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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I can't believe they wrung that much text out of such a small issue - tempest in a teapot indeed.

Maybe the top 1/4 of the post is actually useful. Google apparently caught "sponsoring" blog posts to promote Chrome. Google denies knowledge, marketing firm admits to doing it without Google approval.

The website then spent the next 3/4 of the article trying to invent a conspiracy theory around it, with the author throwing in some choice weasel words to make it seem like outsourced marketing is suspicious behavior.

Then more words are spent trying to spin this very common, very simple mistake into a conspiracy theory. Couldn't we have found a better link for this?

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This very common, very simple mistake was done by the company with the biggest video ad network in the world, which advises others on how to do video advertising.

This very common, very simple mistake was also don by the company which over the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into oblivion from its search engines, because they had content that was deemed too "thin" and warned others not to do the same.

This very common, very simple mistake was also done by the same company that has banned or penalized other companies over purchasing links through sponsored posts, even if those companies protested that they didn't know better and that a middleman was involved.

So how did I wring that much out of this "small" issue. Simple. It's not a small issue.

Again, tempest in a teapot. Apparent bad behavior is uncovered, immediate denial is issued. Followup investigation reveals that a third party contractor acted out of line, has admitted guilt, and remedial action taken.

A minor scandal by all measures. Embarrassing maybe, and probably worth a good look over how Google chooses its third party contractors, nothing more.

> "by the company which over the past year has tossed hundreds of sites into oblivion from its search engines, because they had content that was deemed too "thin""

This would be scandalous if Google actually did participate in a blog-payola situation, which they didn't.

> "done by the company with the biggest video ad network in the world, which advises others on how to do video advertising"

Have you worked in a big company before? The fact that you expect the Chrome team to be "advising others on how to do video advertising" is pretty far out. Breaking: corporate communications in giant companies is substantially less than perfect. Film at 11.

> "Simple. It's not a small issue."

The only way this could be construed as a major issue is if Google's lying about the rogue contractor and did in fact knowingly engage the bloggers. Do you have evidence of this?

I honestly cannot see how this is nefarious. Google screwed up and picked a crappy contractor for this work. Everyone goes home with egg on their faces. To generalize and extrapolate this to see malice really demands some substantiating evidence that Google did this on purpose.

   Again, tempest in a teapot. Apparent bad behavior is uncovered,
   immediate denial is issued. Followup investigation reveals that a
   third party contractor acted out of line, has admitted guilt, and
   remedial action taken.

question: when other companies have had external contractors try to game google by paying for links or posting paper-thin irrelevant paid for blog posts, has google accepted "our bad, it was an external contractor and we had no idea" as an excuse or have they penalized the companies anyway?

> probably worth a good look over how Google chooses its third party contractors, nothing more.

No, it's also worth a good look over how Google handles these problems when other companies have them.

The problem isn't that Google gamed their own results, who cares about that. The problem is that Google doesn't offer transparency or recourse for the little guy

Yes, when JC Penney was discovered to have purchased links through the actions of a third-party, and said hey, it was the contractors fault, Google immediately say "Oh, that's OK, no reason to penalize you."

Oh, wait. They didn't. They slapped a ranking penalty on the company, because ultimately it was JC Penney's responsibility.

Google did participate in a blog for payola situation. The fact that it employed third parties that got it involved in that doesn't magically excuse it from potential penalties.

This wasn't some "rogue" contractor that just did whatever it wanted. This was an agency Google hired, which in turn worked with another agency, that ran this campaign. These companies were engaged by Google.

Did Google expect this type of mess? No. Should Google have been watching for it? Absolutely. Either no one at Google bothered to fully examine the final and promised work product or they did and were dumb enough to let this go forward. Neither speaks well about this case.

And to date, I still haven't gotten Google or the agency to provide more specifics about what was expected or promised. That generally isn't a positive sign.

I think someone at Google got a pitch about doing some viral blogging thing to promote Chrome. They probably decided cool, go for it. They probably didn't examine exactly what was going to happen. They almost certainly didn't plan to buy links or have garbage content be produced. There almost certainly wasn't some evil plot to do all this.

But that's not the point. The point is that this did happen, by a company that when others do this, passes out penalties against them, regardless of the excuses. That's why it's an important story, and I'm sorry that's lost on you. It's not lost on many other people.

Including Google, by the way. That's why Google's own spam team has penalized Google Chrome's page.

Danny is the best search engine journalist on the planet. This is what he does, about search engines, day in and day out. I expect no less than this level of scrutiny from him, and that's why I read his posts.

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