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Comment by r721 | Hacker News Reader

>EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740425 (4 days ago, 119 comments)

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> relevant material provided to us

Sure would be nice if the material was provided to us too. Or write an article explaining clearly how the original info was misconstrued. Simply deleting it (edit: instead of replacing it with a clarification so anyone who goes to read the wrong info gets the corrected one) really sends a wrong message, both about Wired and Google.

The relevant material was almost certainly the slide that the article was mischaracterizing: https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061

I wish WIRED had included this context in their retraction statement…

Maybe they meant a longer version of this tweet:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297 (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802302)

"The organic (IE: non-sponsored) results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems."

Uh, other than being pushed off the visible page, I guess?

That's a very fair point, and I've complained about that degradation on Google many, many times over the years on HN, but I also don't think that's what Google was responding to. The Wired article has been taken down, but I'm assuming it was arguing that Google would change organic results to get more ad clicks. Google is saying here that ad results and organic results are 2 independent, orthogonal systems.

Again, your point is one I strongly agree with, but it's also taken out-of-context with respect to the article Google was responding to.

I think there's also a case for neglecting the quality of organics, while investing highly in the quality of ad targeting. So it's not quite as twirling-mustachio villain feeling, it has roughly the same effect.

Yep. It's obvious that they design for you to click ads, but it was fairly rocky suggesting that the backend reaches out to the ad system. This wouldn't just destroy results, but also run afoul of FCC Ad disclosure requirements.

So is no one questioning that maybe the search subsystem talks to the "website score" (or whatever it's called in Google-speak), to determine if it's relevant? And perhaps that score is influenced by how many valid ads there are.

Maybe the score is simply highly-correlated with a site that shows many google ads? Think about it, someone that shows Google ads happens to also be very very keen on optimizing everything that affects their rankings in Google searches.

Hey Google, perhaps "displaying many Google ads" should be a negative on page-rank?

Regardless, the Wired piece had no evidence and didn't make a claim on the same basis as what you're suggesting. The opinion author mistook this feature by thinking it applied to organic results: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10286719?hl=en

The 'visible page' isn't a finite length.

I'm not sure what point you're making. Is it just that I didn't say "currently visible portion of the page, the part you see without deliberate scrolling"?

Or, I guess "below the fold"

It's not fixed, but it is finite. No infinite sized screen exists

If they mean it's forced off the screen, not the page, that makes sense.

People don't click on or look at anything past the top 5 results anymore. They just refine the query.

For context, the WIRED op-ed was written by a DuckDuckGo executive. I can certainly imagine the incentive there for DDG to misrepresent Google's behavior (and as I was reading the article, most of it struck me as speculation more than anything).

ETA: Okay, weird. The op-ed itself made it sound like she was a current DDG executive, but her LinkedIn profile states that she no longer works there (and is more or less self-employed now). No idea how to interpret that.

In any case, she was DDG's legal counsel and VP of policy for three years.

This person is not employed by DuckDuckGo. They formerly worked there, and not for a couple of years. We had nothing to do with this op-ed.

Mere employment does not negate that the person might still have financial incentives tied to DDG. If anything, they might be concealed better and are MORE likely they can publish with conflict of interest, without legal risk.

You're right. And on the other hand, someone with passion and knowledge about the domain will likely be working for one of its major players at some point.

Are claiming that the author still does have financial links to DDG? That's quite an accusation.

Is it such a ridiculous idea that a former executive might have stock options or some kind of lingering financial stake? Worth at least investigating.

With laser precise specificity, what - exactly - are you inferring she did?

Beware isolated demands for rigor

Including this one?

We don’t know, but it does seem like a reasonable suspicion?

Little DDG would necessarily have to do with it either.

In the article, it stated she was an ex-DDG employee

> It has been removed

Okay, but where is its correction? If you, as a professional publication that considers itself to publish news, unintentionally spread misinformation, you shouldn't just take down the old links, you should put out a new piece with the correct information (and give it just as much attention, don't hide it away).

The news came out, everybody got mad, and not half the people who read the original article (or headline) will revisit the articles and see the retraction.

Maybe the correction will come later, but I'll stay sceptical of anything Wired has to say until the correction comes out.

The relevant information: Google’s legal team

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