Alphabet Google: High School Science Club Management Breakthrough
February 20, 2021
The Google appears to support the concepts, decision making capabilities, and the savoir faire of my high school science club. I entered high school in 1958, and I was asked to join the Science Club. Like cool. Fat, thick glasses, and the sporty clothes my parents bought me at Robert Hall completed by look. And I fit right in. Arrogant, proud to explain that I missed the third and fourth grades because my tutor in Campinas died of snake bite. I did the passive resistance thing, and I refused to complete the 1950s version of distance learning via the Calvert Course, and socially unaware – yes, I fit right in. The Science Club of Woodruff High School! People sort of like me: Mid western in spirit, arrogant, and clueless. Were we immature? Does Mr. Putin have oligarchs as friends?
With my enthusiastic support, the Woodruff High School Science Club intercepted the principal’s morning announcements. We replaced mimeograph stencils with those we enhanced. We slipped calcium carbide into chemistry experiments involving sulfuric acid. When we we taken before the high school assistant principal Bull Durham, he would intone, “Grow up.”
We learned there were no consequences. We concluded that without the Science Club, it was hasta la vista to the math team, the quick recall team, the debate team, the trophies from the annual Science Fair, and the pride in the silly people who racked up top scores on standardized tests administered to everyone in the school.
The Science Club learned a life lesson. Apologize. Look at your shoes. Evidence meekness and humility. Forget asking for permission.
I thought about how the Science Club decided. That’s an overstatement. An idea caught our attention and we acted. I stepped into the nostalgia Jacuzzi when I read “Google Fires Another AI Ethics Leader.” A déjà vu moment. The Timnit Gibru incident flickers in the thumbtypers’ news feeds. Now a new name: Margaret Mitchell, the co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team. Allegedly she was fired if the information in the “real” news story is accurate. The extra peachy keen Daily Mail alleged that the RIF was a result of Ms. Mitchell’s use of a script “to search for evidence of discrimination against fired black colleague.” Not exactly as nifty as my 1958 high school use of calcium carbide, but close enough for horseshoes.
Even the cast of characters in this humanoid unfriending is the same: Uber Googler Jeff Dean, who Sawzall and BigTable problems logically. The script is a recycling of a 1930’s radio drama. The management process unchanged: Conclude and act. Wham and bam.
The subject of ethics is slippery. Todd Pheifer, a doctor of education wrote Business Ethics: The Search for an Elusive Idea and required a couple of hundred pages to deal with a single branch of the definition of the concept. The book is a mere $900 on Amazon, but today (Saturday, February 20, 2021, it is not available.) Were the buyers Googlers?
Ethics is in the title of the Axios article “Google Fires Another AI Ethics Leader,” and ethics figures in many of the downstream retellings of this action. Are these instant AI ethicist zappings removals the Alphabet Google equivalent of the Luxe Half-Acre Mosquito Trap with Stand? Hum buzz zap!
In my high school science club, we often deferred to Don and Bernard or the Jackson Brothers. These high school wizards had published an article about moon phases in a peer-reviewed journal when Don was a freshman and Bernard was a sophomore. (I have a great anecdote about Don’s experience in astrophysics class at the University of Illinois. Ask me nicely, and I will recount it.)
The bright lads would mumble some idea about showing the administration how stupid it was, and we were off to the races. As I recall, we rarely considered the impact of our decisions. What about ethics, wisdom, social and political awareness? Who are you kidding? Snort, snort, snort. Life lesson: No consequences for those who revere good test takers.
As it turned out, most of us matured somewhat. Most got graduate degrees. Most of us avoided super life catastrophes. Bull Durham is long dead, but I would wager he would remember our brilliance if he were around today to reminisce about the Science Club in 1958.
I am grateful for the Googley, ethical AI related personnel actions actions. Ah, memories.
Several questions with answers in italic:
- How will Alphabet Google’s effort to recruit individuals who are not like the original Google “science club” in the wake of the Backrub burnout? Answer: Paying ever higher salaries, larger bonuses, maybe an office at home.
- Which “real” news outfit will label the ethical terminations as a failure of high school science club management methods? Answer: None.
- What does ethics means? Answer: Learn about phenomenological existentialism and then revisit this question.
I miss those Science Club meetings on Tuesday afternoon from 3 30 to 4 30 pm Central time even today. But “real” news stories about Google’s ethical actions related to artificial intelligence are like a whiff of Dollar General air freshener.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2021
Facebook Decision Sparks Colorful Language
February 19, 2021
I noted this headline:
Facebook Gives Middle finger to Australia as Google Strikes Multi-Million Dollar Deals over News
Very colorful. Google decided to write checks, not do the crazy pull out a country play bandied about. Facebook, on the other hand, seems content to kiss the kangaroos good bye. Not shrimp on the barbie when Mr. Zuck entertains, I assume.
The write up with the middle finger headline includes this quote from a Googler:
In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” wrote William Easton, managing director of Facebook Australia & New Zealand in a blog post. “The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.
What happened to Melanie Silva the Managing Director,, Google Australia and New Zealand. She assumed her job in November 2020 or October 2018 depending on which source one examines. She was — at least to me — the hard line Googler.
But the article with the middle finger headline focuses on William Easton. He has VP attached to his title. What’s interesting is that he was at Facebook before becoming a Googler.
What I find interesting is that both Ms. Silva and Mr. Easton are finance types.
Remember the good old days of Google when senior executives were engineers?
Who at Google is calculating the cost of paying for news to publishers worldwide? How many ad sales will it take to offset the cost of news? The Google News page has lacked ads for many years. Perhaps that will change? If not, Google will have to trim more costs and find a way to hold down costs.
The Google is entering a new phase and high school science club management tactics won’t work. Writing checks does it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2021
Google in France: Are Wine and Cheese Included in the Deal?
February 19, 2021
Google News aggregates news content from various media outlets, but it does not pay the outlets for the content. Some content on Google News requires subscriptions to specific outlets, but overall the information is free. Media outlets are upset that Google does not pay them for their content, although Google could argue that they are driving traffic to their Web site and offer free exposure. Traffic and exposure are not enough for French publishers, says the Seattle PI in, “Google, French Publishers Sign Copyright News Payment Deal.”
Google France negotiated with the Alliance de la Presse d’Information Generale for months to agree upon a framework where Google would pay licensing fees to French publishers. Google needed this deal after France was the first country to adopt the European Union’s new copyright rules.
The new rules were made, because of money and lack of quality news:
“Under the framework agreement, payments will be based on criteria such as the amount published daily and monthly internet traffic. Google did not spell out how much money would be paid to the group’s members. News companies had pushed for the EU copyright reform amid worries that quality journalism is declining as ad revenue gets siphoned off by the digital giants.”
It makes sense, especially when big tech companies created the technology that enables misinformation bad actors to spread conspiracy theories. The technology itself is not bad, but can cause harm. Google is benefiting from journalists’ hard work, but also dumbing down the medium as well as stealing its’ power. Journalists, like other professionals, should be paid for their work, especially if they focus on telling quality stories.
Whitney Grace, February 19, 2021
Alphabet Google: Rambling, Scrambling, and Managing
February 18, 2021
The Google — actually Alphabet — has been beavering away in Silicon Valley. So much to do and so little time. First, the company caught the attention of gamers with its interesting Stadia crawfishing. Hey, that could be a video game similar to Angry Birds. The GOOG does not innovate; the Google imitates and duplicates. That’s definitely been a secret sauce in the instant messaging department.
Next, the company cut a deal with Australia. Isn’t that the stomping ground for Rupert Murdoch, the bright white light and clear blue flame thinker for news? Mr. Rupert has captured headlines with analyses by the laser intellect of a “real news” generator. You can read that remarkable analysis here.
And the cherry on top of the Googley banana split is reorganizing its artificial intelligence unit. The story “Google to Reorganize AI Teams in Wake of Researcher’s Departure” states:
Google has sought to diffuse employee rancor stemming from the acrimonious departure of a prominent Black researcher, Timnit Gebru. The responsible AI teams will roll up to Marian Croak, a Black Google executive who currently serves as a vice president of engineering focused on site-reliability matters. Croak will report to Jeff Dean, the senior vice president of Google AI.
Each of these is a potential top tier business school case study. That seems unlikely, however, in the aftermath of the Covid thing’s impact on some universities and advanced degrees programs. Consider these business implications of each of these examples of stellar management certitude:
- Stadia seems to have arrived and departed much like Dodgeball and Web Accelerator. Quick decisions are one hallmark of thoughtful, organized business actions.
- The “pay to play” model seems to provide incentive to large publishers to accept Google’s cash. Google’s reluctance to pay for news, its saber rattling, its posturing by the company’s Australian executives, vaporized with what I call a Rupert deal.
- The reorganization of Google AI has more to do with preserving the Google status quo than substantive change. Isn’t Dr. Jeff Dean still in charge? Wasn’t he the wizard who added an accelerant to the Gibiru affair.
Let’s step back. In the space of a week, Google — actually Alphabet — has abandoned the science club approach to reality. Google is killing products after praising the workers soon to be terminated. Google is buying cooperation from the inspiration behind today’s Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Plus Google is trying to deal with employee unrest with an old school management technique: Shuffling deck chairs. (Hey, I did not mention the Titanic. You thought that. Come on. Admit it.)
What have we learned? One can view Google’s actions as brilliant managerial execution. On the other hand, Google seems to be showboating. There is also a middle ground. The new Google just does not know what to do: Be forceful, spend money, reorganize, and demonstrate the values of managers who really miss the high school science club meetings from a past long dead but not forgotten.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2021
Google: Alleged Candidate Filtering
February 18, 2021
Who knows if this story is 100 percent spot on. It does illustrate a desire to present the Google in a negative way, and it seems to make clear how simple filters can come back to bite the hands of the busy developers who add features and functions without much thought for larger implications.
The story is “Google Has Been Allowing Advertisers to Exclude Nonbinary People from Seeing Job Ads.” The main idea seems to be:
Google’s advertising system allowed employers or landlords to discriminate against nonbinary and some transgender people…
Oh, oh.
If true, the check box for “exclude these” could become a bit of a sink hole.
The write up points out:
It’s not clear if the advertisers meant to prevent nonbinary people or those identifying as transgender from finding out about job openings.
Interesting item if accurate.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2021
Alphabet Google Spells Misunderstanding with a You
February 17, 2021
Developers at Google’s recently formed game studios were shocked February 1 when they were notified that the studios would be shut down, according to four sources with knowledge of what transpired. Just the week prior, Google Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison sent an email to staff lauding the “great progress” its studios had made so far. Mass layoffs were announced a few days later, part of an apparent pattern of Stadia leadership not being honest and upfront with the company’s developers, many of which had upended their lives and careers to join the team.
The Stadia Xooglers-to-be tried to get more information from Alphabet Google. According to the article:
One source described the Q&A as an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at extracting some kind of accountability from Stadia management. “I think people really just wanted the truth of what happened,” said the source. “They just want an explanation from leadership. If you started this studio and hired a hundred or so of these people, no one starts that just for it to go away in a year or so, right? You can’t make a game in that amount of time…We had multi-year reassurance, and now we don’t.” The source added that the Q&A “wasn’t pretty.”
The management finesse is notable. If the information in the article is accurate, the consistency of Alphabet Google’s management methods is evident. I have labeled the approach “the high school science club management method” or HSSCMM. With the challenges many business schools face, the technique is not explored with the rigor of other approaches. Nevertheless, several characteristics of this Stadia motif are worth noting:
- Misinformation
- Awkward communications
- Insensitivity to the needs of Googlers on the express bus to Xooglerdom
- A certain blindness toward strategic and tactical planning.
Online games are bigger than many other forms of entertainment. I recall learning that in the mid 2000s, Google probed Yahoo about online games if I recall the presentation I heard 15 years ago.
Taking the article at face value, it appears that Alphabet Google spells misunderstanding with a you. There is no letter “we” in Alphabet I conclude. High school science club members struggle with the pronoun and spelling thing I conclude.
What’s the outlook for Alphabet Google in the burgeoning online game sector? Options include:
- Acquiring a company and integrating it into the Google
- Cleaning the high school and leaving the Science Club leadership intact
- Creating a duplicate service with activity centered in another country which is a variation on Google’s approach to messaging
- Going into a holding pattern and making a fresh start once the news cycle forgets that Alphabet Google failed on the well publicized game initiative.
- Teaming with Microsoft to create the bestest online game service ever.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2021
Google: An Homage to Donald Rumsfeld
February 16, 2021
I read “Uncovering Unknown Unknowns in Machine Learning.” The title reminded me of Donald Rumsfeld who served as US Secretary of Defense fro9m 1975 to 1977. He is the author of Known and Unknown: A Memoir. He allegedly coined the quip:
There are known knowns, things we know that we…” “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know.”
The Google blog post states:
The goal of the challenge is to raise the bar in ML evaluation sets and to find as many examples as possible that are confusing or otherwise problematic for algorithms to process.
Yep, Google wants others to help it deal with unknown unknowns. I won’t chop the logic of Mr. Rumsfeld’s alleged quip. I absolutely won’t compare knowing unknown unknowns to Google’s attempt to “solve death.”
I will make three observations:
- I think that the Google wants to use this type of Fancy Dan initiative to get in front of the tempest swirling around Timnit Gebru incendiary devices
- The desire to associate Google with something inherent in trying to make smart software do more than sell ads threads through the CATS4ML announcement. I think of the announcement as a variant of “stuff happens” and not even the Google can figure it out
- The initiative may be a building block in Google’s Spring 2021 game plan which will allow more ad revenue to flow whilst neutralizing difficult decisions about staff who raise uncomfortable research topics.
My three points are known unknowns. These are less troublesome than Google’s bold efforts to solve death and identify unknown unknowns. Nope, I don’t want to do the phenomenological existentialism of smart software. Not for me. Too old.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2021
The Unthinkable: Will Google News and Facebook Pay Publishers for Content?
February 15, 2021
Regulators are beginning to agree with publishers that platforms like Google News should pay for the content they post. News Showcase is Google’s answer to this trend, and The Verge reveals it is operating in two new countries in, “Google Now Pays 450 Sites to Bring You Free News, Including Some Paywalled Stories.” In the UK, 120 publishers have enlisted in alongside 40 in Argentina. Those nations join Germany and Brazil, where News Showcase launched last year, and Australia, which joined in just last week. The last example is in interesting study in regulatory pressure and corporate acquiescence. Writer Jon Porter explains:
“Last week, Google News Showcase launched in Australia, a country where the company is currently locking horns with lawmakers over new rules that could force it to pay news publishers for their content. Google recently threatened to pull its search engine from the country if the News Media Bargaining Code goes into effect. Last week, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he’d held ‘constructive’ talks with Google CEO Sundar Pichai over the new rules. The situation means that although seven Australian publishers have joined the program, covering over 25 publications, The Guardian reports that one outlet, Nine, chose not to negotiate with Google until the new code is brought in. In an FAQ, Google says it believes News Showcase should be compatible with the new rules, since publishers are free to enter into arbitration if they don’t like Google’s News Showcase deal.”
Google plans to soon add France, Canada, and Japan to its News Showcase roster. Meanwhile, Facebook has a similar plan. It is phasing content for which it is actually paying publishers into its News tab, which serves up both curated and personalized content. The initiative started in the US and recently began operation in the UK. Now we know the big tech companies are not completely impervious to regulatory pressure. What is next?
Cynthia Murrell, February 15, 2021
Google and Broad Match
February 11, 2021
I read “Google Is Moving on From Broad Match Modifier.” The essay’s angle is search engine optimization; that is, spoofing Google’s now diluted relevance methods. The write up says:
Google says it has been getting better at learning the intent behind a query, and is therefore more confident it can correctly map advertisements to queries. As that ability improves, the differences between Phrase Match and Broad Match Modified diminishes. Moving forward, there will be three match types, each with specific benefits:
- Exact match: for precision
- Broad match: for reach
- Phrase match: in Google’s words, to combine the best of both.
Let’s assume that these are the reasons. Exact match delivers precision. Broad match casts a wide net. No thumbtypers wants a null set. Obviously there is zero information in a null set in the mind of the GenXers and Millennials, right? The phrase match is supposed to combine precision and recall. Oh, my goodness, precision and recall. What happened to cause the Google to reach into the deep history of STAIRS III and RECON for this notion.
Google hasn’t and won’t.
The missing factor in the write up’s analysis is answering the question, “When will each of the three approaches be used, under what conditions, and what happens if the bus drives to the wrong city?” (This bus analogy is my happy way of expressing the idea that Google search results often have little to do with either the words in the user’s query or the “intent” of the user (allegedly determined by Google’s knowledge of each user and the magic of more than 100 “factors” for determining what to present).
The key is the word “reach.” Changes to Google’s methods are, from my point of view, are designed to accomplish one thing: Burn through ad inventory.
By killing off functioning Boolean, deprecating search operators, ignoring meaningful time indexing, and tossing disambiguation into the wind blowing a Google volleyball into Shoreline traffic — the company’s core search methods have been shaped to produce money.
SEO experts don’t like this viewpoint. Google doesn’t care as long as the money keeps flowing. With Google investing less in infrastructure and facing significant pressure from government investigators and outfits like Amazon and Facebook, re-explaining search boils down to showing content which transports ads.
Where’s that leave the SEO experts? Answer: Ad sales reps for the Google. Traffic comes to advertisers. But the big bucks are the big advertisers’ campaigns which expose a message to as many eyeballs as possible. That’s why “broad reach” is the fox in the relevance hen house.
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2021
Terrorized Publishers Try a New Poison Dart on the Google
February 10, 2021
Google has reduced its investment in plumbing. It’s mostly waffled and fumbled its push into online games. The company has failed to keep Loon balloons aloft. And, more disappointingly, the Google has not solved death. Amazon and Facebook, despite protestations to the contrary, are making progress in online advertising. And the Bezos bulldozer’s new driver knows that product searches are Amazon’s personal turf.
Another group, however, wants to pour poison in Googzilla’s ear. The publishers, aided by their advisors, and assorted governments may have found a way. The write up “EU Ready to Follow Australia’s Lead on Making Big Tech Pay for News” reports:
EU lawmakers overseeing new digital regulation in Europe want to force Big Tech companies to pay for news, echoing a similar move in Australia and strengthening the hand of publishers against Google and Facebook.
Note that this article is behind a paywall, and in order to access it, you have to snag a wonky orange copy or fork over some cash. Very European, eh?
What happens if countries require Google to pay for news? What happens if the millennials holding elected and appointed positions don’t buy the threat of blocking search or killing access to Android apps (hopefully those which distribute malware via the Google Play service)? What if the bold push by Google Australia’s wizardly manager is recognized as a company acting like a country, maybe like the nation state in “The Mouse That Roared”?
Let’s see. Google has been involved in doing its brand of “not evil” for information for about 20 years and change. It takes a long time to develop an economic poison. Too bad the governments were not into the “warp speed” approach to innovation.
And France and its Googley tie up? Ah, France.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2021
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