voelspriet - 7:01 am on Jun 6, 2005 (gmt 0)

GOOGLEGUY

But when Henk van Ess submitted his own blog to Slashdot, he asserted "Real people, from all over the world, are paid to finetune the index of Google," and that made it sound like people were reaching in via this console to tweak results directly, which just isn't true at all.

Google Guy, do I read between the lines that you think my postings are irrelevant and misleading? That would be a shame.

Let's go along with your reasoning. If you say agents don't have any influence on the index, I have a question for you. Why pay them for something if it has no effect om the index? Must be charity then.

GOOGLEGUY

I have serious reservations about Henk van Ess taking information from one of his own students (who presumably signed a non-disclosure agreement when the student agreed to help rate the quality of our results) and posting that information online.

I like your posts, but I guess you don't like mine. I'm not aware of restrictions. The pages were shown in a public class. I'm a professional reporter for 20 years. If Google thinks the information is classified, why Debbie (Frost) didn't tell me? I asked her for a comment...

Let's go back to the content. Check the discussions on Search Engine Watch or many other professional SE-boards. Google Guy, do you really think it's irrelevant to talk about Google's Human Quality Evaluation?