Adam_Lasnik - 7:57 am on Dec 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

On the first day of Christmas, jtara said to thee:
You've hobbled search results advertisedly!
[...]

I've said it in other threads, but apparently it bears repeating. Our department (Search Quality) is judged upon how much we reduce spam in the index AND (as part of that) how much we improve user happiness (Are users finding what they want and need? Is the experience pleasant?)

By your logic, jtara, Google should instead dramatically increase the number of ads above the fold (instant revenue increase!) when -- in contrast -- at least one of our execs has gone on record stating that we hope to show *fewer* (but better targeted) ads over time. It's an issue of trust and user experience; quality over the long haul.

Ads and search people are in separate buildings, use separate algorithms, report to separate managers (all the way up to the top), and so on. And given that there's little switching cost in search (unlike, say, operating systems), we have to win users' approval every single day. Users notice speed, they notice quality. And, IMHO, to suggest otherwise (users are brandingly lemming'ed sheep) is sadly far from both reality and the holiday spirit ;-)

* * *

Oh, and this wikiasari thing? Sounds fascinating. Jimbo did some great stuff with Wikipedia, and I look forward to seeing what comes of his latest project. As always, there's room on the big ol' interweb for lots of projects to succeed. Personally I think there's way too much zero-sum FUD out there. Balderdash to that!

[Edited for typos and inadvertent redundancy. Bad eggnog, bad eggnog!]

[edited by: Adam_Lasnik at 8:14 am (utc) on Dec. 26, 2006]