I just read this New York Times article on DecorMyEyes a really quite evil company that threatens it's customers when they want refunds on counterfeit goods. But that's not why I'm writing this - the way the Times reported this story really got on my nerves. Supposedly it's all Google's fault...
Now I'm all for Google improving their search algorithm - better for them, better for me - but they're not responsible for what is on the web. Nor should they be, as I certainly don't want a single company controlling everything on the web (that's my main fear about Facebook). Anyway, the article seems to totally ignore the fact that the credit card company the poor woman used treated her disgracefully, basically cleaning their hands of it. The article also totally ignores the fact that she was threatened - where were the police? There's thousands of bad companies out there, and people are abused by them every day. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it any different! It feels very much like the Times is picking on Google, as new media company.
I suspect that one of the reasons that DecorMyEyes was so high up in search (it seems that they've been moved down now) was because few, if any had tried the tactic of using negative links to get to the top of search results. Unfortunately Google doesn't distinguish between a 'good' and a 'bad' link, rating them the same - something that I'm sure Google will work on now it's been tried.
Also interesting is some of the response I saw on Twitter (squee! I got retweeted by Jeff Jarvis!), including Robert Scoble's response: "Facebook will monetize better than Google: I trust my friends. I don't trust algorithms". Which I partially agree with - recommendations through friends for things like movies, music, restaurants, stuff that people like talking about are going to be very useful. But I'm not going to ask my friends about concrete, carpet or boring mundane stuff - that's where Google comes in. Let's not forget that Google is ultimately (partly) social too - the human power of the link. Instead of asking your friends you're asking the world.
So to try and unite these two themes: Google's search needs to improve (just like every other product out there), and it needs to be more social. That's where the rumoured Google Me comes in - which is supposedly the strategy of putting social everywhere, something I'm a bit dubious about as there needs to be a hub for the social to be aggregated. It seems like social could be included in search more - the Google Shopping results show masses of negativity around DecorMyEyes (to the Times' credit they suggest this in the article).
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