Where Google should be transparent

Google not only seems mysterious, as companies go, but actually cultivates the mystery surrounding its operations. As an article published in the LA Times today explains “Consumers had already been dazzled by Google's search engine for years, with little idea of how it worked.” Google has over the years become a highly complicated and ever-expanding empire that is no longer just about searching text on web pages. Most areas Google plays the 'mystery game' in are providing it with a competitive edge, leaving only a few which could potentially create issues for the company.




'Google Earth' provides satellite images and maps of more and more countries around the world and is integrating data on a par with the Yellow Pages in certain cases. It is easy to imagine many other services branching from 'Google Earth' looking at the example here on the right. 'Google Video', just like the famous search engine, provides a list of videos to match the search query. This service is interesting but, at the moment, doesn't really compare to the effectiveness of the traditional Google search engine. Tagging and indexing videos in order to optimize search results is a far more complex and daunting task. Google also offers an email service called 'Google Mail' and being a 'GMail' user I must admit the service is one of the best. I do find however that the marketing around it is inadequate, that some marketing shine is missing, with it relying too much on the Google brand. Google recently acquired an online equivalence of Microsoft Word. Rumours peg Google with plans to provide a 'G Drive' type service allowing users to store their data on it remotely. This last service makes you wonder, when there is talk of indexing your data, how closely personal data will be guarded. Finally, a slightly controversial subject, Google is working on the creation of a worldwide web of books for people to search through, by digitizing millions of library books.

These examples demonstrate how Google is expanding into new areas, some relate to its initial success story but others are extremely different. What I find very intriguing is the way that external observers like those quoted in the article are taking grief with Google for not divulging information about its current and future objectives. Complaining a company doesn't provide everybody (competitors included) with vital and strategic information is absurd. The fact that Google has been able to keep most of this strategic information closely guarded is impressive in itself.

Another area discussed in this article is how Google operates its advertising business and how clients have little or no idea how the system works. From a technical perspective this may be understandable, however Google doesn't provide any information on how the advertising system works on a basic operational level. This situation results in clients doubting they are being best served by an automatic system that decides which client's ads to display. As a Google ad client I must agree that I'm not that happy about it and I wouldn't be surprised if big Google clients start looking at alternative solutions from competitors should the situation remain like this. There are many articles that discuss the concern about click fraud that consists in site owners clicking or getting others to click on ads which appear on their site in order to illegally increase their ad revenue. The lack of transparency from Google concerning its advertising service is unlikely to be helping them to reassure clients in this area. It may not sway everybody away from Google but it may well help competitors steal clients from Google. This is an area that Google, while benefiting from a near monopoly, has not needed to worry about, playing on the 'mysterious game'. Hopefully Google will change this before the competition leaves them no other choice.


Believe it or not, companies have actually sued Google for having dropped them from the search engine. Being dropped from Google must be a hard pill to swallow. Such companies, in nearly all known cases, have been dropped for using unethical techniques to obtain a higher rank in the search engine. Granted Google has a strong market position and even though Google isn't God, being high up in their results is a very valuable asset. The ability to ask Google why your site/pages are not high up seems a valid request. However at the end of the day, such a request or dropping a site from Google, is for Google to decide. The judge who rejected the companies suing Google declared “Google's rankings amounted to a constitutionally protected expression of opinion”. Although the judge's ruling may sound unusual, Google's search engine is in effect their opinion of what is best. The choice of whom and where sites appear in their results is the key factor behind Google's success. It would be like telling McDonald's that they had to start using certain types of potatoes. I haven't yet come across a valid and corroborated story consisting of Google deliberately removing a site that wasn't trying to cheat for higher ranking in the search results.

Google strives to keep its techniques for ranking results secret to prevent companies from using and abusing this knowledge. It is perfectly understandable since unscrupulous people will cheat to be in the search engine's top ten results. This practice is damaging for Google since their results will, in effect, be less relevant. People who optimise web pages/sites for better results take part in a practice called Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. An article at Newsweek's web site discusses the SEO game, as you can guess, there are people who optimise sites in a scholarly manner (white hat) and others (black hat) who use unethical ways to cheat the systems in order to get quick results.


So Google seems to generally have a good reason to keep a lid on information and let's hope that the few cases which really merit more transparency shall soon undergo the necessary changes.