Mike Blumenthal

A great summary including a link to a (lengthy) position paper by the FTC: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/01/26/fake-reviews-everyone-is-doing-… In summary, reviews like this are illegal.

http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com/2013/11/announcing-reviews-i… http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/11/25/google-intros-the-mother-of-all…

Google isn't above doing things that harm people to make them more money. Like the steadily decreasing background contrast and lack of borders separating ads from search results. Older people are far less cognizant of borders and thus would click on ads thinking they're search results. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… They recently got rapped by the FTC for it. http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/ftc-googles-ad-practice-is-deceptiv… The difference is that the negative Microsoft news tends to float on top of sites like HN more than positive news, and the reverse is true for Google so this alters perceptions of people.

I don't think that's an outrageous exaggeration. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… But going beyond that, even when differences are not subtle as in that blog post you still have a large swath of people who won't be able to distinguish ads from non-ads. Just go in the heart of a large city and observe the web-surfing habits of some regular Joe Shmoe and you'll be pretty astounded with his ad-detection heuristics. Large internet companies know and understand this very well, and indeed design their products as such. Heck, when I'm designing webapps I do this too, I guess I'm just cognizant about what actually I'm doing.

> "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. I think omitting a border around ads and intentionally reducing the contrast from the background to make it invisible to older people and people with bad monitors does count as an annoying gimmick and a user-hostile anti-pattern. The A/B testing would've shown a lot of ad clicks and increase in profit from people who mistake them for organic search results. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png And also, didn't Google change its shopping results to be paid search results? http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/05/31/how-evil-are-goog… I would think the beancounters are rapidly taking over.

Wrong: Since 2009, at least in US, TeleAtlas was replaced by data from Google Street View. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/10/12/google-replaces-tele-atlas-data… Business listing comes from "information from our web search results, data submitted directly by local business owners, and third-party sources such as publicly available Yellow Pages directories" https://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7103 It's hilarious how quick you can accuse someone without even having some sources to back it up.

Yes, they did just switch data providers. Now they're using TeleAtlas, before it was a combination of TeleAtlas and Navteq. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/09/19/google-maps-now-using-teleatlas… also see: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-176096.html

>The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy. Sure it does, but when some of the profit increases are made by deliberately decreasing contrast of the background of the ads and avoiding borders to increase ad clicks, especially from old people who are unable to see contrast [0][1], that's when it crosses the line into "decline" of the user experience. They(along with other search engines) got smacked by the FTC [2], it's an interesting read. That plus shoving Google+ down the throat of people and making them literally cry [3] (yes I mean literally) in an effort to compete with Facebook at any cost leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and reminds me of how Microsoft got it's M$ moniker. [0] http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it [1] http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… [2] http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegeneralletter.pdf [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs

There's the other problem of decreasing contrast and lack of borders separating the last ad and first organic search result. http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… A few years ago this was the style http://www.ismoip.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screenshot1.png Before that http://cdn.userstyles.org/style_screenshot_thumbnails/58617_after.jpeg Now http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png Some of those keywords are worth tens of dollars per click so no wonder,the colors have been A/B optmized to get the most clicks from people not knowing they are ads. Comparison: Google: #fff7ec Bing: #f9fcf7 Yahoo: #fafaff DuckDuckGo: (255,212,0,0.18) Not to say that Bing, Yahoo etc. are much better but I expect more from the "Do No Evil" Google rather than increasing the next quarter's earnings instead of targeting older people and people with bad monitors and hurting people who did a lot of good work to come in the first few in organic results but don't and/or can't pay Google for expensive ads. Also, Bing and the rest continue to mostly lose money and they can't afford to separate ads while the big guy continues to reduce the difference between ads and search results. "Study:Contrast sensitivity gradually decreases with age" http://www.eyeworld.org/article.php?sid=818&strict=0&morpholog…

I think we can both agree that bootstrapped companies != lean start-up.[0] Cool. However, it irks me that you think these largely successful companies didn't innovate based on lean principles and therefore couldn't be considered lean start-ups. > I think you're misunderstanding what a lean startup is. It also irks me that one of the most well-known cases of MVP/Pivoting discussed on HN has been by Dropbox, and yet you were completely unaware of it. I'm sorry if I'm coming off crass but the lack of research on your part doesn't help your argument. If I've goofed somewhere I'd like empirical evidence. It's important I understand this fully. > The point of a lean startup is to identify a profitable product using a very low burn rate. Google and Facebook's burn rate was massive. Really? When was the burn rate massive? From Steve Blank:[0] The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, [1] 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. Google:[2] 1) Google hired their first head of sales nearly 7 months after it incorporates. I wouldn't really call that hiring a sales force (nor is one guy a force) too early. 2) AFAIK Google wasn't out there actively promoting with their 8 member team. They continued to develop the product. 3) I'm pretty sure there is nothing more minimal than this:…

Can anyone tell me how many things in this list are about a "level playing field" or "do no evil". If Apple or MS did even half of the things in this list, people would be screaming about it from rooftops a couple of decades later, but as Assange noted, Google seems to get a free pass. Most of the Google search page area is now occupied by ads, or ads disguised as content http://searchengineland.com/google-results-too-ad-heavy-166226 Profiting off adware ads for downloads http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/08/15/firefox_dodgy_download.jpg Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads. http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-itor-maybe-not/ http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-… http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/ftc-googles-ad-practice-is-deceptiv… Tracking the emails in the free Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business to build ad profiles, making misleading statements to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to having to make statements to federal court, having to tell the truth about it and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education…

Here's a few ways the post became true: Tracking Google Apps for Education students and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html Conspiring to kill SkyHook just with its outsized influence like Microsoft used to. http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-moto… Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking. http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/ Google employee access personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email? http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-o… Paid inclusion for shopping search results http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embraces-paid-inc… Ranking Google+ reviews over Yelp results even if the user explicitly searches for Yelp http://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-complains-outranked-google-loc… Decreasing contrast in the background of ads,…