Hacker News Reader

Comment by nulluk | Hacker News Reader

I understand it's all algorithmic and there will be some truly innocent collateral damage involved but Google wouldn't be pushing this out if they didn't feel the overall quality of search would increase.

Most of the collateral damage is going to be people straddling the grey hat line and rightly so in my own opinion.

View on HN

I think it's very possible that google would push this out without thinking the quality of search would increase; if they think their PR will be able to continue controlling the message and getting discussion away from the potentially decreased search quality and fighting any possible damage to the brand through extremely tight & multi-layered propaganda around any dissent or competition that comes up in the news cycle.

Glass fans should be happy to know that shortly after the algo change they should be seeing another wave of public demonstrations, perhaps a self-driving car sighting or two.

I don't disagree, but look at it from the perspective of the small business owner that gets 80% of their revenue from Google traffic. Even if they were one of the few unlucky ones, their livelihood is lost.

Look at it from the perspective of the small business owner who currently has next to no revenue from Google traffic, because their genuinely useful or relevant site is drowned out by spam.

That makes sense, if virtually every update didn't promote the likes of Amazon, eBay, and Google properties. Small businesses are toast and getting toaster by the update

Reply on news.ycombinator.com