“In a world where the cost of a loaf of bread rises faster than the morning sun…” Like me, but no, not me. A friend asked one of the AIs to write an unCharles opening. I think he was mocking me. Or, maybe the AI was. Whatevs. I chose to see having someone I know tell an AI to ape me as the most sincere form of modern flattery.
Some people I know are far less forgiving. One of them is Matthew Keys. He runs The Desk, a website about TV and streaming read by 50,000 professionals who strategize about that kind of stuff.
Spammers copied Matthew’s recent story about the arrest of Marco Gaudino and pasted it to their site. Google put the aped version at the top of their search rankings. Matthew’s original and identical story was “nowhere to be found.”
@searchliaison Please explain to me why a spam site that copy and pasted my entire story is on the first page of Google when you search "Marco Gaudino," but my story — the original source — is nowhere to be found?
Are spam sites more "helpful" than original journalism? pic.twitter.com/1zFWWoDbek
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) April 14, 2024
Google says they look for stories readers value. Comparing the value of these two stories is like comparing two crisp twenties that popped out of an ATM. They’re indistinguishable.
But Google’s choice cost Matthew traffic and money. It’s not funny. Unsurprisingly, he’s perturbed. He tweeted as much to a search ombudsman. A couple of days later, when I searched for “Marco Gaudino charged,” Matthew’s story came up in the fifth position. So, maybe his actions helped. But the damage was done.
Just in case you're wondering why I'm frustrated: This is a look at our ad revenue over the past 12 months.
That drop in October was when Google changed its search algorithm.
You don't have to see the numbers on the left. A chart like this is NOT GOOD. Google did this. https://t.co/bkbh0exPLU pic.twitter.com/jv8gCpmhEH
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) March 5, 2024
When things like this happen, the presumption is Google == evil. That double equal sign doesn’t mean Google is really evil, it’s just nerd notation for a single equal sign. I think folks are wrong about Google being evil. Or in the parlance of code jockeys, Google != evil. Hold off on hurling flaming barbs for a moment.
For proof, I ironically offer Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Hanlon submitted it as a joke for Arthur Bloch’s second book of Murphyisms.
Why would Google opt for derivative claptrap over the original McCoy? They get paid either way. My Aggregator’s Dilemma-lemma, which I hereby elevate to straight blade status, posits that Google needs Matthew to get paid so he shows up the next morning with fresh content, or Google won’t have anything for their indexing bots to ingest — and, thereby, nothing to muddle with marketing garbage to make search results seem organic to lay people.
“Organic.” Good word and an even better segue.
There are two Internets right now: The organic, free-range fields that people like Matthew sow and Google reaps, and the cage-fed stuff that users create on social platforms that are closed off to Google.
Every time Google eclipses a story from someone like Matthew, a piece of the free-range internet withers. Every day, we lose so many hectares of plow-able organic content that we’re going to need Sally Struthers to do a public service ad.
Seeing so many stories like this – GENUINE publishers getting absolutely ruined by @google's garbage HCU update.
HCU IS NOT ABOUT CONTENT – It's about BRAND AUTHORITY and UGC.
I've audited COUNTLESS SITES hit by HCU, all had amazing content, good engagement.
Don't be fooled. pic.twitter.com/XEVozIMTzZ
— Daniel Foley Carter (SEO evangelist) (@foley_seo) April 20, 2024
We’re almost at a point where we need to name this phenomenon. I suggest “Global Waning.” No, even better: “Search Engine Change.” At some point, Google is going to need to start to loan publishers money so they can forgive defaults in content-for-loan-forgiveness swaps. Which is a preview into a future story on the lack of derivative media. Well, the lack of media derivatives.
Related: How Google is killing independent sites like ours [HouseFresh]
“Google is dead” was a friend’s take on this. Although, it’s hard for me to make a case that the fourth most-valuable company is dead. Or even sickly. I’d say Google is going through a midlife crisis. It wakes up a couple of times a night to pee. When the sun also rises and Google does get up for real, it swings its legs over the side of the bed, and groans putting on its socks. Last weekend, I saw it test-driving a pricey car with an unnecessarily long front. Don’t ask what I was doing there.
For a long time, we believed Google to be brilliant. That everything they did was orchestrated. We ignored failures like Hangouts, Circles, and Picasa. Other than giving away established services like email, what have they created? Just our undying belief that they’re evil geniuses.
If you listen carefully, you can hear Google bad-guy monologing. Which is usually a sign that things are going to go south. Especially for evildoers.
And, here it is. Google is the world’s biggest one-trick pony. They’re really good at search and pretty lousy at just about everything else. But, they’ve just been such a huge part of our world that they’ve blocked out the Sun. You see, Google isn’t the Sun. They’re the Moon. If the morning sun doesn’t rise for Matthew, the sun also sets on Google.
So, I’ll close with this razor to shave off philosophication time for future media theorists — and this time, it’s all me, baby: “Algorithmic boners aren’t evil, they’re a glimpse into midlife onset imposter syndrome.”
(groan. I should’ve stuck with AI aping me.)
…there’s an important P.S. here.
In 2018, Google was bidding on a $10 billion contract to be the cloud service for the Pentagon. Googlers — I hate the San Francisco startup ethos so much when they use words like that. You’re tech pros, not high school footballers. Egad. — protested to management, and Google withdrew their bid.
This week, 28 Google employees protested that Google sold cloud services to Israel. Google fired those 28 employees on the spot.
People like DHH and Kimberly A. Whitler applauded Google’s new-found ethics. Outside of silly names for employees, I don’t think Google has ethics. I certainly don’t believe they have a conscience. I think that Google is in far more trouble these days, and this massive shift in philosophy underscores how much Google needs (or at least badly wants) this revenue.
Charles Benaiah is the CEO of Watzan, a techy company for medical media. When he’s not running a media company, he reads about media, thinks about it, pull out what’s left of his hair dealing with it, and then he writes about it over on Funny Business (formerly unCharles). Follow him on LinkedIn by clicking or tapping here.
The opinion reflected in this article is the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of TheDesk.net or its parent company, Solano Media LLC. Although the majority of Benaiah’s current column was focused on this publication and its troubles with Google’s core product, no one at TheDesk.net was involved in the column’s creation, and we were not aware that Benaiah was working on his editorial until after it was published.
