

Don't Be Evil but Intentionally Deceptive is OK - Gibbon
http://www.diorex.com/dont-be-evil-but-intentionally-deceptive-is-ok/

======
iamelgringo
Goog has major issues with customer service. If you're running a business,
your first inclination 95% of the time, should be to make the customer really
happy. If they have a complaint about your service, you bend over backwards to
make it right. Especially, when these people are use to paying a CPC of $10
for some of their ad campaigns.

Can you imagine that type of response from Amazon web services support staff?
Especially, if you had an unresolved $3000 bill with them.

I recently set up an online store using Yahoo Merchant solutions. I ran into
road blocks two separate times, and when I went to their "help" section, I
found a 24 hour customer service phone number, so I called them both times
after midnight. On both occasions, within a minute, I was talking to a live
person who spoke fluent English. And I had my issue resolved within minutes.
Needless to say, I'm going to continue using Yahoo Merchant Solutions. The
interface is pretty clunky, but I've been really happy with their customer
service.

Google could take a lesson or two from Yahoo and Amazon on this.

~~~
KWD
I also run a Yahoo Store, and even in their Search Marketing group, customer
service has always been excellent. Clearly there is a lesson Google needs to
learn from Yahoo in at least one area.

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axod
[show = all but deleted] -> [select all] -> [resume]

It's not rocket science :/

The UI is 100% clear. This is a non-story. As soon as you log in, top right
shows "Show | all / all active / all but deleted".

It's actually quite worrying the poster is spending a lot on adwords, yet
doesn't seem to understand the UI and instead suggests setting all your bids
to 0.01 to avoid resuming deleted campaigns having a big effect.

Choosing [show = all] shows deleted campaigns, and if you select them all, you
can resume them...

To suggest this is "intentionally deceptive" is laughable. Worrying this has
been voted up to #1

~~~
ambition
No. One of the first rules I ever learned about human factors was to translate
"user error" into "design flaw." A mistake that is easy to make is a design
problem. In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google.

It's probably not intentionally deceptive, but it is deceptive and Google
should fix the problem.

Default actions should not affect deleted items. Think about GMail: "All Mail"
excludes your Spam and Trash.

~~~
llimllib
> In this case, this easy-to-make mistake benefits Google.

And, worse, it seems to be a pattern. Clicked the wrong button in your adsense
campaign? No appeal, we take your money. We detected fraud in your google
payments account? No appeal, we take your money. We detected click fraud in
your adsense displays? No appeal, we take your money.

I'm glad I don't do any business with them.

~~~
Ardit20
Why would they give you an appeal? They are not a charity organisation they
are a business for profit. If something they are doing is illegal then by
right you have access to the courts. Use them.

~~~
wheels
That's like saying, "Why would you talk to their customer service when you
could just sue?" The courts are there as a last resort, not as a default place
to settle things. Your statement also implies that there's not a relationship
between how one treats their customers and bottom line, which is pretty far
from the truth.

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alain94040
Google is slowly losing the PR war. It starts with the geeks. It may take
another two years to propagate to the general public. By then, billions of
dollars in ads (think Microsoft) can't undo the damage.

I'm watching to see if they are smarter than MS.

~~~
mattmaroon
Yeah, MS really screwed the pooch. That's why their revenues have climbed
steadily year after year to over $60b. Sure hope Google doesn't make that
mistake.

Only on Hacker News do people think emulating Microsoft (from a business
standpoint, that is) is bad.

~~~
evgen
Their revenues may still be climbing, but the rate of increase has dropped
significantly. They are losing market share in operating systems, office
suites, and browsers; they have an awful PR image and they have not had a
"hit" product in more than a decade. It does not take an idiot to see that
Microsoft has passed its peak and that the decline has begun.

~~~
mattmaroon
You know, that's exactly the same argument people made to me 10 years ago when
I started comp sci classes and made the mistake of asking some of the grad
students why they hated Microsoft so much. Luckily for Microsoft, the other
99.99% of the population never got the memo. At the time I didn't know about
Silicon Valley groupthink and I actually believed them.

Of course their growth has slowed since their startup days, but for a company
of their size it's incredibly impressive. See a chart of it here, noting that
the next year after this graph was published it topped $60b:

[http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-
eve...](http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/05/21/will-googles-revenue-ever-surpass-
microsofts/)

That's about 20% more than the year before it. Show me another company their
size that did that last year.

They don't have an awful PR image on Main Street, just on social news sites.
Despite Apple spending hundreds of millions to tell the world how much they
suck, 90%+ of people still use their products and like them just fine.

And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book.

I would argue that it does take an idiot to look at a company that went from
$51b to $60b in revenues and see decline.

~~~
axod
"And I think the Xbox 360 is a bona fide hit in anyone's book."

That's an odd book you have there. The last I heard was that at least they are
profitable now. However, there's 6 years or so of vastly unprofitable to pay
back before they actually make any money from the venture. By that time we'll
be into the next console war, and who wins that is anyones guess. (Whoever
stops using discs for the love of god).

People hate MS for a variety of reasons. My top 3:

    
    
      1. Taste - they consistently implement bad solutions rather than good, elegant solutions.
      2. The internet - they show consistently that they do not understand the internet.
         They loose enough money on it. They don't get advertising, building webapps, browsers, etc
      3. Bullying - Squashing the competition and giving users a worse experience isn't nice.
         It holds back progress. Suing people because they use the FAT format is ridiculous and indefensible.
         The FAT format is so simple it's trivial.
    

They are irrelevant to most people in any event. Unless you work in the
corporate world.

~~~
mattmaroon
Apple fans always move the goal posts when discussing Microsoft. The iPhone
sells 17m units, and it's a hit, despite having relatively small market share.
The Xbox 360 sells 28m units (about 30% market share in its generation) leads
its segment, and it's not a hit somehow.

Microsoft is doing really, really well in the gaming space, in fact they lead
the serious gamer market. They sell more games per unit at higher prices.
They've been the clear leader in online connectivity and game distribution,
with Nintendo and Sony lagging years behind them there, and they're doing a
million downloads a week. They've also got the top game franchise with Halo,
smashing sales records with each release.

Comparing them to the Wii is like comparing the iPhone to a free-after-
contract clamshell. Of course some of the clamshells sell many more units, but
that doesn't make the iPhone a dud.

And they're moving into the VOD space. They're now streaming tons of videos
through Netflix and some of the built in stuff. Having a console attached to
28m TVs has given them the video distribution channel that Apple tried and
failed miserably to get with the Apple TV, though I have a feeling that if
that product sold 28m units you'd call it a hit.

~~~
axod
OK lets ask it this way. If you had enough money to buy Nintendo, with its
innovation, massive profits, and cult following, or the xBox section from ms
with its debt, which would you buy?

Who knows, maybe in 5 or 6 years xBox will have paid back what it cost them to
develop. Or maybe a new console will come out and no one will remember what
the xBox was before they get a chance.

The genius was that Nintendo decided to not compete with xbox and ps3, and
instead create a new market which they completely dominate and profit heavily
from.

Personally I don't buy the 'control of the living room' strategy. From anyone.
Apple TV? no thanks.

Portable devices - Nintendo DS, iPhone/iPod are where it'll be IMHO

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't know what debt you mean, the division is profitable. It took them some
money to get there, but that's what happens when you battle competition that
has been entrenched for decades. At the rate they're going, they'll soon be
profitable on the EDD unit as a whole.

So I'd take the Xbox unit, if we're talking strictly TV consoles. (Nintendo
owns the handheld market, and is one of the biggest game makers too, so it's
not an apples-to-apples comparison.) For one, they're the most likely to
abandon optical media as a necessity for their next player. Nintendo is very
backward-thinking when it comes to media formats, consistently choosing
cartridges and proprietary discs. By your own logic, that's pretty bad. (The
Wii proves users really don't give a damn yet, but they may.)

They'll still offer discs, because a lot of people will still want to rent
games, buy them as gifts from Best Buy, etc. But it won't be the only way to
get any new game. You can already pay to just download tons of games from the
library.

For another, they're the most compelling VOD service on the market. They're
going to achieve the dream of streaming movie rentals to people in large
numbers. They're already doing it with Netlflix, but they're still improving.
I already cancelled my cable and now watch whatever TV I do through PlayOn or
streaming from a PC thanks to my Xbox. Despite rarely playing console games,
my Xbox gets used daily.

They're much more than a gaming device, and they're growing there all the
time. The Wii is not, it plays casual games well, and that's about it. And
that's great, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the only market segment.

Also remember, Nintendo has been playing 2nd or 3rd fiddle for a couple
generations before the Wii, after having dominated for 2 generations. There's
no reason to believe they won't end up right back there. That industry is
tumultuous to say the least.

And even if you'd go with Nintendo, that doesn't make what Microsoft has done
any less impressive. That industry is one of the most brutally competitive
there is. So many people have come and go, big companies have tried and failed
to get a toe hold. Microsoft hit the #2 spot 2 generations in a row, and built
a genuinely cool product that is killing the non-casual segment right now.
It's really impressive.

~~~
axod
>> "I don't know what debt you mean, the division is profitable."

I thought it was just profitable for 2008, but not profitable as a whole, when
taken as a venture - 5 years of heavy losses, then 1 year of some profit?

Other points taken, and guitar hero rocks, halo is cool. The xBox is the best
part of ms. On the downside, my xbox often sounds like a washing machine and
is hotter than the sun ;)

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think all 5 years were heavy losses, but yeah, they might well be in
the red overall. They'll recoup it fast if their current trend continues
though.

Hardware-wise they made a lot of errors that cost them a lot of money and
reputation. (I'm on my third unit, and everyone I know seems to be at least on
#2.) On the other hand, people love it enough to deal with it, kinda like
Macbooks in that regard. I'm starting to think that I've overrated the
importance of build quality in things other than cars due to my experience
with those. Perhaps since people aren't so reliant on non-automobiles it
factors much less into their user satisfaction. (I've heard iPods too have
high failure rates, though the couple I've owned never seemed to have any
problem, but if that's true it clearly hasn't dented their uptake.)

If you're lucky enough to have a newer one, they're a bit quieter, especially
once you rip the game to the hard drive. You still have to put the disc in,
but it doesn't spin and it makes it a lot quieter. Of course, the only game I
play is Rock Band and I tend to crank that up :)

------
lsb
I wonder how many bad customer services experiences it'll take to train their
Bayesian models.

~~~
axod
There will always be user error, which this clearly was.

~~~
slance
Not really user error. Deleted means deleted.

~~~
charltones
_Deleted means deleted_

and resume doesn't mean undelete. Pause / resume, and delete / undelete should
be kept separate IMHO. So resume should just resume paused campaigns and a new
undelete option should allow you to reverse the status of deleted campaigns.

~~~
axod
>> "Deleted means deleted"

Gmail: Delete... oops... undo.

Granted though, it should warn you that you're resuming a deleted campaign.
But that's a feature request to save people making mistakes IMHO rather than
anything inherently wrong with their UI.

------
Raplh
I think there must be a basic law of nature that when you have a monopoly you
get stupid.

Perhaps the only way for Google to "not be evil" is to cut itself in half and
have the two new companies compete with each other.

------
Raplh
As stupid as Google's customer service, and their interpretation of the word
"deleted" is, it is pretty obviously not intentional. My reasoning is: it adds
virtually nothing to Google's income.

If these had not been turned on, the next higher bidder would have gotten
those clicks. Presumably this is "dutch auction" -ish pricing, so the high
bids on these CPCs only got a high charge per click if there were other high
bids out there?

~~~
eru
Wouldn't a Dutch auction work exactly the opposite way?

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction>: "A Dutch auction is a type of
auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered
until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a
predetermined reserve price (the seller's minimum acceptable price) is
reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price.")

Or do you use eBay's definition of the term: "eBay uses the term Dutch auction
differently, for a multi-unit auction for several identical goods to be sold
simultaneously to potentially multiple bidders."

------
mattmaroon
Wait, he actually got someone at Google to respond to a query in a timely
fashion? That seems like a pretty big win to me. He must have a serious ad
budget.

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah the guy is huge. I'm just some random nobody loner who makes his living
off the net (not too much $$ though) and I know for almost a fact that this
guy is rich as shit through random people talking about him. Pretty modest
too.

~~~
Gibbon
He's got 125 employees. <http://www.diorex.com/thoughts-on-scaling-a-
business/> will give you some idea about the size and scope of what he's
doing.

~~~
skinnymuch
I know this is a super late reply, but wow. 125 is insane. Though I wonder how
many are employees in first world countries vs third world countries.

------
eli
I don't see how this is intentionally deceptive. It's just typically bad UI
design. (Typical among even Google software, I'm afraid)

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chanux
Actually things are just getting worse.

If you missed following article anyhow... "Google slips from list of top
companies on privacy" - <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10123251-93.html>

------
blasdel
"Don't be evil" is a KICK-ME sign on Google's back.

