From the nothing-to-see-here-folks department
comes this easy and not too Googly shift from “user” to “consumer”
“First, we built search for users, not websites, and no matter what we do, there will always be some websites unhappy with where they rank. Search is subjective, and there’s no correct set of search results. Our scientific process is designed to provide the answers that consumers will find most useful.”
And while this all may come as no surprise to many, these were prepared remarks delivered by Eric Schmidt, Google’s VP, as he testified before the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee this week…so, here’s a decent question: why not prepare these remarks better? Really, why not just call us all consumers? Or users? At the minimum its unseemly to use them interchangeably in the same paragraph.
Schmidt remarks that “we get it” can be translated simply into: “we understand that politicians and regulators can cause us constant headache and potentially grievous hurt, so we’ll do what’s necessary to court them, which should satisfy everyone, because then nothing will happen and politicians will get the appearance of action, which is all they really want, and we’ll get to continue doing whatever we want with search, consumer data and advertising, which is, after all, exactly what we want.”
Watch the testimony, here:
Google’s courting of the Republican Party is newsworthy, too. Take a look at this Politico story by Mike Zapler to get a better sense of what’s in Google’s future.