“In a world where the cost of a loaf of bread rises faster than the morning sun…” Like me, but no, not me. A friend asked one of the AIs to write an unCharles opening. I think he was mocking me. Or, maybe the AI was. Whatevs. I chose to see having someone I know tell an AI to ape me as the most sincere form of modern flattery.
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Some people I know are far less forgiving. One of them is Matthew Keys. He runs The Desk. A site about TV and streaming read by fifty thousand professionals who strategize about that kind of stuff.
Spammers copied Matthew story about “Marco Gaudino” and pasted it to their site. Google put the aped version at the top of their search rankings. Matthew’s original and identical story was “Nowhere to be found.”
Google says they look for stories readers value. Comparing the value of these two stories is like comparing two crisp twenties that popped out of an ATM. They’re indistinguishable.
But Google’s choice cost Matthew traffic and money. It’s not funny. Unsurprisingly, he’s perturbed. He tweeted as much at a search ombudsman. A couple of days later, when I searched for “Marco Gaudino charged,” Matthew’s story came up in the fifth position. So, maybe his actions helped. But the damage was done.
When things like this happen, the presumption is Google == evil. That double equal sign doesn’t mean Google is *really* evil, it’s just nerd notation for a single equal sign. I think folks are wrong about Google being evil. Or in the parlance of code jockeys, Google != evil. Hold off on hurling flaming barbs for a moment.
For proof I ironically offer Hanlon’s Razor, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Hanlon submitted it as joke for Arthur Bloch’s second book of Murphyisms.
Why… why would Google opt for derivative claptrap over the orginal McCoy? They get paid either way. My Aggregator’s Dilemma lemma which I hear-by elevate to straightblade status, posits that Google needs Matthew to get paid so he shows up the next morning with fresh content. Or Google won’t have anything for their indexing bots to ingest. And, thereby nothing to muddle with marketing garbage to make search results seem organic to lay people.
Organic. Good word and an even better segue. There are two internets right now. The organic, free-range fields that people like Matthew sow and Google reaps. And the cage-fed stuff that users create on social platforms that are closed off to Google.
Every time Google eclipses a story from someone like Matthew, a piece of the free-range internet withers. Every day, we lose so many hectares of plowable organic content that we’re going to need Sally Struthers to do a public service ad. We’re almost a point where we need to name this phenomenon. I suggest Global Waning. No. Better. Search Engine Change. At some point, Google is going to need to start to loan publishers money so they can forgive defaults in content-for-loan-forgiveness swaps. Which is a preview into a future story on the lack of derivative media. Well, the lack of media derivatives.
“Google is dead,” was a friend’s take on this. Although, it’s hard for me to make a case that the fourth most valuable company is dead. Or even sickly. I’d say Google is going through a midlife crisis. It wakes up a couple of times a night to pee. When the sun also rises and Google does get up for real, it swings its legs over the side of the bed, and groans putting on its socks. Last weekend, I saw it test driving a pricey car with an unncessarily long front. Don’t ask what I was doing there.
For a long time, we believed Google to be brilliant. That everything they did was orchestrated. We ignored failures like Hangouts, Circles, and Picasa. Other than giving away established services like email — what have they created? Just our undying belief that they’re evil geniuses.
If you listen carefully, you can hear Google bad-guy monologing. Which is usually a sign that things are going to go south. Especially for evil-doers.
And, here it is. Google is the world’s biggest one-trick pony. They’re really good at search and pretty lousy at just about everything else. But, they’ve just been such a huge part of our world that they’ve blocked out the Sun. You see, Google isn’t the Sun. They’re the Moon. If the morning sun doesn’t rise for Matthew, the sun also sets on Google.
So, I’ll close with this razor to shave off philosophication time for future media theorists — and this time it’s all me, baby — “Algorithmic boners aren’t evil, they’re a glimpse into midlife onset imposter syndrome.”
[groan. i shoulda stuck with AI aping me.]
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There’s an important P.S. here.
In 2018, Google was bidding on a $10B contract to be the cloud service for the Pentagon. Googlers (I hate the san fran startup ethos so much when they use words like that. You’re tech pros, not high school footballers. e-gad) protested to management and Google withdrew their bid.
This week, 28 Google employees protested that Google sold cloud services to Israel. Google fired the 28 employees on the spot.
People like DHH and Kimberly A. Whitler applauded Google’s new-found ethics. Outside of silly names for employees, I don’t think Google has ethics. I certainly don’t believe they have a conscience. I think that Google is in far more trouble these days and this massive shift in philosophy underscores how much Google needs (or at least badly wants) this revenue.