Top all-time · #3942
Mike Blumenthal
Personal blog · blumenthals.com/blogwebbusiness
Mike Blumenthal's personal blog at blumenthals.com covers web and business. Since 2008, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Google Replaces Tele Atlas with Street View Data in US”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mike Blumenthal's blog for its posts on Google search changes, including reduced contrast and missing borders around ads, Google Maps data sources, local business listings, and fake reviews.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-03-14
- Google Replaces Tele Atlas with Street View Data in US2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-10-12
What Hacker News says?
There's the other problem of decreasing contrast and lack of borders separating the last ad and first organic search result. http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... A few years ago this was the style http://www.ismoip.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen... Before that http://cdn.userstyles.org/style_screenshot_thumbnails/58617_... Now http://i.i…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “How Google is Killing Organic Search”Submitted Google Tags boost traffic as a story · 14 points
HN discussionGoogle isn't above doing things that harm people to make them more money. Like the steadily decreasing background contrast and lack of borders separating ads from search results. Older people are far less cognizant of borders and thus would click on ads thinking they're search results. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... They recently got rapped by the FTC for it. http://wallstcheatsheet.…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages”Submitted Google Replaces Tele Atlas with Street View Data in US as a story · 9 points
HN discussion>The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy. Sure it does, but when some of the profit increases are made by deliberately decreasing contrast of the background of the ads and avoiding borders to increase ad clicks, especially from old people who are unable to see contrast [0][1], that's when it crosses the line into "decline" of the user experi…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Google's Decline Really Bugs Me”Submitted What Do Consumers Think of the iPhone Map App? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor those saying Google is a benevolent company, here are a few signs that the bean counters are taking over: Tracking Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and the…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice”Submitted The Sound of Trouble Knocking – A Call from Google Places India as a story · 2 points
HN discussion[Edit: Downvotes, why?] Which of these actions are about making an AI? Most of the Google search page area is now occupied by ads, or ads disguised as content http://searchengineland.com/google-results-too-ad-heavy-1662... Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that th…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector”Submitted Google Officially Ends Support For QR Code in Places as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. I think omitting a border around ads and intentionally reducing the contrast from the background to make it invisible to older people and people with bad monitors does count as an annoying gimmick and a user-hostile anti-pattern. The A/B testing would've shown a lot of ad clicks a…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV”Submitted Yelp - Real People, Real Reviews, Deceptive Sales Tactic as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHere's a few ways the post became true: Tracking Google Apps for Education students and even paid Google Apps for Business emails to build ad profiles, making misleading statement to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to statements to federal court, lacking the dare to continue lying and finally confessing the truth and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Educ…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Don't Trust Google (2002)”Submitted Are Mobile Signals Actively used in Ranking Local Results? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI don't think that's an outrageous exaggeration. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... But going beyond that, even when differences are not subtle as in that blog post you still have a large swath of people who won't be able to distinguish ads from non-ads. Just go in the heart of a large city and observe the web-surfing habits of some regular Joe Shmoe and you'll be pretty astounded with h…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison”Submitted Google Maps: Polling location information goes live as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCan anyone tell me how many things in this list are about a "level playing field" or "do no evil". If Apple or MS did even half of the things in this list, people would be screaming about it from rooftops a couple of decades later, but as Assange noted, Google seems to get a free pass. Most of the Google search page area is now occupied by ads, or ads disguised as content http://searchengineland.com/google-results-t…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/
on “Level Playing Field”A great summary including a link to a (lengthy) position paper by the FTC: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/01/26/fake-reviews-everyone... In summary, reviews like this are illegal.
Comment linking /blog/2014/01/26/fake-reviews-everyone-is-doing-it-so-it-must-be-legal/
on “Amazon Sues Fake Reviewers on Fiverr”Wrong: Since 2009, at least in US, TeleAtlas was replaced by data from Google Street View. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/10/12/google-replaces-tele-... Business listing comes from "information from our web search results, data submitted directly by local business owners, and third-party sources such as publicly available Yellow Pages directories" https://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ... It's hi…
Comment linking /blog/2009/10/12/google-replaces-tele-atlas-data-in-us-with-google-data/
on “Source: Apple Aggressively Recruiting Ex-Google Maps Staff To Build Out iOS Maps”I think we can both agree that bootstrapped companies != lean start-up.[0] Cool. However, it irks me that you think these largely successful companies didn't innovate based on lean principles and therefore couldn't be considered lean start-ups. > I think you're misunderstanding what a lean startup is. It also irks me that one of the most well-known cases of MVP/Pivoting discussed on HN has been by Dropbox, and yet y…
Comment linking /blog/2009/05/13/google-maps-development-history-2005-2008/
on “If Lean Works, Prove It”Yes, they did just switch data providers. Now they're using TeleAtlas, before it was a combination of TeleAtlas and Navteq. http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/09/19/google-maps-now-using... also see: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-176096.html
Comment linking /blog/2008/09/19/google-maps-now-using-teleatlas-data-exclusively/
on “What's up with Google Maps Sucking...”http://googleandyourbusiness.blogspot.com/2013/11/announcing... http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/11/25/google-intros-the-mot...
Comment linking /blog/2013/11/25/google-intros-the-mother-of-all-smb-review-monitoring-systems/
on “Google Places for Business: what customers say about your business, in one place”
