HRoth - 7:25 pm on Oct 13, 2011 (gmt 0)

It has gotten really hard to read the Google SEO threads because of so many people giving themselves fulltime jobs venting their spleen about how Google is evil. This is something I don't understand. Google's actions can indeed wreck my business, but so can any number of other things that are likewise capricious and about which no one has all the variables identified either. It is the nature of small business that it is fragile. That is just something a businessperson has to come to accept and work with.

Depending on Google or any corporation to act ethically is IMO irrational. Yes, they would cooperate with the NSA, spy on people, put their own products first, manipulate their product, and whatnot. How many big corporations have NOT done those things? Maybe people have just never read any literature. I suggest reading Sinclair's "The Jungle" or Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" to get an idea of how corporations have historically acted, although it's true--these are the sort of books a sheltered PhD would read.

The job of a corporation is to make money and sometimes they even break the law--or manipulate those who make those laws--to do that. My job is to figure out how I can on the one hand prosper and on the other keep from getting smashed whenever Google shifts in its sleep. If I get all het up about it, I will not be able to do that job effectively.

Thanks for discussing both the Employee 59 and this Plex book. I have put them on my list.