Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by spc476 on Thursday March 22, 2012 @03:36PM (#3741514)

I did a Google search for "dmv". The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida.

A Google search for "florida dmv" returned Florida-based results.

What I am tired of seeing are Eames chair ads all over the place. Do one search for Eames chairs, and click on one paid result, and now all I see are Eames chair ads. Sigh.

At least it's a break from the casino school ads I was getting.

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Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by keltex on Thursday March 22, 2012 @05:25PM (#3742083)

This is called google "remarketing". Basically what happened is when you visited the Eames chair site, you received a remarketing cookie.

Then when you visit other google properties, google automatically gives you ads from that Eames chair site.

http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html

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Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by spc476 on Thursday March 22, 2012 @05:59PM (#3742237)

I did the search from my home computer. The Eames chair ads are showing up not only at home, but on my computer at work as well. Seeing how I've never logged into any Google property at work, I find that interesting.

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Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by loverobots on Thursday March 22, 2012 @04:44PM (#3741898)

The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida.

So you click on the relevant link ("happened" to be an ad,) as the Stanford MBAs high five each other at Googleplex. I remember reading a very interesting comment about the incentives of providing the best results and ad revenue. It's clear to me that ad revenue has been winning at Google.

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Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by thisisnotatest on Thursday March 22, 2012 @11:46PM (#3743565)

No.

I work on Search Quality at Google. We have a firewall between Search Quality and Ads. We don't answer to Ads. Revenue is just not my team's problem. We come into work every day and look at our search results and try to get the most relevant answers ranked as #1, #2, etc. I never think about the impact of my ranking improvements on ads. I've been personally involved in dozens of changes, and I've never once heard anyone argue for or against releasing a change because of ads.

I can understand why someone might be mistrustful because of the apparent incentive to sandbag the algorithmic results. But Google has the long-term view: if we can keep satisfying our users' needs, the revenue will follow.

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Re:Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Go... by loverobots on Friday March 23, 2012 @12:07PM (#3745766)

You can only speak about yourself, you do not know what goes behind the scenes. Firewall, like the investment banks have? Don't take personally, enjoy your paycheck and stock grants, you work for a corporation that answers to Wall Street. Listen to the earnings call once and analyze what the ad people say about "innovation."

But Google has the long-term view: if we can keep satisfying our users' needs, the revenue will follow.

Personally I no longer buy that. The revenue is now #1 and now Google is spending like crazy to keep the users. It started last year full speed

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