Google is a temple to irony. It depends on everyone in the world to be open with their information so Google can organize it, yet Google is never open with its own information — whether that is how it manages ad shares or how it picks news sources or, now, how it treats people who come to a Google community conference. Google made it off the record. Why? What could possibly be said there, among hundreds of people, that should not be said openly. Dave Winer is having a proper fit about it. He links to Danny Sullivan, who in turn links to the Google conference site, which is now behind a password wall. Open the doors, Google, or at least the Windows.
I say this is a great opportunity for confidential-source blogging: Someone who’s at the conference should feed all the juicy bits to Winer for him to blog from outside.
Its official: you have a woody for Google. Go get’em tiger!!!!
You sure taught Dell a lesson….the bar has now been risen.
Whine, whine, whine. Or is it Winer?
Good for Google, they didn’t invite the self important.
Jeff,
Google are truly despicable – far worse than Dell, to my mind. Let me tell you my Google Hell story.
Earlier this year, Google banned thousands of sites in China (where I am based) without any warning. Immediately after they received their license to operate in China (last May), they decided that SEO practices that they had acceptable for 2 years were suddenly unacceptable. There was no warning, no communication, just a sudden ban.
This sudden disruption almost put us out of business – a company that had taken me 8 years to build up. (We are still struggling and may yet go under.) Google gave me no indication of what I had done wrong. I searched their site for help. It said I had to offer them a written apology before they would reinstate us. I was furious. I bit my lip and, like an idiot, wrote the thing. And the result? Nothing. Not a word. I waited for months for some response. None was forthcoming. I’ve spenty thousands of dollars with the these overgrown, self-righteous billionaires, and this is the customer servcie I get?
Eventually, after sever financial losses I had to start from scratch with a new URL and build the whole thing up again. Now, I have no choice but to give these jerks 100 bucks per day just to stay in their PPC searches. It will be several months before my business recovers. I’m still feel sure that I cannot trust threm.
My misfortune was certainly their gain. All the talk about not doing evil is just sanctimonious clap-trap. It doesn’t help me in the slightest when I think how I may not be able to keep my daughter in a decent (but expensive) school here, because of them.
Google Hell.
Ken
Ken, in the name of openness, what were the SEO practices you mention that made Google mad? And how do you build up a business for 8 years and then have it fail because it’s not searchable?
You have picked one of my pet hobby horses. Google as an information monoply. They get to decide what gets indexed and how it gets indexed. If they don’t do this the information “disappears”.
My short essay(s) on the topic:
http://robertdfeinman.com/society/google_monopoly.html
Google’s media strategy is all about playing hard to get: it works. Google Talk is an example of how secrecy can be a form of PSYOPS (Psychological Operations). Everyone was so excited. Big time anticipation. It’s just a VoIP tool like Skype, Gizmo and the other three on the market. I support Google. I want to see free WiFi or WiMax with better local functionality as Om Malik has been breaking. I personally find conferences and trade shows to be lame. I’ve been to many during the dot com years. I prefer small Gallery Openings like the one’s at the Art Director’s Club in NY. I do think about why we don’t have live streaming of all conferences anyway. In person is only necessary to close a deal, not to become informed or inspired. I personally despise windowless rooms with flourescent only lighting.
Undertoad,
I’m not a tech guy, but we had used a re-direction function to guide people after they had signed up on our database. It took them automatically from the sign up page to the user’s area. We had used it for 2 years previously, as had many others. (When the ban came, it affected thousands of websites.) I think this was the problem.
We were obviously aware that Google frowned upon egregious SEO tricks, and so we avoided them.
Over time, we found that online promotion brought us the best return for our marketing dollars, so we began to build our strategy around it. The data showed clearly that a good number of our customers were coming from Google, so we responded accordingly (and cautiously). However, when the ban hit, it was not just a case of losing the extra traffic that SEO provided. The problem was this: Suddenly we did not exist on Google anymore. You could search all day and find no reference to us. People thought we had disappeared. You could type in our URL, our slogan, our name, everything, but according to Google we did not exist.
My business hasn’t failed, but we went AWOL from the most important online channel and it hit us hard. Obviously we made mistakes – such as over-relying on Google – but I still believe my point is valid: Google’s ‘monopoly on information’ (as Robert Feinman calls it above) didn’t extend to informing us of its devastating plans to change its policies. There is simply no channel between Google and it’s millions of non-technical users. It can do whatever it wants, with impunity, regardless of how it affects those who rely on it. And as I said, not only did I lose a crucial source of revenue, but I also had to beg for them (in vain) to re-instate me. Now, I pay for the privilege of the whole thing by upping my daily PPC spend, so Google actually benefits fron my misfortune.
I am a firm believer in free-markets. To me Google can run their business as they see fit. But they do absolutely need need a better way to communicate with their customers. I think this has something in common with Jeff’s Dell problems.
thhis is a kewl concept. I just wish someone would feed bits of info to somebody on the outside !!
[...] GOOGLE “..is a temple to irony. It depends on everyone in the world to be open with their information so Google can organize it, yet Google is never open with its own information” …. (buzzmachine) [...]
The only thing I want to know is when Im going to get my free Wifi… =D
Googlenet FAQ – http://wifi.google.com/faq.html
Googlenet Client Download – http://wifi.google.com/download.html