
The Year the Internet Thought I Was MacKenzie Bezos - mirciulica
https://www.wired.com/story/internet-thought-i-was-mackenzie-bezos/
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sohamsankaran
The snippets feature has always seemed somewhat shady to me -- in essence, it
steals pageviews from the websites that did the hard work of sourcing the
information.

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mxz3000
From my (probably naive) point of view this does seem like a useful feature
for users. If you can get an accurate answer for your query without clicking
on a link or having to grep the linked page for the answer that's a win in my
book and a time save for users. I guess an issue arises when the snippet is
_not_ correct. But in my personal experience, the snippets are usually pretty
helpful/accurate

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dessant
Snippets are indeed a useful feature to have, but Google should share some of
the ad revenue it generates with the publishers of the featured content
snippets.

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Tinyyy
They do indeed generate revenue for the publishers, because a fraction of the
users actually click through into the article. Without the snippet promoting
it, the article would see much fewer traffic from Google.

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djitz
The snippet is almost always generated from the first search result, which
garners the lion’s share of the clicks. Now, many find what they were looking
for in the snippet and forego the click.

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remote_phone
The fact that Google doesn’t immediately change bad data for queries is
extremely scary to me. Misinformation from a query should be a civil offense,
similar to libel or slander. They are effectively causing disruption in lives
these days and I’m perfectly okay with Google being sued directly for
spreading misinformation. If their algorithm doesn’t work, it shouldn’t be a
public, they can’t just say “nope sorry that’s just how it works”.

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lonelappde
The information in the snippet was correct.

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p49k
OP’s point stands though, you can search “google snippet fail” for all kinds
of misinformation this feature spreads, from harmless but funny mistakes, to
conspiracy theories, to dangerous/unsafe advice.

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quantummkv
> “In situations where people are searching for something like a phone number
> that is not readily available online, our systems are understanding these
> pages (that include those exact keywords plus a phone number) to be the best
> matches available, even if the phone number is not the correct number for
> that entity,” Lara Levin, a spokesperson for Google, said in an email.

This is completely depressing. I would really like to know what thought
process led to something like this being implemented. Why would anyone even
think that attaching a wrong phone number and email to anyone and broadcasting
that on the top of Google Search is a wise idea?

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toast0
The thought process probably was 'if people just want to find the number for
X, we should show it on the search page'... The problem being that some phone
numbers aren't readily available, but people still want them.

It would seem like something they could figure out, but I'm guessing there's a
lot of 'contact us' pages that have the phone number and rank well for the
keyword, but don't have the keyword near the phone number.

They _should_ probably have a 'this isn't correct' link in the snippet or
something to trigger review of it, but Google is alergic to humans in the
loop.

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brandon272
An equally disturbing part about the article to me is the number of people who
are willing to email a perfect stranger to beg for money or try to start a
romantic relationship.

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ikeboy
You could list the contact info on a different page and just link to it "to
contact this author, click here"

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lonelappde
Or just move it a few more sentences away from MacKenzies name, or possibly
add some more HTML tag gunk to separate it, or out then author's name near the
phone number.

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franze
Last year I had the opportunity to work with some Xooglers. According to their
CVs an Linkedin they were with Google for a year or two. All with job titles
that trim down to project managers. All very junior.

Still, considering that Google only hires the best of the best I expected to
work with ambitious, clever people.

They were the worst. The showed me graphs, fancy presentations and project
plans in some saas tools (lots of them).

I soon realized that they did not have a clue what they were doing. Neither
could they answer ”who does what when" nor even show defined measurable goals
for the projects they were managing. And they were not able to make any
decisions at all.

If they are an example of Googles middle (project) management it's quite clear
why Google does not progress anymore in 2020 and lots of their products rot
away on an at best mediocre level.

In my point of view Google needs a major crisis (like Microsoft under the late
Balmer) before it becomes the innovationleader again - which it once has been.

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muglug
I'm not entirely certain that your anecdata about ex-Google project managers
(who only lasted a year there) has much bearing on this article.

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franze
It's anecdotal. The question behind it is: "How does such obvious broken
features like ’featured snippets for phone number searches' make it into
production?"

Obviously there are working lots of very clever people at Google, so why is
Google putting out so much subpar products and features?

Weak middle management is my explanation, there might be others.

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russell_h
Junior project managers aren’t “middle management”, they’re probably not
people managers at all.

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franze
weak project management then.

