fred_nada

I will no longer use Product Search.

@nelsonMinar @pamelafox @cidbona and any other googlers.

Do you think it could actually ever go back to the way it was? Or is it too late? The beauty of Google in 2001-3 was that it gave you hope for what a company could be in the future. We all knew about the Jobs/Gates/Ellison shenanigans and some of us hoped for a better future. Better work environments for employees, innovating vs stealing, 100% focusing on the user, and not throwing integrity out the window for a couple of dollars per share.

Can they get back there? or is it gone?

@jrockway - I know you just started at Google. Anyway, here are the deeper issues.

1. I had mentioned this in another post to you before. Anyway, some people(not all) are upset because your company said you were better than everyone else. "You can make money without being evil" "What is the best for users?" All that crap Google said to us and continues to say like it still exists. Google was the poster child of the business of the future. Everyone felt you were the ones that were actually going to do good. Facebook/MS/Apple never posed as is this. You did. And that is where the anger comes in. When you are told one thing and the opposite happens people get mad. They should have tried to manage expectations.

2. Thousands of businesses depend on your search engine. With some of them 80% of their business comes from you whether thru paid ads or not. Many of these companies never would have built their websites if Google didn't exist. When your company changes things to place their irrelevant content over the content of other websites/companies people are going to be pissed. What if Apple created their own applications for 50% of the categories in the app store and then placed their apps at the top of each category? Wouldn't you expect some sort of anger? Do you think Zynga would be pissed if Facebook placed all of their games higher than Zynga's games? Its the same thing.

You honestly feel that the Matt Cutts article about seeing his werewolf photo benefits search results? You are definitely in the minority. Look at the comments.

EDIT: Never mind. Didn't know you are a Googler. of course you agree with Matt Cutts. :)

A little over the top, but to your point. See this search for cars I just did... 2 real results on the entire page.

http://oi39.tinypic.com/2s62a9k.jpg

Yes, I use Bing and starting to use DDG for tech queries... You are wrong about fb/twitter are the only ones who care.

Look at all of the comments on the blogs... Here is one for an example. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/

This doesn't just effect twitter/fb

ex1: it's an ad for google for google products no? It's not relevant like Cleetus said.

ex2: In 99% of searches I would never want to see that, but I just searched for sales and he is #3... some blurb about kindle fire sales. A. I don't need a status update on sales. B. He is linking out to an article about the kindle fire sales. Shouldn't the result go to the actual story? Isn't that more relevant? Not to mention that he has this on his twitter page too which Google HAS crawled. The twitter result is nowhere in the top 100. I barely use Google as it is, but I am definitely opting out of g+ results.

ex4: All of the stuff on the right hand side and the auto-suggestions are there whether you opt-out or not. Test it.

ex5: no comment

See http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html - I just think it is funny.

bing for main searches - DDG for tech searches... thats the play.

disclosure of what? Do you think he voted 15,000 times?

Sorry: I probably should have posted this here - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510109

Wow - 65% of people say they will cancel their Google Account over the Privacy changes...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-user-polls/post/wil...

I'm not surprised. It is weird though. He is not in my circles and never has been. Even if he was I don't care to know he is going to the game. :)

if someone followed these rules it might actually work - http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html

Cletus: The outrage is from people who feel they were lied to and instead of apologizing google seems to be defending their actions.

You said: As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. This is something you can opt out of (to some extent with privacy controls, otherwise with logging out).

This is not true.

Example 1: Search for cars while "opted" out of G+ results. Ferarri's G+ page is on top on the right, but no link to Ferrari's actual website or their FB page. So if this was focused on relevancy wouldn't the Ferrari link be to Ferrari's home page? Not that I think Ferrari is the most relevant result period, but wouldn't that make sense? Not only that, in your main results Ferrari.com isn't listed in the top 100. So how could they be relevant? This gives pageviews to G+ where the user should be going elsewhere. This isn't just about Twitter/Facebook. Google is driving users to its content over other publishers. This is an ADVERTISEMENT for Google+. 100% Which is against your policies not to mark them clearly as ads. http://www.google.com/competition/howgoogleadswork.html

Example 2: I searched for NFC Championship Game in Google while being opted in. I got a status update from MG Siegler stating he was going to the game in the top 5 results. MG Siegler is not in my circles. Wouldn't an article on the game be 100X better than this result. So you are driving users to your irrelevant content in replace of ESPN. That makes no sense.

Example 3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-plus-your-world/ - Cutts did a search for werewolf. Was he looking for a picture of himself? Does anyone here find that useful? Most of the comments on his post didn't. I would like to know honestly. Would that be useful to you? Also, in the future, when I search for cars will I see my friends driving their cars as the 2nd result? I would personally rather see some info about how to buy a car or research a car or car prices.

Example 4: You can't opt out 100%. That is disingenuous to say you can.

Example 5: Google was supposed to be "Do No Evil" and you have squashed that. It is worse to be screwed by someone who claims to be trustworthy than someone you know is not. For example, we all knew Microsoft was shady from the beginning so we didn't expect much. But you guys said it was all about relevancy, the user, do no evil, etc. Look at this way, if a girl married Gene Simmons could she honestly be pissed if he was cheating on her? But if a girl married a guy like Donnie Osmond and he cheated she would be devastated. She was probably only with him in the first place because he was trustworthy. You are Donnie Osmond. :)

Anyway, if you guys came clean and said that you are trying to promote your network then maybe people wouldn't be so pissed. As of right now, it looks like you are trying to drive traffic to your own irrelevant content over legitimate content businesses. Since you have a dominant position in search and hundreds of thousands of companies/sites depend on your traffic, they are scared. Google is rapidly getting into the content game and people can only assume you will put your new content above everyone else's. That is bad for business and bad for startups which are country needs so badly right now.

search nfc championship game in google. In my results MG Seigler's g+ account is ranked #5. Above the nfl, nytimes, espn, etc. It is a G+ post where he says "going to the nfc championship game with Sarah Lacy" - Keep in mind, I am not friends with him nor is he in my circles, etc. So instead of getting an article from a sports news outlet about the post I get a MG Seigler status update.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nfc+championship+game http://www.bing.com/search?q=nfc+championship+game&go=&#...

Blake:

If Focus on the User really doesn't want to be "evil" and you want to "focus on the user" then the plugin needs to be changed. The edits the plugin makes are better, but it just looks like Facebook/Twitter are just making sure they get their websites mentioned. It appears they are not focused on the user, but focused on how it will help them.

Here are some major suggestions:

1. If someone searches for cars in Google, 95% of the time they are looking to either research cars, buy a car, or the movie Cars. First of all do you honestly feel that Ferrari's facebook or google+ page is more relevant/useful than the websites of CarsDirect, Edmunds, or MotorTrend? The Google+/Facebook pages are more prominent than these websites. That makes zero sense. I don't know if you can do this, but if possible the "People and Pages" section should be removed. If not, see #2.

2. Why would the first result be Ferrari's facebook page in this search over Ferrari's own web site?

3. The Autosuggestion thing should work the same way as above. When I search for Matt Cutts I am not looking for either his Facebook or his Google Plus page, the most relevant result would be mattcutts.com, no? Or just remove the autosuggestion thing period. Assuming that I want to go see Matt Cutts Facebook profile over his Google+ profile is silly.

4. Make it so that you can actually remove Google+ results period. When I search for NFC Championship Game I don't care to see that MG Siegler went to that game. Nor would I want to see that on facebook either. It just ideally would be removed.

This is great. I will add the pseudonym of Mortgage Loans and my profile will be the #1 result in Google.

I would argue on both of your statements, but I don't think you are reading anything I write. :)

Incorrect. I did a search for "test" while logged out. In the top 5 results there are 2 results for MG Seigler who I am not connected with in any way.

Then I did another search for NFC Championship game - Again, MG Siegler #5 in the results. Apparently he made a comment that he was going to the game. So this guy who is not associated with football in any way who wrote a 10 word fragment on his wall showed up above the following results...

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d82622cb4/article/nfc-c...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/us/text-message-service-he...

http://blog.sfgate.com/49ers/2012/01/23/photos-from-the-nfc-...

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1035221-nfc-championship-...

http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/52524/page/count...

This was definitely not happening one month ago.

You aren't familiar with antitrust laws. Because a company has a free product does not mean it can't be anticompetitive. Free means nothing.

Example: If one company owned 90% of the media content in the world and gave it a way for free because they made money on ads does not mean they can't abuse their power. If you started your own website how would people find out about you? 90% of the search engines wouldn't show you. You couldn't advertise on 90% of magazines, websites or tv shows. And 90% of social networks wouldn't allow links going out of their site. And so on.

This is an extreme example, but free means nothing.

Who was trapped into using Windows? Why couldn't you buy another OS?

Threatening OEMs? The MS abuse I was talking about was having to do with IE only. But Google is not innocent of strong-arming companies either. If Yelp didn't allow Google to use its reviews in Google Places, Yelp would be removed from the index entirely. http://searchengineland.com/yelp-google-told-us-its-our-way-...

Yes, but why did anyone feel entitled that their browser should be bundled with Windows? Or that Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to include their own software within their own software? Seems to me that is a sense of entitlement from non Microsoft companies. Yet, it was monopolistic abuse and wiped out Netscape. That is why we have antitrust/anticompetition laws.

Facebook/Twitter aren't the real losers here though. They will survive. The problem is that Google is pushing their results to their average content on Google+ while tossing thousands of smaller content websites aside. Don't expect that to decrease. It is too easy for them to grow profits by pushing their own content. Whether they start other content companies or buy them, this is their growth.

I believe the point is that within the past month Google's "Do no evil" has jumped the shark. It no longer exists. But some people still trust them for some reason that I dont understand. Maybe because Matt Cutts seems like a nice guy or they are just hanging on to google's past. In addition to this Mocality deal, what stands out is their blatant favoritism of Google+ in their search results.

Google has been preaching for years about relevancy and unbiased search results. Even testifying in DC - http://searchengineland.com/mr-cutts-goes-to-washington-6123... - Google’s results are determined by an algorithm and not tweaked to get particular sites ranking well. - Yet they now have tweaked their results in order to place their Google+ brand above results that are much more relevant than theirs.

Some might argue, "hey, it is Google's website - they can do what they want." I used to think like this too, but the reality is that this behavior is bad for consumers and bad for businesses. Especially smaller businesses. This isn't just about Facebook and Twitter... there are hundreds of smaller niche content players that will be pushed aside by this. And as Google has to grow to keep shareholders happy, they will have to move into more and more content. If this still seems like a stretch see the example below.

What if there were only 2 companies that owned land in San Francisco and New York? One of them was named Google and they owned 70% of San Francisco and 90% of New York. In the beginning Google allowed anyone to rent their land for retail stores. So you had all different kind of companies providing different kinds of products in their stores. Hundreds of different businesses. Then all of the sudden Google decided to take over those retail locations and sell their own goods. They also sold other company's goods, but they were way back in the store. Hidden away. So if you were walking down the street in New York, 90% of the time a store would be owned by Google and 90% of the time you would only see marginal Google products. Now would that be good for business? Who would go into business? It would be so hard to compete. Would that be good for the consumer?

I believe in free enterprise, but only to a certain extent. There is a reason why antitrust laws exist. If they didn't, companies like Google never would have existed. We would all be working for Rockefeller.

The funny thing is everyone continues to make excuses. Already 2 in the past 5 minutes...

Well they must have missed a week.

Search for cars while you are opted-out of personal search. You will see the Google+ Ferrari page on the right. Is that really what people want to see? The normal Ferrari website isn't anywhere in the top 100 organic results, but yet Google's extensive user research team decided that is what people wanted to see on the right hand side. Or did they put that there because it benefits them.

Yes, they took user behavior into account and realized that it didn't matter because they have to get into the social space. Remember, social media success is tied into all Google employee bonuses. They are willing to make search worse in order to make G+ better.

Yes, relevance is everything. When I search for something in a search engine 95 times out of 100 I am searching for something new. Occasionally I am searching for something that I already found when searching before. I am never looking for photos of myself. I mean please.

This is corporate spin and you are eating it up! :)

Chrome is by far the best browser imo. I am surprised it has taken so long to get here to be honest. I guess people are just too lazy to switch sometimes.

Moultano: I 100% believe google keeps ranking changes siloed from the ad side, but Google 100% favors its own properties within its search results so you can't be surprised that someone thinks this way? Here are some examples for you that need major changes in my opinion.

www.google.com/#hl=en&q=san+francisco+restaurant+reviews www.google.com/#hl=en&q=hollywood+cauldron

-when i previously used google for retail reviews I would just bypass all of your results to get to yelp. sometimes trip advisor.

-look at those youtube video results for the 2nd query. So off the mark, but you guys keep them in there because it is good for google. it doesn't help your users and makes you look bad. I don't know what you guys are thinking.

I use Bing for 95% of my searches now. For tech searches I still think you guys are better, but for everything else I use Bing.

The reason why people single Google out is because you act like you do no wrong... See the article quote: "flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they're perpetrating evil under our noses"

You are like an in the closet politician that is against gay marriage.

moultano: notice this "fresh" search https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+courier

every page in the top 10 organic results were coming from pages that were either added or updated within 2011 except for the youtube results. those 2 videos were added in 2009.

i also noticed that your youtube videoes were higher in the results than articles from gizmodo, arstechnica, engadget, Time magazine and whole slew of other articles that were released 2 days ago.

just asking...

Yes, i noticed better results outside of personalized search... It is a hassle to logout thought. I actually use bing for 90% of searches... google is better at tech searches like mysql questions, but outside of that there results have gotten more irrelevant and crowded with useless content...