Google, Transparency, Social Media and PR

Published on March 3rd, 2010 by Jeremy Chatfield

Google has a major strength and a major weakness, and they are the same. It is an engineering-lead business. That gives it some unique capabilities and some weaknesses. Before you make too many assumptions about me, let’s disabuse some of them:

• I used to be a Top Contributor in the AdWords Help Forum (that’s a designation given by Google to high frequency posters, who are more often correct and useful, than not) – I resigned, basically because Google doesn’t understand social media
• I used to be a software R&D manager, in a large US Company, in the USA – I do know a little about how large US businesses work and think
• I’ve worked in small businesses, including a company that I co-founded, in the US – I’m entrepreneurial and competitive, perhaps not what a US commentator would expect of a Brit posting about Google and Europe
• My current business is one that I’ve set up in the UK. Self funded through sales to non-governmental clients. I’m not relying on the state to support me, buy from me, or do anything other than the common defence for a citizen – I’m not on a “European Socialist” agenda.
• I’ve developed intellectual property that has been awarded patents – I understand a bit about IP, trade secrets and technical advantages

Google is transparent – within certain limitations. I think you guys have done a great job about communicating the factors that lead to high ranking in your search engine. You’ll see references in the Merjis blog side navigation to Google resources for SEO – because those, and the Bing Webmaster advice, are amongst the best resources that I’ve found, along with Matt Cutt’s superb series on his blog and on YouTube. Applause is due for the clear way that you guys have communicated and the passion you all clearly feel.

However.

You knew that “however” was going to come, didn’t you?

There is a difference between technical excellence, passion, transparency and, on the other side, public relations.

You can have the world’s best product, and if the public perception is that a different product is better, the other product will outsell you. It’s painful for engineers to understand – I’ve personally made that journey, so I know. But having a world’s best product doesn’t automatically confer the advantage of user sympathy that you might expect.

Why not? It is best expressed as a marketing dictum – “Perception is reality”. It doesn’t actually matter, in the public playing field, whether Google is pure when it comes to privacy – it is the perception of privacy that counts. It doesn’t matter whether Google actually is working on a level playing field in Europe – it is a question of whether it is credible. The actuality does make a difference, of course, but perception is not the same as reality – look at the whole climate change issue, for example. There is some real science, with some real data, but perception and reality do not have to converge.

That’s a whole area that Google finds very difficult. Public relations.

Google has a trusted brand. No doubt about that. If the brand wasn’t trusted, it wouldn’t be so badly abused by scammers, who use Google’s name to induce people to buy into their cunning frauds. If the Google brand was untrusted, then Google Money Tree and other scams would be unable to operate.

Perception is a matter of whether the public, especially the public in non-domestic countries (i.e. outside the USA) can trust a business that is owned by Americans, run in the US, under US laws, paying US taxes, and that appears to put US citizens first in their thinking to operate on a level playing field outside the national boundaries of the USA.

It is perception that is the overwhelming part of the game. And transparency is not the same as developing trust and improving perception. I do trust to Google to deliver fair and transparent results – so long as the social context is the USA. That’s the crucial issue.

I trust Google to badly misunderstand social media, and public relations – even in the USA. That’s because you guys are mostly engineering. You think that delivering the worlds best search engine is proof that you are delivering a level playing field to Europe. But what you *are perceived to do* is what counts. And inside and outside the USA you act differently.

Some examples. At the risk of making these too brief to make the point:

Customer Service is not the same as a Public Forum

If I have a unique problem (e.g. my credit card works elsewhere, but doesn’t work on a Google transaction), it is not appropriate to post that problem in a public forum; no-one but Google and the customer should be involved in that discussion of a failed payment – perhaps the bank or credit card company might be involved, but other customers? The decision by Google to throw small AdWords clients into the hands of other users, shows a complete lack of understanding of, and is an abuse of, social media.

Google AdWords apparently conducts the auction in US Dollars.

That means that UK businesses appears to suffer from a competitive disadvantage in auctions – the granularity of our bids is 1.5 times larger than the US, so a USD based competitor can bid slightly less in the auction, giving them a competitive advantage. Where is that documented? Why are British companies selectively chosen to pay more in auctions? It doesn’t *look* like a level playing field. It isn’t discussed in AdWords Help.

Google hides critical elements of fairness from public view. Is that transparent? Or manipulative? Or just so parochial that it beggars belief?

Google AdWords apparently converts British Pounds and Euros to USD for the AdWords auction.

What’s the exchange rate? Where is it published? Which of the exchange rates do you use? What’s the time interval on updates – or is the time interval manipulated so you update faster when it suits you and slower when it doesn’t?

US business may be selectively advantaged, and Google itself can benefit from currency fluctuations, using an entirely undocumented transaction system. Where’s Hal Varian’s posting and paper about currency quantisation and exchange rate fluctuations, and what Google does to level the playing field for non-US businesses? Or did you guys assume that with the auction in USD, that all is fair? Or do you actually run the auction in the .co.uk servers in GBP? You don’t say. Even as an AdWords Help Form Top Contributor, I never got a straight answer about the auction, exchange rates, and the quantisation problem.

Google doesn’t expose stuff that is critical to showing that you play fair. Microsoft doesn’t expose this either. Guess how much I trust them to play fair in Europe?

Yes, I know that some one will say that if I don’t like AdWords I don’t have to use it. But Google penetration in the UK is higher than in the US. I am effectively forced to use Google – it’s not my decision, but my target audiences’ decision. They don’t, directly, bear the costs of that, or need to understand the issues of a business forced to apparently compete on an unequal playing ground with US businesses.

Google makes primary decisions about search in the US HQ.

That means, because you live in an insular nation, that you will unconsciously tend to focus on the US environment in decision making. This shows up. When you (correctly – well done) decided to help with the Chilean Earthquake disaster relief, you chose only to concentrate on US citizens and donations in US Dollars. Even when you translated the pages on national servers to non-US languages, you still told the French in French, and the Germans in German, how US citizens could call US resources.

What? You guys don’t know how to use a search engine to find the appropriate resource in that country for its’ citizens? Or is a US citizen so much more important than a German or French citizen that non-US citizens should be ignored? It is deeply insulting (outside the Googleplex – within, its apparently OK to value a US Citizen more highly?).

Geolocation is confused outside the USA.

Take AdWords again. Google used to claim “94% accuracy with a 20 mile radius” But that’s not true in Europe. See if you can find a statement about the accuracy in Europe. It is important. At certain values of accuracy, you waste money by geotargeting – but Americans have decided that Europeans should use US figures for accuracy. I have discussed this with Google staff, but I’m under NDA, so I can’t say what I know.

What I’ve measured, *BEFORE* talking with Google staffers, in limited trials that my small business can afford to do, is about a 70% inclusion rate. That’s close to the critical value that means it is more effective to disable geotargeting. But you guys think about Americans. Not the Brits, the French, the Germans and the Italians, and how our telephone and ISP services developed. So you make decisions that affect us, without understanding us. Pretty arrogant and insensitive, isn’t it? Or are we just supposed to be grateful that the mighty GOOG noticed anything outside California?

Geolocation is increasingly complex, and as users become more mobile, the location in Europe is likely to become more precise. But the large volume of desktop based (typically, still, 90% or so of the volume on mainstream sites) is subject to the old router/ISP based locations. Which in Europe will be less accurate. Where’s that explained? Clearly? So that someone can make an informed decision? Google has decided that all we need to know in Europe, is carried by the US based experience.

AdWords is completely confused about time zones.

Coded in California, with a default California time zone, the user interface betrays a conflict between events run in PST (California Time), events in the user selected account TimeZone, and the users’ current machine timezone. When you sit down and write this stuff, Google staff think about someone in Mountain View, not in Tokyo or London using a machine set to the time in Frankfurt or Durban.

There’s about ten times as many people *not* sharing US Time Zones, as are in your time zones. Want to convince us, the rest of the world, not accidentally sharing your time zones, that we’re valued? You know what to do – understand time from *our* perspective and reflect that in the UI, properly.

I haven’t checked this (and the related issues of Ad Scheduling that fails when it is near midnight, California time) for a few months. It’s been a problem for ages. But hey, we’re in Europe, so if we complain, it’s probably because we’re funded by Microsoft, eh?

Perception Is Reality

I could offer more examples. If pushed, I will. There is a key point. There’s what Google says, and there’s what Google does. What you *say* is great.

Google is going to organise the worlds information.

What you *do* tells us that this has a qualifying statement.

Google is going to organise the world’s information, in the way that works best for Americans.

In terms of AdWords, I’ve moved to thinking that the Ten Things don’t apply. You don’t put the user first. You put the American user first.

The way you behave to us, causes perceptual problems outside the USA. Until Google learns to play the game of understanding the messages that it emits, as if it didn’t live in the US, we Europeans and Asians and Africans, etc, will feel like second class citizens.

If you want to be the worlds first truly global business, you’ve got to stop thinking first and foremost like a US business. And that will cause you huge difficulties. Your HQ is in the US, surrounded by US media, US investors, US citizens and US lawmakers. You will think of your countrymen first. It’s natural.

You’ll have to work to overcome that institutional bias – or forget about making us feel like partners. Because right now, I don’t trust that Google *could* make a fair and equitable decision about European rankings. You have failed to communicate that a European life is worth as much to your thinking as a US citizen, and that the success or failure of a non-US business is as important to you as a US business competitive advantage.

All because Google hasn’t understood how to encode and decode messages – the key component of social messaging is that you value the people at the other end of the message. Master that, and you’ll help us to love you, instead of fear you. Stop being offended by the criticism, and start thinking about *why* you are criticised. You’ve a long hard haul ahead to master social media. It isn’t an engineering problem – it’s a psychological and marketing communications problem.