Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Googlefolk;
Recently, you have decided to take sides in a scientific debate. That in itself is very foolish. Why would Google want to take either side when there is a disagreement between scientists? I thought your motto was “Do No Evil.” For the 900-pound gorilla to take sides in any tempestuous politically charged scientific discussion is an extremely stupid thing to do, and in this case definitely verges on the E-word.
In fact, that’s why up until now I trusted Google, because I always felt that I was being given the unvarnished truth. I always felt that Google could be trusted, because you didn’t have a dog in the fight. I believed you weren’t trying to slant your results, that you were neutral, because you had nothing to prove.
So what did you guys do? You’re now providing money to 21 supporters of the CO2 hypothesis, funding them as “Google Fellows” to go and flog their scientific claims in the marketplace of ideas. Is this the new face of Google, advocating for a partisan idea?
You have chosen to fund policy people as Google Fellows. You have a specialist in “strategic communication in policymaking and public affairs” among them. You have a bunch of scientists whose careers depend on the validity of the CO2 hypothesis. And you are paying them all to push your ideas. In other words, Google has put into place a public relations campaign for the CO2 hypothesis … and people in your organization actually consider this a good idea?
I mean people other than Al Gore, who sits on your Board and who stands to make big money if the CO2 hypothesis can be sold to the public. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. If it can be sold to the public, Al makes big money, even if it’s later shown to be false. So sure, he’s in favor of your cockamamie scheme … but the rest of you guys have truly decided to hitch your wagon to Mr. Gore’s dying star? Really?
Man, Google doing PR work shilling for the CO2 hypothesis. I thought I’d never see the day.
It’s not even disguised as a scientific effort. It’s a sales job, a public relations push from start to finish, no substance, just improved communication. I’m surprised that you haven’t brought in one of the big advertising agencies. Those mad men sell cigarettes, surely they could advise you on how to sell an unpalatable product.
The problem is, now Google has a dog in the fight. You’ve clearly declared that you’re not waiting until the null climate hypothesis gets falsified. You’re not waiting for a climate anomaly to appear, something that’s unlike the historical climate. You have made up your mind and picked your side in the discussion. Here’s what that does. Next time I look up something that is climate science related, I will no longer trust that you are impartial. No way.
Let me make it very clear what I object to in this:
GOOGLE IS TAKING SIDES IN A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR POLITICAL/SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE
Don’t mistake this for a partisan entreaty. This is not because of the side you’ve chosen, despite the fact that I’m on the other side. I don’t care which side Google takes – it’s wrong and stupid for Google to be in any scientific fight at all, on either side. I’d be screaming just as loudly if you had picked scientists who were on my side of the debate. In fact, I’d scream even louder, because I don’t want Google Follows doing a big PR dog-and-pony-show for skeptical science. Unlike you, I think that’s bad tactics. Your presence, and the desperation that it reeks of, can only damage whichever side you support, so I’m glad it’s not my side.
But sides are not the point. Supporting either side in the debate involves Google in a high-stakes, multi-billion dollar, long-festering, dog-ugly political/scientific battle, with passions running high on both sides, accusations thrown, reputations attacked … and putting your head in this buzz-saw, jumping into this decades-old scientific Balkan war, this is a good idea for Google exactly how?
Truly, are you off your collective meds or something? You don’t want the good name of Google involved in this, there is no upside. All it is going to do is get your name abused in many quarters. I’ve read dozens of people already who said they were switching to Bing or Alta Vista. You’ve lost my trust, it’ll be trust but verify from here on out for me.
And all for what? Guys, you are so far out of touch with the issues that you appear to be truly convinced that it is a communications problem. So you’ve hired all these scientist/communicators to fix that problem. Let me put it in real simple terms.
People don’t believe AGW scientists because they have been lied to by some of the leading lights of the CO2 hypothesis. They’ve seen a number of the best, most noted AGW scientists cheat and game the system to advance their own views, and then lie and deny and destroy emails when the sunlight hit them.
That, dear friends, is not a failure to communicate. Your problem is not the lack of getting your message across. You’ve gotten it across, no problem. The message was obvious – many of the best AGW scientists are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to push their personal AGW agenda … the same agenda that your Google Fellows are now pushing. That was the message, and by gosh, we got it loud and clear.
The only cure for that kind of bad science is good science. It will not be cured by communication. We’ve already gotten the message that your side contains a number of crooks among its most admired and respected members. We’ve gotten the message that most of the decent climate scientists won’t protest against anything. They’ll stay quiet no matter what egregious excesses their leaders commit. They’ll pretend that everything is just fine. Indeed, a number of them even find excuses for the malfeasance of their leaders, that it’s just boys will be boys and the like. No recognition of the gravity of the actions, or how they have destroyed the public’s trust in climate scientists.
If you think the cure for that widespread scientific rot is a clearer explanation of how thunderstorms form or how the greenhouse effect works, I fear you are in for a rude shock. Communications will not fix it, no matter how smart your Google Fellows are … and they are wicked smart, I looked at the bios of every single one, very impressive, but that doesn’t matter. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that the side you’ve picked conned the public, and afterwards refused to admit it. Until they and climate science face up to that, your side will not be believed. There’s no reason to concern yourself with hiring scientists to analyze why your message isn’t getting across. It’s because people hate to be conned. They’d rather be wrong than be conned. And once you’ve conned them, and the Climategate emails show beyond question that your side conned the public, that’s it. After that, all the honeyed words and the communications specialists and the Google Fellows with expertise in “strategic communication in policymaking and public affairs” are useless. Clearer scientific explanations won’t cure broken trust.
And yes, perhaps I’m being paranoid about whether you will skew your search results against skeptics … but then I look at what happened in 2009/10 with “Climategate” as a search term, when for a couple weeks Google wouldn’t suggest it in the Auto Suggest feature. People claimed back then that it was deliberate, you did it on purpose, and I accused them of being paranoid, I didn’t believe it. Looks like instead of them being paranoid, I may have been being naïve.
Anyhow, you can be sure that I won’t defend you again.
So I entreat you and implore you, for your own sake and ours, stop taking sides in political/scientific debates. That is a guaranteed way to lose people’s trust. I’m using Bing for climate searches now, and I’m wondering just if and where you’ve got your thumb on the information scales.
Perhaps nowhere … but I’m a long-time Google user and Google advocate and Google defender. For me to be even wondering about that is an indication of just how badly you screwed up on this one.
Since you seem to have forgotten about your “Do No Evil” motto, I have a new one for you:
You are not wanted there. You are not needed there. You have no business there. Get out, and get out now, before the damage worsens.
Because the core issue is this – you can either be gatekeeper of the world’s knowledge, storing gigabytes of private information about me and my interests and likes and dislikes and my secret after-midnight searches for okapi porn and whale-squashing videos … or you can be a political/scientific advocate.
BUT YOU CAN’T BE BOTH.
You can’t both be in politics and be hiring scientific experts to push a trillion-dollar political/scientific agenda, and at the same time be the holder of everyone’s secret searches. That’s so creepy and underhanded and unfair and wrong in so many ways I can’t even start to list them. I can’t even think of a word strong enough to describe how far off the reservation you are except to say that it is truly Gore-worthy.
Your pimping for the CO2 hypothesis is unseemly and unpleasant. Your clumsy attempt to influence the politics of climate science, on the other hand, is very frightening and way out of line. You hold my secrets, and you held my trust. If you want it again, go back to your core business. Your actions in this matter are scary and reprehensible and truly bizarre. It’s as bizarre as if J. Edgar Hoover was hiring shills to flack for the Tea Party … you are the holder of the secrets. As such, you have absolutely no business involving yourself in anything partisan. It is a serious breach of our trust, and you knew it when you started Google. That’s why your motto is Do No Evil. Get back to that, because with this venture into advocacy you have seriously lost the plot.
My best to you all, and seriously, what you are doing is really scary, I implore and beg you to stop it. Your business is information and secrets, and ethically you can’t be anything else. You hold too much dangerous knowledge to be a player in any political/scientific dogfight, or any other fight. You not only need to be neutral. You need to seem to be neutral.
w.
Lets just assume that for a minute CAGW is finally exposed as a fraud perpetuated by those making a living out of it and those with a political agenda in its favour – quite a possible outcome. Where will Google sit against angry citizen victims of this fraud. Google has lots of money and as a promoter of the fraud may well face a multitude of class actions all because it took sides instead of merely facilitating access to information. Or has it realised it is already in this hole and is digging itself in deeper?
Am I the only one to notice that the “2” in the graphic “Co2 ogle” looks very much like a banana peel? How appropriate for the “900 pound gorilla” 🙂
They showed their bias directly after the Climategate was broken. They quite clearly kept removing it from their search results for days (weeks?) until they had to give up.
It was called Googlegate, remember?
Google takes sides in politics, too.
Google has often thrown their Integrity under the bus and they done so more then once.
During the week of climate gate when media and elites started circling wagons in a state of panic, they still believed they could subdue the scandal. Not only did we see Arnold Schwarzenegger pretty throw his integrity under a bus that week as he Stated his unabridged support for global warming policies, that week during climate gate, Al Gore who is a special adviser to the Google board had this video running in Canada on the front page of Google.
If you watch the above video, it is rather remarkable since I do not type in ANY KIND OF search. ONLY needed is ONE MOUSE CLICK from the front page of Google and you then hear Al Gore speaking and spewing out propaganda!
Imagine that, ONE simple mouse click from Google front page. I repeat, no searching, no typing, no doing nothing but one single click and we hear Al Gore speaking!. It never happed before….
The above lesson is remarkable, because when these crisis is break out, we often see some of these institutions show their true colors for a very short while.
As a Flash programmer, I have an issue with the way Google Chrome has implemented Flash.
To me it is obvious that Google, Apple and many more companies have decided to use their power to destroy Flash.
This is a small point in the context of the discussion.
But it does demonstate how Big Business does business.
Here is my Chrome test page here:
http://trilogymedia.com.au/chrome_test/
Google needs to be sent a message that we are not happy!
Smokey says:
“Eisenhower was very prescient. His predictions have come to pass with a vengeance. The government subsidized system has now been hijacked by cliques of self-serving pseudo-scientists and unelected bureaucrats intent on destroying the country through insane laws, rules, regulations, ever higher taxes, and the deliberate elimination of cheap energy, based on anti-science.”
Not quite right. It is not the pseudoscientists. They are just useful idiots being funded by the real culprits who are those in charge of the Far Left, which is a sall minority, but which has a great deal of power right now because of money, smarts, and position. And they are making their move now “while the “gettin’s good”. And this relatively tiny minority of wealthy far-left elitists are supported by a large mob of useful idiots, like members of “labor unions” and the millions on the dole–folks who don’t have a clue about what is going on, but who swallow the hypocritical class welfare propaganda and promises of government-guaranteed security (does any thinking person still believe that the far left really champions the “down and out?). The Far Left is pushing for all it is worth right now, becauise it’s tyranny is being rapidly uncovered and understood by the majority thanks mainly to the internet . It’s now or never in their minds. The Google crap is one part of this “soft tyranny.” Let’s pray it won’t work!
This is my conspiracy theory, and I’m sticking with it!
Willis Eshcenbach
Nope. I’m going to respond that if you believe that, you have your head up your fundamental orifice so far that if you pull it out quickly you’ll go snowblind.
That response is beneath the Willis we came to know and admire. If that is the best you could come up, you’ve had a hard winter.
Plus, Google’s spending millions on their vision of “ideological advocacy”, where I spend … well, nothing. So we can’t be guilty of the same thoughtcrime, I’m too poor to commit theirs.
What you’re saying is that your not rich enough to pay others to do your dirty ideological work for you. You still have to do it yourself.
Pity the lowly paid father who has to work 12 hours a day and who is too buggered to get on his son’s PC, or the ‘bum’ out of a job and too poor to go to an internet cafe, so they could say, “Willis, what do you know about poverty?”
Willis
The problem is the progressive mindset – not Google – I’ve never really trusted Google from the start when it commenced business – its basically a liberal organisation.
The problem with progressives/liberals is that, as their political positions are founded on a rhetorical basis, rather than an empirical physical one, they then conclude that it, their view, “has” to be correct since everyone “they know” agrees with it. But as the journalist Bernard Goldberg pointed out in his two books Bias and the second, Arrogance, in the MSM, progressives don’t mix socially with others outside their circle, so they never get exposure to other ideas and hence have the hermetically sealed worldview we are so familiar with and which creates so much consternation as well.
Hence they believe our scepticism is the result of not getting their message right, and if they could do that by the means that caused you to post this opinion, then all will be OK. Well no, instead they seem unable to accept that their group think might be in error, since everyone they socialise with also agrees.
The larger problem, of which the Google action is a symptom, is the progressive/liberal mindset that has taken over the “State”, the education systems, the Universities both here in Australia, the US and Europe.
They really truly believe they are right – it’s sincere as well, which makes it a little frightening, hence some of the posts in the comments here.
So railing against Google is not going to change much – though I do share your distrust of its search engine – but the climate change battle isn’t so much over science per se, as over the state itself.
To the folks upthread who suggested Dogpile as an alternative – thank you.
I just tested Dogpile vs. Google on these searches:
H.R. 1 – Dogpile gave a clean list of hits (on the House Continuing Resolution) leading off with the Thomas website “Text of Bill” page for the current session – perfect. Google also offered this, but you had to wade through some unrelated fluff to see it.
Agency Conflict – both sites delivered mostly the same results.
Frankfurt School – both sites delivered mostly the same results.
Conclusion: based on some search test topics that just sort of came to mind while reading Willis’s fine open letter 🙂 is that with Dogpile you lose nothing vs. Google, while you gain a cleaner search experience and you avoid the Google nonsense. No downside.
So Dogpile it is…
Thanks again for the info and thanks again Willis for providing the catalyst for this change.
vigilantfish says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:16 pm
You have just learned that for RGates, Fascism is anything that is not yet controlled by the totalitarianism that pervades the Left. So, for example, the existence of Obamacare means for Leftists that healthcare in the USA has just passed from Fascist to “Good.” Leftists don’t actually have terms for their own desired end states; instead, they simply substitute “Good.”
Dangerous for some American minds, perhaps. The US is the only place on the face of the planet where taxation is considered as dangerous and immoral.
Governments could tax thin air if they needed the money, if they were so willing, and if they could get away with it. They tax income, profits, goods, services, petrol, tobacco, alcohol, and all other good things in life. They even tax the privilege of hiring labor (payroll tax). But for some reason they don’t tax death, as I believe they should. Why shouldn’t the governments take a share of the wealth the dead people leave behind as they move on to the Great Beyond where no worldly currency is of any use?
Nobody likes paying taxes, of course, but nobody likes dying either. Tax is just a fact of life. Anyone who doesn’t want to pay taxes should move to China, because only in communist countries you may live a life without paying a cent of tax.
Australia, the UK and the rest of the Europe aren’t doing any worse than the US in terms of prosperity, even though taxation levels are higher than those in the US. And the life in those states isn’t any more dangerous than the life in the US. In fact, it is a lot safer. People don’t sleep with a pistol under their cushion in those countries because they are not afraid of ideologues, revolutionaries and/or otherwise hopelessly needy people barging in to steal away lowly-taxed property.
This completely misses the point.
Of course corporations can invest their money in advocacy projects they believe in. However, it is not wise for all corporations to do so.
If mass media companies started putting money into PACs, would you be trust their product? Would you not protest their actions by accommodating their competitors? Since I believe you are a thinking person, I am going to be presumptuous and assume your answer is “no” to the first and “yes” to the second question.
If Wikipedia suddenly started funding the People’s Republic of China’s campaign against Tibet, would you trust anything Wikipedia had to say on the issue?
The fact is that purveyors of information must remain neutral, else they are not to be trusted. And what, I ask, is Google, but a purveyor of information. This is especially troubling since Google posits itself as a neutral such purveyor. They are no longer to be trusted.
I have learned long ago not to trust Microsoft. That company is as underhanded as they come, and there success came not from their own innovation, but from stealing the innovation of others. So for me, Bing is not an option.
Yahoo and startpage are my primary search engines now.
I stopped using all things Google quite some time ago. It was the CEO’s attitude toward personal privacy that did it for me. This is just further confirmation that this company is on the wrong path.
vigilantfish says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:16 pm
R. Gates says:
March 19, 2011 at 10:53 am
“The U.S. is a Corporate controlled country, and this is the true form of Fascism as Mussolini meant it…it is not a control of corporations by the government, but rather, a control of government by corporations. Washington D.C. and American national policy is dictated by large, wealthy, and very powerful multinational corporations. These corporations do battle every day between each other for bits and pieces of that control, and hence the reason that lobbyists in D.C. outnumber politicians about 100 to 1.”
————-
Wow, do you learn history from Wikipedia? Corporatism does not mean run by private corporations, it means a country run like a corporation …
____
Nope. You are way off base. I would think that the biggest fascist of them all would know exactly what he meant, since he helped to create the basic fascist principles. You may want to read up on Mussolini and his concept of Fascism. It was a melding or melding together of government and corporate power. Here’s a nice quote that summarizes this:
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/fascism_should_more_appropriately_be_called/163211.html
It clearly does not simply mean government run LIKE a corporation, but in conjunction with corporate power. In this sense, Corporatism and Fascism are very similar, and Mussolini knew exactly what he was talking about.
For many years prior to Google’s founding, Microsoft was known, in the trade, as “the evil empire.” What “Don’t be evil” meant was, “don’t be like Microsoft.” This was well understood by software techies and other people who followed the microcomputer industry.
This project of theirs is probably the result of lobbying by warmist advocacy organizations that have Google’s ear, plus Gore’s efforts, plus the mindset of most of its employees, especially those “concerned” enough to agitate about it. I don’t think the impulse came from the top. The top is reacting mostly, IMO. Basically, the top is unarmed when it comes to having rejoinders to the alarmists’ nudgings, and has been “pushed” into this action, just as the warmist advocacy groups have nudged the rest of the corporate world into their corner..
——
I don’t think switching search engines will do much good. It won’t harm them. Using their searches actually imposes a cost on the company. (And Google is too far ahead of the competition technically for them ever to be displaced.)
What would be more effective would be a pledge to avoid clicking on their ads. (This would involve the extra step of right-clicking on an ad you want to see to copy its URL/link, and then pasting that URL into the command line to go to the site, thus depriving Google of its ad-click cut.)
I’m quite impressed with this engine for scientific enquiries:
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/
Kev-in-Uk says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:55 am
For example, Windows live mail which replaces the old free Outlook Express – is now a remote system where your emails are stored not on your computer but at microsoft where presumably they could be read? (as THEY know your password, etc).
I’m not fan of Microsoft, but Live Mail can certainly store e-mails locally on your own machine without signing up for any remote account.
If you want to erode Google’s gathering of personal information ( one of the bases for their revenues) while still using them (and using their ressources), use the plug-in “Google Sharing” on Firefox. The Firefox Addon for the GoogleSharing system. GoogleSharing ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/googlesharing/
“Why would Google want to take either side when there is a disagreement between scientists?”
Because the few, the exceedingly few, the insignificant, doddering minority of holdouts will die eventually and then there’ll be none.
Mein Fuh…I mean Herr Google,
Whether the science behind the IPCC was fraudulent or not is the basis of the crux of the argument between skeptics and alarmists. Alarmists beleive the whitewashes because they don’t look at the actual emails. Skeptics have read the emails and the science and the analaysis – how is your propaganda going to convert someone who knows full well everything that went on with the whitewashes and reads real information like Wattsupwiththat, ClimateAudit and Bishop Hill?
“You can speak for yourself, fredb.”
LOL. You have no self-awareness.
[thought this image was worth embedding ~jove, mod]
Excellent choice.
I tried a search for something that should absolutely obviously put WUWT high in the results:
best science blog
StartPage : listed 5th (excl sponsored results)
Yahoo! : not on page 1
Duckduckgo : 3rd
ixquick : 6th
Google (the things I do for science!) : not on page 1
Dogpile : 17th
ShaneCMuir says March 19, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Have you ever considered that maybe Adobe needs to be sent a message about the quality and security of its products?