Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• Physicians, Others Chime in on Who's to Blame for Rising Healthcare Costs
• Sunday Funnies 2010-08-29 Double Dipping
• Email From "Morally Conflicted" One Year Later After Walking Away

Physicians, Others Chime in on Who's to Blame for Rising Healthcare Costs Posted: 29 Aug 2010 08:23 PM PDT I received a lot of emails in response to Who's to Blame for Rising Healthcare Costs? Some reader suggestions might save you some money. Overpaying for Generics "Dr. P" a front line working family physician for 30 years writes .... Hello Mish Thank you for exposing some of the many scams on health care insurance. Here is another example of industry wide ripoffs: Many generic medications now cost $4.00 for 30 days or $10.00 for 90 days without insurance. Sadly, many mail in companies require patients to pay a $15.00 - 30.00 dollar co-pay for 90 days for the same drugs. Just this week one of the mail in companies informed a patient of mine that they will be only filling the prescriptions for 30 days and will require a $15.00 co-pay monthly for a medication which is only $4.00 per month. My patients were surprised when I told them to just go to a local pharmacy and not use their insurance. One patient had 4 medications he was paying more than double for. In the most flagrant example, a patient paid $60.00 per month for his medications that he could get for 90 days for $40.00 if he did not use his employer paid insurance. That is $180 instead of $40! The insurance company walks away with the money on the back of the patient in all of these instances. I find this way over the top in the ethics department. To your health, Dr P. Drugs from Canada "CB" writes ... Hello Mish Keep up the good fight. I want to let you know, however, that Americans can buy drugs from Canada - as individuals. No bulk purchasing for resale is allowed, but to get one's own drugs at a big discount (like I do), the place to check out is called Canada Meds. Their phone number is 1 877 542 3330. I save 50%. I pay directly for them, so trying to buy from Canada under an insurance plan might not be possible. I don't know. The drugs I get from Canada Meds come from other countries, and are usually made in India, but they are the exact same thing and I've been taking them for years now with no ill effects. CB I cannot and do not vouch for the above claims nor do I deny them. I simply do not know. Moreover, I do not know if buying drugs from Canada is against any state laws. I did check and I do not see complaints against Canada Meds, so that is a good sign. Another physician Chimes In "MB" MD writes .... Hello Mish I am a long time reader and have written previously. I am also a physician. Your post regarding health care costs hits close to home but I think you have missed the real crux of the issue. I will not pretend that I can offer a comprehensive review in a short email. There is more than enough blame to go around. Who shares the blame? Insurers, the Congressmen they've bought and the Americans who can look only at the fact that they can get mostly free care (Medicare and Medicaid recipients, government employees and a decreasing number of lucky beneficiaries of large corporate policies) and many of my peers who are paid per service regardless of need, benefit or outcome. One need only look at the enormous amount of waste in the system in regards to gross and repeated over-testing to no patient benefit. I could write pages about over-testing. I have a little aphorism that I believe sums up the failure of American health care: 30% of health care delivered was never necessary and 30% of necessary health care is never delivered. "MB" Cost of Illegal Aliens "JC" writes ... I know a nurse in a major metro area and she deals with the illegal immigrants flooding into her hospital emergency room every day. They come with their diagnosis in hand from the country they left. Major metro hospitals are magnates for illegal aliens coming to the US for free medical treatments. In my post of who is to blame I came up with this list. So Who's To Blame? Obama Congressional Republicans Democrats Insurers Public Unions State Government President Obama just wanted a bill. He did not really give a damn what was in it, as long as it did not upset public unions. Moreover, Obama sold the youth vote right down the river. There is nothing but pain for them. Public unions do not give a damn about healthcare costs because they and their families pay next to nothing with deductibles that are next to nothing. Taxpayers pick up the cost. Democrats also did not want to upset the unions. Republicans refused to allow competition between states or cheaper drugs coming in from Canada. State governments pander to unions and also act to restrict competition. The insurers bribed both parties to get what they wanted out of the legislation. Other Notables Lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists for insurers, lobbyists for lawyers so tort reform is not passed, etc. Local Governments for pandering to unions. Fear Mongers who talk of "death squads" every time a discussion comes up regarding health care rationing. Organized religion for fighting to keep brain-dead zombie patients alive at enormous expense. A nurse friend of mine told me how hard it is to "pull the plug". The public at large for obesity, poor eating habits, smoking, etc. Case for Rationing At some point the system just has to say no. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend someone's life by three months is simply not rational. Nor is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars when the odds of success are slim. Yet every time the discussion comes up, political hacks start screaming about "death squads". Other than the public at large, everyone has a vested interest in not fixing the system. It is pretty tough to get reform when nearly every major industry group is against anything and everything that is likely to do any good. If additional comments come in, worthy of posting, I will add an addendum. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Sunday Funnies 2010-08-29 Double Dipping Posted: 29 Aug 2010 12:05 PM PDT Here is a funny clip from Seinfeld on double dipping. Embedding disabled. What We Call The News - Jib Jab In case you missed it, please take a look at Nonsense from NBER on Odds of Double-Dip. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Email From "Morally Conflicted" One Year Later After Walking Away Posted: 29 Aug 2010 01:57 AM PDT Slightly over one year ago, I received an email from "Morally Conflicted in Arizona" who at the time was considering "Walking Away". I responded to his email on August 18, 2009 in Bright Side of Falling Home Prices It turns out "Morally Conflicted" did indeed walk away. Here is a followup email I received a few days ago, about his experience. End of the Line "Morally Conflicted" writes ... Hello Mish, It's been over a year since I asked for your opinion about how long it would take for the housing market to "recover," which was about the same time that I stopped paying my mortgage and decided to walk away. Well, the game is finally over. I moved out last week, and the trustee's sale occurred last Thursday. After thinking repeatedly about it recently, the end results look something like this: After purchasing the house in 2005 for about $740K with only $40K down, if you count my mortgage payments as "rent," in a sense, I recovered my down payment over the past year by living "rent" free over the past year. The current value of the house is most likely around $400K. Thus, I was able to "get out from under" a $300K loss by walking away. After a bit of looking over the past couple of months, found a two-bedroom house I can rent for $1200/month. The rental is in Scottsdale, just a few miles from my old house. It's definitely smaller and not as nice, but it's more than adequate. Given my new rent payment, I am estimating that I will be saving at least $1500/month by renting the new house vs. staying in the old house, even with a modified payment (and yes, I am accounting for the tax break on my old property. Therefore, as things currently stand, I believe I will "save" $150K over the next 100 months - assuming of course that my rent doesn't change and/or I don't move again. Thus, I believe I can conservatively estimate that my decision to walk on the house will essentially increase my net worth by approximately $300K over the next 100 months had I struggled in the existing loan. Moreover, that assumes the old house increases in value in that timeframe. If not, the number may be more like $450K. On top of everything, just this week, I was contacted by the real estate agency that will be selling the house for the new owner (i.e., the bank - it looks like they bought the house "from themselves" at the trustee's sale), and I am being offered $2500 to leave the appliances, etc., in the old house. The only real downside I see at this point is that my credit is shot. I guess I'll have a foreclosure on my "record" for the rest of my life. However, the irony is that if there has ever been a time in my life when I do not want to borrow any money for anything, it is now. I'm not trying to make light of the situation. This is not something that I'm proud of. However, it does feel good to have it over with, and looking at the math, it really seems like the right thing to do. Sure, I "could" have been paying my mortgage over the past year, but given the hit my income took last year and the first part of this year, I would essentially be living paycheck to paycheck right now. As always, I appreciate your work. Please keep it up. Thank you, Morally Conflicted in AZ P.S. I did consult with an attorney before making the final decision to walk away. Glad I could Help Thanks "Morally Conflicted" I am glad I could help. For more on the morals and ethics of "Walking Away" please see Moral Obligations Of Walking Away Walking Away Revisited - Reader Mailbag - Moral Dilemma Emails from Housing Hypocrites about Ethics Many Chime In On "Housing Hypocrites" Post Seek Legal Counsel That "P.S." line above regarding consulting an attorney is very important. I did advise"Morally Conflicted" to do just that. For more on the needs to seek proper legal advice, please see ... Before Walking Away Consult An Attorney How to Find a Bankruptcy Attorney There are many potential snags to consider if you go it alone. Don't do it! Walking Away Goes Mainstream The moral stigma regarding "Walking Away" is now pretty much gone. That it ever existed in the first place is quite hypocritical. Henry Blodget and Aaron Task discuss the hypocrisy a few days ago in It's Okay To Walk Away: Let's End The "Morality" Double-Standard On Mortgage Defaults I was way out in front of this issue, almost two years ago. If "Walking Away" is in your best financial interest, there is nothing wrong with doing just that. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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Crawl Errors now reports soft 404s

Crawl Errors now reports soft 404s: "Webmaster Level: All

Today we’re releasing a feature to help you discover if your site serves undesirable 'soft” or “crypto” 404s. A 'soft 404' occurs when a webserver responds with a 200 OK HTTP response code for a page that doesn't exist rather than the appropriate 404 Not Found. Soft 404s can limit a site's crawl coverage by search engines because these duplicate URLs may be crawled instead of pages with unique content.

The web is infinite, but the time search engines spend crawling your site is limited. Properly reporting non-existent pages with a 404 or 410 response code can improve the crawl coverage of your site’s best content. Additionally, soft 404s can potentially be confusing for your site's visitors as described in our past blog post, Farewell to Soft 404s.    

You can find the new soft 404s reporting feature under the Crawl errors section in Webmaster Tools.



Here’s a list of steps to correct soft 404s to help both Google and your users:

1. Check whether you have soft 404s listed in Webmaster Tools
   
2. For the soft 404s, determine whether the URL:
   1. Contains the correct content and properly returns a 200 response (not actually a soft 404)
      
   2. Should 301 redirect to a more accurate URL
      
   3. Doesn’t exist and should return a 404 or 410 response
      
3. Confirm that you’ve configured the proper HTTP Response by using Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster Tools
   
4. If you now return 404s, you may want to customize your 404 page to aid your users. Our custom 404 widget can help.

We hope that you’re now better enabled to find and correct soft 404s on your site. If you have feedback or questions about the new 'soft 404s' reporting feature or any other Webmaster Tools feature, please share your thoughts with us in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

"

Our new search index: Caffeine

Our new search index: Caffeine: "

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Today, we're announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don't build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here's a good explanation of how it all works.)

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we've built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We've built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it's a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Posted by Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer

"

Quality links to your site

Quality links to your site: "A popular question on our Webmaster Help Forum is in regard to best practices for organic link building. There seems to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on how to approach the topic. Different perspectives have been shared, and we would also like to explain our viewpoint on earning quality links.

If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good way marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content -- something that lets your expertise shine -- people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.

A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and 'spread the word.' Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site's reputation in a positive way.

Humor can be another way to gain both great links and get people to talk about your site. With Google Buzz and other social media services constantly growing, entertaining content is being shared now more than ever. We've seen all kinds of amusing content, from ASCII art embedded in a site's source code to funny downtime messages used as a viral marketing technique to increase the visibility of a site. However, we do not recommend counting only on short-lived link-bait tactics. Their appeal wears off quickly and as powerful as marketing stunts can be, you shouldn't rely on them as a long-term strategy or as your only marketing effort.

It's important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site's reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they're likely to have no positive impact on your site's performance over time. If your site's visibility in the Google index is important to you it's best to avoid them.

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes.

It can be a good idea to take a look at similar sites in other markets and identify the elements of those sites that might work well for yours, too. However, it's important not to just copy success stories but to adapt them, so that they provide unique value for your visitors.

Social bookmarks on YouTube enable users to share content easily

Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users' attention.

As usual, we'd like to hear your opinion. You're welcome to comment here in the blog, or join our Webmaster Help Forum community.

Written by Kaspar Szymanski, Search Quality Strategist, Dublin

"

Sitemaps: One file, many content types

Sitemaps: One file, many content types: "Webmaster Level: All

Have you ever wanted to submit your various content types (video, images, etc.) in one Sitemap? Now you can! If your site contains videos, images, mobile URLs, code or geo information, you can now create—and submit—a Sitemap with all the information.

Site owners have been leveraging Sitemaps to let Google know about their sites’ content since Sitemaps were first introduced in 2005. Since that time additional specialized Sitemap formats have been introduced to better accommodate video, images, mobile, code or geographic content. With the increasing number of specialized formats, we’d like to make it easier for you by supporting Sitemaps that can include multiple content types in the same file.

The structure of a Sitemap with multiple content types is similar to a standard Sitemap, with the additional ability to contain URLs referencing different content types. Here's an example of a Sitemap that contains a reference to a standard web page for Web search, image content for Image search and a video reference to be included in Video search:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
       xmlns:image='http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1'
       xmlns:video="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.example.com/foo.html</loc>
   <image:image>
      <image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>
   </image:image>
   <video:video>
   <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/videoABC.flv</video:content_loc>   
     <video:title>Grilling tofu for summer</video:title>
   </video:video>
 </url>
</urlset>

Here's an example of what you'll see in Webmaster Tools when a Sitemap containing multiple content types is submitted:



We hope the capability to include multiple content types in one Sitemap simplifies your Sitemap submission. The rest of the Sitemap rules, like 50,000 max URLs in one file and the 10MB uncompressed file size limit, still apply. If you have questions or other feedback, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

"

New Message Center notifications for detecting an increase in Crawl Errors

New Message Center notifications for detecting an increase in Crawl Errors: "Webmaster Level: All

When Googlebot crawls your site, it’s expected that most URLs will return a 200 response code, some a 404 response, some will be disallowed by robots.txt, etc. Whenever we’re unable to reach your content, we show this information in the Crawl errors section of Webmaster Tools (even though it might be intentional and not actually an error). Continuing with our effort to provide useful and actionable information to webmasters, we're now sending SiteNotice messages when we detect a significant increase in the number of crawl errors impacting a specific site. These notifications are meant to alert you of potential crawl-related issues and provide a sample set of URLs for diagnosing and fixing them.

A SiteNotice for a spike in the number of unreachable URLs, for example, will look like this:


We hope you find SiteNotices helpful for discovering and dealing with issues that, if left unattended, could negatively affect your crawl coverage. You’ll only receive these notifications if you’ve verified your site in Webmaster Tools and we detect significant changes to the number of crawl errors we encounter on your site. And if you don't want to miss out on any these important messages, you can use the email forwarding feature to receive these alerts in your inbox.

If you have any questions, please post them in our Webmaster Help Forum or leave your comments below.

Posted by Pooja Shah and Jonathan Simon

"

To err is human, Video Sitemap feedback is divine!

To err is human, Video Sitemap feedback is divine!: "Webmaster Level: All

You can now check your Video Sitemap for even more errors right in Webmaster Tools! It’s a new Labs feature to signal issues in your Video Sitemap such as:

• URLs disallowed by robots.txt
• Thumbnail size errors (160x120px is ideal. Anything smaller than 90x50 will be rejected.)

Video Sitemaps help us to better crawl and extract information about your videos, so we can appropriately feature them in search results.

Totally new to Video Sitemaps? Check out the Video Sitemaps center for more information. Otherwise, take a look at this new Labs feature in Webmaster Tools.

Written by Jackie Lai, Video Search Team

"

Verification time savers — Analytics included!

Verification time savers —  Analytics included!: "Webmaster Level: All

Nobody likes to duplicate effort. Unfortunately, sometimes it's a fact of life. If you want to use Google Analytics, you need to add a JavaScript tracking code to your pages. When you're ready to verify ownership of your site in other Google products (such as Webmaster Tools), you have to add a meta tag, HTML file or DNS record to your site. They're very similar tasks, but also completely independent. Until today.

You can now use a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet to verify ownership of your website. If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button.


This only works with the newer asynchronous Analytics JavaScript, so if you haven't migrated yet, now is a great time. If you haven't set up Google Analytics or verified yet, go ahead and set up Google Analytics first, then come verify ownership of your site. It'll save you a little time — who doesn't like that? Just as with all of our other verification methods, the Google Analytics JavaScript needs to stay in place on your site, or your verification will expire. You also need to remain an administrator on the Google Analytics account associated with the JavaScript snippet.

Don't forget that once you've verified ownership, you can add other verified owners quickly and easily through the Verification Details page. There's no need for each owner to manually verify ownership. More effort and time saved!


We've also introduced an improved interface for verification. The new verification page gives you more information about each verification method. In some cases, we can now provide detailed instructions about how to complete verification with your specific domain registrar or provider. If your provider is included, there's no need to dig through their documentation to figure out how to add a verification DNS record — we'll walk you through it.


The time you save using these new verification features might not be enough to let you take up a new hobby, but we hope it makes the verification process a little bit more pleasant. As always, please visit the Webmaster Help Forum if you have any questions.

Written by Sean Harding, Software Engineer

"

Showing more results from a domain

Showing more results from a domain: "Webmaster Level: All

Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site:



Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results.

We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year. We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.


Written by Samarth Keshava, Software Engineer

"

Clarifying a couple points

Clarifying a couple points: "

[Just as a reminder: everything below is my personal opinion. I haven't sent it to anyone else at Google for a review, etc.]

Valleywag used a recent podcast I did as material for two points in Six Delusions of Google’s Arrogant Leaders. The two assertions that used my comments as material were “Google’s wealth means Google ‘gets it’” and “Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow.”

Valleywag has either misinterpreted what I said, or I didn’t express myself clearly, because I don’t believe either of those claims. I’ll try to explain the intent of what I said, in case I wasn’t clear during the podcast. I’ll address the latter claim first (“Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow”), because I certainly don’t believe that “Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow.” I think Google benefits the most when users understand what Google is doing and why; I also think that user trust in Google (and by extension our privacy policies) is paramount to our success.

A good example is our Google Ad Preferences page. As one blog concluded a couple days ago: “Google’s Ad Preference Manager, with its persistent opt-out plug-in, offers precisely the kind of robust opt-out that privacy advocates have always demanded.” And it’s not that we’re shy about talking about privacy; Googlers Alma Whitten and Nicole Wong recently talked privacy for an Ars Technica article that came out earlier this week. It’s a long article, but an example useful fact is that if X is the number of people who visit the Ad Preferences page and opt out, 10X people don’t opt out and 4X people actually edit their categories to improve the targeting relevance of the ads they see. Let me say that again: four times as many people change their settings to make their ads *more* relevant than opt out of interest-based targeting. I think the Ad Preferences page is a good example where users get more transparency and control regarding their privacy.

Another example where Google helps your privacy (rather than sacrificing it) is the Google Dashboard. This is a single site that gives you an overview of what information Google has from various services, and allows you to edit and to manage settings. This is another example where Google is trying to give more information to users, not less. I could point out lots of examples where we try to debunk privacy misconceptions. Where we actively fight for our users’ privacy. Or where we talk about privacy and engage in debates about user privacy. And of course there’s Google’s full privacy center (with videos!) at http://www.google.com/privacy.html . Suffice it to say, I don’t believe that Google “must sacrifice user privacy to grow.”

Okay, what about the other claim that Valleywag used me for: “Google’s wealth means Google ‘gets it’”? Ryan Tate wrote “It’s a truly bizarre moment, in which Cutts defends some horrendous management decisions based on Wall Street trades.” I don’t agree with that either, so let me try to clarify. Eric Schmidt joined the company in 2001. The first time I got to meet Eric was at the weekly TGIF meeting where he was introduced to the wider company. He answered questions for an hour, and I thought his answers were spot on. He was one of the original authors of lex, a well-known Unix utility that I had used in the past, so I knew that he was also a solid engineer and technologist. Schmidt also had experience at large companies (Sun and Novell).

All in all, I was very happy and impressed that Eric was joining Google. When I went home that day, my wife asked what had happened at work. And I replied with something like “I think the value of our stock options just went up a lot.” What I meant by that was that I thought Google had recruited the perfect person to lead the company from start-up to the next level. I still believe that. Eric has been a truly great CEO–and I’m not just saying that because for the last several years he has worked for $1 a year. Maybe I didn’t tell the anecdote well or clearly, but my intent was to explain that I think Eric Schmidt has been a great CEO right from the beginning of this decade, not to defend any decisions “based on Wall Street trades.”

If you want to listen to the full podcast, it’s available, but I hope this post helps to clarify.

"

More material for web site owners

More material for web site owners: "

Here’s some more stuff you should know about.

- I did a monster-long interview with Eric Enge. I think the interview lasted an hour or something like that, and we covered several areas in depth.

- Next, take a break and go read this post by Rhea Drysdale. Heck, maybe send her a donation by Paypal (Added: the address if you want to send a Paypal donation is rhea_drysdale [at] yahoo [dot] com). Rhea took on a big fight for the benefit of the SEO industry, saw it through to the end — and won! In the process, she earned the sort of credibility that you just can’t buy.

- We continue to answer webmaster questions over on the YouTube webmaster video channel. My recent favorite video is an eight-minute discussion of “What are some good link-building techniques?”

We now have over 200 videos live on the webmaster video channel, including topics such as “Is it worth spending time on tags and categories?”

You might want to check out the video channel; there’s a lot of good material there. You can also follow me or the Google webmaster account on Twitter; we often tweet when new webmaster videos are released.

"

New 30 day challenge: not replying to outside email

New 30 day challenge: not replying to outside email: "

I just wrapped up two 30 day challenges (no sugar for 30 days and no iPhone for 30 days). I’ll try to report back what I learned soon, but in the mean time I wanted to alert you that today I’m starting a new 30-day challenge: not replying to outside email.

When I announced my first 30 day challenge and did a poll on what challenge to do next, “no email” was near the bottom of the list. But there’s good reasons for me to try to reduce my time on email right now:

- I have a big internal project at work (nothing related to webspam) that’s going to take all my time for a couple weeks.

- I’m also planning to take a couple weeks of vacation time in the next month.

So the fact is that I probably wouldn’t have had much time to reply to outside email in the next month anyway. Also, I’ve noticed that sometimes I spend 1-2 hours a day responding to outside email. I’d like to re-assess whether that’s the best use of my time. For example, if I spent that time on more scalable ways of communicating, it might help more people. Taking a step away from responding to outside email might also help me find better ways to manage that communication. Maybe someone else can help me. Maybe I can find ways to fix what people email me about (e.g. modify or improve the spam report process so that people don’t feel the need to email me directly with spam reports). This is a chance to re-assess how I’m spending a fair chunk of my time at work and look for a better solution.

I’m not taking the attitude that “if I reply to a single external email, then I’ve failed,” because emergencies do happen. Rather, I’m going to make a deliberate effort to respond as little as possible to outside work-related emails. At any rate, I think I’ll learn something new from this challenge, so I hope folks will support me in this experiment. Wish me luck, and feel free to provide suggestions or tips in the comments about how you tackle the email monster, or ideas for new 30-day challenges.

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Mini-review of the iPad

Mini-review of the iPad: "

I played with an iPad yesterday. Here’s my mini-review. The screen is bright and the touch sensitivity is fantastic. Given that it reminds me the most of an iPhone, it’s surprisingly heavy. It feels dense with potential.

On the childlike-sense-of-wonder-scale (as fake Steve Jobs would say), the iPad is better than the Macbook Air but not as stunning as the iPhone when the iPhone first came out. I played with my wife’s iPhone for just a few minutes before I knew I had to have an iPhone. But I never really cared about the Macbook Air, mainly because the screen resolution was worse than my current laptop. The iPad fits between those two products in the spectrum of desirability for me.

The form factor is… weird. You’re going to feel strange carrying one of these into the grocery store, in the same way you felt weird using your cell phone in the grocery store at first. Leave it to Apple to blaze a trail of coolness though; the iPad will make this form factor acceptable, so you won’t feel quite as strange carrying a tablet into a meeting in a few months. The form factor fundamentally is awkward though: the iPad is book-sized, but much more delicate than a book. A screen this big with no protection will get scratched or scuffed. I’d expect to see plenty of articles about dropped iPads like you did about Wiimotes getting thrown into TVs and windows.

The gadget lover in me wants one, but the part of me that cares about open source and tinkering is stronger. I’m with Cory Doctorow on this one. The iPad is gorgeous, but it’s still not worth it for me. Yesterday, I also bought two books at the bookstore to read on a trip. Walking back to my car with “paper media” felt a bit dorky–why am I buying books on paper in 2010? If I could buy a book digitally and really own it (not just obtain a license to read a book, where the license could be revoked), I’d quickly switch to buying my books digitally. But the success of the Kindle shows that a lot of people care more about the convenience than completely owning what they’re buying digitally.

I think the iPad will be a huge hit. Non-tech-savvy consumers will love it because of the user experience, the simplicity, and the lack of viruses/malware/trojans. It’s like a computer without all the hassles of a typical computer (pre-installed crapware, anti-virus software, inconvenient software upgrades). Lots of tech-savvy consumers will love the iPad for the same reasons, and especially for the polish and user experience. The current iPad lacks a few things (such as a camera), which ensures that future generations of the iPad will also be a huge hit.

But the iPad isn’t for me. I want the ability to run arbitrary programs without paying extra money or getting permission from the computer manufacturer. Almost the only thing you give up when buying an iPad is a degree of openness, and tons of people could care less about that if they get a better user experience in return. I think that the iPad is a magical device built for consumers, but less for makers or tinkerers. I think the world needs more makers, which is why I don’t intend to buy an iPad. That said, I think the typical consumer will love the iPad.

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