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.
Some have said Al Gore stands to be the first carbon billionaire. Them Google boys want in.
ShaneCMuir says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:39 pm
“Google needs to be sent a message that we are not happy!”
____
Wow, collectively the readers of WUWT represent some whopping .ooooo1% of the users of the Google and the internet. Your message to them should cause them to quake in their boots!
Here is a topical article in Saturdays edition of The Vancouver Sun.
The risky business of Google
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/risky+business+Google/4470897/story.html
I really appreciate this important article. As the trusted gatekeeper of information, Google’s potential for evil is truly(truly) frightening. (I wonder what attracted Gore to this company?).
It is not until you want to make a complaint to Google that you realize how arrogant and insular the organization is. There is virtually no mechanism to make a meaningful complaint (so kudos for the open letter). They clearly have no interest in any form of criticism and this level of arrogance should be a concern for us all.
This next bit may be exposing too much of my own paranoia but after I did find an avenue to complain to Google about filtering auto-suggestions, my google searches did not work for quite sometime (returned no results at all for months). I do not even know if it is technically possible for them to ‘punish’ me in this way, but it did make me wonder.
Google has been a force for great good making information accessible to the masses but they now have extraordinary power and even a hint of misuse/abuse should be unacceptable to us all.
I have to disagree on one point Willis. Sergey Brin and Larry Paige do have dogs in the fight … they were $7.5 billion dollar dogs a couple years ago:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/specials/article5816774.ece
Who knows how big the dogs have grown to be by now… Of course Bill Gates has a $26 billion gorilla in the ring, so I don’t know that Bing will be any better, depending on how hands on Bill choses to be.
I made the point about the Google founders on the Google forums when the discussion about Googlgate started.
I’m amazed anyone belives the Google “do no evil” propaganda.
After sending out the black vans to photograph everybodies street and incidently sniff everyones wi-fi (surprisingly everyone was all up in arms about the sniffing and not many were worried that Google can now tie wi-Fi packet info to an adress)
After their soon to depart CEO said “If theres things your doing you don’t want Google to know about, then perhaps you just shouldn’t do it” (from the soon-to-be US Secretary of Commerce)
After sufferring through about 20 lawsuits last year where they buried pages they didn’t like in the name of “Improving the search algorithm”
After rolling over for totalitarian govenments like China and the United States (you guys have got to get rid of the Patriot act)
Speaking of the US…Erics Schmidts inpending nomination makes 5 Google execs in the Obama executive team…maybe theres a merger coming..the United States of Google!
Google in a decade has managed to do what most technical areas thought was impossible, they proved that Microsoft wasn’t that bad after all.
R. Gates says:
Are you dense, or just pretending to be? You claim I’m against Google entering the fray. However, I said:
I don’t think I could make it clearer than that. So you can stuff your claim about my motives up your fundamental orifice, it’s cousins are in their waiting to come out.
The issue is that Google is the keeper of the nations secrets, as well as the purveyor of what claims to be neutral information.
Certainly they have the rights you assert. I never said they didn’t. They have the right to put their full weight behind anything they choose, including the full weight of all of their secret information. Would you want them running against you when they know about your midnight searches and can read all of your email? Because as you point out, they have the right to do that. They can target you exactly, they have your emails, they know what you were searching for and when. But do you think that’s a good idea?
I never said they didn’t have the right. My point was that it was as UNETHICAL for them to be in the public arena as it would have been for J. Edgar Hoover to form an action group to push his ideas. Certainly, as you claim because you haven’t bothered to actually read what I read, Hoover and Google have the right to do that … but ethically? Not on my planet, although YMMV.
Finally, is Google doing that? Are they slanting their searches? Are they using their information for their own ends?
That’s the heart of the problem. We don’t know. We don’t know if Al Gore, as a Google Director, ever looks at thing that he shouldn’t. We don’t know if Google is going to utilize their secret knowledge to help push their agenda, or not.
But I don’t trust Al Gore, and after the Climategate flap, I don’t trust that Google is not putting its thumb on the scales. It has before. And since there is no way for us to know the answer to any of those questions, I say that it is unethical for Google to be an advocate for anything.
They realize it too, or they did. R. Gates, why do you think their motto is “Do No Evil”?
Because they have the power to do immense harm with both their secret knowledge, and their ability to hide anything that they want to …
w.
PS – You say:
Your claim that you can read my mind and see why I make my decisions is pathetic, R. Gates. And your constant attacks on my motives and my decisions are a measure of your desperation and your lack of personal integrity. You are an unpleasant man, and I hope you take your ad-hominem accusations elsewhere. You are certainly not going to get an answer from me again, don’t bother trying. When I explain something to you twice, and then you come back and make the same untrue and unpleasant personal accusations, you’ve used up all of your second chances.
Bye …
e. c. cowan says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:43 am
What makes you think I do? In general, I don’t trust anyone. Trust but verify.
w.
mcfarmer says:
March 19, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Not for me. For me it was a very encouraging admission that the Google founders understood the awesome power that they would have if Google succeeded, and they were determined not to misuse it.
Unfortunately, it seems the folks running the company now understand the awesome power that they have and are determined to misuse it.
w.
sHx says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:02 pm
You accused me of being as bad as Google, and said I was not giving the “unvarished truth”, viz:
Where I come from, that’s calling a man a liar. Politely, to be sure, but a liar nonetheless. If you expect me to blow in your ear after you call me a liar, or to apologize for my words, you picked the wrong man to call a liar. You deserve what you got and more. I went out of my way to be nice to you, I made it all humorous, I should have handed you your head on a platter. I don’t respond well to random internet posters who are hiding behind an alias making slimy accusations that I am lying, without putting forward a single fact to back it up their fraudulent claim. In response to your ugly accusation, I said that if you believe I’m a liar, you have your head up your fundament, and I stand by that. So sue me.
I don’t have any “dirty ideological work” to do, that’s your fantasy, and not a pretty one. I think you must be confusing me with someone else, perhaps even yourself. Nor do I have all of the secrets of people’s midnight searches and all their gmail, so it is impossible for me to do what Google is doing. You sure you understand this “analogy” thing? Because “Willis = Google” just won’t fly.
What do I know about poverty? Probably more than the “lowly paid father” whose son has his own PC knows about poverty. A man whose son owns his own computer is not poor on my planet.
Me, I grew up broke and spent much of my life that way. Retiring early and often is hardly a blueprint for financial success … and then I worked for some years in some of the poorest villages on the face of the planet, working to alleviate that poverty however I could. In addition, I lived in third world countries for 18 years, including nine years in a “Least Developed Nation” (the poorest of the poor nations). So I know poverty myself, and I have lived around it and worked to lessen it for years.
So that’s what I know about poverty … what do you know about poverty, sHx?
w.
The bias of Google first appeared to me whith the press release from the Ida fossil, which Google turned into a doodle. The doodles are uses for historic events and anniversaries only and not for news items. Apparently, the Ida news hit the Google folks hard enough to make a one time exception here. Something they never did again, not even for big news items like the Arabic revolution or the Japan earthquake. That is: As far as I know. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
They’re all in the pay of Big Search!
Bye bye GOOGLE… I switched to Dog Pile
R. Gates said “More broadly though, I am actively taking steps to remove my home and business property from needing energy from the grid. In less than 2 years, I will be selling excess energy back to the grid,”
Uh huh. Looks like you are prevaricating again. Either you are removing yourself from the grid or you are selling “excess” energy back to the grid, it can’t be both. Most likely, you are screwing taxpayers like me to install some uneconomical solar, then you are taking advantage of other ratepayers (and bragging about it no less) by selling your “excess” energy to them during peak solar when it is not needed. Later when your precious panels are producing nothing (peak power use is after sunset) you will buy energy from the grid that will be generated with the most expensive peak power generation. You will of course demand to pay regular prices for that energy while getting the same for your non peak power. Let me know when you buy some batteries then maybe we can take you seriously.
I’ve noticed you’ve given up defending the non-neutrality of Google. Note my comparison to Yandex above, clearly Google raises alarmists like Tim Lambert above other sources.
I choose to add a news section about theses subjects so that Google see what people want to read and be informed about :
– global warming skeptic
– climate change skeptic
– global cooling ice age
– climate cooling
In fact I double the first 2 sections. Share your own news sections.
Show Google what you want to read about. What you want is worth money. Google likes money.
good article….. ..I will use bing for searches now too.
your point is excellent. google has inserted itself into political discussions for a long time and must say they are not on the side of freedom or individual rights.
they have what appears to be nefarious relationship with the obama administration and their efforts in china are more then suspect.
For those that want to concede that Google can do whatever it wants, I say not so fast. First of all “Google” doesn’t decide to do anything. People decide things. Specifically the officers and board of directors of Google decide what will be done.
Google Inc. is a publicly traded company. NASDAQ – symbol GOOG
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG+Key+Statistics
Given that Google Inc. is a publicly traded company the officers and directors of Google have 2 primary duties:
1. Maximize shareholder value
2. Obey the law
All other strategies, programs, tactics, activities etc. are subordinate (and indeed must support) those 2 primary duties. For the officers and board to utilize company assets to engage in activities that do not support these primary duties is an example of “Agency Conflict” – Google this term, (actually don’t Google it …. Firefox it, Yahoo it, Dogpile it….. 🙂 there are alternatives, and that is the crux of the matter – more on that shortly.)
A quick look at Google Inc. financial stats shows a share price that trades at about 21 times earnings with very high current earnings growth – so superficially not bad. However a closer look reveals no dividend, so the current valuation is based on significant continued growth expectations combined with continued high profit margins. What will drive this profitable growth? A better product? High barriers to competitive entry? Not really, we have seen upthread that there are many perfectly acceptable alternatives available.
So where is the value? Answer – it is the brand.
Remember “Google it”. Sort of like Kleenex – which is really just facial tissue, Google is really just a commodity web browser. But the brand Google (or Kleenex or Coke) has equity and that (and pretty much that alone now that the business has matured) drives the market/ consumer behaviours that create better long term financial performance and justify higher valuation.
Now brand equity doesn’t just happen, it is built and nurtured. In other words it is managed. Here is where we come to the concept of agency conflict. The custodians of the Google brand are associating the brand in a controversial program, completely unconnected to their core business. The postive PR return from this is likely to be minimal (are more people going to click Google Ads because of this ?!?) and the potential risk is, well, non-zero. So the risk adjusted return from this activity renders it unsound. Yet they have done it.
This is prima facie evidence of agency conflict. The officers and board of Google Inc. have subordinated the interests of their stockholders to their own personal / political whims. The board and officers of Google Inc. cannot be trusted as custodians of these assets. This, in concert with the commoditisation of the industry, is a sell (profit take) signal.
That btw was a long winded way of saying that they are getting cute …. time to dump ’em.
This is ridiculous. Climate change is not a “partisan” issue, it’s an issue of people on one side who actually pay attention to and understand the scientific literature, and people on the other side who cherry pick and skew for I-don’t-know-what-reason. Anthropogenic climate change is no more a political issue than whether you believe in AIDS is a political issue, despite all of the effort that some people put into convincing themselves otherwise. 98.5% of publishing climatologists (from EOS survey) believe that anthropogenic climate change is real and is occurring. Google is not being political here, any more than they would be if they gave money to cancer patients even though 2% of practicing doctors write silly books about healing through homeopathy. You can feel free to get all uppity and switch to Bing–it’s no loss to me if your searches suck–but don’t pretend that Google is doing anything wrong.
This should have been kept as top post for a very long time: reason hurt google as much as you can until they get message. By removing this post from top we show weakness.
LOL
I have feeling Google mail is going under anyway. Again their email has crashed for two days (or anyway I haven’t received any emails which I know people had sent). The idiots taking it over are probably going to destroy it.
I just watched a show about the planets and listened to someone, supposedly educated, that claimed that the reason that Venus is 30 degrees warmer than the Earth is, yes, you guessed it “Global Warming.” His assertion was that even though Venus was the approximately the same mass, density, and size, that due to runaway “global Warming” Venus was 30 degrees warmer that the earth. Am I to assume that the fact that Venus is about 1/3 of the distance closer to the Sun has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Venus is warmer than the Earth. And the AGW Ministers claim they do not spread falsehoods! Oh, that’s right, I forgot, the Sun has nothing to do with global warming!
dkkraft says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:14 am
I couldn’t disagree more. You have a very narrow view of the duties of a corporation.
Corporations have an ethical duty as well, to be good corporate citizens. Having had a seat on the Board of a corporation worth a couple hundred million dollars, I say this not as a theoretical claim, but as something I have personally ensured that our corporation did.
The current paradigm is that corporations are “persons” under the law. As such, they have a responsibility to do more than simply enrich their owners by any legal means. If you want to pretend a corporation is a person, then they must also pay attention to the ethical duties incumbent on every citizen.
Nor are these social responsibilities “subordinate” to making money, or else corporations would never, ever make charitable donations … but since in fact corporations of all types spend their hard-earned money on all kinds of charitable and community projects, the people running those corporations obviously don’t agree with your claim that the highest goal of a corporation is to amass every penny they legally can …
w.
I quit googling a while back due to their incideous political bs. WUWT?
I suggest the usual treatment. Take away their money and the problem goes away.
I easily convinced a person who sets up all the pc’s for a large state agency to no longer default to google. Thousands of pc’s times thousands of searches lost to competition. 🙂
Good man Willis!
Dave C-H says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:55 am
Thank you for your opinion. If you had buttressed it with an occasional fact, I suppose it might have been convincing … as it stands, however, it merely reveals you haven’t done your homework.
Better luck next time,
w.
PS – the EOS survey was not a survey, it was merely an on-line poll of self-selected climatologists. How many climatologists? Well … 79. Like I said, you haven’t done your homework.
The emphasis on “communication” of the “unequivocal science” rather than an effort to advance the retarded state of the understanding of the basic physics evident in the “climate science” community is totally telling .
I would think this would cause somewhat of a civil war within Google where some of their more numerate employees , of which they have lots , would rebel against this nonscience .