Repeat Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn't Like - I Know Because It Happened to Me

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: September 1, 2017 at 4:35:36 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn't Like - I Know Because It Happened to Me
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me
> By Kashmir Hill
> Aug 31 2017
> <https://gizmodo.com/yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesn-t-li-1798646437>
>
> The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting 
> rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was 
> “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major 
> funder of the think tank, for its market dominance. 
>
> The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the 
> European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine for privileging its 
> price-comparison service over others in search results. That post was briefly taken down, then republished. Soon 
> afterward, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for 
> failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”
>
> Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the “facts are largely right, but quotes are 
> taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.” Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise 
> felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic 
> practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. 
>
> I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run 
> social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, 
> Plus.
>
> The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside 
> the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus 
> recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers. 
>
> This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news give it tremendous power over publishers. 
> By tying search results to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to promote its social 
> network. 
>
> I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search 
> results would suffer? The answer was yes.
>
> After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team as a reporter, told them I’d been in the meeting, and 
> asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button 
> “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your 
> stories will be harder to find with Google.
>
> With that, I published a story headlined, “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,” 
> that included bits of conversation from the meeting. 
>
> The Google guys explained how the new recommendation system will be a factor in search. “Universally, or just among 
> Google Plus friends?” I asked. ‘Universal’ was the answer. “So if Forbes doesn’t put +1 buttons on its pages, it will 
> suffer in search rankings?” I asked. Google guy says he wouldn’t phrase it that way, but basically yes.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20170901084216:FA777678-8F12-11E7-B4C6-AEF96BB4AA08
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com