Google's machine

Rough Type by Nick Carr | Jan. 26, 2007 (Opinion)

After years of taking a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward googlebombing, Google has now taken action to stop the practice. It has incorporated into its search engine a googlebomb-sniffing algorithm that somehow identifies and neutralizes any concerted effort to skew search results for a given phrase (such as, most famously, tying "miserable failure" to the White House site). That's fine with me. It's like scrubbing graffiti off the side of a subway car. Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala

See All Reviews »

View

3.7

by Jim Lang - Oct. 1, 2008

This blog post criticizes Google for fighting googlebombs to protect their image rather than for more altruistic reasons then goes on to remind us that we don't know what else Google is doing for less than altruistic reasons. This may be a concern. However, since Google's reputation and some of this altruism are linked, another criticism could be Google's lack of sophistication in spinning the reasons for their actions.