[conspire] The disappearing scandal: Google Search

[Rick Moen]

A couple of weeks ago (Oct. 2), _Wired_ published a bombshell article
entitled "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet".  It
was at this URL -- but now isn't.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

It can still be read at the Internet Archive, e.g., at
https://web.archive.org/web/20231002123158/https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

First, let's note what is _currently_ at the published URL:

   A Note From WIRED Leadership

   EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How
   Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant
   material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial
   leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial
   standards. It has been removed.

Hey, edit-beings, mind sharing the "relevant material"?  **crickets**

It would be nice to know.  But, well, it seems _we will not_.


So, wait, back to the story.  It was from one Megan Gray, a lawyer who's
a non-residential fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet
and Society and quite an impressive and serious person, former FTC
attorney and former vice-president of DuckDuckGo (a Google competitor
in the search space):
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/people/megan-gray

To summarise Ms. Gray's article, she had been attending the ongoing FTC
antitrust lawsuit against Google/Alphabet/whatever, where proceedings
are behind closed doors and very little material gets made available to
the public, but nonetheless alert spectators such as herself can
sometimes spot very interesting things exposed in court at least
briefly.  And here's the incendiary part:

Ms Gray says that during testimony by a Google employee, there was a
brief "key exhibit momentarily flashed on a projector" that confirmed
rumours of

   a highly confidential effort called Project Mercury, urgent missives
   to “shake the sofa cushions” to generate more advertising revenue on the
   search engine results page (SERP), distressed emails about the
   sustained decline in the ad-triggering searches that generate most of
   Google’s money[...].

   This onscreen Google slide had to do with a “semantic matching”
   overhaul to its SERP algorithm. [...]

   Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of
   different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for
   “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a
   search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes
   substitution of your actual query with a different query that just
   happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate
   results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to
   opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and
   you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a
   twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

As Ms. Gray goes on to point out, this behind-the-scenes bad-faith
rewriting of _your_ search query, not visible in any way to you -- if
indeed being carried out -- cheats both the users and also the
advertisers (Google, Inc.'s customers).

If it were true, and that became known, then Google, Inc. would become
inescapably tarnished in the eyes of the entire public, who quite
rightly would never trust its good faith and fair dealing again, and it
would face hostility and rebellion from it advertisers, and perhaps also
the mother of all class-action lawsuits for business torts including
possible financial fraud.

And, if it were true and Ms. Gray wrote the story sourcing her data on
what she saw briefly on a projector during the antitrust trial as part
of the testimony of a Google employee, then in that hypothetical Google,
Inc. would have a massive incentive to use its enormous cloud and money
to get that story squashed.  In that hypothetical, it might pressure
_Wired's_ editors with full force, saying "We assert that this did not
happen as Ms. Gray described, and we notice you have, we infer, only her
word for what she claims she saw.  Are you sure you wish to be
co-defendants if we sue her for libel and various business torts, or
would you prefer to retract the article?"  

And, in that hypothetical, the firm might lean on John Gruber, who
linked to Ms. Gray's article from daringfireball.com, and motivate him
to disappear that link.

I will cautiously say that I have no proof of Ms. Gray's contention.  
I know only that she appears to be a serious person with no reason 
not to be truthful.  I note that all the other parties have, well, 
interests at stake.


One thing about the Project Mercury claim is that, if true, it is very
difficult, perhaps impossible, to test.

Searching around (_not_ using Google Search, FWIW) for "Project Mercury
Google" finds occasional stuff of interest:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-execs-scheme-to-increase-ad-revenues/497461/
Some similar and disturbing claims, but not the same ones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleBard/comments/16yvyh2/google_confidential_project_mercury/?rdt=60333
Discussion on Reddit of the suppression of Gray's article.

Some discussion here of the eyebrow-raising secrecy permitted by the
judge:
https://www.metafilter.com/200935/How-Google-Alters-Search-Queries-to-Get-at-Your-Wallet


It appears not disputed that "Project Mercury" is some project to
increase ad revenues from Google products including search.

It is absolutely indisputable that Google Search has progressively
become dreadful in ways hauntingly consistent with what Mr. Gray claims
they are doing.


I was going to simply end there, but Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic just
published "We Finally Have Proof That the Internet Is Worse /
High-profile lawsuits against Google and Amazon have revealed Silicon
Valley’s vise grip on our lives" at We Finally Have Proof That the
Internet Is Worse" at 
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/big-tech-algorithmic-influence-antitrust-litigation/675575/

   [Gray's] si an alarming allegation, and Ned Adriance, a spokesperson for
   Google, told me that it’s “flat-out false.” Gray, who is also a former
   vice president of the Google Search competitor DuckDuckGo, had seemingly
   misinterpreted a chart that was briefly presented during the company’s
   ongoing U.S. et al v. Google trial, in which the company is defending
   itself against charges that it violated federal antitrust law. (That
   chart, according to Adriance, represents a “phrase match” feature that
   the company uses for its ads product; “Google does not delete queries
   and replace them with ones that monetize better as the opinion piece
   suggests, and the organic results you see in Search are not affected by
   our ads systems,” he said.)

   Gray told me, “I stand by my larger point—the Google Search team and
   Google ad team worked together to secretly boost commercial queries,
   which triggered more ads and thus revenue. Google isn’t contesting this,
   as far as I know.” In a statement, Chelsea Russo, another Google
   spokesperson, reiterated that the company’s products do not work this
   way and cited testimony from Google VP Jerry Dischler that “the organic
   team does not take data from the ads team in order to affect its ranking
   and affect its result.” Wired did not respond to a request for comment.
   Last night, the publication removed the story from its website, noting
   that it does not meet Wired’s editorial standards.

   It’s hard to know what to make of these competing statements. Gray’s
   specific facts may be wrong, but the broader concerns about Google’s
   business—that it makes monetization decisions that could lead the
   product to feel less useful or enjoyable—form the heart of the
   government’s case against the company.

Quite.  And, having known many lawyers (not to mention turning out to
have one as a bio-dad), it's a very lawyerly thing to try to discredit
someone's main point by attacking a small one.


Warzel elaborates, and then also calls out how Google has been keeping
information from the antitrust trial _very_ restricted (see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/technology/google-antitrust-trial-secrecy.html),
which frankly is super-suspicious, and I smell something past its pull
date, there.

Warzel then broadens his story to cover an equally bad-smelling
initiative from the Big South American River called Project Nessie.
"Price-fixing" is such an ugly term.  Let's not use it, shall we?