Hey I went to Google site with a virus
And now I have a virus.
Google is evil.
Harvard professor Ben Edelman calls it conversion-inflation syndication fraud. We call it typical Google. In early February, at a net-conscious conference in San Francisco, Edelman exposed one of those online boondoggles that shows you just how much Google overplays the efficiency of its web-dominating ad system. Using a PC …
From a 16 July 1998 Netscape PR
"...allowing them to go to Web sites using real words or simple phrases instead of complicated Internet addresses (URLs)..."
I do recall a bit more resistance, but then Netscape wasn't making the necessary billions required to dull the press[1] with free trips, food, &c.
[1] Does not include El Reg. As if.
Real world analogy. Lets say a restaurant decides wants someone to hand out fliers ... so they offer this guy $.10 a flier to print some and distribute them.
So the guy they hire just stands at the front door and hand the fliers to anyone already walking through the door.
Resturant pays lots of money and gains zero customers.
Guy handing out the fliers tells the owner how many fliers were printed and compares that to how many people bring the fliers into his resturant.
The owner thinks the fliers are very successful and now offers $.20 for each one.
This is a business. The punter have a right to know where their money goes, as is shown here. The point remains that this is a business. Meant to make money and they (Google) are good at it. I have rarely seen another company with some many different revenue streams on the same product that ALL appear to work. Good for them, bad for us.
Buy some shares, if it annoys you that much.
Ok so due to malware and squatters, advertisers don't know the quality of service Google provides. Yet somehow the problem isn't with the malware and squatters but Google?
Does he really think the solution is for Google to 'fix' something and leave the malware and squatters where they are?
I think he must have learn't his problem management skills from the government.
I'm glad I get all my software from the Ubuntu repositories!
Even though people have to agree to install this adware (and most will click 'OK' without thinking) it seems to me like a not nice piece of software. I'm not sure people would like it so much if users were told just how intrusive it was.
The problem here is that a piece of dubious AdWare is able to serve Google Ads.
And, er, that's it.
The fact that an Ad for RCN shows up - as a result of the adware - when the user is on the RCN site is down to the adware, rather than Google or RCN directly.
Last I checked, Google didn't promote or endorse Adware (quite the opposite, in fact). Did Ben Edelman contact Google to alert them of this issue? What response did he get? -That- would be the story. Instead, this is just another "Google is not not evil" piece of puffery with little substance.
Your analogy is flawed.
You suggest that "the guy they hire just stands at the front door and hand the fliers to anyone already walking through the door." - which is not what Google are doing. The fliers aren't just going to anyone who are already walking through the door, they're going to thousands of other people who are looking for a resturant; any resturant.
Yes a few go to those are "already walking through the door", but not all of them, and certainly not a high percentage of them are, and the only way the fliers are getting to those people are if the original guy (Google) hires a friend (Nbcsearch) who hires a friend (LocalPages) who hires a friend (WhenU) to hand them out on his behalf.
Here in the UK many years ago we had a similar monopoly on search facililites, run by the government. It was called 'directory enquiries' and free to consumers. Due to some atrocious misuses of statistics the arrangement was privatised and deregulated. It now costs a couple of dollars to get a contact.
Redefine 'Evil' as appropriate to your aims.
Mine has the roadmap of good intentions in the pocket.
I read the rest of his various rants - to be honest the guy sounds like a Grade A Nimrod. It's cool to slag off Google (and hey, most of the time it's valid), but rather than slating the mal/adware WhenU, he blames this particular piece of crass analysis on Google?
His other points all seemed to be about how paid search links makes companies pay for clicks they would have got anyway. Methinks he's out of his depth. Epic FIAL
The problem here is not with google, it's with the adware. It's not google that's plastering the browser with ads back to the existing site, its the adware. The only involvement google has is that the adware is using google ads, and is there much it can do about that?
Any company that pays for clicks obtained through malware deserve being ripped off twice over. Once for encouraging malware developers to get their garbage on people's browsers, and secondly for trusting them to deliver genuine traffic. You lie down with dogs, expect fleas.
"Here in the UK many years ago we had a similar monopoly on search facililites, run by the government. It was called 'directory enquiries' and free to consumers. Due to some atrocious misuses of statistics the arrangement was privatised and deregulated. It now costs a couple of dollars to get a contact."
Not quite true,
Directory Enquiries was free until BT started charging for it (first at 25p/call then 40p/call, though it was still free from phone boxes). This went on for a few years until Europe decided that the monopoly situation wasn't good, and that competition was needed. This competition unfortunately had the side effect of increasing the cost of directory enquiries.
So you can blame BT for introducing a charge in the first place - had 192 remained a free service, it's unlikely that all those 118 numbers would have come about.
As for this story, it's the malware's fault, and the point about Chrome is just stupid - typing "expedia.com" into the browser will take you to the site, whereas only typing "expedia" will take you to the search results. This is exactly the behaviour I want - if I type a word or phrase in then it's likely I'm searching for pages based on that word or phrase.