[conspire] The disappearing scandal: Google Search

[Don Marti]

begin Rick Moen quotation of Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 04:40:10PM -0700:

> 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).

One possibility is that the "organic" (non-ad) search results are
based on your original query, but the version of your query that gets
passed into the ad selection algorithm has a brand name added.

Really hard to say.

However they work it, though, you do have to be really careful not
to actually click on any of the search ads. The FBI pointed out that
"Cyber criminals purchase advertisements that appear within internet
search results using a domain that is similar to an actual business
or service."

  https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

and that you should use ad blocking software to block the search ads.

I normally don't argue with the idea that most CEOs are overpaid, but
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates seems to have earned his salary when he sent
out the "Trustworthy Computing" email and put a big set of security
projects in motion.

  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2022/01/21/celebrating-20-years-of-trustworthy-computing/

I know, I know, I'm on a Linux list, we should mock Microsoft by
time-honored tradition, but in that case Gates did get a lot of people
working on making a lot of software more secure for Microsoft
customers. They had a security crisis and he did something about it.

The FBI's warning, on one of the last Christmas shopping days of
2022, was just the news hook that Google management could have
used to justify getting just as serious about honest business
practices as Gates decided to get about security, back in the day.
It's unusual for any company to have a Federal law enforcement
agency state publicly that your number one service is full of
crime. That's not the kind of crisis that you want to waste. But
they seem to have wasted it.

-- 
Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>                   
https://blog.zgp.org/