Don’t Be Evil

"Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous."
Plato

A long time ago I commented on what seemed to me to be absurd anomalies in Google's Page Rank system. No doubt they have a formula for determining their numbers but it would seem to elude both myself and millions of others. It almost appears to be random, but I wonder sometimes if it might not actually be more sinister than happenstance.

When I started using this site as a personal blog it had a modest Rank of 1. After a month or so I posted a few paid posts. During the same period my daily visitors increased by several hundred percent and the number of inbound links rose substantially as well. However, my Page Rank disappeared entirely. The site became more popular but the Rank went down. The only other change - my paid posts. Hmmm…

I stopped writing paid posts many months ago because, without a Google Rank, it was simply not worth the effort. When I did write them I would spend between 45 minutes and an hour considering appropriate content, quotations, and picture. Without a Page Rank the only opportunities available to me were $5 or $7 posts. Hardly worth it.

To my current point: I have not even bothered to check my page rank for months, but last night, out of curiosity to see if Google had maybe taken its rationality pill, I decided to have a look. The results were much as I remembered except for one glaring difference.

I checked 4 sites:

1. This blog, with daily hits rarely above a dozen or so.
2. Bluesky Sportfishing (www.blueskysportfishing.com), a site I maintain that gets 2-3 dozen hits a day.
3. Fashionese Daily (www.fashionesedaily.com), a close friend's site, and a very popular site with upwards of 1000 hits a day and a forum memberships of over 2000.
4. Sineira - my personal business site that gets no more than a few dozen hits A MONTH!

The results:

First, inbound links:

Three? Wha!!!!!!

This would all be just amusing were it not for the fact that Google is messing with people's income with its "system". They are powerful. They are necessary. Too powerful. Too necessary. Microsoft has been dragged into court several times because of its alleged monopoly of the desktop market. In my view, Microsoft does not wield anything like the power of Google when it comes to the Internet and its commerce. Google, with it's mysterious search and rank systems, even the guiding principles of which it refuses to disclose to the public, affects people's lives.

I do not know what they are up to, but I have a feeling it is not "good".

When someone tells you that something is "not about the money", you can pretty much be sure "the money" is exactly what it is about. Similarly, I think, you can probably be confident that when someone adopts the motto "Don't be evil", evil is exactly what they will turn out to be.