] Google News, fresh from being sued by the French press
] and subsequently backing down and pulling the AFP's
] stories, is right back in at the deep end. This time, the
] question of transparency comes up in relation to it's
] non-disclosed news sources and nazi websites being
] featured on the Search engine's algorithmic news portal.
]...
] Philipp hits the nail on the head though when he quite
] rightly states that Google do indeed have editorial
] control, they choose the sites that appear in Google News
] - In other words, someone looked at a neo-nazi white
] pride hate site and said "oh my, that just has to be in G
] news...."

Yet more evidence of Google misstepping.

I should have called it when I saw it, how Google was going to fall. Fall from the graces as the Can Do No Wrong folks. The common fall for such a tech company is to slow down in their rate of innovation, have their technology surpassed. They have been smart enough to prevent that; ever new release is a new domain killer, pushing the limits of our expectations and released at a sufficent frenzy as behoves such a giant talent-suck with such visible and easy to change products [ie, DEC in its heyday couldn't put out something substantial every 6 months].

And the general fear with Google was that they would be too powerful, and Evil Empire status would fall upon them just because they found themselves ruling the world; people couldn't live without them, and no one could compete with them. That has not yet quite happened, although it occasionally looks like it.

No, the problem is that the business was smart enough about keeping their tech edge, and felt like to do so they needed to preserve their corporate culture. Unfortunately, one part of their culture that may have worked for them as a small company with a killer product, is a lack of communication. Reading the Operating Manual, for instance, this was obvious: they are "smart" in their field, and know to emulate the "smart" people in fields they find themselves now in; but without a deep understanding of the field, fall short. Buffett gives deep descriptions of his company in a way they do not. The maneuvers he does are generally transparent to a watching crowd, because of the SEC requirements tracking investments. And his annual meetings.

Google refuses to be answerable to the public, and to the finance community, and as long as nothing "bad" happens, they will get away with it. But things like this essay point out that their reputation is already being tarnished. The Trust In Google metric is down. And at the end of the day, most of what they do relies on it.

Trouble Brewing over Google News Transparency | Threadwatch.org