Google letting spam sites live for $$$?

[eof]

I find it hard to believe google cannot differentiate between auto-scraping sites and original content sites with like 95%+ accuracy.

[bediger]

Google for "pink contract". You'll find at least this:

http://news.cnet.com/ATT-admits-spam-offense-after-contract-...

I recall, but can't find confirmation, that the old Uunet UUCP and usenet hub had "pink contracts", but denied them until irrefutable evidence surfaced. Why would Google be any different? As a publicly held corporation, the Google entity is what one could delicately call a "sociopath".

[byoung2]

The conspiracy theorist side of me thinks that Google doesn't want to get rid of all of the spam sites because they bring in revenue for Google through AdSense. The practical side of me says that even 95% accuracy wouldn't be enough with 200 million websites out there. A 5% miss rate is 10 million angry webmasters potentially complaining to Google and requesting manual reviews.

[eof → byoung2]

It would be fine if google just increased the the threshold of it's p value for spam-status.