This is ridiculous. Look, I’m no great fan of Schmidt’s politics either, but this post just reflects an ignorance of the net. Adding public DNS servers doesn’t encroach in any way on ISP’s; they still own the pipe and that’s what counts.

This post reminds me of the one last week claiming to have “evidence” that Google was altering search engine results to suppress climategate, as in the above link, too . . . and now the suggestion that the spam engine is screening differently based on political bias?

Give me a break! This conspiracy paranoia only undermines the seriousness of real information on the site, and provides ammunition for critics on the left.

Why am I critical? Because when posts are unsubstantiated and worse yet contrary to what a heck of a lot of folks already know, the site’s credibility takes a hit and those folks we are trying to persuade (assuming this site is for more than just true believers) regrettably question the credibility of other info on the site.

As far as google is concerned (and I’m no fan of Schmidt, by the way) . . . I would like to see an authoritative technical analysis proving your supposition.

Finally, is it possible for you to post without personalizing and using ugly language?

Just to be clear, I never suggested climategate was a conspiracy theory. Only that typing “climaga” and getting no pre-fill response proves nothing; try that in the other major engines, and the same will be true.

Nobody is sitting in Mountain View maintaining the prefill list. This is all done by machine. Now, if you didn’t get the 30 million hits, that would be reason to wonder.

This (“climaga”) is a tempest in a teapot.

Actually, here Yahoo returns nothing for any “clima . . .”; it may be that Yahoo is using cookies for prefill rather than from the server. It’s done in more than one way; you have to look at the code to know exactly how. The Ask and Altavista engines return no prefill at all.

Prefill is a very “dumb” programming feature. For that matter, even the hits returned are a function of the number and sophistication of the crawlers, so that also is variable.

Yes, folks see the politics and policy disliked re Google, and extrapolate into various nefarious conspiracies.

Having worked in the Valley for many years, and there are lots of other companies like Google (of course, without the size and clout) that are the same – in the end, it’s about the money. There is ideology involved, but IME it’s pretty ignorant. These guys are brilliant at what they do, but they put their pants on just like the rest of us, and being Steve Jobs doesn’t automatically translate into being *wise* about other things. But, similar to academics, folks here tend to fall into that trap.

As far as the Google bomb goes, that wasn’t a google thing, that was a technique to fool the engine. Initially Google was unwilling to adjust as needed, but eventually gave in and modified the engine. Google’s ranking algorithms are design to return what is thought to be the most popular or arguably results, but that is at best a programmer’s notion, an attempt to do better than raw number counts. It’s based on numbers, not on content.

I can appreciate why you’d expect the result that you did. The flaw here, and I’m not being facetious and certainly mean no offense, is in using human “reasoning skills”. All the features of these systems are just not that smart.

So let’s take prefill for a moment. In the first place, many y prefill results are not determined at the server, but at your own machine, using data accumulated into a cookie and then massaged in the search request. In that case, one user will get different results from another. Another engine will aggregate search requests *as defined by the programmer* and then do some massaging of that data *as defined by the programmer* on a time cycle *as defined by a programmer*, and so on.

Looking at what an engine returns for prefill at a given moment on a given day and then extrapolating that what the code is actually doing is, well, impossible – and most likely, will be inaccurate. Not without building a data model over time.

What is happening here is that folks expect certain outcomes of using the software, based on what is perceived to be logical. But that is expecting the software to think like a human being, and one who thinks like you do, to boot. That kind of think only happens with transactions which are strictly governed; when you buy a book from Amazon and charge it to your Visa, you expect a very specific outcome – and rightly so, otherwise Amazon and Visa would be out of business pretty quick. But a search engine only gets and uses raw data according to the programmer’s *generalized* rules, that’s all. Reading between the lines is attributing capability which is beyond the code, and in the case of many comments here, would be outright illegal and caught on to pretty darn quick by other software architects..

That’s just not accurate. There have been a lot of bombs, some political, many commercial. And some have been intended to send other political messages, for example there were bombs designed to discredit George Bush and Tony Blair, long before most of us ever hear of Obama. The origins of the bomb was actually in html tagging techniques designed to fool the engine into giving a higher ranking to a particular page. More sophisticated techniques evolved from this.

It’s true that Google initially resisted interceding, because that involved human intervention (which was the labor intensive model used by Yahoo, by contrast). But eventually that was required, and thereafter more sophisticated detection techniques were developed.

This is not about defending Google. There is lots not to like, not the least of which is what any company can muscle its way doing when it become a monolith. And I don’t like Schmidt’s politics and brown-nosing anymore than you do. But it’s a distraction to go down these conspiracy paths which just aren’t based in fact. Trust me on this one – there are so many libertarians on that Mtn. View campus that were Google doing all the stuff its accused of here, you would know it for a certainty.

I’m not “excusing” google, I’m just trying to share how the technology works. And the nature of technology in general – it’s a lot less smart than users think.

As I commented below, if there were programmer hanky-panky going on we would all know it pretty quick. You might be surprised how many libertarians work in the Valley (myself and my son among them), and we are all very closely networked. Anyone who smelled this would out the s.o.b.’s in a heartbeat. Just like the net itself, this kind of thing can’t be controlled or bottled up.

Now, re net neutrality – that’s not about ideology, it’s about the money. And here, you betcha we should be very concerned. Because these guys are no different that the insurance and pharma guys who have sold out on the health care bill, nor are they different than Carnegie and Rockefeller were, nor are they different than Gates and Ballmer (who, having met these sob’s, for my money are about the worst). For these guys, its all the power, and the money that gets it. So . . . stuff like prefill is mouse nuts, even if it were true. These guys don’t have to do Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother, they have much more powerful tools at their disposal – that’s what we should be watchful for.

sorry penguin2, forgot to add in prev reply . . .

please, I didn’t mean to infer that you should “shut up”, I don’t think you’ll find that language in my earlier post. If I offended, that was unintentional and I apologize.

Please understand that my frustration arises from assumptions being made which IMO distract from the actual more serious issues – such as you point out, net neutrality. I’m sensitive to this because here in the Valley, concerns are unfortunately dismissed when accompanied by what are frankly off-the-wall suspicions. It’s hard enough to get a listening ear in these parts, doesn’t help to turn off the other party going in.

Nope. Please do some research from reputable technical sources. Google changed its indexing structure in 2007, again before the 2008 campaign. Bombs have been used against the Jews, against foreign governments and dignataries, and by both left-wing and right-wing bloggers. More importantly from Google’s business perspective, boms were being used to distort commercial results, i.e., to favor one business or website over another.

Google initially wanted to disregard all this, for understandable reasons – circumventing it required a lot of labor. Google waited way too long to act (it’s not like they don’t have the money), and eventually did it the right way, by modifying the algorithms.

Again, y’all are trying to interpret perceived technical results (and there, often the perception itself is inaccurate) thru a human or political prism. That is just not how this stuff works.

Well, now this has become circular, hasn’t it?

You are claiming that Google did nothing about the bombs because out of political motivation.

But that is just not true. That is just not the facts. Doesn’t the truth matter? Why go afield with these accusations when, not only can they not be substantiated, but they can be proven to be inaccurate?

And what the devil does the RedState audience have to do with it? Those posting here are making very strong claims about what is being done with the technolgoy – so it is out of school is explain what the tech is actually doing? Is it so disconcerting that the facts don’t fit with the preconception or suspicion?

Furthermore, this is not about “layman’s terms”. I didn’t make the posts imputing all manner of nefarious plots at Google over climategate. If y’all aren’t interested in understanding how it actually works (and my explanations have hardly been techie) and what the facts are, well then, that’s says a lot in itself, doesn’t it?

I guess you didn’t see my previous reply?

I plead guilty to using the word “ignorant”, but if you look at my original post what I wrote was the the *post* indicated an ignorance on this specific topic (DNS). And, yes, I did suggest the post indicated a “conspiracy paranoia” and I stand by that, damn the torpedoes. But again, that was in direct ref to the topic, which I surmise is open to feedback given there is a comments section. I did not direct these comments to anyone here personally, nor did I use a broad brush; my comments are specific to this and only this topic.

I confess the rest of your post confuses me, and so is just another reason for us to give this a bye. A “lefty troll”? I don’t know how old you are, but I’m guessing that I was a conservative, that’s a Buckley conservative, before you were around. Heck, I’m old.

Finally, of course I haven’t commented on anything other than Google here. This thread is, after all, about the original Google DNS suspicion, isn’t it? Or is the ideo that each topic is a soap box for breathing our own exhaust? I come here to learn, not for re-affirmation.

G’night.

I guess we’ve traveled in different circles.

And oh, hmm, “idiot” – well, heck, why not add that in too?

My word to the wise in return:

Take a Valium.