Good to know that the company that holds my email, appointments, two-factor-auth, credit card number, and search data has the reliability of a flaky college freshman.
Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise because the outcry would be tremendous).
Reading this is a breath of fresh air from the traditional "defend Google or other corporations at all costs" type comments. Maybe now we can drop the meme that Google is some altruistic entity and realize that ~97% of their revenue is from advertising. This is why they exist.
It's now just a matter of time before paid inclusion results show up in the organic SERPs like Yahoo used to have.
The best part is in Google's original IPO filing they promised not to ever accept money for inclusion of results:
> "Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating."
> "We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated. This is similar to a newspaper, where the articles are independent of the advertising."
> "Some of our competitors charge web sites for inclusion in their indices or for more frequent updating of pages. Inclusion and frequent updating in our index are open to all sites free of charge."
> "We apply these principles to each of our products and services. We believe it is important for users to have access to the best available information and research, not just the information that someone pays for them to see."
Agree about freshman, just wanted to add, that this freshman has managed to do other not so nice things recently, thus increasing cumulative damage to the reputation well beyond sum of each part. I assume that at some point powerusers will start to migrate to different services, when/if competitive enough offer comes
A promise made by Marissa Mayer, who, as most of us know, works elsewhere now. Sure, the promise was arguably on behalf of the company, but "under her watch" is also arguably implied.
And... Did you leave her? or just break up as a common agreement? In legalese language, I am pretty sure that a promise is synonym of contract, and contracts might be dissolved if both sides of the contract agreed.
This being an open promise is not a contract but a reaffirmation of a goal, since people change is regrettable but OK to break promises to ourselves sometimes when the interest of the goal had changed.
This is exactly the problem people are having with Google. We/they have this ideal of what they thought Google was/should-be and Google isn't/haven't-been-completely living up to it.
One could argue that the advertising situation has changed. Back in 2005, the types of banner ads that they opposed were heavy, often Flash driven punch-the-monkey junk.
Now, they are putting non-animated (from the samples that I have seen) banners that are completely relevant to your search.
Does that argument hold up? I don't really think it does. But maybe that is their angle?
mapgrep|12 years ago
Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise because the outcry would be tremendous).
brymaster|12 years ago
It's now just a matter of time before paid inclusion results show up in the organic SERPs like Yahoo used to have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_inclusion
Edit: Whoops they already broke that promise too!
http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrace...
The best part is in Google's original IPO filing they promised not to ever accept money for inclusion of results:
> "Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating."
> "We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated. This is similar to a newspaper, where the articles are independent of the advertising."
> "Some of our competitors charge web sites for inclusion in their indices or for more frequent updating of pages. Inclusion and frequent updating in our index are open to all sites free of charge."
> "We apply these principles to each of our products and services. We believe it is important for users to have access to the best available information and research, not just the information that someone pays for them to see."
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125041...
Times sure have changed!
jeffclark|12 years ago
At some point, people realize that corporations exist to maximize profit and not necessarily for the good of the customer.
jol|12 years ago
Aldo_MX|12 years ago
moogleii|12 years ago
d23|12 years ago
jeanlo|12 years ago
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unknown|12 years ago
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pmelendez|12 years ago
This being an open promise is not a contract but a reaffirmation of a goal, since people change is regrettable but OK to break promises to ourselves sometimes when the interest of the goal had changed.
raldi|12 years ago
You are 100% wrong.
recuter|12 years ago
emehrkay|12 years ago
Dylan16807|12 years ago
The advertising situation hasn't changed, and promising no banner ads is not puffery.
_ea1k|12 years ago
Now, they are putting non-animated (from the samples that I have seen) banners that are completely relevant to your search.
Does that argument hold up? I don't really think it does. But maybe that is their angle?
gauravpandey|12 years ago
macspoofing|12 years ago
macspoofing|12 years ago
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