‘Failure’ Googlebomb Ended – For Obama
First a refresher course on the history of the Googlebomb, “Miserable Failure.”
(Click to enlarge)
Lest we forget, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt called President Bush "a miserable failure" in a presidential debate on September 4, 2003.
This witticism was taken up by Michael Moore and other leftwing internet scamps, who did their best to make sure that any Google search for the phrase “miserable failure” would return a link to President Bush’s official White House biography as its top result.
But now that Mr. Obama’s official biography now resides on that same page, the Solons at Google have decided this is unacceptable.
Observe how Google spins their sudden crackdown:
Detecting new "Googlebombs"
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Posted by Matt Cutts, Software Engineer
Though the spirit of change may be in the air in Washington, some things apparently stay the same. Yes, the old online prank called "Googlebombing" returned for a brief while recently, when Google searches for the words words (failure) and (cheerful achievement) returned President Obama’s biography as the top result.
You may remember this issue from a few years ago, when the query (miserable failure) led to the biography of President Bush. For some reason, all those links pointing to the Bush bio were redirected to Obama’s. Some people have asked in the past whether these results are a sign of political bias on Google’s part, and we’ve explained that this isn’t the case.
Rather than edit these prank results by hand, we developed an algorithm a few years ago to detect Googlebombs. We tend not to run it all the time, because it takes some computing power to process our entire web index and because true Googlebombs are quite rare (we joke around the Googleplex that more articles have been written about Googlebombs than there are actual examples of Googlebombs).
After we became aware of this latest Googlebomb, we re-ran our algorithm and it detected the Googlebomb for (cheerful achievement) as well as for (failure). As a result, those search queries now return discussion about the Googlebombs rather than the original pages that were returned.
Be sure check out search engine analyst Danny Sullivan’s post from yesterday. He does a great job explaining the history behind this and how it all works.
By the way, Google probably “became aware of this latest Googlebomb” when an outraged New York Times alerted them on January 23, 2009.
Talk about quick results.
Please note that it took a mere six and a half long years – but only a couple of days after Mr. Obama was inaugurated – for Google to decide this was all terribly wrong and that they had to "re-run” their “algorithm.”
Meanwhile, Google has the chutzpah to claim:
Some people have asked in the past whether these results are a sign of political bias on Google’s part, and we’ve explained that this isn’t the case.
Well, then that settles that.
Remember, Google’s slogan is “Don’t be evil.”
Remember too that Google and MoveOn.org are two of the organizations behind the laughably named “net neutrality.”
A matter which is already engraved as an agenda item at the newly revamped White House website:
Ensure the Full and Free Exchange of Ideas through an Open Internet and Diverse Media Outlets
* Protect the Openness of the Internet: Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
Well, it’s only fair. Google paid for it.
And with more than just money.
Great work on this one, Admin. I hadn’t heard about the history on this issue. In context, Google’s foot-dragging during the past six years vs their six days for Lord O is a stark example these two owners’ political bias.
Funny…when I do a Google search for “miserable failure”, I get a return with “Obama’s fathers” at the top. Maybe they are returning true hits.
I did “miserable failure white house” and Obama’s picture came up.. lol from this story even.. hahaha lets keep it NEWS!!!
Pitiful however, and not at all surprising from those wonderful liberals from Michigan.. (yes sadly.. they at least went to school at the bastion of liberalism that even Tom Hayden attended – well at least one of them..)
This is going to be a tough battle getting through to people if the results are limited to whatever Google sees fit to provide as answers. You all might be interested in this little piece from a friend of mine’s blog:
http://www.chetlyzarko.com/b2e.....n-the-inte
Interesting look at how things develop with the assistance of the “powers that be…”
Yessir, “net neutrality” is the next assault. Wish google had some real competition.
My old US rep is Rick Boucher, who I remember from the late 90′s as being a staunch advocate for free commerce on the internet, and a great advocate for individuals’ right to the files on their computer, ability to archive [burn] these files in order to save space on a hard drive, etc.
So I searched out his website, and found that he is acting as a good comrade with the rest of the Dems, claiming that having served for two decades on the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Internet and intellectual property, he now bats for the other team: “Recently, Congressman Boucher has been a leader in ensuring that the Internet remains an open medium by promoting network neutrality.” ( http://www.boucher.house.gov/i.....;Itemid=75 )
It turns out that Rick is an advocate of BitTorrent, as a lot of us are. He didn’t like the fact that Comcast put filters on their lines to block the file transfers using that protocol. Boucher was right. And up until late ’07, Boucher favored free market solutions instead of government regulation:
“Unfortunately for fans of Net neutrality, the congressman said he was not ready to go down this path and instead stressed market-based methods of fixing the problems. Instead of tinkering with packets, the congressman said that in the short term, Comcast should “simply tier their offerings and engage in a pricing structure that allocates more bandwidth to those who pay more, and less to those who pay less.” (source below)
Here’s a link to a terrific article on Net Neutrality from CNET in Oct 07: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1373.....ncol;title
Google, these idiots wouldn’t do anything wrong now would they?
On a side note: Just a little off subject here. but I can’t hide my little bit of happiness in this mess. All Repubs. went Jesse Helms
yesterday. “NO’. Hooray, for them. Keep it going. Encourgement , they need encourgement!
Net Neutrality is more complex than the article that John Galt linked to suggests.
There is the issue of treating different protocols in a “neutral” manor. This is essentially the common carrier issue. In order to not be liable for all content carried, the carrier needs to ignore the content. They have to treat bit torrent the same as they treat email or web traffic or child porn. They don’t look, they don’t judge, they just pass it along. The same way you can’t hold the phone company liable for a threatening phone call or the USPS liable for delivering a letter with anthrax powder.
The other issues are where net neutrality starts to look like a “Rail Unification Plan”. Billions of dollars are spent constructing and maintaining the infrastructure underlying the internet. This money has almost all come from private companies. In order for the internet to work, all traffic needs to be able to flow through anywhere. Everyone has in the past agreed to this.
But, the proponents of net neutrality also say that “Taggart Internet” for example cannot give preference to its own customers when forwarding traffic. This is a huge advantage for certain companies (Google, Netflix, streaming porn) because they can get on a local spur connected to Taggart Internet and then dump huge amounts of data onto someone else’s tracks and that other company must carry it with the same priority as their own.
That’s where net neutrality runs into trouble, because many of the proponents want one company to partially subsidize the cost of another company’s business.
Nice summary of the net neutrality issue, Doug. I also like the examples!
You’re right–it is complex. Your breakdown above didn’t even mention another aspect I’d read about the issue in my scant research: Verizon tried to disable SMS texting to users from a pro-choice organization. (Any congressman not getting their palms greased enough from Verizon could easily threaten net neutrality to them.) Even though they eventually unblocked them, the excuse for congressmen to rush to declare “net neutrality” is made stronger by these occasions.