Google 2007: More Googlers blogging?
Bloggers in point:
1) Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s point man on click fraud, weighed in personally on the Google click fraud issue at his own blog December 12 in a post entitled “Google, Click Fraud and Invalid Clicks”:
Matt Cutts pointed to the Ghosemajumder post at his own personal blog, saying:
Read Shuman’s post for more details. I’m sure he had to take the precaution to run his post by the legal team, but personally, I’m delighted to see Shuman talking about this issue on his blog.
Ghosemajumder’s personal blog commentary, then, can be viewed as a proxy for a Google official statement on Google’s position vs. a vs click fraud. Ghosemajumder:
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of misinformation on this topic (mainly from third parties with an incentive to exaggerate the issue), so we have been exploring ways to become more transparent ourselves. Our top priority is to protect advertisers, so that means not disclosing any proprietary methods which would allow click fraud perpetrators to reverse-engineer our systems.
A commenter at Ghosemajumder’s blog, Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy, noted, however:
So what is our overall "click fraud rate"? You never answered the question you yourself posed. I think it's great that Google is willing to start disclosing (in public) a bit more information on click fraud. I certainly do understand the need for protecting some of the algorithms however I'm sure that Google also realizes that doing so tends to create a certain amount of distrust from it's users. G-Man
Ghosemajumder:
you're right, I did not provide a specific click fraud rate. We don't have such a metric to disclose, because there's no exact way to determine "intent"…
2) Today, William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google, specializing in “fair use,” commented on the CNET story: “Judge: Can't link to Webcast if copyright owner objects” (see “U.S. capitalism vs. Web democracy”), at his own personal blog.
Patry presumably did not need to “take the precaution to run his post by the legal team,” as he is a key member of the Google legal team. His personal blog commentary, then, can be viewed as a proxy for a Google official statement on Google’s position vs. a vs, “fair use”, in a post entitled “Gentlemen Stop Your Linking.”
Patry’s post began by cautioning that cases where a defendant acts as his own lawyer are “quite dangerous…to the rest of us.”
It is not clear who “the rest of us” that Patry suggests is at risk. Patry is clear, however, in his condescension to all professional parties involved in the matter:
Cases involving pro se defendants are usually quite dangerous, not only to the defendant, but also to the rest of us: plaintiffs who are represented by decent enough law firms, if before a district judge without copyright experience can, and often do, get away with outrageous things. This may have been the case in Live Nation Motor Sports, Inc. v. Davis, 2006 WL 361983 (N.D. Tex. Dec. 12, 2006).
Patry, “fair use” advocate for Google, characterizes the court’s finding that if the defendant is not enjoined from providing unauthorized Webcast links on his Web site, plaintiff will lose its ability to sell sponsorships or advertisement, as a “deeply disturbing opinion.”
Will 2007 bring more Googler bloggers to the Google blogging fore?
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