Comparing Google to 9/11?
Updated Below
I read this today. A comparison between the Google Smackdown and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
On 9/11 -
I watched the second plane fly into the World Trade Center live on television on 9/11. My sister had called to tell me the first plane crashed. It was about 10:30 at night here and The Other Half and I sat down and watched the live footage on cable. I was horrified to see that plane fly into the tower right in front of my eyes. I was stunned. So was the rest of the world.
A New Fear Was Born -
A few days later I had volunteered to paint houses for a charity organisation that housed women trying to leave abusive situations. About an hour into the painting I heard a plane approaching and I looked up – not with happiness, not with joy, but in *fear*. The terrorists had achieved what they wanted right there – they wanted to create fear.
Change Can Be Forever
The actions of the terrorists changed things forever – from airport security to the laws of several countries, to creating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I would suggest some of these changes were not seen in the crystal ball of the terrorists. I’d suggest that the anti-Google feeling and the amount of anger their actions would create was not seen in the crystal ball of Google, either. For some, there will be no going back to how things were.
My reply to that post was as follows:
Did you seriously equate the Google Smackdown with what happened Sept. 11 and the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you honestly believe that Google removing pagerank is equal somehow to lost lives? Would you actually look a survivor of 9/11 or a surviving family member in the eye and compare losing pagerank to what happened to them? What about a war widow?
Wow.
Just wow.
Good on you for creating “controversy” and driving traffic, though. Shoot, if Giulani can campaign on the graves of the dead, why shouldn’t someone else compare their lost lives to lost pagerank?
You know, I would poke my own eyes out before I would support my own president in his ongoing “war”, but I have to say that I am deeply offended by your comparison.
Please remove the link to my site from your list. Thanks.
I am literally shaking with rage. I CANNOT even imagine that someone would actually print something like this up and then, for God’s sake, promote it for traffic.
I wrote this in the PPP forums where people seemed not to have read the post (I hope):
Am I the only one so deeply offended by that post that I am shaking with rage? Am I the only one that is disgusted by the comparison to a pagerank reduction to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on 9/11?
Wow.
I left my comment regarding it on the post.
I’m seriously done with this business. When people can honestly compare an insignificant pagerank reduction to the DEATHS of thousands of human beings then the obsession with Google has gone too far. What happened on 9/11 changed the lives of millions of people irrevocably. The flippin’ Google Smackdown pales in comparison. I’m pretty sure the people that were personally effected by the terrorist attacks and the events following would agree with that assessment.
I have seen some really ugly things in the marketing sector of the blogosphere. Almost as ugly as the political sector. I’ve rolled my eyes and mentally marked people off my “must read” list because of stupid reasons for not commenting and considering themselves above other people because of their precious pagerank. But this takes the cake. This is beyond pale. There are comments on that post where readers are congratulating the author and agreeing with her assessment.
Am I too easily offended? Possibly. But I’ve lost a friend because of the events following 9/11, I’ve got friends in mourning now, and I see my country (and others) torn apart because of the real terrorists. How many lives has Google taken with their pagerank reduction? How many lives have been ruined? When will this precious flippin’ pagerank debacle take center stage in my nightly news? Why isn’t my Senator all over this atrocity?
Because when compared to other things it doesn’t matter. Yeah, PPP bloggers are losing money in advertising. How many died? Sure, some people are losing search engine traffic. Did Google somehow maim them physically? Are people actually going to be damaged forever and ever because they no longer have a pagerank?
I may be too harsh here, I admit that. I’m actually take my time between paragraphs. My anger is overwhelming me. I experienced that pagerank drop and guess what? I haven’t been devastated, my family is still intact, and I’m going to wake up tomorrow in the same condition that I am in today (God willing). Col. Keith Nepsa is still going to be dead because he was in Iraq fighting the real terrorists. And, no, those terrorists don’t work at the Googleplex.
I suppose I’ll calm down eventually. Still, I’m done with that kind of thinking. I feel dirty just from reading it. It doesn’t matter if you support the “war” or not, the fact is people actually die because of terrorists. Google’s not killing anyone and they didn’t cause 9/11. They aren’t even in the same class as Al Qaeda, to which they were compared. Are you kidding me?
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
Everyone has their line and that was mine. Gah!
Update:
I just read this on another blog (contact me for linkage, but I have something else in mind for later and am keeping it simple right now):
They are justifying their actions, their evil, their fear tactics, with the rationalism that they will help the greater good (by harming a minority), whether or not they are rounding people up for slaughter, or killing people with jet airplanes, or taking food away from a poor family in the US or even the Philippines, they are still harming people. Hitler did not start immediately by sending people to concentration camps, he ramped into it.
Bin Laden did not start out by killing thousands of people right away, he influenced people, curbed them to his belief system and then kicked off a campaign to achieve his sinister goals. Google today is harming people by taking away their wealth and their earning potential and they are harming the people that trust Google to provide uncensored information. Who is to say what they will do tomorrow, when their software is running on everyone’s computer and Gphone and car.
If they can not avoid doing evil today, when they have a large amount of power, what will they do tomorrow when they gain even more power?
The answer, they will do even greater evil and possibly eclipse Osama Bin Laden and Hitler combined. [emphasis mine]
The person that wrote this received kudos from the person who wrote the post to which I was initially referring. And yet that same person said in the comments of this post (and in other places, including a private message) that I had “misinterpreted what she wrote”. Really? Someone obviously looking to cause some controversy (which fuels traffic, which would increase his “RealRank”) dug down deep in the muck*, covered himself with it, sucked it into his lungs and declared a search engine to be on par with Hitler which effectively equates the Google smack with the Holocaust for all of which he gets kudos and
Oh this is brilliant, much better than my article! Very well written, congratulations.
Cheers,
Snoskred
Is it really a misinterpretation?
I have plenty of other words befitting of this kind of dirty trickery, but I’ll leave that to your imagination as I promised myself I would remain civil and ladylike…heh.
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Whew! It has been a rough couple of days. I haven’t even watched television in, oh, THREE DAYS! How is that possible? The flu has struck our house and I was suffering like you would not believe! Yesterday I didn’t even get off the couch. The house was a wreck, but that’s life. I needed a really long nap. I’m feeling much better today, though. Thanks.
I have to turn my attention to BloggingZoom. Before Ye Ole Flubug hit, I became a little addicted. Yes, I know I was a little put off by all the money-making blogs (honestly, who doesn’t want to make money?), but then people started submitting articles that were more interesting and pretty soon I was sucked in. I just started following links, reading stories, getting tons of useful information, and before you know it Saturday was gone. Considering that a lot of blogs that I’ve been visiting lately seem to be sans blogroll, this is a really good way to find new blogs to fall in love with. Of course, there’s also some fodder for "What are they thinking?" file. Gotta say, the best posts to blog about are the ones that make you squint your eyes and cuss at the monitor. Ya know?
While I was stumblin’ around (or zooming? Hmm) I fell upon a blog post I found mildly interesting. In this post there was some talk about commenting on other blogs. I thought maybe this was going to be another rant about commenters leaving "PlayVegasAllNight.com" as their name or something. I love posts like that. Every time I see one I think "Kindred spirit!" I was a little disappointed.
Turns out that this particular blogger is one of the "blog snobs" that I try to avoid. By that, I don’t mean that she is necessarily a bad person. But she is very calculating about where she’s going to comment, who should comment on her post, where she’s going to link, etc- all that mattered was SERPs in the end. So, community and meeting other people were almost (but not quite) unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The blogger says that she will only comment on blogs with that are part of the Do Follow movement and then only if she can get in as one of the first commenters and a couple of very strategic reasons. That’s fine, I suppose. I can get that some people are only in this for the money. It’s sad, but I get it. So, I get to the bottom of the post, to the comments, and what do I see? Nofollowed comments!
A little explanation. I have Search Status enabled on my toolbar. It’s a Firefox plugin that prompts the browser to highlight all nofollows found on the page. I can tell right away if someone is part of the Do Follow community or blowing smoke. It’s got a couple other features, but I’ve jumped around enough.
I don’t care that the comments were nofollowed. My thing was that this person made such a big deal about commenting only on blogs with Do Follow- so she can get backlinks – but she’s not doing the same thing for her commenters.
Not only that, but I followed her from a post where she commented about another blog (which was mentioned in that particular post) but hadn’t commented on the blog she was discussing. Why? That blog’s comments were nofollowed. Huh? You honestly have a compliment for a blogger because he’s doing something you admire, but you won’t comment on his blog because…?
I just don’t get. I do not get it. When did the blogosphere become such a cold, ugly place?
*sigh*
Well, luckily my PR stinks like butt, so I don’t expect this particular person to ever grace my low-down, no good blog. That’s a good thing.
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