There is a lot of discussion on the web about Google and its proclamations, policies, and practices. One recent episode involves Google’s pay-per-post service in Japan, as described here. While the article is informative, I was much more amused by the exchange between Justin Davis, Ian McAnerin and David Brunig in the comments. Your mileage may vary, but I am with Justin.
Google marketing vs. Google journalism
We also recommend
6 Comments
Comments are closed.
In other words, local adaptation trumps hypocrisy? My mileage does vary, and I’m glad that there was dissent inside Google too:
http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/02/19/matt-cutts-keeps-google-honest/
I am not sure it’s hypocritical: I don’t think there is a moral argument to be made here. Business is done differently in different places. So long as human rights aren’t violated in the process, I think businesses have a defensible position in adopting regionally-appropriate strategies. If Google goes with Matt’s opinion (as many believe it should) they would be doing so not for moral but for business reasons.
My question is: Does it fit the stated Google goal of always focusing on the user? Google says it places the user’s interest first. Does it?
Who cares what the advertising norm is in Japan. Google is not based on norms, it is based on users. If it helps the user, then good. If it does not, then it should be stopped.
I lived and worked in Japan for 5 years, and I am sympathetic to the argument that paying for blog posts is not considered pernicious there. In fact the whole orientation to blogging is much different in Japan: much less personal and much more closely aligned with mainstream media (which also basically operates on a pay-per-post basis, see [1]).
BUT: if Google is indeed tailoring its approach by region–something I support–then why do they insist that in other areas global standards should take precedence (e.g. [2])? Therein lies the hypocrisy.
[1] http://mekas.jp/en/interviews/396.xhtml#1
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=google+global+privacy+standard
I agree, Ryan. The flip side of that is, if they focus on the user, why apply region-global levels of tailoring? Why not just apply person-by-person tailoring? It’s a question that I asked of infamous Microsoft-to-Google transplant, Kai-fu Lee, at SIGIR last year when he gave his keynote there. Lee said that Chinese users exhibited much more “exploratory” (my word, not his, but essentially that’s what he showed) behavior in their searches. And so Google China has changed its interface to support more exploratory, data rich information seeking.
Daniel T and many others have argued and shown that there are users in the U.S. who exhibit just as much, if not more, exploratory behavior than Chinese users. And yet Google does not give those U.S. users exploratory interfaces and algorithms. Google, despite claiming that they focus on the user, says that region trumps the user. That, to me, is another logical disconnect.
..what I mean is, the search engine should give the user the ability to choose their interface.. whether U.S.-standard Google or the more exploratory-Google. By having different interfaces, but then forcing the user to adopt the interface tied to the region of their ISP, Google does not focus on the user.