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Comment by andrewljohnson | Hacker News Reader

Matt Cutts should also probably recuse himself from this issue. He is an investor in a YC round and multiple YC companies. That's an obvious conflict of interest, whether or not it affects the outcome.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disclosure/

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For what it's worth, Matt Cutts has historically put his responsibility as head of webspam above other interests. For example, he's penalized Google itself.

http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...

There's still a conflict of interest, and it is possible he is giving his interests more leniency.

Side note: it's interesting that he continues to serve in this position for many years. I see a lot of directors/managers shift around, but not really him.

He has no legal obligation to recuse himself and the fact that he and his team appear to have handled this situation in exactly the proper way speaks to the fact that there's no reason for him to do so for public image reasons.

It ain't broke, don't fix it.

He's unfortunately the SEO poster child though, which is hard. Do you think there should be any line of communication between Google and a site for SEO?

I'm torn on whether or not there should be a more formal process or they should just keep it completely locked up.

I agree that there should be a more formal process, but I think Matt has done an absolutely sterling job.

Agreed, especially in the different SEO conversations that flair up (Calacanis at Mahalo, Google's problems, etc.). Just the way the RapGenius gents have said their talking with Google about a "resolution" is unsettling without a more formal process laid out.

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