Google Employees Should Be “Pissed Off” Their Leadership Is Misleading Congress | Hacker News Reader

Google Employees Should Be “Pissed Off” Their Leadership Is Misleading Congress

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37 pointsseapunk15 comments

I think Google made the right choice for themselves avoiding directly answering the question because you'll get absolutely nowhere with a "yes, but this is meaningfully inaccurate characterization of how the search space works." Nobody will hear anything except the yes on the various blogspam sites and Google's eventual long-form defense/rebuttal/explanation of the report will get lost on page 2 of their own searches for the story.

This is what you're supposed to do in law and PR. You never accept the premise of the question, which in this case is that the percentage of searches without a click or clicks to Google owned properties is a meaningful metric. If you answer at all you lose.

Compiled here: https://threader.app/thread/1159174025949564928

What is a zero click search? How can 48% of search be answered without a click? Are we talking about searches that use the currency converter widget, calculator widget, the movie list widget, etc. Do these compromise 48% of all search?

sometimes theres enough info on the results page to answer your search query.

google does a lot more than simply find you a website

What protections would an Google employee have for calling out Google here? Does an employee get whistleblower protection for reporting that their employer lied to Congress or any other branch / department of some branch of government?

Problem is that Google didn't lie, they did what politicians do, they deflected the question. They gave an answer, but that answer was entirely random and had nothing to do with the question. We call this waffle.

How does the government get a corporation to give a truthful answer to a question?

In court, under oath is my guess? How does the electorate of a country get their own government to give a truthful answer? Unfortunately there isn't many ways to really get a straight answer from anyone these days. You can sue someone for something at which point there is something at stake, until then nobody has a reason to be honest if it could hurt their career/business/{insert whatever thing here}. :/

Not just elected ones, we see even appointed officials doing the same to the media. Even media does it - intentionally confusing, talking about two unrelated (or mildly related) topics at the same time to disorient readers etc.

How does one expect answers from lawyers (probably the best in the business, no doubt highly paid) to be fully truthful or helpful? They're gonna do the absolute minimum required by law, they are hired for this very purpose

Whistleblowing protection, for what?

> Of the total U.S. mobile and desktop searches that occur on Google, is it true that less than 50% result in clicks on non-Google websites?

Google was asked if less than 50% of Google search results end in a user on a non-Google site. Presumably the 50% number came from some study, which Google mentioned in their response. They noted that the study hadn't been clear on the methodology used and may include cases where the user didn't end up on any site (e.g. "How old is Obama" shows 58 years in the search results).

It's an entirely reasonable answer to the 50% claim. As to the actual number, that depends on how you define the question (see above). They were not asked what percentage, there were asked about the specific claim of 50%, presumably from some paper, which the answer referenced.

And the bigger point is that author of these tweets shows this as some kind of smoking gun. Google is intended to get you answers, not to distribute traffic to other websites. In the case above, if they could answer your question immediately rather than forward you to some site, that's a good thing. If people are searching for video and the video is hosted on Youtube which is owned by Google (gasp!), rather than some shady Russian video site, they should forward users to Youtube.

I get it, some people don't like Google. But this kind of phony outrage hurts actual issues with tech dominance

The author of these tweets is also the author of the report, and he claims that he did provide a methodology [0]. The report can be found here: https://sparktoro.com/blog/how-much-of-googles-search-traffi... .

[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/randfish/status/11591753859064381...

The Google answer makes sense then:

Received 150+ Billion searches

Solved 48.96% of those searches without a click

Sent 7.2% of all search clicks to paid results

Sent 6.01% of all searches (~12% of search clicks) to websites owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company

Directed a click to non-Alphabet-owned websites (aka, the rest of the web) after 45.03% queries

Specifically "Sent 6.01% of all searches (~12% of search clicks) to websites owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company". So only 12% of search clicks resulted in Google owned sites. The 50+% quoted includes all the search results without a click. Getting answers without a click is the ideal for me as a consumer. I don't know why you would include that as evidence that Google somehow favors their site over others.

The other factor is the content. IMO Youtube and Google Maps are far superior products compared to others. I imagine an unbiased search engine would favor these sites. If a large percentage of search queries are for videos or places, I would expect the search results to skew towards Google products.

No employee should be pissed off. It's a job not a religious calling.

I respectfully disagree: it's important that an employee assesses whether her or his employer's actions align with their own moral compass and belief system.

Without this check we'd surely leave ourselves open to a society where people 'just doing their job' can do some pretty heinous things. This doesn't imply you treat it like a religious calling. Just that you give it due consideration

I disagree. I've worked/create gambling sites, pro-gay, religious sites and those all conflict with each other. I'm not really for or against their mission and nor should I be.

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