I'm sure this is a gross oversimplification, but Google is in the business of monetizing people's interest in content it doesn't create. Who will it perceive is the better partner for that monetization, the scraper who understands how to apply Google's tools to maximize monetization, or the original content author?
Umm... long term, no original content authors = no original content. No content = search volume goes down. Search volume down = holy crap for Google. I'm just saying.
Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I don't think that's necessarily the case. The question here is Google's ranking of original content. If they rank it lower than search sites, that would only drive original content off the net if the primary motivation of the content authors is to get traffic through Google.
As long as there are chumps like me that write content for our own personal reasons, or who drive traffic through sites like HN and twitter referrals, scrapers can piggyback on my work and Google can do whatever it likes. It won't affect my motivation to create content.
Umm, wasn't Google supposed to "Don't be evil" and care about their search result quality about all else? I find your defense of and apathy to hypocrisy disturbing.
And oh, your post pushed a hot button of mine: comments by people who think they're being incredibly insightful by saying "the world is not fair" in different ways. On HN, I think we can assume that people are adults and understand such things. Sorry about the flame.
I think you're putting words in my pen when you describe my comment as defending Google. The article describes Google's behaviour. My comment describes a mpotivation for that behaviour. If you tilt your head sideways, you will see that my comment is helping to build a case against them, not a defence of them.
For an analogy, consider a murder trial. Someone stands up and says, "The accused stands to profit from the victim's death." Isn't that suggestion more likely to come from the prosecution than from the defense?
"Umm, wasn't Google supposed to "Don't be evil" and care about their search result quality about all else?"
Mmmm... no, unfortunately Google is supposed to make money, and they make money mainly from adsense. I'm not prepared to accept that random algo modifications having big impact on their revenue are done without concerns.
And when you are at the same time the same company driving people to web sites (search) and getting profits from ads showed in web pages (adsense) something bad can happen as it is not a free market setup.
>I'm not prepared to accept that random algo modifications having big impact on their revenue are done without concerns.
The effect on adsense revenue isn't even measured let alone used. The people who make decisions about changes to ranking algorithms don't even see the data on adsense revenue because we don't even have a system to collect it for ranking changes.
I work in search quality, and there are many metrics I have to collect to launch changes. None of them involve ads.
I'm glad to hear that, and I trust you. If it is this way I expect to find less spam engines or copied content in the next months when I search on google :)
Comments
I'm sure this is a gross oversimplification, but Google is in the business of monetizing people's interest in content it doesn't create. Who will it perceive is the better partner for that monetization, the scraper who understands how to apply Google's tools to maximize monetization, or the original content author?
Umm... long term, no original content authors = no original content. No content = search volume goes down. Search volume down = holy crap for Google. I'm just saying.
Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I don't think that's necessarily the case. The question here is Google's ranking of original content. If they rank it lower than search sites, that would only drive original content off the net if the primary motivation of the content authors is to get traffic through Google.
As long as there are chumps like me that write content for our own personal reasons, or who drive traffic through sites like HN and twitter referrals, scrapers can piggyback on my work and Google can do whatever it likes. It won't affect my motivation to create content.
Umm, wasn't Google supposed to "Don't be evil" and care about their search result quality about all else? I find your defense of and apathy to hypocrisy disturbing.
And oh, your post pushed a hot button of mine: comments by people who think they're being incredibly insightful by saying "the world is not fair" in different ways. On HN, I think we can assume that people are adults and understand such things. Sorry about the flame.
I think you're putting words in my pen when you describe my comment as defending Google. The article describes Google's behaviour. My comment describes a mpotivation for that behaviour. If you tilt your head sideways, you will see that my comment is helping to build a case against them, not a defence of them.
For an analogy, consider a murder trial. Someone stands up and says, "The accused stands to profit from the victim's death." Isn't that suggestion more likely to come from the prosecution than from the defense?
"Umm, wasn't Google supposed to "Don't be evil" and care about their search result quality about all else?"
Mmmm... no, unfortunately Google is supposed to make money, and they make money mainly from adsense. I'm not prepared to accept that random algo modifications having big impact on their revenue are done without concerns.
And when you are at the same time the same company driving people to web sites (search) and getting profits from ads showed in web pages (adsense) something bad can happen as it is not a free market setup.
>I'm not prepared to accept that random algo modifications having big impact on their revenue are done without concerns.
The effect on adsense revenue isn't even measured let alone used. The people who make decisions about changes to ranking algorithms don't even see the data on adsense revenue because we don't even have a system to collect it for ranking changes.
I work in search quality, and there are many metrics I have to collect to launch changes. None of them involve ads.
I'm glad to hear that, and I trust you. If it is this way I expect to find less spam engines or copied content in the next months when I search on google :)