Mon 28 Jan 2008
Okay, I get it. I understand. Google only wants content that helps their users find something of value. And Google doesn’t want you to make any money off of it. That money belongs to them dammit. I get that now.
After getting slapped like an alter-boy with last quarter’s Google PR dance, I took a different approach than most. I quit. What’s the point of maintaining a site if it will be systematically judged as valuable or not based soley on an unknown formula.
Google judged that I advertised on my blog in a way they didn’t like or that the articles were not up to their standards or something, and struck it from their white list. So I threw my hands up in the air and went on to other projects. Instead of listening to everyone who maintained that pagerank only means something to people trying to sell things, I caved.
Well, they’re right. If Google views a site like Engadget, one of the most prominent tech aggregators and opinionators as “unimportant” and dings their “PR” accordingly… that’s a clear sign that the system is broken. So time to do what I tell my kids all of the time. Just ignore them.
I even met some of the guys from Google at SES Chicago recently and had a lot of my questions answered in a very friendly way. No evilosity at all. Which makes the whole situation even stranger. Clearly one person or one line of code somewhere saw something unlikeable in the archives of this site and placed a frowny-face next to the domain. Fair enough. Would be nice to know what it was, but never mind. Just ignore them.
Back to writing then, Google be damned. I don’t need sponsors. I don’t need ads. I might need medication. I’ll likely need counseling. But I certainly don’t need some algorithm to determine for me what is and is not worthy content. If anyone enjoys the posts, let me know and pass them around. I’ll get along fine without Google. Bastards.
P.S. Apple… you’re next on the list. Don’t think I’ve been asleep during your whole “We Sold 4 million iPhones and cured Herpes” speech.