Google Wants to Do Better: Read These Two Articles for Context
June 10, 2021
You will need to read these two articles before you scan my observations.
The first write up is “How an Ex Googler Turned Artist Hacked Her Work to the Top of Search Results.” The is a case example of considerable importance, at least to me and my research team. The methods of word use designed to bond to Google’s internal receptors is the secret sauce of search engine optimization experts. But here is a Xoogler manipulating Google’s clueless methods.
The second article is “Google Seeks to Break Vicious Cycle of Online Slander.” Ignore the self praise of the Gray Lady. The main point is that Google is going to take action to deal with the way in which its exemplary smart software handles “slander.” The main point is that Google has been converted from do gooder to the digital equivalent of Hakan Ayik, the individual the Australian Federal Police converted into the ultimate insider. The similarity is important at least to me.
Don’t agree with my interpretation? No problem. Nevertheless, I will offer my observations:
First, after 20 years of obfuscation, it is clear that the fragility and exploitability of Google’s smart software is known to the author of “How an Ex Googler Turned Artist Hacked…”. Therefore, the knowledge of Google’s willful blind spots is not secret to about 100,000 full time equivalent Googlers.
Second, Google – instead of taking direct, immediate action – once again is doing the “ask forgiveness” thing with words of assurance. Actions speak louder than words. Maybe this time?
Third, neither of the referenced articles speaks bluntly and clearly about the danger mishandling of meaning poses. Forget big, glittery issues like ethics or democracy. Think manipulation and becloudization.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2021
Does YouTube for Kids Need a Pause Button?
June 10, 2021
YouTube Kids is a child-friendly version of the video streaming platform. Google created YouTube Kids so younger viewers were only exposed to age appropriate content. While YouTube Kids is popular with its intended audiences, parents, child safety advocates, and Congressmen and women dislike its autoplay feature. Vox reports on the issue in “YouTube’s Kids App Has a Rabbit Hole Problem.”
The problem with Youtube Kids’ autoplay feature is that it never stops. When one video ends another begins in an endless loop. This would not be a problem if there was a way to disable autoplay, but that is not an option. Child safety advocates and parents are worried that a constant video stream teaches kids bad video consumption habits and tricks them into making certain choices.
Parents are also upset with the app for several other reasons. The inability to disable autoplay does not allow them to control their kids’ viewing habits. YouTube Kids does have a timer feature, but it clocks out at an hour and must be reset each time. Parents can also limit the app to certain videos or channels and they can disable the search function.
The biggest objections to the autoplay feature is the app’s algorithm that plays recommended videos. The problem with the algorithm is that it does return inappropriate videos about dieting, suicide, mean pranks, mature cartoons, and suicide ideation.
YouTube apparently wants to protect kids and work with parents, but they are slow to respond:
“For now, YouTube has not said whether YouTube Kids will have autoplay on or off by default. It’s also unclear how easy it will be to turn off autoplay. Still, the autoplay in YouTube Kids is a reminder that design choices made by tech platforms do have an impact on how parents and children interact with technology, and where regulators might step in.”
Google, YouTube’s parent company, does want to protect children, because if they do not it affects their profit margin.
Whitney Grace, June 10, 2021
Google: Do What We Say, Ignore What We Do, Just Heel!
June 8, 2021
If this Reddit diagram is on the money, we have a great example of how Google management goes about rule making. The post is called “Google Can’t Pass Its Own Page Speed Test.” The post was online on June 5, 2021, but when Beyond Search posts this short item, that Reddit post may be tough to find. Why? Oh, because.
- There are three grades Dearest Google automatically assigns to those who put content online. There are people who get green badges (just like in middle school). There are people who warrant yellow badges (no, I won’t mention a certain shop selling cloth patches in the shape of pentagons with pointy things), and red badges (red, like the scarlet letter, and you know what that meant in Puritan New England a relatively short time ago).
Notice that these Google sites get the red badge of high school science club mismanagement recognition:
- Google Translate
- Google’s site for its loyal and worshipful developers
- Google’s online store where you can buy tchotchkes
- The Google Cloud which has dreams of crushing the competitors like Amazon and Microsoft into non-coherent photons
- Google Maps which I personally find almost impossible to use due to the effort to convert a map into so much more than a representation of a territory. Perhaps a Google Map is not the territory? Could it be a vessel for advertising?
There are three Google services which get the yellow badge. I find the yellow badge thing very troubling. Here these are:
- YouTube, an outstanding collection of content recommended by a super duper piece of software and a giant hamper for online advertising of Grammarly, chicken sandwiches, insurance, and so much more for the consumers of the world
- Google Trends. This is a service which reveals teeny tiny slice of the continent of data it seems the Alphabet Google thing possesses
- The Google blog. That is a font of wisdom.
Observations:
- Like Google’s other mandates, it appears that those inside the company responsible for Google’s public face either don’t know the guidelines or simply don’t care.
- Like AMP, this is an idea designed to help out Google. Making everyone go faster reduces costs for the Google. Who wants to help Google reduce costs? I sure do.
- Google’s high school science club management methods continue to demonstrate their excellence.
What happens if a non Google Web site doesn’t go fast? You thought you got traffic from Google like the good old days, perhaps rethink that assumption?
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2021
Google Management Methods: A Partial CAT scan
June 8, 2021
The document “Thoughts on Cadence” is online as of June 7, 2021, at 6 am US Eastern. If you are a fan of management thrillers, you will want to snag this 14 page X Ray at www.shorturl.at/dgCY6 or maybe www.shorturl.at/cdBE2. (No guarantee how long the link will be valid. Because… Google, you know.)
“Cadence” was in the early 2000s, popular among those exposed to MBA think. The idea was that a giant, profit centric organization was organized. Yep, I know that sounds pretty crazy, but “cadence” implied going through training, getting in sync, and repeating the important things. Hut one two three four or humming along to a catchy tune crafted by Philip Glass. Thus, the essay by a person using the identifier Shishir Mehrotra, who is positioned as a Xoogler once involved in the YouTube business. A book may be forthcoming with the working title Rituals of Great Teams. I immediately thought of the activities once conducted at Templo Mayor by the fun loving Aztecs.
I am not going to walk through the oh, so logical explanation of the Google Management Method’s YouTube team. I want to highlight the information in the Tricks section. With such a Campbell soup approach to manufacturing great experiences, these magical manipulations reveal more of the Google method circa 2015. Procedures can change is six years. Heck, this morning, Google told me I used YouTube too much. I do upload a video every two weeks, so now “that’s enough” it seems.
Now to the tricks.
The section is short and it appears these are designed to be “productivity techniques.” It is not clear if the tricks are standard operating procedure, but let’s look at these six items.
First, one must color one’s calendar.
Second, have a single goal for each meeting.
Third, stand up and share notes and goals.
Fourth, audit the meetings.
Fifth, print your pre reading.
Sixth, have a consistent personal schedule.
Anyone exposed to meetings at a Google type of company knows that the calendar drives the day. But what happens when people are late, don’t attend, or play with their laptops and mobile phones during the meeting. Plus, the “organizer” often changes the meeting because a more important Google type person adds a meeting to the organizer’s calendar. Yep, hey, sorry really improves productivity. In my limited experience, none of these disruptions ever occur. Nope. Never. Consequently, the color of the calendar box, the idea of the meeting itself, and the concept of a consistent personal schedule are out the window.
Now the single goal thing is interesting. In Google type companies, there are multiple goals because each person in the meeting has an agenda: A lateral move or arabesque to get on a hot project, get out of the meeting to go get a Philz coffee, or nuke the people in the meeting who don’t understand the value of ethical behavior.
The print idea is interesting. In my experience, I am not sure printed material is as plentiful in meetings as it was when I worked at some big outfits. Who knows? Maybe 2015 thumb typers, GenXers, and Millennials did embrace the paper thing.
Thus, the tricks seem like a semi-formed listicle. With management precepts like the ones in the “Cadence” document, I can see why the Google does a bang up job on human resource management, content filtering, and thrilling people with deprecated features. Sorry, Gran, your pix of the grandchildren are gone now but the videos of the kids romping in the backyard pool are still available on YouTube.
Great stuff! Productivity come alive.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2021
Google Encourages Competition: Our Way or No Way. Seems Fair
June 4, 2021
I get a kick out of the Google. First, there was the really embarrassing matter of the diversity director outputting a few years ago some spicy comments about a country. Here’s a rundown of what makes the Timnit Gebru affair like just another synthetic pearl in a long string of management jewelry at a flea market.
I found this story even more revealing. The context is that numerous legal eagles are slapping Googzilla with a wide range of legal documents. Many of these are related to alleged monopolistic practices. I am no lawyer, but I get the feeling that some people are concerned about Google’s ability to absorb online advertising revenues, control what information people can find via the universal search thing, and Google’s Amazon like arrogance. (Yep, Amazon is the new Big Dog, but you knew that, right?)
Here’s the key statement:
Today I Learned you can not advertise on @GoogleAds if you use @googleanalytics competitors like @matomo_org
This seems reasonable. An “if then” statement for organizations that want to tap into Google’s billions of “users.”
An entity called @HashNuke added:
This is easily identifiable as anti-competitive practice. Wouldn’t this be illegal in many countries?
If these statements are accurate, isn’t being Googley just the best way to inspire individuals and organizations. Some of those legal eagles may find the information worth checking out.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2021
Don Quixote Lives: Another Assault on Data Silos
June 3, 2021
Keep in mind that in some organizations data silos are necessary: Poaching colleagues (hello, big pharma), government security requirements (yep, the top Beltway bandits too), and common sense (lawyers heading to trial with a judge who has a certain reputation). Data silos are like everywhere. The were a couple of firms which billed themselves as “silo breakers.” How is that working out? The answer to the question resides in an analyst’s “data silo.” There you go.
Security is the biggest reason much-maligned data silos, also known as fragmented data, persist. Google now hopes to change that, we learn from “Google Cloud Launches New Services for a Unified Data Platform” at IT Brief. The company asserts its new solutions mean organizations can now forget about data silos and securely analyze their data in the cloud. We have yet to see detailed evidence for that claim, however. We will continue to keep our sensitive data separated, thank you very much.
Writer Ryan Morris-Reade describes the three new services upon which Google is pinning its cloudy unification hopes:
- Datastream, a new serverless Change Data Capture and replication service. Datastream enables customers to replicate data streams in real-time, from Oracle and MySQL databases to Google Cloud services such as BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage, and Cloud Spanner. This solution allows businesses to power real-time analytics, database replication, and event-driven architectures.
- Analytics Hub, a new capability that allows companies to create, curate, and manage analytics exchanges securely and in real-time. With Analytics Hub, customers can share data and insights, including dynamic dashboards and machine learning models securely inside and outside their organization.
- Dataplex, an intelligent data fabric that provides an integrated analytics experience, bringing the best of Google Cloud and open-source together, to enable users to rapidly curate, secure, integrate, and analyze their data at scale. Automated data quality allows data scientists and analysts to address data consistency across the tools of their choice, to unify and manage data without data movement or duplication. With built-in data intelligence using Google’s best-in-class AI and Machine Learning capabilities, organizations spend less time with infrastructure complexities and more time using data to deliver business outcomes.”
We learn consulting firm Deloitte is helping Google implement these solutions. That company’s global chief commercial officer emphasizes the tools provide “enhanced data experiences” for companies with siloed data by simplifying implementation and management. We are also told that Equifax and Deutsche Bank trust Google Cloud with their data. I guess that is supposed to mean we should, too.
But Google is quite the fan of data silos. Remember “universal search.” Google has separate indexes for news, scholarly information, and other content types. Universal implies breaking down “data silos.” But it is easier to talk about solving the data silo problem than delivering.
And what about Deloitte? This firm was fined about $20 million US because it had data silos which partitioned some partners from the work of the professionals working for Autonomy.
Yep, data silos. Persistent and embarrassing when someone thinks of “universal search” and Deloitte’s internal oversight methods.
Cynthia Murrell, June 03, 2021
Google: The High School Science Club Management Method Cracks Location Privacy
June 2, 2021
How does one keep one’s location private? Good question. “Apple Is Eating Our Lunch: Google Employees Admit in Lawsuit That the Company Made It Nearly Impossible for Users to Keep Their Location Private” explains:
Google continued collecting location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, made popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressured LG and other phone makers into hiding settings precisely because users liked them, according to the documents.
The fix. Enter random locations in order to baffle the high school science club whiz kids. The write up explains:
The unsealed versions of the documents paint an even more detailed picture of how Google obscured its data collection techniques, confusing not just its users but also its own employees. Google uses a variety of avenues to collect user location data, according to the documents, including WiFi and even third-party apps not affiliated with Google, forcing users to share their data in order to use those apps or, in some cases, even connect their phones to WiFi.
Interesting. The question is, “Why?”
My hunch is that geolocation is a darned useful item of data. Do a bit of sleuthing and check out the importance of geolocation and cross correlation on policeware and intelware solutions. Marketing finds the information useful as well. Does Google have a master plan? Sure, make money. The high school science club wants to keep the data flowing for three reasons:
First, ever increasing revenues are important. Without cash flow, Google’s tough-to-control costs could bring down the company. Geolocation data are valuable and provide a kitting needle to weave other items of information into a detailed just-for-you quilt.
Second, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook pose significant threats to the Google. Amazon is, well, doing its Bezos bulldozer thing. Apple is pushing its quasi privacy campaign to give “users” control. And Facebook is unpredictable and trying to out Google Google in advertising and user engagement. These outfits may be monopolies, but monopolies have to compete so high value data become the weaponized drones of these business wars.
Third, Google’s current high school management approach is mostly unaware of how the company gathers data. The systems and methods were institutionalized years ago. What persists are the modules of code which just sort of mostly do their thing. Newbies use the components and the data collection just functions. Why fix it if it isn’t broken. That assumes that someone knows how to fiddle with legacy Google.
Net net: Confusion. What high school science club admits to not having the answers? I can’t name one, including my high school science club in 1958. Some informed methods are wonderful and lesser being should not meddle. I read the article and think, “If you don’t get it, get out.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 1, 2021
Google: More Personnel Excitement
June 1, 2021
I am not too keen on what used to be called human resources. I am not sure I liked being a “resource” like sand or lignite. I once wrote a report about “sherm”. Was I surprised. The “word” was the way personnel professionals pronounced the estimable trade association Society for Human Resource Management. SHRM became sherm to those in the know. I did the report; got paid; and decided to not think about personnel again. Until I read “Over 10,000 Women Are Suing Google over Gender Pay Disparity.” Now that’s a personnel story which is almost up to the level of the Timnit Gebru matter.
According to the write up:
Four women who worked at Google have won class-action status to proceed with their gender pay disparity lawsuit, reports Bloomberg. The latest ruling in the protracted legal battle means the suit can now apply to 10,800 women who held various positions at the tech giant since 2013. Those affected represent a broad cross-section of vocations including engineers, program managers, salespeople and at least one preschool teacher. The women, who are seeking more than $600 million in damages, allege Google violated the California Equal Pay Act by paying them less than their male counterparts, promoting them slowly and less frequently.
I have used the phrase “high school science club management methods” or HSSCMM or H2SC2M to capture the approach some Google managers take to the personnel thing. If the information in the article is accurate, it would appear that Google had institutionalized pay disparity. That’s something my high school science club would have done for sure.
My thought is that Alphabet Google may want to check out the information on the SHRM Web site. I clicked on the Compensation tab and spotted a number of articles about employee pay. There’s an entry for “Using AI in Comp Decisions? Here’s How to Build Trust.” That write up seems germane. It mentions artificial intelligence, and based on the recent Google conference, smart software is a big deal at the Google. The write up mentions “trust.” That’s important when visiting via Google’s Zoom clone with prospective female hires at big time universities.
Perhaps Google should pull up roots and relocate to a country which does not fiddle around with the equality notion? Can a high school science club just pick up and head to such a place? Sure. High school science thinkers (regardless of age) can come up with absolutely brilliant solutions that seem logical to them. Example: Buying Motorola, Orkut, solving death, etc.
It’s sherm. Remember when you sign up for an online equality in compensation course. Sherm and 657175616c697479.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2021
Loon Balloon Descends from Fantastic Heights to Parking Lot
May 31, 2021
I read “Alphabet Moonshot Loon Is Jolted by Layoffs – But Employees Are Finding Jobs with Tech Titan.” The article is amusing because of the assertion that “employees are finding jobs with tech titan.” How many Loonies will be joining other units of the online advertising company? The article does not answer the question because that would reveal the functioning of the people management methods at the firm.
I noted this statement in the write up:
Mountain View-based Loon decided to wind down the company after it wasn’t able to craft a viable and sustainable business model.
Yep, the online ad firm learned that balloons floated with the wind. Bad weather? It happens, and the Loon balloons would go where Google did not want them to venture. Flight paths, military facilities, transmission lines. You get the idea.
Here’s a statement which may ring hollow with Timnit Gebru:
Loon and Alphabet intend to help the displaced workers, a Loon spokesperson said in an email to this news organization.
Help, it appears has not been defined. A member of the high school science club management team allegedly said:
If Loon employees do not find alternative roles at Alphabet, they will be eligible to receive severance pay following their end dates.
Loon balloons come down to earth, and it is possible that some Xooglers will be able to park their vans in the parking lot instead of on the street in Mountain View. Cost cutting and reality have intruded on the mom and pop online ad merchant it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2021
More about Bert: Will TikTok Videos Be Next?
May 28, 2021
Google asserts its new AI model will deliver significant improvements. SEO Hacker discusses “Google MUM: New Search Technology.” We are told MUM, or Multi Unified Model, is like BERT but much more powerful. We learn:
“They are built on the same Transformer architecture, but MUM is 1000x more powerful than its predecessor. … Another difference between MUM and BERT is that MUM is trained across 75 languages – not just one language (usually English). This enables the search engine, through the use of MUM, to connect information from all around the world without going through language barriers. Additionally, Google mentioned that MUM is multimodal, so it understands and processes information from modalities such as text and images. They also brought up the possibility for MUM to expand to other modalities such as videos and audio files.”
For an example of how the new model will work, see either the SEO Hacker write-up or Google’s blog post on the subject. The illustration involves Mt. Fuji. Naturally, the Search Engine Optimization site ponders how the change might affect SEO. Writer Sean Si predicts MUM’s understanding of 75 languages means non-English content will find much wider audiences. The revised algorithm will also serve up more types of content, like podcasts and videos, alongside text-based resources. Both of those sound like positives, at least for searchers. Other ramifications on the field remain to be seen, but Si anticipates SEO pros will have to develop entirely new approaches. Of course, producing quality content relevant to one’s site should remain the top recommendation.
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2021
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