Thanks, Google, For Fucking Over A Bunch Of Media Websites
from the nice-of-'em dept
We've discussed a few times in the past how Google's seemingly arbitrary policies are a potential problem for various media companies that often rely on the company. We've detailed ridiculous warnings we've received because our news stories covered topics that Google deemed offensive, because apparently no one at Google can distinguish between reporting on something offensive and just posting something offensive. We've also discussed how Google tends to present itself as a great white monolith to those who run up against its seemingly arbitrary policy decisions where there's basically no recourse and no human to speak to.The latest such example of this happened over the long weekend and seems to have impacted plenty of websites -- including us. And, yes, part of this is our own damn fault in relying on a service from Google, which we've now routed around. The short version is that, many years ago, we signed up with a service from FeedBurner, to manage our RSS feeds. We did so somewhat reluctantly. We had first published an RSS feed back in April of 2001 (along with an apology for being so "late" to the RSS game) and we'd run it ourselves for years. Eventually, FeedBurner added enough features that we felt it was worthwhile to let it run our RSS feed -- though that came with promises from the then FeedBurner team that if there were any problems we could easily dump it. Over time, FeedBurner got purchased by Google and subsumed into the Google machine. At some point, a few years ago, anyone still using FeedBurner had all links in those RSS feeds automatically switched to using Google's URL shortener.
Also, several years back, we used the fact that FeedBurner had a one-click integration with Twitter to easily send all Techdirt stories to Twitter, which has become an important source of traffic. So that's how it came to be that all of our RSS links and all of our Twitter links had Google shortened links in them. And, yes, go ahead and laugh at us for being this reliant on Google. We should have known better. And we did know better. I'd been meaning to write an article about how the Supreme Court actually used a Google shortened link in a recent decision, leading Parker Higgins from the EFF to point out some serious potential problems with this, including the fact that Google could arbitrarily change where the link goes, or if it goes anywhere at all. That seems... problematic for a Supreme Court citation.
In fact, because of all of this, some libraries (led by Harvard's Law School Library), set up Perma.cc, which is designed with the promise of allowing "scholars, courts and others to create web citation links that will never break." It promises to even archive the content of any link, so that if it does break, the content will still be available.
And so, yes, we were totally aware that there were potential issues, and obviously we were aware that Google sometimes makes totally arbitrary decisions that fuck with people and companies who rely on them... but sometimes even when you know all that, if it's not a priority, you let it slide. And it wasn't a priority, because we've got lots of other stuff going on these days. Well, it wasn't a priority until yesterday. That's because yesterday morning when we all got back to work from the long weekend (I was completely disconnected, off camping in the mountains) we had a ton of emails, messages and tweets from Techdirt readers and supporters about how all our links were broken -- with every one of them pointing to a page on Google's site saying that we had violated Google's terms of service.
And... apparently we were not alone. A bunch of other sites had the exact same experience and there are a bunch of people asking what the hell happened. With no explanation, no notification, Google just made a lot of websites' RSS and Twitter feeds break completely. And this includes some other high-profile bloggers as well, like Violet Blue.
The leading theory that I've seen going around is that Google is actually blocking all links in any FeedBurner feed, because it's a violation of its own terms of service. Seriously.
The link-shortener "goo.gl", run by Google, is blocking all URLs generated by Feedburner, run by Google. pic.twitter.com/IR7wrlv6xj
— Great Again Also (@agentdero) September 6, 2016
Bravo, guys.
Meanwhile, despite lots of sites complaining, and people reaching out, the Great White Monolith remained silent. Well, until an hour or so ago -- just as I was putting the finishing touches on this post, after having reached out to multiple people at Google, I heard back from someone saying that this was a mistake that had been "fixed." There's still no official explanation of why it happened. No explanation of why no one at Google seemed to notice that all of its FeedBurner feeds were throwing up errors on every link due to Google's own use of its own URL shortener. How that could last for five days while a bunch of sites that relied on the product were left with no recourse wasn't explained either.
So, yeah, we've moved our RSS feed away from FeedBurner/Google. And you can argue that we should have done so a while ago -- and you're probably right. But, really, can't a company as big as Google figure out how not to fuck over a bunch of media websites that make use of its services?
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Filed Under: feedburner, goo.gl, integration, link shortener, media, rss, rss feeds, terms of service
Companies: google, techdirt
Reader Comments
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Good news
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The term is "to big to fail."
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Just more proof ...
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Now scale this out to their other properties
Why isn't their a "dashboard" for *all* google services? Nest? Android patches? etc? Why not take control of QA company-wide so that your users can at least see status of issues?
The only people you can trust with your data is yourself, because *you care* about your own data, but companies only care about profit and return on shareholder value, which is a few steps away from your data.
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Re:
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Me, I prefer to tweet the links with a bookmarklet.
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Re:
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Google MOO
In other words YOU ARE GOOGLE'S PRODUCT! You are NOT GOOGLE'S CUSTOMER!
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Re: Good news
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A screwup
They noticed it and fixed it.
Big deal - is there anybody on Earth this doesn't happen to once in a while?
I don't see anything Google-specific about it.
Am I missing something?
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Re: Google MOO
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Re: A screwup
Big time. In a way that impacted many, many, many websites.
They noticed it and fixed it.
They didn't notice it. Five days of people complaining on Google's own forums and sending in notices did nothing. It was only when I reached out for comment from Google that someone seems to have finally realized things were broken.
Big deal - is there anybody on Earth this doesn't happen to once in a while?
Break a critical system and not notice for five days while your users suffer? Yeah. That doesn't happen that often, actually.
I don't see anything Google-specific about it.
Huh?
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Re: Re: Google MOO
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Re: A screwup
When your company gets too big
for its own britches, it's brain
no longer functions properly.
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Great White Monolith
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Re:
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“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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We're Google
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Re: Now scale this out to their other properties
customer service, googs dont need no steenkin customer service...
having seen and experienced googs abandoning some shiny toy they enticed you with to use their junk, and then had the rug pulled out from under you, i will NEVER trust them with anything...
foad, googs, you have gone to the dark side...
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Re: Now scale this out to their other properties
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Re: Re: Google MOO
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Re:
Google did split itself apart though. The parent company is Alphabet inc. Every (former) subdivision you can think of presumably sits on the books as a separate subsidiary company now.
I feel like Google got ahead of the curve in the anti-behemoth game here.
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Re: Just more proof ...
Well, duh. Look at how many times "Google" appears on this page. Proof positive that Mikey's a shill!!!1111!1
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Re:
Umm?
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Re: Re: A screwup
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Re: Re: A screwup
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Re: Re: Re: A screwup
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Do no evil, how about just doing the job.
They have always seemed (in my view) to believe that their code is better than any person. Sadly, removing people from the decision path is not always the right thing to do.
The white monolith indeed.
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Re: The term is "to big to fail."
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Wait.
Sort of like nagging Pizza Hut to fix the cookers at KFC (both Yum! Brands subsidiaries)?
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Re: A screwup
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Re:
You'd have to cite for me where Microsoft ever 'split apart', and in doing so, give examples of what they 'split into'. Last I heard, they were and still are controlled by the NSA, completely, and their Win 10 Malware fully supports it. Best advertising that Linux will ever get for free, that's for sure.
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Re: Do no evil, how about just doing the job.
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You violated some terms, we won't tell you which ones... but they were very important... so important we can't be assed to mention them. Don't bother to reply, we have no fucking clue why we did it, and we aren't authorized to have a human review anything. So what if we screwed hundreds of people, they have no where else to go and need to just suck it up and remember we don't talk to our users beyond sending circular unhelpful notifications.
The algorithm killed Jesus, and its coming for customer service.
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If you have been looking at the YouTube Mess...
Then again, is anyone surprised that any company that has outsourced a majority of its staff and management to parts unknown is going to remain viable?
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Unfair playing field
Google's product FeedBurner is blocking URI shorteners/redirectors:
- If they block goo.gl as well, Google can claim they block everything equally. Looks stupid for them though; they're blocking their own product.
- If they allow goo.gl and nothing else, they're basically saying "use our products or gtfo". Isn't this illegal?
Or they can just not block anything, because frankly, it's not Google's problem and Google is not the Internet Police.
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sounds like a lot of people learned that lesson this week.
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Re: Re: A screwup
This change took place over a weekend without any notice whatsoever. Was a great Monday morning when tens of thousands of client devices no longer connected to our server.
Hosting wouldn't back down and up to this point no one kept record of the MACs as we shipped the devices to clients. We had to spend the entire week reaching out to thousands of client locations collecting MAC addresses and manually updating their system to allow them.
Might I add these devices were time clocks...
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Re: Now scale this out to their other properties
I find your optimism about the combination of how much I care about my data and how capable I am of taking care of it charming, given just how long my NAS has been out of service...
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really?
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I really can't wait for someone at Google releasing the software update on some nice winter evening of Tuesday, December the 24'th, and rendering gmail inaccessible.
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Re: Re: Re: Google MOO
When it's repeating a tired, regularly repeated idea that has nothing to do with the issue at hand, yes.
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Re: A screwup
Eventually... without any communication to the people affected nor any direct explanation as to how it happened.
"Big deal - is there anybody on Earth this doesn't happen to once in a while?"
We all make mistakes, but next time I make a mistake that causes 20 minutes of outages as happened a few months back, I'd *love* you to come into my office and offer that excuse for me. That meeting was very uncomfortable for me and I could do with a laugh at someone else's suffering before the justified rage turns on me.
Note, I said *minutes* not days.
"Am I missing something?"
The repercussions of a multi-day outage on a service used by a large number of other companies and the related costs caused with no explanation, and the issues related to the complete lack of support offered?
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It is precisely because it is so big that allow these screw-up's occur and persist for days. As another poster mentioned, there are multiple competing fiefdoms and there's little incentive in paying attention to what you are providing your users because there are other, more personally lucrative, political games to be played within the corporation.
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You have my sympathies.
We feel your pain. Please put down the sword. Seppuku is not the way to serve the cause. We would miss you. It really isn't THAT much that has to be repaired. (Yes I know, it probably IS that much)
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
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Re: If you have been looking at the YouTube Mess...
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https://by.graffino.com/how-google-obliterated-my-24k-users-chrome-extension-eeb14c040a39#.h 9ur899vo
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Re: Re: A screwup
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Re: A screwup
Yes, even after Mike went through the trouble of spelling out every obviously unacceptable reason.
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Geo-blocking: YouTube's Mess...
Their android client still Geo-blocks me in a country where the video isn't Geo-blocked.
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IS GOOGLE ACTING ILLEGALLY
.
Please!... no emails!
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