Matt Cutts Gives Insight To Bigdaddy

TheHoff, shame you cant post that in the comments on Matts blog. lmao

 

Minstrel, the problem isn't with the Google folks who write those kind of emails. The problem is that Google is now a public company and any kind of official announcement from someone at Google that there is something wrong could send their stock into the tank. In the world of public companies and thousands of lawyers, the truth isn't something that is looked on with favor by either side.

If Google admits they have a problem and the stock goes down an angry group of shareholders will sue them. If Google says nothing and the companies stock price goes down, then a class action lawsuit will be filed because they didn't release enough information. My personal view is that the days when Google gave out good information to the public ended when their first shares of stock were sold on the open market.

Just because they won't admit they have a problem doesn't mean that they don't know they have a problem inside the company. I liked the pre-public Google much better than the public one because back then they didn't have to worry about "class action" attorney's watching their every word and waiting to file a huge lawsuit just because they told the truth.

 

That is putting it too nicely.

Big F'ing Mess

 

What this tells me is that it is normal for a site to disapear from the index at any time. How is that good for anyone?

 

What it tells me is that Google Support is doing just what Matt Cutts is doing these days - smokescreening and bafflegabbing. See the post by markhutch above if you're wondering why that is.

 

It is even worse than that - Google said that they would not "play" nice with Wall Street and planned on being less transparent than other public companies (well, obviously within the laws as part of being a public company). This may back fire (or has already) as the lack of "official information" is often filled in with rumors.

So, I would say it isn't just the "having gone public" aspect of Google, but the creepy Google culture that insists on "we know better than you - we will tell you when you need to know".

 

In the late 1990's I was a fairly large investor in high technology and Internet companies. The truth be told, I was following some easy money just like millions of other people. I knew in my gut that the bottom was going to drop out of the whole thing eventually, but even though my mind kept telling me to get out of that market, my ego and love of easy profits kept me in it.

When the high technology market finally did go bust I lost a bunch of money and got taught another important lesson in life. Nothing really easy will last for long and that applies to most aspects of life. A few months after the major stock market slide at the NASDAQ began, I started receiving dozens of "class action" lawsuit petitions wanting me to sue every company that I had lost money with in the stock market. Most of these proposals stated that the company management did something wrong and they should pay for the millions of dollars of loses that people, like me, were suffering.

I did not participate in this silly game because no one forced me to get into this high stakes game to begin with and it's wrong to earn huge profits and be happy without assuming some of the risk when things start to go wrong. Truth is that years later, most investors got pennies on the dollar when these class actions were settled. However, most of the attorney's of record received millions of dollars in compensation. That's when I knew for sure that the "class action" lawsuit system in the United States was just a "lotto" system for class action attorneys.

I believe I read somewhere where Google recently settled one of these "class action" lawsuits to the tune of ninety million dollars. That case involved "clickfraud" but in the end Google had to shell out ninety million dollars in the end. That suit is small potatoes compared to what these same attorneys would do to them if they said something that might be true, but cause their stock prices to fall substantially. It's not important whether attorneys get most of the money or the people who actually suffered the loss; Google still had to write out the check for ninety million dollars and NO CEO wants to do something like that without getting something in return for that kind of money.

I know this is very off topic and I'm sorry for that. For those that might be younger than I am and have not experience first hand what kind of "class action" system is waiting in the wings to get a "little bit" of free money from these large corporations. Remember that the truth doesn’t matter in a court of law, it’s only about what an attorney can prove to a jury.

 

Anyone who remembers the OJ trial should know that.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the settlement actually paid for AdWords credits? Chances are AdSense publishers actually paid the price...

Beautiful Disaster comes to mind...

 

There is 2 kinds of attorneys.

1/ the one that knows well the law

2/ the one that knows well the judge

 

I think you are correct, but rest assured the attorney's of record who filed and settled this case were paid in cash and not advertising credits!

 

Like this you mean

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/21/business/GOOGLE.php

 

I just got done watching the Enron movie.... if you haven't seen it, please do. Try comparing Enron to Google. Not so much in the criminal element, but in the house of cards stock price.

It may be a completely incorrect comparison, but then again the stockholders will get to find out what is realy going on the hard way - eventually.

 

That Google rotate thing is weird. I don't see any use to it.

 

When Google started it just did search, and it was very good at it. They now do so many different things that search is not their main focus. The same happened to Yahoo, as they tried to be everything. The comparison to Enron is similar in that they started as energy and expanded to so many other different areas. Many successful businesses fail because they grew so fast in so many different areas, but they are still led by those who started the company and have a small business mindset. Those people understood the initial business, but get sidetracked by other oportunities. Now they are trying to please shareholders instead of advertisers, satisify lawyers instead of searchers. Google is taking the same path that Yahoo and Excite took. They forgot why people liked them.

 

I was saying something similar yesterday on another forum. Google reached the top by doing something way better than anyone else while everyone else was trying to take on Microsoft and take over the known world. Google is now trying to do the same thing. If they don't wake up soon and reverse this trend, they will fail miserably and, make no mistake about it, Microsoft and Yahoo will be there to pick up the pieces.

 

Google is not nor has it ever been a search company. Google is an advertising sales company who used search as their vehicle of choice. I just wish people would realise that

Google is a one trick pony, if their search vehicle breaks down, then they are left stranded in no mans land. They know this only too well, and are grasping at other areas to provide them with long term online real estate i which to display their clients adverts.

When you get your head around the fact that search is just a vehicle, the rest of it will fall into place

<Cross posted with Minstrel, not replying to him, replying to the previous post >

 

They used to know that very well. I am beginning to fear they've lost sight of that, as others like Yahoo and AltaVista did before them.

 

Yep your right, it sure looks that way does'nt it. SURELY they should have learned from the once mighty Altavista?

 

10 years ago I submitted to Alta Vista and a couple hours later I was in. I was not satisified with my position in their serp so I altered the page and re-submitted. I did this all night long and by morning I was on the first page. How I learned seo (helped that only about 25 other companies in the whole world were competing with me). Ahhh, the good old days.