Google Watch



Google Watch is a website run by Public Information Research, started in 2002 by Daniel Brandt. Brandt states that the website's goals are to report on conflicts of interest in Google's corporate structure, the dependency of the public on it for information, invasion of privacy issues, and its increasing commercial links with private interests.

About
The website states:
 * "Given that Google is so central to the web, whatever attitude it takes toward privacy has massive implications for the rest of the web in general, and for other search engines in particular."

The web site documents concerns about privacy risks arising from Google's use of long-living HTTP cookies. More recently, the web site has highlighted the issue of "made for AdSense pages" &mdash; spam pages with content often scraped from other sites that sometimes enjoy high rankings in search engines due to sophisticated optimization techniques.

To illustrate his view that Google's search engine could be subjected to manipulation, Brandt implemented a so-called Google bomb by linking the phrase "out-of-touch executives" to Google's own page on its corporate management. The attempt was mistakenly attributed to disgruntled Google employees by The New York Times, which later printed a correction. This Google bomb still results in a top ranking on Yahoo!, but stopped working on Google in July 2004.

Google Watch continues to raise Google-related privacy issues, particularly its use of cookies which have a life span of more than 32 years and incorporate a unique ID that enables creation of a user data log. Brandt has also made allegations about connections between Google and the NSA and the CIA. Public Information Research has set up Scroogle, which enables people to use Google's search engine via an ad-free proxy server.

Salon.com
Farhad Manjoo in a 2002 Salon article said of Brandt, "Because he has a personal stake in the squabble, he's pretty easy to dismiss: He doesn't like his Google rank, so it's not surprising he doesn't like Google... Brandt has spent a lifetime questioning the secret machinations of people in positions of authority, and he's taking on Google in that same spirit." This echoes Brandt's own description of his work against Google as the "cyber equivalent of my draft resistance days". Mr. Brandt, for his part, claims the Manjoo article is biased and contains misquotes.

Google Watch Watch
In reaction to Google Watch, Chris Beasley created Google Watch Watch in July 2003. Beasley claims that Brandt was motivated to start Google Watch as revenge for the low PageRank that his Namebase website received. Brandt argues that Beasley himself is not a disinterested party, describing him on Google Watch as a "template spammer" who makes a six-figure income from the websites that he owns, which in many cases benefit from using Google's AdSense advertising service.

A 2002 article published on Salon.com by Farhad Manjoo implies that Brandt started the site for personal reasons, having "spent thousands of hours building a web site that he believes is both useful and important, and Google, in its algorithmic blindness, gave Brandt a lower page rank than he thinks he's entitled to." Some critics, notably Chris Beasley (Google Watch Watch), therefore characterize him as a disgruntled webmaster. Brandt denies that this was the motivation for the site's creation. Brandt is however an outspoken critic of the PageRank algorithm used by Google.