It's interesting that he admits his company rely on Google's search traffic (while criticising them for showing any of their content, but I digress) - and criticises them for algorithmic changes that don't benefit his company (fair enough), then decries the idea that competitors pay for some new advertising spot. So the attitude here is against paying?
But later he looks at Google's free services and claims that they're not free since they use a behavioral currency (fair enough, they collect lots of data of course) - and maybe it would be "better and cheaper" to use normal money. So, we should be paying for services? Hmm. Not a completely equal comparison, maybe they should be at the top of Google for whatever terms.. but it seems odd to preach that I should pay for convenient services and they shouldn't for the majority of their traffic.
I do agree with a lot of what he says, but I use Google services and find them helpful.
Perhaps the fundamental issue here is that this is a big media company and they want transparency into Google's algorithms. What's a media company going to do with that? My guess is optimise their pages to abuse the algorithms and dominate the search rankings. Great for them, judging by most media outlets, terrible for the search user. I think I'd rather Google have a secret algorithm than have my search results dominated by whoever can abuse a known algorithm the most - especially because media companies I'd rather not hear from (not necessarily Axel Springer) and scammers are among those with the means to do so.
But later he looks at Google's free services and claims that they're not free since they use a behavioral currency (fair enough, they collect lots of data of course) - and maybe it would be "better and cheaper" to use normal money. So, we should be paying for services? Hmm. Not a completely equal comparison, maybe they should be at the top of Google for whatever terms.. but it seems odd to preach that I should pay for convenient services and they shouldn't for the majority of their traffic.
I do agree with a lot of what he says, but I use Google services and find them helpful.
Perhaps the fundamental issue here is that this is a big media company and they want transparency into Google's algorithms. What's a media company going to do with that? My guess is optimise their pages to abuse the algorithms and dominate the search rankings. Great for them, judging by most media outlets, terrible for the search user. I think I'd rather Google have a secret algorithm than have my search results dominated by whoever can abuse a known algorithm the most - especially because media companies I'd rather not hear from (not necessarily Axel Springer) and scammers are among those with the means to do so.