more specific, I was referring to the campaigns success in creating an association between Kerry's intellectual nature and speaking style and general sentiments of distrust. They successfully took a president who made a point of avoiding information more than any president in recent memory and acting on his gut and were able to use these traits as selling points. It seems there are a lot of people who think there is a strong correlation between how much you would want a particular person at your BBQ and how much you would want that person in your Oval Office. This approach was perceived to have a lot of resonance with Americans, and good or bad, I think its fair to say that if what we describe as "anti-intellectualism" was not as strong in America, this approach would have been less successful.
I do agree that many accusations of "anti-intellectualism" are rooted in a form of elitism, though just because the E-word has a negative connotation, I don't regard it as negatively as some. Critics of anti-intellectualism (like myself) don't believe that people with less education or a less intellectual/analytical approach are as suited to solve many problems compared to those who are more educated or more intellectual/analytical. This is exemplified in the ID arguments by the general perception that religious authorities are just as valid judges of what constitutes science as those who practice science. Or that presidents who make a point of ignoring information and viewpoints that conflict with their own are just as well suited to make decisions as presidents who don't try and shield themselves from information that conflicts with their guts.
There was an interesting article in Rolling Stone about ID ( http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/80 92015 ) that argued that the ID proponents big secret was that their intentions were religious and they didn't truly respect the scientific process and looked upon scientists with distrust, but that the other side's big secret was that they didn't truly respect religious viewpoints and looked upon religious people with disdain.
So I agree it is a problem when "pro-intellectuals" have disdain for people they deem less educated or informed. But even if we all may be in the same big boat of humanity, personally, I'd rather not have many of the smaller points such as science and foreign policy sink because we are afraid to admit that we'd rather have people who are educated about sailing captain these boats.
Well one big difference is that the number of people in American society who dress up for Star Trek Conventions is smaller by many orders of magnitudes than the number of people who dress up for Fotoball games.
Not everyone has passion, but more importantly the level of passion for traditional interests like baseball still has much more breadth and depth than baseball.
I agree the geek is "more" chic, especially in certain tech-conscious areas like the valley, but I think the article and this post perceive it to be a much more significant trend than is justified by the info provided.
And to look at it from another perspective, I think modern politics have reflected an increase in anti-intellectualism. This was most apparent in the success of the the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign and an antagonism towards science the Intelligent Design issue seems to have espoused/surfaced. And while geeks might not value the "cultured" aspect of intellectualism, they still seem to be pro-intellectual.
While ads might make advertisers, stations, and Google a lot of money, I don't see how better advertisements could save radio in general. I think radio is the antithesis of recent trends for consumers to want a lot more control of their media and though media such as film and television currently don't provide a ton of control (though TiVo changed this somewhat), they also have the added benefit of good content. Yes, television is mostly crap and there are a lot of bad films, but until very recently the only legal ways to watch films and television were through the dominant mediums (the actual television, DVD, and theaters). Radio doesn't offer any uniqueness in this regard, except for talk radio.
I guess is Google can establish contextual advertising when these mediums are phasing, they could be setting themselves up as a major provider for whatever these mediums are replaced with.
Then again, I could be projecting my communities onto the larger world too much (being a software developer in the San Francisco Bay Area where iPods have been described as the closest thing we have to religion). Either way, its always interesting to watch what good does when they enter a new market.
While I can imagine a **AA executive making this argument, it seems pretty weak coming from a consumer or a consumer-focused company like Google. To say, "we'll inconvenience people who are paying us good money so that we can stay a minor step ahead of the hackers" seems very unfriendly, especially for Google. Incompatible formats and restrictive DRM are at the top of users lists of web-related headaches (along with spam, popups, and spyware) and I think Google needs a much much better reason to make this problem worse.
Though they have certainly been highly critical of this type of relationship when discussing Yahoo's Search Submit Pro program (used to be called Overture's Site Match xChange, used to be called Inktomi's Paid Inclusion). They made a big point that even have inclusion relationships with content providers tainted you search results, even if they didn't influence ranking.
Though you acknowledge the "whole moral debate", I think it is pretty key. AdSense is absolutely huge and the decisions Google makes change the face of the Internet. So if Google makes banner ads a large part of AdSense, even if it will be turned off, they will be responsble for making the Internet more flashy in exactly the ways they think are detrimental to users.
I do agree that its not exactly reprehensible, but just like popup ad providers, their decision will have a significant impact on the user experience for every Internet user.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems somewhat true, but I assume the cost of paying for a referral is generally higher than the cost of perceived lower conversion rank in the display algorithms.
So users would have an incentive to have a reasonable converstion rate, but they would probably benefit financially from shaving off as many referrals as they can.
GBuy would allow Google to verify any purchases that were made with GBuy, but it seems like one problem they'll run into is how to make sure that users aren't diverted to other payment methods. If site has a 5% conversion rate, it seems like it would be a challenge to keep them from directing most of that 5% to some other payment method.
I assume Google will probably have to enforce most of this through contracts and some policing, and probably just have to eat the cost of acquisitions that they refer but don't get credit for.
Try doing an Image Search for "porn"
This query has triggered our safe search filter. Flexible settings are coming soon.
Luckily the same thing doesn't happen for "tianamen square"
When I preview the new Mail functionality on the front page (the preview only works in IE) I see the new interface. When I actually log in (with an old account or with a new test account) I get the old interface. Is anyone seeing the new interface? Man, this whole thing blows. Especially in FireFox.
The new Yahoo maps allows as many points as you'd like.
Does Measure Map provide demographic information? I thought it only provided IP-based geographic information.
Who are you accusing a double standard though? I don't see the Bush administration particularly concerned about Google or Yahoo's role in China. It seems they would be more concerned about capitalism "flourishing" than China asking for this info.
They are both bad positions, but they seem consistent.
In a sense that seems totally reasonable. Capitalism generally doesn't have the benefits of an auction model where the people who really value a product (or have a lot of money/resources) can subsidize the experience for those who don't. So for people who really wish things are cheaper, they can get things for a lower price at the expense of those who are more indifferent and won't go through the hassle of mailing in a coupon for $30.
And whether or not Google has direct influence of China's access policies, they certainly influence the world's perception of the the ethicalness of obeying them.
If Google had chosen to refuse business in China as statement, it would certainly put pressure on MSN and Yahoo. It might be good for their stocks, but it would certainly be bad for their P.R. and make it more difficult for other visible companies to make compromises in China. This doesn't make the decision easy or obvious, but Google is certainly not powerless to influence policy in one direction or another. And how ever big this influence is, the direction they chose was to the benefit, not detriment of censorship.
And we can't forget that the information the government is censoring allows them to get away with human rights violations. Theis is a much worse scenario than the censorship scenarios we usually discuss in the U.S. (porn for example).
But the problem is not that clever people can't find accurate information about Tienamen Square if they do some clever search sleuthing, its that the government has censored this information from as many mainstream channels as possible. None of this information is fully protected from citizens in China, but being able to keep dissent out of most mainstream channels (print, television, radio, top results on major search engines) has a huge affect on the perception of the government's human rights violations and facilitates their continued practices.
And it also exposes listeners to the very best that they have to offer and gets potential students excited about the possibility of their entire experience being this well taught. "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" and well as some of the others are considered some of the most interesting lectures on campus and are often presented in forums outside of the classroom. And listening to these gems might keep people from realizing that if they posted "Powerpoint Physics Lecture by Bored Uber-Genius #22", they wouldn't be in for such a treat.
No, because I also don't think France or Germany is being "evil" by disallowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia. While I am glad we do not have this limitation in the U.S., the disservice it does to German and French citizens is miniscule compared to the affects of the Chinese governments laws on its citizens human rights. While doing business in China is not as evil as these particular Chinese laws, serving as a censor for the Chinese government is much much more evil than agreeing to not facilitate the sale of nazi memorabilia.
Its a relevant analogy, but it fails to support your point since the crux of our arguments is not that Google should never compromise anything to do business, but that they should not be this evil to do business.
A company cease to do business in a country when performing this business passes a certain threshold of compromised morality. Most people on this thread seem to think that the Chinese have requested Google go past this threshold. In your example, you lowered the bar significantly. While the situations could be called analagous, most of us are arguing that the Chinese side of the analogy is a much graver moral compromise than just turning over untraceable search results.
"or watch someone else do it, to the exact same effect, except you don't get the money."
Yep, that's how ethics work. Not that it would be easy to do, but if something is determined to be "evil", it doesn't mean that it is evil only for the first person to do it.
Whether its "evil" is debatable, but whether they have a choice is not.
I have to disagree with the people who are arguing that Yahoo's and MSN's presences in China make this a non-issue for Google. By censoring results they are relieving a great deal of pressure from Yahoo and MSN by reinforcing the "not so evil" nature of being beholdent to the Chinese governments request. While I recognize that few people here would have the balls to put their multibillion dollar corporation on the line for this, its an unethical decision either way.
Imagine if they had decided to allow the Chinese government to block their search servers. There would be big headlines tomorrow about how Google took the ethical approach while leaving MSN and Yahoo to compromise their ethics for making money. It would be great P.R. for Google and bad P.R. for MSN and Yahoo. Even if it wouldn't directly change the Chinese government's policy, it would put more pressure on MSN, Yahoo, and any other company put in a position to compromise their ethics to make money in China.
You could interpret there comments that way. They know they will remain Avis, yet they will try harder because of it. But with the hope to be number one.
But maybe Avis expects to be number one real soon.
Glad it was helpful. I didn't mean to imply I'd assume everyone would know about it, but in a past discussions there are a lot of people who know about it who still compare the Yahoo Front Page to the Google Front/Search Page. Admittedly, the style of the front page affects other parts of Yahoo as well, but it seems the search front pages are pretty comparable on Yahoo and Google.
Its been said many times before, but I might as well point out again that http://search.yahoo.com/ provides the same interface as Google.
The philosophy of the front page does affect other areas of the site, but the lack of a clean search front page would be resolved by search.yahoo.com if that were your only reason to switch.
I think it is important encourage posters to reread their posts for grammatical and spelling errors so that they can also catch errors that might actually confuse readers. When I spell check my posts, I sometimes catching places where I typed the wrong word or transposing two words that make the sentence confusing. I'm trying to stick to my habit of rereading everything I post.
Great response. Much appreciated.
0 92015 ) that argued that the ID proponents big secret was that their intentions were religious and they didn't truly respect the scientific process and looked upon scientists with distrust, but that the other side's big secret was that they didn't truly respect religious viewpoints and looked upon religious people with disdain.
I guess to respond to the Bush-Cheney point (which I would certainly still support, though throwing it out there rather casually does come from being insulated in an environment of disdain for this administration). But to be more specific, I was referring to the campaigns success in creating an association between Kerry's intellectual nature and speaking style and general sentiments of distrust. They successfully took a president who made a point of avoiding information more than any president in recent memory and acting on his gut and were able to use these traits as selling points. It seems there are a lot of people who think there is a strong correlation between how much you would want a particular person at your BBQ and how much you would want that person in your Oval Office. This approach was perceived to have a lot of resonance with Americans, and good or bad, I think its fair to say that if what we describe as "anti-intellectualism" was not as strong in America, this approach would have been less successful.
I do agree that many accusations of "anti-intellectualism" are rooted in a form of elitism, though just because the E-word has a negative connotation, I don't regard it as negatively as some. Critics of anti-intellectualism (like myself) don't believe that people with less education or a less intellectual/analytical approach are as suited to solve many problems compared to those who are more educated or more intellectual/analytical. This is exemplified in the ID arguments by the general perception that religious authorities are just as valid judges of what constitutes science as those who practice science. Or that presidents who make a point of ignoring information and viewpoints that conflict with their own are just as well suited to make decisions as presidents who don't try and shield themselves from information that conflicts with their guts.
There was an interesting article in Rolling Stone about ID ( http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8
So I agree it is a problem when "pro-intellectuals" have disdain for people they deem less educated or informed. But even if we all may be in the same big boat of humanity, personally, I'd rather not have many of the smaller points such as science and foreign policy sink because we are afraid to admit that we'd rather have people who are educated about sailing captain these boats.
Well one big difference is that the number of people in American society who dress up for Star Trek Conventions is smaller by many orders of magnitudes than the number of people who dress up for Fotoball games.
Not everyone has passion, but more importantly the level of passion for traditional interests like baseball still has much more breadth and depth than baseball.
I agree the geek is "more" chic, especially in certain tech-conscious areas like the valley, but I think the article and this post perceive it to be a much more significant trend than is justified by the info provided.
And to look at it from another perspective, I think modern politics have reflected an increase in anti-intellectualism. This was most apparent in the success of the the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign and an antagonism towards science the Intelligent Design issue seems to have espoused/surfaced. And while geeks might not value the "cultured" aspect of intellectualism, they still seem to be pro-intellectual.
While ads might make advertisers, stations, and Google a lot of money, I don't see how better advertisements could save radio in general. I think radio is the antithesis of recent trends for consumers to want a lot more control of their media and though media such as film and television currently don't provide a ton of control (though TiVo changed this somewhat), they also have the added benefit of good content. Yes, television is mostly crap and there are a lot of bad films, but until very recently the only legal ways to watch films and television were through the dominant mediums (the actual television, DVD, and theaters). Radio doesn't offer any uniqueness in this regard, except for talk radio.
I guess is Google can establish contextual advertising when these mediums are phasing, they could be setting themselves up as a major provider for whatever these mediums are replaced with.
Then again, I could be projecting my communities onto the larger world too much (being a software developer in the San Francisco Bay Area where iPods have been described as the closest thing we have to religion). Either way, its always interesting to watch what good does when they enter a new market.
While I can imagine a **AA executive making this argument, it seems pretty weak coming from a consumer or a consumer-focused company like Google. To say, "we'll inconvenience people who are paying us good money so that we can stay a minor step ahead of the hackers" seems very unfriendly, especially for Google. Incompatible formats and restrictive DRM are at the top of users lists of web-related headaches (along with spam, popups, and spyware) and I think Google needs a much much better reason to make this problem worse.
Though they have certainly been highly critical of this type of relationship when discussing Yahoo's Search Submit Pro program (used to be called Overture's Site Match xChange, used to be called Inktomi's Paid Inclusion). They made a big point that even have inclusion relationships with content providers tainted you search results, even if they didn't influence ranking.
Though you acknowledge the "whole moral debate", I think it is pretty key. AdSense is absolutely huge and the decisions Google makes change the face of the Internet. So if Google makes banner ads a large part of AdSense, even if it will be turned off, they will be responsble for making the Internet more flashy in exactly the ways they think are detrimental to users.
I do agree that its not exactly reprehensible, but just like popup ad providers, their decision will have a significant impact on the user experience for every Internet user.