
Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016) - wallace_f
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/27/why-did-protonmail-vanish-from-google-search-results-for-months/
======
f_allwein
[2016].

Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that
Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they
violate its webmaster guidelines:
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en)

Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the
search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot
in robots.txt, ...). In such cases, the best way to raise the issue would be
to report it on the webmaster forum, which is frequented both by smart and
helpful users and by Googlers working on search quality:
[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters)

~~~
StreamBright
You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary
properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo,
Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are
censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't
there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to
many Google services, most notably Youtube.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google)

~~~
f_allwein
No, this is an entirely separate process. The wikipedia link you shared
relates to content that is illegal in a country, so consequently Google does
not show it. E.g. in my home country (Germany), this includes some types of
Nazi propaganda. I would assume all other search engines follow the same
rules.

~~~
StreamBright
So in your country can you look stuff up about China and Tiananmen Square?
Well you can't in China. This is censorship coming from the state. Now go on
Youtube and look for PagerU videos. I understand that conservative views are
not popular in Google but filtering legitimate content is just bad.

[https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1406441&st...](https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1406441&start=240)

What about Dave Rubin? Does he fall into the same category as nazi propaganda
according to you? What about Christina Hoff Sommers? Same question. And the
list goes on an on. I do not necessarily agree with these viewpoint but I
strongly against censoring them just because it does not fall inline with
Google's political agenda.

~~~
soundwave106
On much of this, it's not Google's political agenda here from what I see...
it's advertisers in general.

You are aware that Youtube faced a huge backlash earlier this year from large
scale advertisers over "hate videos" and "extremist content":
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-
youtube-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-
advertising-boycott-hate-speech)

Defining what a "hate video" and is "extremist" can be vague, so it's not
surprising that some strong political channels are caught in the crosswinds,
even if they are not necessarily "hate speech" or "extreme". (After all,
Youtube is probably relying heavily on user feedback to determine what to
flag). It's also not surprising that other things are caught in the crosswind
(as the Ars Technica article mentions, LGBT content was also caught in the
crosswinds.)

Youtube's most recent advertiser-drive purgek came over "inappropriate" videos
aimed at children. Again, advertisers are driving what some might call
"censorship". [https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-deletes-150000-videos-
foll...](https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-deletes-150000-videos-following-
boycott/)

Basically, I feel like strong advertiser presence in the future is going to
heavily focus Youtube towards more "mainstream" oriented material in the
future, especially on what can be monetized.

Is it censorship? Not really -- no one is going to force companies to spend
money to advertise where they don't want to. Feel free to start your own video
platform that doesn't have Youtube's current corporate advertisement pressure.

At this point, in my opinion, the energy some are spending in fighting
Youtube's monetization policy ("1st Amendment" lawsuits against Youtube are
going to fail, in my opinion) would be better spent in making sure the web
remains open. So that any Youtube competitors, some of which might focus on
hosting "non-mainstream" content that Youtube might ignore in the future,
actually have a chance.

~~~
StreamBright
I disagree. You are mixing together two categories: legitimately bad content
(like the scary kid videos) and content does not fall in line with Google's
political stance. As an advertiser you are targeting a very specific narrow
population anyways and it is super easy to exclude your ads showing up in
videos that you do not approve. And just a counter example to your point:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-
potenti...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-potential-
anti-semitic-ads-following-report-n801566)

This was in production for god knows how long.

"Feel free to start your own video platform that doesn't have Youtube's
current corporate advertisement pressure."

Well I do not use Youtube as much as I can. I use alternative video content
providers. Anyways, this argument is silly at the very least.

~~~
soundwave106
Why is the argument silly? Any "solution" to this that I can think of would be
awful.

Let's throw a counter example on another platform. Most American talk radio is
conservative. ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-
all-t...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-all-the-talk-
radio-stars-are-conservative/)) IMHO the reasons for this are largely
demographic oriented as specified in the Forbes article -- consequently,
liberal specific talk radio has not done as well as a business model since,
say, the 1980s. Conservative specific talk radio has.

It's pretty easy to Google grumbling from liberals about Clear Channel being
conservative and crowding out liberal talk and whatnot. These arguments seem
as silly to me as the arguments about the political stance of Google (which I
also think is more driven by business dollars and cents, not explicit
political lean).

At any rate, what's the solution here? Force Clear Channel to host liberal
political talk via government decree? That would be about as awful as forcing
Youtube to monetize conservative videos via government decree.

The only arguments that make sense in this direction to me is that American
radio, in effect, is a monopoly. It might be difficult to start a "liberal
specific talk radio" format even if there was a solid business case for it,
because the airwaves are dominated by only a few corporations. (I would argue
that this actually played itself out more in the world of music -- a lot of
music never crossed into the playlists of corporate radio or MTV, because of
various reasons. Which is why Napster was so heavily embraced by many once it
showed up.)

Likewise with Google / Youtube: I would be much more receptive to arguments
along these lines. If they became a defacto monopoly (I don't think they are
there yet, but this is a danger these days), only one "content policy" would
exist. And that definitely would be a problem.

Hence why I think the real issue here is keeping the web open and competitive.

------
tobltobs
Wasn't this at the same time when ProtonMail migrated their site from a .ch to
a .com? I would be thankful if I would be able to get such a special treatment
from Google for a borked migration. For most of us it is a death sentence when
we bork a migration, protonmail gets help and then they whine about it.

~~~
spuz
What do you mean by borked migration? What could Proton mail have done better?

~~~
GregMartinez
Without knowing their migration strategy it is hard to say. A few things I
notice that get borked often with migrations are not handling redirects &
internal links properly, not updating sitemaps & canonical tags, and not
checking Google Search Console & robots.txt

~~~
spuz
My question was more specifically about ProtonMail's domain migration which
the commenter I was replying to implied to have specific knowledge of.

------
mark_l_watson
There are many major actors, both corporate and governmental, that don’t like
privacy enhancing services like ProtonMail. No conspiracy theory, just large
actors acting ruthlessly in their own self interest.

This year old article is a bit bogus though. As other pointed out, the hit on
SEO came from changing from .ch to .com

ProtonMail, and other similar services, deserve to be supported in my opinion.
I have recommended ProtonMail to friends and family. I use them out of
personal choice, and I also rely on Fastmail.

~~~
notheguyouthink
Is ProtonMail still free? If so, I dislike that greatly.

I switched to FastMail a while back and while reviewing options, I _wanted_ to
use ProtonMail.. but a free option seems far too unreliable for something as
important as email. I need to know how they're paying the bills, basically. I
prefer their incentives to be perfectly inline with mine, because I am paying
their bills for my portion of usage.

~~~
enitihas
Protonmail's terms of service are better than Fastmail', IMHO. Fastmail TOS
says that your service can be terminated anytime whatsoever on the whims of
fastmail, whereas from what I remember, protonmail's TOS atleast laid out
conditions under which your service could be terminated, like doing something
illegal.

------
dreamcompiler
Search is now as vital to the Internet as DNS. As such, having it be run by an
unregulated, for-profit monopoly is looking less and less acceptable. As a
minimum remedy, Google should probably establish a defined email address or
web site where complaints like this are answered within 24 hours by a human.
It's not like they can't afford it, and it might hold off full-on regulation
of their activities a while longer.

~~~
drdaeman
By saying "full-on regulation of their activities" do you suggest that it's
some (which exactly?) government or committee is who would decide on search
ranking algorithms and what shows up in the results and what doesn't? Or is it
something else?

~~~
dreamcompiler
I'm suggesting that, in an effort to ensure fairness of opportunity and no
anticompetitive practices are taking place, governments might begin to see
Google as the public utility monopoly that it has de facto become, and start
treating it like one. Google might want to get out in front of this by being a
bit more transparent and responsive to its users.

~~~
drdaeman
I got it that you suggest the governments (all of them, authoritarian ones
included?) to interfere by making some legislative decisions. But what exactly
should the government(s) decide upon?

Just saying that $company_name has to be "transparent" and "responsive"
doesn't mean anything on its own. I was interested in how you suggest to
achieve those feats (read: enforce them)

So here's the problem I see: for the the accountability and transparency you
suggest, to decide if Google (Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DDG... is it really
a monopoly?) does things right or wrong governing bodies must invent some
rules how search engines should work. Surely not a full set of algorithms
(that would be an unprecedented disaster) but a set of constraints on those
algorithm outputs.

And it has to be an extensive ruleset. I'm sure it's not enough to require
that e.g. a registered trademarks must be the first result on exact query, or
that querying for Tiananmen Square gets no results. It has to decide for what
happens on the intermediate positions, what has more priority and what's
legally irrelevant and mustn't show up any high. I think that would be just
bad - too many ways to abuse this system.

I thought of also not writing any legislatures but doing some ad hoc rulings,
when judges decide what's fair and what's not on the case-per-case basis
(basically, civil vs common law), but I'm not sure if that would work any
well. In such theoretical scenario I just foresee the insane amount "sue
because my site is 5th result and I feel it's unfair to be anything less than
3rd place" cases. That would quickly escalate, judges would end up inventing
some common criteria, and we're back to the abovementioned scenario, just
sourced differently.

------
beaconfield
This is extremely disturbing. I'm a recent convert to ProtonMail and I am not
going back to the free, ad-based email world. Google and Facebook are not
companies I trust any longer. DuckDuckGo, ProtonMail, Signal are.

------
mintplant
Relatedly, Google refuses to list my personal site (spinda.net) for reasons I
can't discern. It only shows up if one searches for the exact domain itself,
and even then as a bare entry with no description. I've tried submitting the
URL through every avenue Google offers for recrawling—no dice.

~~~
kyrra
I'm assuming you set up your site in webmaster tools[0]? If there is a
problem, it should report it to you.

Besides that, there is not much on your site that is of value as to why Google
would link to it. It just links to your other projects other sites that you
are on. If I do a google search for your name + "spinda", your Github,
Twitter, and Keybase entries come up. Then search result #12 or so is your
website. I'd say Google is actually doing this right, as it's giving users a
direct link to the sites of "value", while your meta-link site may not be as
much value to people. Google would rather have people get directly to useful,
than having to click through to other sites first.

Now, if you had something on your site that was changing (a blog or
something), it may be ranked higher. But as of now, I don't see why Google
would put it high up in the rankings.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)

~~~
mintplant
> Then search result #12 or so is your website.

Oh, that's new. Previously it didn't appear at all in the results, even for
specific, targeted queries matching the site content. And I see it's now
showing a title and cache link (but no blurb), whereas before it appeared as:

    
    
        spinda.net
        https://spinda.net
    

and only for the query "spinda.net", in a special position up at the top.

------
awestroke
Anyone know a good alternative to ProtonMail with no ties to the Israeli
Military? Preferably European.

~~~
dvdkhlng
* [https://posteo.de/en](https://posteo.de/en)

* [https://mailbox.org](https://mailbox.org)

posteo implements multiple encryption schemes: encrypt incoming mails with GPG
(making them inaccessible by any end device not having the corresponding
secret key). Or encrypt via the login passphrase with transparent decryption
on authorized access.

~~~
rocqua
It is great data hygiene to use encryption at rest. However, it gives no
security guarantees. You still need to trust posteo.

If posteo wants, they can read all incoming email. Their security scheme
depends solely on their good intentions. Still great that their data at rest
is encrypted in a way even they cannot read.

The scheme does defend against third parties outside of posteo being able to
access data, or coerce posteo to decrypt data. Posteo could probably still be
coerced to push out a fraudulent client update that still breaks their
encrpytion, but that is a very hard problem to deal with.

~~~
dvdkhlng
> Posteo could probably still be coerced to push out a fraudulent client
> update that still breaks their encrpytion, but that is a very hard problem
> to deal with.

They are based in Germany and would need to be coerced in accordance to german
law. I don't think that there is something like National Security Letters in
Germany, so doing such a thing without (eventual?) public disclosure seems
unlikely.

Also posteo regularly releases as much information as they are allowed to
regarding their interaction with law enforcement, e.g.:

[https://posteo.de/en/site/transparency_report](https://posteo.de/en/site/transparency_report)

~~~
rocqua
There are other methods of coercion than courts, but I agree that the German
courts are probably much safer than the American courts.

In any case, the fraudulent client update is a very hard hole to patch. The
only solution for this I know of is local hosting. At the moment, defending
against this in web-apps is simply not possible.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
There's one way I know to stop that.

Ipfs. Its immutable, for a given key. And its easy to see what an IPNS link
points to.

It may not be a way to verify, but others could do that hard work.

But it strictly shows proof that codebase for a web app hasn't changed.

~~~
dvdkhlng
The only real antidote against unauthorized access is using end-to-end
encryption between email's sender and recipient(s), via PGP/GPG or S/MIME.
Unfortunately this requires the sender's cooperation. As long as the sender
does not cooperate, there will always be some leg of the communication path
that is vulnerable.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Indeed. But that problem has been to "Show clients how to install the relevant
plugins, make their certs, and then appropriately use certs." That's been
error-prone since the beginning with PGPMail and PGPphone.

That's why this was switched to doing it in a webapp, to streamline the
process and remove user error out of the equation. There's one problem, and
that the owner of the script can change it to a bad one that does X.

With an immutable data structure, like what IPFS uses, can provide that chain
of custody with a script they make that simplifies PGP usage, while still
maintaining "We didn't change anything" \- and you can prove that.

------
0xADADA
Shouldn't we all be using DuckDuckGo anyways?

------
misterhtmlcss
I just use duckduckgo. I've tried it for years and it just wasn't good enough
and then about a month ago I got fed up with Google's data mining again and
tried it for like the 5th trial period and I haven't switched back. If you
haven't tried duckduckgo for over a year then I suggest you give it a trial
again.

I'm running a custom theme to remove the Google search bar from my Android
phone, installed Firefox Quantum and set up a Mozilla account, so now
everything is gone from Google except my Gmail and that will happen next along
with Dropbox too.

If you want Google to be a better organization then you have to vote with your
feet. Do that and your voice will eventually mean something, but until then
Google won't listen.

------
ucaetano
ProtonMail is the first result when I search for "secure email", even when not
signed in.

~~~
godshatter
Same here, even when using duckduckgo and !g.

------
dmitriid
A friend of mine tweeted a couple of days ago:

On the one hand, net neutrality is truly a problem: evil ISPs decide for you
what you will and will not see. On the other hand, google, youtube, facebook,
twitter and others already decide this for you. But you don't even know that
they don't show things to you.

(sorry for poor translation from Russian)

------
LeeHwang
Google needs to be investigated and broken up. Its beyond time for an
investigation and regulation of Google from the united states government.

Other countries are already starting work against Google. The power Google
wields over the general public warrants severe investigation at even the hint
of abuse of power.

~~~
bootlooped
If that were true, then it would definitely also be true for Facebook as well.

------
Too
What one could do to prove this type of abuse would be to do a daily search
for terms you think should match your site and record how high in the results
it appears, and do it for various search engines.

If you plot this over time and see a sudden drop you know Google has
identified you as a threat.

------
brudgers
To me, this is why the arguments over Net Neutrality are really an argument
over which corporations are favored by existing regulations. Google isn't
neutral and it is integral to the way people use the net.

------
DavideNL
I wonder if this will backfire somehow. Google (privacy nightmare) removing
ProtonMail from its search results will only attract more privacy conscious
people...?

------
franz899
Sharing an article from an amp page when talking about Google manipulating
search results is quite the touch.

------
arcaster
Must've been after it's feature on last night's episode of Mr. Robot....

------
durfdurf
was there a reason given as to why the company was dropped from search
results?

------
n1000
This article is from 2016. Maybe this should be mentioned in the headline.

~~~
teekert
It should, because my first thought was: "What, again!"

~~~
wallace_f
Sorry, that is my fault. If a mod can add it please do.

~~~
dang
Done now.

------
saalweachter
"Google's search results should contain exactly what I personally think they
should in every case," said the HN commentator. "But they mustn't be
personalized," said his boon companion. "Oh no, personalization is Evil." They
nodded in agreement and upvoted each other's comments.

~~~
rusk
Google's PR monkeys hard at work I see!

I find it very, _very_ hard to believe that HN readers would vote such a
comment to the top.

~~~
dang
We needn't invoke foreign entities to explain why HN voters would upvote it.
Smug comments routinely get upvoted. The fault is with us, not shadowy
outsiders.

Apropos of which, it's in the site guidelines not to bring in insinuations of
astroturfing unless there's actual evidence, so could you please not do that
on HN?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
rusk
Apologies all.

------
tpolzer
Has to be a transient problem, I get ProtonMail as first unpaid search result
for both queries they mention.

~~~
dvt
Did you not read the article? It was eventually "fixed."

> ProtonMail tracked this situation through Spring 2016, trying to get in
> touch with Google to query why it had vanished from search results — and
> initially having no luck getting a response. It only eventually got an
> acknowledgment of the complaint in August after it had tweeted at Google
> staff.

~~~
Joe-Z
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. HN-Guidelines tell
us to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

It wouldn't take anything away from your response just leaving that question
out.

BTT: Why is this even an article on here anyway when the situation has been
dealt with one year ago? The title should already mention that it's from 2016.

~~~
woof
The missing guidelines:

* Please read submissions before commenting on them

~~~
Joe-Z
The question "Did you even read the article?" adds nothing of value, if not
downright hostility. When someone asks a question/writes an uninformed
response and one wants to respond to it, fine. But don't complain that someone
made you respond to it.

------
z3t4
Don't depend on search for people to find your product. Just like you do not
include vesting when comparing salaries between startups.

~~~
renaudg
This is a bit naive in a world where the address and search bars in browsers
have merged, and many physical adverts don't even feature a website address
any more, just search keywords.

~~~
z3t4
It's branding. You advertise for a trademark that you have control over. If
the users are using Android or Chrome they'll see some ads on their way to
your website, but they will eventually get there, but that's ok I guess. What
I mean is you should not depend on, for the life of your business, that a
keyword like "secure email" will send traffic to your website, unless that is
your trademark or brand name, and in that case you better own secureemail.com

Back in 2006 or so when the address field became a search bar in most major
browsers, I started to get a lot of traffic from Google, but 99% was searching
for mydomain.com, I'm not talking about that kind of traffic, I'm talking
about SEO keywords that will kill your business over night when (not if)
Google change their formula or some algorithm removes your site from the
search result.

It's a bit upsetting that web browsers have monetized the address bar, but
that's another, yet important discussion.

------
alexasmyths
This needs a full anti-trust investigation.

If it's true that this has happened, then they need to have a regulatory
oversight body right up in their operations.

The power of search engine is immense - they could change stock market
outcomes, election outcomes, entire economies.

------
bogomipz
>"“[E]ven though Google is an American company, it controls over 90% of
European search traffic. In this case, Google directly caused ProtonMail’s
growth rate worldwide to be reduced by over 25% for over 10 months,” he adds."

If a substantial part of your funnel is attached to another company's whims
then maybe it was past time to think about your strategy for building product
and brand awareness.

>"“The only reason we survived to tell this story is because the majority of
ProtonMail’s growth comes from word of mouth, and our community is too loud to
be ignored."

Again it was up to you to diversify what sounds like an over reliance on
Google for 25% of your growth. Portraying that as into "victim survivor" story
is a bit dramatic.

This sounds like a yarn they are spinning for potential investors. And not a
very good one.

~~~
eqmvii
I mean, if that one company is Google and the reason is search, you don’t have
many options. This specific case is much harder to avoid than the general one
of over reliance on one entity.

~~~
bogomipz
>"I mean, if that one company is Google and the reason is search, you don’t
have many options."

The point is you shouldn't rely on the vagaries of a third party for your
business growth period. More especially a third party you don't appear to have
any relationship with. They even admit in the blog post that the majority of
their growth comes form "word of mouth." Word of mouth and "hoping for the
bes"t with Google searches is not really a solid marketing plan.

