[geeks] Google Irritation

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Feb 26, 2009, at 10:25 , Sandwich Maker wrote:

> " From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>
> "
> " > Google search butchers word pairs and even phrases, even if you  
> quote
> " > them.
> "
> " It also mangles things in other ways, like forcibly including  
> responses
> " you specifically asked to have suppressed.
> "
> " Quite some time ago, I was looking for some music typesetting  
> software
> " called "smut".  I'm sure you all can imagine the false positives.   
> But
> " I started trying to exclude them with searches like
> "
> " 	smut music typesetting -sex -beaver
> "
> " and I kept getting the false positives anyway, often even  
> including in
> " the sample few lines the very terms I specifically minused.  I  
> wrote to
> " them to report the bug, and what did they do?  Did they fix their
> " searches?  No; it appears these were "sponsored links",
> " []
> " I suppose I should be grateful
> " they did even that much, since clearly getting their sponsored  
> links in
> " front of eyeballs is a priority even when it angers searchers,
>
> have you tried the firefox 'customizegoogle' plugin?  it allows you to
> block the ads.

That doesn't block the ads disguised as search results though, which  
is what he is talking about.

> yup, in any ad-supported enterprise we are the product and advertisers
> are the customers...
>
> it's in google's interest to suppress your reaction and just count
> your eyeballs.  makes their numbers look better.

I think with some creative thought and a few thousand volunteers, you  
could turn that against them pretty severely.

Or, convince someone with money to burn to sponsor anti-ads  
specifically designed to counter ads.  You could structure the Google  
ad contract and their content such that the more successful a "bully"  
ad becomes, the more anti-ads show up in reaction to them.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Google could not legally refuse a contract  
like that, due to laws governing fair access to advertising space or  
some such.

I've seen some anti-ad groups do this kind of thing in places like  
magazines, and it always gives me a chuckle, and it seems the  
magazines cannot do anything to stop them.  The main thing that stops  
them seems to be money more than anything else.

Google's highly automated computer driven system opens up the  
possibility of turning their system against itself.  They can't plug  
all of the holes.

-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com