Google vs. Evil

[robertclough]

Source: Wired

Google vs. Evil

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/google_pr.html

Snippet:
The world's biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don't be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business.


Credit goes to Everyman for first posting notice of this article in this thread:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6065

For the benefit of those who may have not read the thread, I'm posting it to the news category so others will be aware of the article as well.

[scottiecl]

Excellent article!
...there is no wiggle room - no gray area whatsoever - when it comes to those who attempt to subvert the power of Google to their own commercial ends. One thing Brin is sure of: On the side of evil lies trickery.
Could it be any clearer? Those who think Google likes SEO's can hear from the horse's mouth that they do not.
The way Brin sees it, the optimizers are co-opting Google's bond of trust with its users.
It would make things a lot easier for Brin if the world's webmasters would just act as though his site didn't matter, but that's not human nature.
What Alan has been saying along- would you do it if Google didn't exist? Very interesting ... and yet Froogle will be 100% commercial...

Very good read!

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by scottiecl
What Alan has been saying along- would you do it if Google didn't exist?Thanks Scottie. It does appear that we share a very similar "worldview". :) And yes, the "would you do it if search engines didn't exist" question was mine. Try searching for the word "exist" in my Spam Classification White Paper (http://www.ebrandmanagement.com/whitepapers/spam-classification) - it crops up quite a lot. Google engineers have been known to reference the White Paper in talks at Danny's conferences.

I like the latest version of Google's Quality Guidelines (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality) - particularly the "Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?" test and the emphasis on principles rather than rules.

This was a good line in the interview:The Google strategy appeals to every engineer's sense of The Way It Should Be. Build the best entry in the science fair. Do not tart it up. Do not make it more clever than it needs to be.So true. But the best bit about Google is that it's so easy for NON-engineers to use. Most engineers build stuff that other engineers have no trouble with, but the rest of the world has a lot of trouble with...

[scottiecl]

There is a paragraph in the article where it talks about how they like to make optmizers miserable with each new dance... what I got from that is that it again emphasizes the fact that it is more important to build a solid website with a good structure and content with at least a few good links (like DMOZ, GoGuides, etc).

You can't penalize people for building an excellent website. If you only employ techniques that are straightforward web-building and common sense, the Dance can't affect you too much or it would affect every site out there.

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by scottiecl
You can't penalize people for building an excellent website.That would be a good principle for search engines themselves to follow. :thumb:

[Alan Perkins]

BTW my favourite non-search page on the Google site (even though I know there's a certain amount of PR spin on it ;)) is this one:

http://www.google.com/corporate/today.html

Point 6 on that page is particularly relevant to this thread: "You can make money without doing evil."

[Matt B]

Good points , Scottie and Alan.

Now more than ever, I am conviced that if you design a site for the user, especially the disabled user, or the 80-year old grandmother using Netscape 2, (because she is afraid to install anything) your site will be successful.

Ultimately, end users are the heart of the algorithm - just as the Sergey is quoted as saying. Design for them and you will naturally be rewarded.

[french dread]

Democracy on the web works

Mmh...pagerank is not truely democratic. I dont wanna diss google, i believe it is the best SE today but pagerank is not democracy. Yes there is a vote but the game is falsified as not every candidate as the same chance to be elected.
And votes dont make quality of the candidate (look at our presidents lol). Then I would say "demagogy and money on the web works, but without these two, one can hope to be elected with much work"
But well..the SE works most of times for common researches :)

[Advisor]

There is a paragraph in the article where it talks about how they like to make optmizers miserable with each new dance... And you know they're laughing their a$$es off when browsing through all the Google Dance posts at WMW!

Not to mention when they play with the PR graph on the toolbar of some people's sites just to mess with some people's heads!

I really love the good vs. evil thing as a way of running your company. If more companies would employ that strategy, it would be a much nicer world to live and work in.

I just hope they can continue to keep their values as they grown and change.

:cheers:

Jill

[french dread]

I really love the good vs. evil thing as a way of running your company

mmmh...depends what is good and what is evil. we are all th eevil of someone else lol. am a pragmatic guy :)

[Advisor]

Yep, good and evil are very subjective terms. What's good to one person might be evil to another. But I still like it!

Jill

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by french dread
pagerank is not truely democratic I think it is. There are lots of different kinds of democratic voting systems, e.g. first past the post, proportional representation, qualified majority voting, etc.

PageRank is similar to qualified majority voting where everyone in the population is a candidate in the election, and where the more people who vote for you, the more your votes for other people count. Democratic? More so than first past the post, I think.

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by Advisor
Yep, good and evil are very subjective terms. What's good to one person might be evil to another.Presumably Google sees their core values as "good" and things that go directly against their core values as "evil"...
Google Corporate Information (http://www.google.com/corporate/today.html)
It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google's objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

[Advisor]

Good stuff.

I think as long as they equate "good" with integrity, we're all set.

And if we can all keep integrity in the back of our minds with everything we do, we'll really be all set!

:cheers:

J