It's funny that Google is publishing this. I work in the ad tech industry and Google did this to us 3 months ago, in order to connect to ad exchange
Signed contracts of about 200 pages long, including really long NDAs
Took $35k deposit
Put us through Dev / Testing Cycle including a few hundred million hits each day for about a month.
After spending 3 months on it, they said that we were profiling user data (which we were not - it was an ignorant mistake on our part in checking an item YES in the contract rather than NO). We pleaded, begged and argued with no merit.
Google blocked us from accessing their ad exchange ..
In the meanwhile...Google does user profiling openly, mining search queries, Google+, Google Maps and everything else available at their disposal, including the kind of apps that you open on your phones (non android included, thanks to Admob).
It seems to me that they are deliberately blocking any fair competition in the marketplace. If this is not a monopoly, then what is this supposed to be?
"For every search query performed on Google, whether it’s [hotels in Tulsa] or [New York Yankees scores], there are thousands, if not millions of web pages with helpful information."
True.
But there is exactly one Trade Winds Central Inn in Tulsa.
If I look for [hotels in Tulsa] right now, the name of that inn is prominently displayed in the "Hotels in Tulsa on Google" box. Clicking the name will lead not to a page about the inn but to a page of search results where that specific inn is again prominently displayed at the top. Clicking that link will bring a booking page where Expedia, Priceline and multiple others bid on providing booking service for that specific inn.
And if I scroll all the way to the bottom of that page I find a little link: http://www.tradewindstulsa.com/ That's the the one vital link for that one little inn in central Tulsa, Arizona.
The "algorithm" placed the name of the inn on the top of the front page. Then it placed the actual link two clicks deep and at the bottom. The "algorithm" is not stupid...
If you're looking for "hotels in Tulsa", you almost certainly want to book a hotel. Hotel booking sites seems like good search results.
If you're looking for "Trade Winds Central Inn in Tulsa", the first result, after one ad, is www.tradewindstulsa.com/.
Yes, Google displays a lot of ads sometimes. But those sometimes are almost always when you are looking to purchase something, and Google works hard to make sure those ads are things you're interested in purchasing.
Maybe I'm just a cynical, skeptical bastard, but if you have to actively state that you have serious competition, then I can quite reasonably assume that you are, in fact, a total monopoly.
Welcome to the Ministry of Truth, my friends. Let the doublethink engulf your senses, and may the newspeak slip off your tongue, for it is clear that Big Brother is watching, and it appears that he is deathly afraid of the EU. May the DOJ have mercy on his soul.
I work at http://samuru.com we have about 70% unique searches. With out the hordes of default install users who type in the product slogan of every commercial, or try to get the Jeopardy questions before the clock runs out, we don't have a great cache hit ratio.
Combine this with the fact that Google is doing more and more to get Cache Collisions in their results (returning results that don't contain all the words in your search because it deemed word unimportant, or using synonyms) and it is hard to compete on speed.
That's why we don't. We compete on the idea we have better results.
Interestingly, I searched "android securerandom" on both, and Google has the first result as the javadoc and the second as a blog post explaining a serious vulnerability in it and how to mitigate it.
The same search on samuru has no results about the vulnerability.
Was using Samuru from July - half September this year. While I applaud the way it just searches for what I ask for, no more no less, there was just one major issue that made me turn to DDG: loads too slow. The way I use it is as default search engine in Opera. So to search, I do Ctrl-T, start typing query, hit Enter. After the Enter it sometimes took more than 5 seconds to show the results. I don't know why that is but it's just too long in comparision with others, sorry. It seems better now, but it's still slower than the competition.
Completely off topic, but why can't I keep the page zoomed out far enough to view the entire width of a paragraph? I'm on my iPhone; is Google doing something screwy to fuck with iOS users?
I wonder how many of them are literally "new", as in, "What cures a hang over" versus "What cures a hangover", and how many of them are "new" by the time Google's computer breaks it into a normalized query? I guess to the engineers designing that process, it's all new data that their algorithm has to deal with. But it'd be interesting to see the vitality of the search for new concepts and knowledge among Google's users.
One measure of "newness" is if the top 10 results are the same as other queries. After all, if two queries produce the same list of results, then aren't they the effectively the same query? I doubt that's what's being used here, though.
This is a classic "made for regulators" set of pages. The title lets regulators know that it's for them, but the content has to explain Google's business as simply and positively as possible. You'll also notice that when you click through each of the pages, almost every criticism that could be lobbed at Google by a 3rd party is countered in some way.
Also note that the page came about mid-2011, around the same time when Microsoft was beating their "Google is a monopoly" drum.
Google: "15% of the searches we see everyday we've never seen before."
The linked page does come from Google's "Facts about Google and Competition", but the section "About Search" appears to be interesting for broader reasons.
This is a response to http://www.fairsearch.org/ which was created by a coalition of Google's competitors to try to convince governments to regulate Google.
Interesting, I searched for "engine oil" and I don't get anything about fish oil in 5 first pages of results. First two hits are the most relevant as well - wikipedia entries.
I feel Google will get replaced soon. The fact that search is getting more personalised is hurting me more than anything else. We dont get unbiased results. The User experience will definitely die down with this !!!
I've been trying to ween myself off search engines, and rather search directly from within specific websites:
Wikipedia - general information
StackOverflow - programming
IMDB - actors/movies
etc...
Obviously finding those websites in the 1st place requires a search engine or index of some kind, but I'm getting faster results going directly to the source :)
The whole 'algorithms do the ranking' thing is a misdirection. Algorithms do of course rank pages, but they do so according to criteria chosen by humans employed by Google. Google absolutely chooses which pages rank highly and which do not according to their own subjective human judgement, applied by machine. It is disingenuous of them to pretend otherwise.
Can you give a concrete example of this? What 'criteria' is chosen by humans? Do you mean stuff like are the key terms in the h1 tags? I would still consider that an algorithm doing the ranking, and PageRank also is the major factor in deciding what gets returned, and though a human wrote the mathematics, they aren't scoring each page individually to quantify the value of each link.
It feels like something is wrong with your comment. I'm pretty sure that Google does something what looks more like A/B testing than law making process. That basically means that you should have some magic power to guess how adjusting one parameter (I don't even speak about multiple) will affect final result. Could you guess how mathematical attractors will behave by changing some parameters? Are you sure Google hires super geniuses that can guess weather? If they do why Google has not released they weather prognosis service yet that would wipe-out all competition from the scene?
While I wont speak for gibwell, I'm interpreting what is saying that Google do set the criteria of what metrics deem a higher or lower ranking page.
For example:
- More time users spend on a page indicates it's more relevant
- More high quality inbound links indicates higher quality content
- Content seen as spammy are considered can lower page rank
The fact is that Google don't discriminate based on the rules they set out within their algorithm. When Google say their algorithm does the choosing, it does, but it's the same algorithm used across the whole internet, giving a fair competitive landscape. That's the theory at least.
Oh no, you are wrong. Machine learning algorithms that are used by Google learn by observing behaviours of users and the results of this learning is essentially a black box of parameters and weights for the target function.
Certainly they analyze the data and add some parameters manually, for example, manual review process but most of the work is done in the opaque black box.
So your statement that "Google absolutely chooses which pages rank highly and which do not according to their own subjective human judgement" is not accurate.
[+] [-] azifali|12 years ago|reply
Signed contracts of about 200 pages long, including really long NDAs Took $35k deposit Put us through Dev / Testing Cycle including a few hundred million hits each day for about a month. After spending 3 months on it, they said that we were profiling user data (which we were not - it was an ignorant mistake on our part in checking an item YES in the contract rather than NO). We pleaded, begged and argued with no merit. Google blocked us from accessing their ad exchange ..
In the meanwhile...Google does user profiling openly, mining search queries, Google+, Google Maps and everything else available at their disposal, including the kind of apps that you open on your phones (non android included, thanks to Admob).
It seems to me that they are deliberately blocking any fair competition in the marketplace. If this is not a monopoly, then what is this supposed to be?
[+] [-] ronilan|12 years ago|reply
True.
But there is exactly one Trade Winds Central Inn in Tulsa.
If I look for [hotels in Tulsa] right now, the name of that inn is prominently displayed in the "Hotels in Tulsa on Google" box. Clicking the name will lead not to a page about the inn but to a page of search results where that specific inn is again prominently displayed at the top. Clicking that link will bring a booking page where Expedia, Priceline and multiple others bid on providing booking service for that specific inn.
And if I scroll all the way to the bottom of that page I find a little link: http://www.tradewindstulsa.com/ That's the the one vital link for that one little inn in central Tulsa, Arizona.
The "algorithm" placed the name of the inn on the top of the front page. Then it placed the actual link two clicks deep and at the bottom. The "algorithm" is not stupid...
[+] [-] skj|12 years ago|reply
If you're looking for "Trade Winds Central Inn in Tulsa", the first result, after one ad, is www.tradewindstulsa.com/.
Yes, Google displays a lot of ads sometimes. But those sometimes are almost always when you are looking to purchase something, and Google works hard to make sure those ads are things you're interested in purchasing.
[+] [-] confluence|12 years ago|reply
Welcome to the Ministry of Truth, my friends. Let the doublethink engulf your senses, and may the newspeak slip off your tongue, for it is clear that Big Brother is watching, and it appears that he is deathly afraid of the EU. May the DOJ have mercy on his soul.
[+] [-] drakaal|12 years ago|reply
Combine this with the fact that Google is doing more and more to get Cache Collisions in their results (returning results that don't contain all the words in your search because it deemed word unimportant, or using synonyms) and it is hard to compete on speed.
That's why we don't. We compete on the idea we have better results.
[+] [-] JSZZHlmumeUE|12 years ago|reply
IMHO it's queries like that make google so much better than the rest.
[+] [-] charleslmunger|12 years ago|reply
The same search on samuru has no results about the vulnerability.
[+] [-] AsmMAn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stinos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fogleman|12 years ago|reply
speed of the iss
I think Google clearly won in this case.
[+] [-] applecore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] albertyw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextstep|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0h1n|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinbad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrasyid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|12 years ago|reply
Also note that the page came about mid-2011, around the same time when Microsoft was beating their "Google is a monopoly" drum.
http://web.archive.org/web/20110826063413/http://www.google....
[+] [-] yohui|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|12 years ago|reply
Even Verbatim search starts to look fishy.
Search for 'engine oil' and you will find 'health benefits from using fish oil'. I'm tired.
[+] [-] bluecalm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vdaniuk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breck|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carbocation|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyfelice|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vdaniuk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mfarid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BitMastro|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabriel34|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeGlitch|12 years ago|reply
Wikipedia - general information
StackOverflow - programming
IMDB - actors/movies
etc...
Obviously finding those websites in the 1st place requires a search engine or index of some kind, but I'm getting faster results going directly to the source :)
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lubujackson|12 years ago|reply
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
[+] [-] jimktrains2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gibwell|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedalpete|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daliusd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin-adams|12 years ago|reply
For example:
- More time users spend on a page indicates it's more relevant
- More high quality inbound links indicates higher quality content
- Content seen as spammy are considered can lower page rank
The fact is that Google don't discriminate based on the rules they set out within their algorithm. When Google say their algorithm does the choosing, it does, but it's the same algorithm used across the whole internet, giving a fair competitive landscape. That's the theory at least.
[+] [-] vdaniuk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gettheyayo|12 years ago|reply
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