Don't Be Evil but Intentionally Deceptive is OK | Hacker News Reader

Don't Be Evil but Intentionally Deceptive is OK

diorex.com

107 pointsGibbon56 comments

Goog has major issues with customer service. If you're running a business, your first inclination 95% of the time, should be to make the customer really happy. If they have a complaint about your service, you bend over backwards to make it right. Especially, when these people are use to paying a CPC of $10 for some of their ad campaigns.

Can you imagine that type of response from Amazon web services support staff? Especially, if you had an unresolved $3000 bill with them.

I recently set up an online store using Yahoo Merchant solutions. I ran into road blocks two separate times, and when I went to their "help" section, I found a 24 hour customer service phone number, so I called them both times after midnight. On both occasions, within a minute, I was talking to a live person who spoke fluent English. And I had my issue resolved within minutes. Needless to say, I'm going to continue using Yahoo Merchant Solutions. The interface is pretty clunky, but I've been really happy with their customer service.

Google could take a lesson or two from Yahoo and Amazon on this.

I also run a Yahoo Store, and even in their Search Marketing group, customer service has always been excellent. Clearly there is a lesson Google needs to learn from Yahoo in at least one area.

[show = all but deleted] -> [select all] -> [resume]

It's not rocket science :/

The UI is 100% clear. This is a non-story. As soon as you log in, top right shows "Show | all / all active / all but deleted".

It's actually quite worrying the poster is spending a lot on adwords, yet doesn't seem to understand the UI and instead suggests setting all your bids to 0.01 to avoid resuming deleted campaigns having a big effect.

Choosing [show = all] shows deleted campaigns, and if you select them all, you can resume them...

To suggest this is "intentionally deceptive" is laughable. Worrying this has been voted up to #1

No. One of the first rules I ever learned about human factors was to translate "user error" into "design flaw." A mistake that is easy to make is a design problem. In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google.

It's probably not intentionally deceptive, but it is deceptive and Google should fix the problem.

Default actions should not affect deleted items. Think about GMail: "All Mail" excludes your Spam and Trash.

> In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google.

And, worse, it seems to be a pattern. Clicked the wrong button in your adsense campaign? No appeal, we take your money. We detected fraud in your google payments account? No appeal, we take your money. We detected click fraud in your adsense displays? No appeal, we take your money.

I'm glad I don't do any business with them.

Why would they give you an appeal? They are not a charity organisation they are a business for profit. If something they are doing is illegal then by right you have access to the courts. Use them.

The market mechanism should step in before the courts (i.e. they would give you an appeal to stop from losing you to the competition). The problem in this case is that there are no significant competitors.

That's like saying, "Why would you talk to their customer service when you could just sue?" The courts are there as a last resort, not as a default place to settle things. Your statement also implies that there's not a relationship between how one treats their customers and bottom line, which is pretty far from the truth.

>> "Clicked the wrong button in your adsense campaign? No appeal, we take your money."

Perhaps you mean Adwords sigh.

I did indeed, my humblest apologies.

>> "...translate "user error" into "design flaw." A mistake that is easy to make is a design problem."

How easy is it to make? One person has blogged that he made it. It's not easy to make IMHO at all. If you translate "user error" into "design flaw", then your product will always have flaws. If you have functionality, someone will get confused and misunderstand.

Blaming the user is rarely the correct response to an incident.

The user selected all of the campaigns, some of which were deleted, and clicked [resume]. I'm not really sure who else you could blame.

It also takes a second to check through afterwards to make sure you resumed the campaigns you wanted.

The company that doesn't let you delete things.

And why do they not let you delete things? because then you'd moan that all your stats were wrong and don't add up.

Then call it archive or something?

I find it strange that anyone would argue in favor of this deletion-means-paused behavior. It's counter-intuitive to many people (me included).

"Must be user error" - I thought it's a joke.

Disagree. Once deleted you'd also think that they would not be impacted by a resume command. Delete = never run again.

I myself wish Google offered a true delete to campaigns in AdWords. It makes for a confusing interface.

Here's the part of the article that struck me as Google's big UI mistake:

"From the campaign summary screen the status of each of these campaigns reads in big red letters as it did before, during and after the issue - DELETED..."

What is the point of having a "deleted" option on a campaign if you can run it while it is deleted? To me, "deleted" suggests that the campaign can no longer be active. But in this case, the "deleted" option actually means "not visible in most views". A much better label for the option would be "hidden".

And even then it would be extremely unlikely for a user to want a campaign that is both "hidden" and active. The UI should prompt the user if they try to make a hidden campaign active, and, if approved, it should make the campaign non-hidden at the same time it activates it.

Google is slowly losing the PR war. It starts with the geeks. It may take another two years to propagate to the general public. By then, billions of dollars in ads (think Microsoft) can't undo the damage.

I'm watching to see if they are smarter than MS.

Yeah, MS really screwed the pooch. That's why their revenues have climbed steadily year after year to over $60b. Sure hope Google doesn't make that mistake.

Only on Hacker News do people think emulating Microsoft (from a business standpoint, that is) is bad.

Their revenues may still be climbing, but the rate of increase has dropped significantly. They are losing market share in operating systems, office suites, and browsers; they have an awful PR image and they have not had a "hit" product in more than a decade. It does not take an idiot to see that Microsoft has passed its peak and that the decline has begun.

You know, that's exactly the same argument people made to me 10 years ago when I started comp sci classes and made the mistake of asking some of the grad students why they hated Microsoft so much. Luckily for Microsoft, the other 99.99% of the population never got the memo. At the time I didn't know about Silicon Valley groupthink and I actually believed them.

Of course their growth has slowed since their startup days, but for a company of their size it's incredibly impressive. See a chart of it here, noting that the next year after this graph was published it topped $60b:

http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-eve...

That's about 20% more than the year before it. Show me another company their size that did that last year.

They don't have an awful PR image on Main Street, just on social news sites. Despite Apple spending hundreds of millions to tell the world how much they suck, 90%+ of people still use their products and like them just fine.

And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book.

I would argue that it does take an idiot to look at a company that went from $51b to $60b in revenues and see decline.

"And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book."

That's an odd book you have there. The last I heard was that at least they are profitable now. However, there's 6 years or so of vastly unprofitable to pay back before they actually make any money from the venture. By that time we'll be into the next console war, and who wins that is anyones guess. (Whoever stops using discs for the love of god).

People hate MS for a variety of reasons. My top 3:

  1. Taste - they consistently implement bad solutions rather than good, elegant solutions.
  2. The internet - they show consistently that they do not understand the internet.
     They loose enough money on it. They don't get advertising, building webapps, browsers, etc
  3. Bullying - Squashing the competition and giving users a worse experience isn't nice.
     It holds back progress. Suing people because they use the FAT format is ridiculous and indefensible.
     The FAT format is so simple it's trivial.

They are irrelevant to most people in any event. Unless you work in the corporate world.

Irrelevant is a tricky word, but I agree with your points. They're irrelevant in that they are no longer leaders. Arguably they still have a creative drive with the 360, but I'd argue that Nintendo is doing vastly more to change the world of video games than Microsoft is.

Slightly off topic, but what the hell is the point in me buying an xBox360, with a large HDD, so I can store the games on it, if I still have to put each disc in when I want to play them? The next games console that actually solves that issue will do brilliantly. An improvement would be to just distribute the games on memory cards, and make the console have say 64 card slots. Then you can just load in all your fave game cartridges and play them, and the piracy issue is addressed.

I agree, Nintendo is really pushing innovation which has paid off for them in terms of profit.

My main point @ irrelevant was that most people these days wouldn't really care if their computer came with Windows, Ubuntu, OS X. As long as it has a browser.

I agree with that. I don't think most Windows users care what OS they're using, whereas a larger proportion of Mac/Linux users have made a firm commitment by picking their OS.

I don't know much about the 360: I'm a Wii/PC gamer myself. The only really cool thing about the 360 is XBox Live, and I'll take online PC play over that any day. PC gamers are much classier, from my experience: the TF2 players are all pretty awesome.

Apple fans always move the goal posts when discussing Microsoft. The iPhone sells 17m units, and it's a hit, despite having relatively small market share. The Xbox 360 sells 28m units (about 30% market share in its generation) leads its segment, and it's not a hit somehow.

Microsoft is doing really, really well in the gaming space, in fact they lead the serious gamer market. They sell more games per unit at higher prices. They've been the clear leader in online connectivity and game distribution, with Nintendo and Sony lagging years behind them there, and they're doing a million downloads a week. They've also got the top game franchise with Halo, smashing sales records with each release.

Comparing them to the Wii is like comparing the iPhone to a free-after-contract clamshell. Of course some of the clamshells sell many more units, but that doesn't make the iPhone a dud.

And they're moving into the VOD space. They're now streaming tons of videos through Netflix and some of the built in stuff. Having a console attached to 28m TVs has given them the video distribution channel that Apple tried and failed miserably to get with the Apple TV, though I have a feeling that if that product sold 28m units you'd call it a hit.

OK lets ask it this way. If you had enough money to buy Nintendo, with its innovation, massive profits, and cult following, or the xBox section from ms with its debt, which would you buy?

Who knows, maybe in 5 or 6 years xBox will have paid back what it cost them to develop. Or maybe a new console will come out and no one will remember what the xBox was before they get a chance.

The genius was that Nintendo decided to not compete with xbox and ps3, and instead create a new market which they completely dominate and profit heavily from.

Personally I don't buy the 'control of the living room' strategy. From anyone. Apple TV? no thanks.

Portable devices - Nintendo DS, iPhone/iPod are where it'll be IMHO

I don't know what debt you mean, the division is profitable. It took them some money to get there, but that's what happens when you battle competition that has been entrenched for decades. At the rate they're going, they'll soon be profitable on the EDD unit as a whole.

So I'd take the Xbox unit, if we're talking strictly TV consoles. (Nintendo owns the handheld market, and is one of the biggest game makers too, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.) For one, they're the most likely to abandon optical media as a necessity for their next player. Nintendo is very backward-thinking when it comes to media formats, consistently choosing cartridges and proprietary discs. By your own logic, that's pretty bad. (The Wii proves users really don't give a damn yet, but they may.)

They'll still offer discs, because a lot of people will still want to rent games, buy them as gifts from Best Buy, etc. But it won't be the only way to get any new game. You can already pay to just download tons of games from the library.

For another, they're the most compelling VOD service on the market. They're going to achieve the dream of streaming movie rentals to people in large numbers. They're already doing it with Netlflix, but they're still improving. I already cancelled my cable and now watch whatever TV I do through PlayOn or streaming from a PC thanks to my Xbox. Despite rarely playing console games, my Xbox gets used daily.

They're much more than a gaming device, and they're growing there all the time. The Wii is not, it plays casual games well, and that's about it. And that's great, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the only market segment.

Also remember, Nintendo has been playing 2nd or 3rd fiddle for a couple generations before the Wii, after having dominated for 2 generations. There's no reason to believe they won't end up right back there. That industry is tumultuous to say the least.

And even if you'd go with Nintendo, that doesn't make what Microsoft has done any less impressive. That industry is one of the most brutally competitive there is. So many people have come and go, big companies have tried and failed to get a toe hold. Microsoft hit the #2 spot 2 generations in a row, and built a genuinely cool product that is killing the non-casual segment right now. It's really impressive.

>> "I don't know what debt you mean, the division is profitable."

I thought it was just profitable for 2008, but not profitable as a whole, when taken as a venture - 5 years of heavy losses, then 1 year of some profit?

Other points taken, and guitar hero rocks, halo is cool. The xBox is the best part of ms. On the downside, my xbox often sounds like a washing machine and is hotter than the sun ;)

I don't think all 5 years were heavy losses, but yeah, they might well be in the red overall. They'll recoup it fast if their current trend continues though.

Hardware-wise they made a lot of errors that cost them a lot of money and reputation. (I'm on my third unit, and everyone I know seems to be at least on #2.) On the other hand, people love it enough to deal with it, kinda like Macbooks in that regard. I'm starting to think that I've overrated the importance of build quality in things other than cars due to my experience with those. Perhaps since people aren't so reliant on non-automobiles it factors much less into their user satisfaction. (I've heard iPods too have high failure rates, though the couple I've owned never seemed to have any problem, but if that's true it clearly hasn't dented their uptake.)

If you're lucky enough to have a newer one, they're a bit quieter, especially once you rip the game to the hard drive. You still have to put the disc in, but it doesn't spin and it makes it a lot quieter. Of course, the only game I play is Rock Band and I tend to crank that up :)

I not sure I see the reasoning that the 90%+ people that use Microsoft also all like it. I know lots of people who hate Microsoft products but still use them esp. non-techy users. They just don't see that there is a viable alternative.

They see Apple products as too expensive (especially if they not in the market for a new machine anyway) and Linux is not a valid choice to them, if they have even heard of it.

The Xbox 360 has widely reported (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems), ongoing, hardware faults and is beaten in sales by the Wii. It also still loses Microsoft money despite entering this market in 2001, whilst the Wii makes a profit.

The 360 is a much better gaming console. It does have the worst failure rate of any piece of hardware I've ever owned, as well as being the loudest. Yet I still play the heck out of it because the library is pretty amazing. Nintendo managed to produce a "trendy" product, but as a gamer myself, my Wii has been relatively unused for over a year. The Wii may be a success from a business perspective, but I'd say it's rather disappointing from a gaming perspective.

"90%+ of people still use [Microsoft's] products and like them just fine."

Actually quite a few of those people hate them with a passion. And most of them don't hate the products or Windows, they hate computers. They just don't know any better.

I personally don't like microsoft because I think we would all be using superior technology had they not used their position to prevent competition.

I don't admire a company's ability to acquire money. I admire their ability to create wealth.

I wonder how many bad customer services experiences it'll take to train their Bayesian models.

There will always be user error, which this clearly was.

Not really user error. Deleted means deleted.

It doesn't make sense to "delete" campaigns in the traditional sense. How would you then get stats on your total spend over time, etc. Those stats are needed, and to remove them would cause even more confusion.

Correct, however, it might make sense to have them more or less 'read only' without flipping a switch or two and being alerted to it.

I've been using adwords for years. Never seen a problem with it. This is nothing new, it's been like this forever. It's pretty obvious how it works in the UI :/

Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it.

> Maybe it should alert you if you resume deleted campaigns and ask if you really meant it.

Yeah, something like "you are about to restore these deleted campaigns!".

Deleted means deleted

and resume doesn't mean undelete. Pause / resume, and delete / undelete should be kept separate IMHO. So resume should just resume paused campaigns and a new undelete option should allow you to reverse the status of deleted campaigns.

>> "Deleted means deleted"

Gmail: Delete... oops... undo.

Granted though, it should warn you that you're resuming a deleted campaign. But that's a feature request to save people making mistakes IMHO rather than anything inherently wrong with their UI.

I think there must be a basic law of nature that when you have a monopoly you get stupid.

Perhaps the only way for Google to "not be evil" is to cut itself in half and have the two new companies compete with each other.

As stupid as Google's customer service, and their interpretation of the word "deleted" is, it is pretty obviously not intentional. My reasoning is: it adds virtually nothing to Google's income.

If these had not been turned on, the next higher bidder would have gotten those clicks. Presumably this is "dutch auction" -ish pricing, so the high bids on these CPCs only got a high charge per click if there were other high bids out there?

Wouldn't a Dutch auction work exactly the opposite way?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction: "A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.")

Or do you use eBay's definition of the term: "eBay uses the term Dutch auction differently, for a multi-unit auction for several identical goods to be sold simultaneously to potentially multiple bidders."

Wait, he actually got someone at Google to respond to a query in a timely fashion? That seems like a pretty big win to me. He must have a serious ad budget.

Yeah the guy is huge. I'm just some random nobody loner who makes his living off the net (not too much $$ though) and I know for almost a fact that this guy is rich as shit through random people talking about him. Pretty modest too.

He's got 125 employees. http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-business/ will give you some idea about the size and scope of what he's doing.

I know this is a super late reply, but wow. 125 is insane. Though I wonder how many are employees in first world countries vs third world countries.

Anyone using adwords can call up a number and speak to a person.

If you start spending more, you get a dedicated account manager etc.

I don't see how this is intentionally deceptive. It's just typically bad UI design. (Typical among even Google software, I'm afraid)

Actually things are just getting worse.

If you missed following article anyhow... "Google slips from list of top companies on privacy" - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html

"Don't be evil" is a KICK-ME sign on Google's back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com