WSJ: Sellout.com

Americans have a long history of selling out - think Warren Beatty and “Ishtar” or politicians and Indian casinos. The public is trusting until proven otherwise, then turns on icons like rats on garbage. Never more so with culture: Being “cool,” “tight” or “wicked excellent” is a hard image to keep and one boneheaded move can send you to tomorrow’s cut-out bin. Ask Michael Jackson. Or Madonna.

Which brings us to Google.

As a company, even more so than Ian Schrager’s hotels, it reeks of cool—Google Maps and Google Earth and gmail bring a kind of geek chic to the dull old media world. Plus, there are those lofty ideals like “organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s why we all use them. Google should do everything to stay cool. GM is spending millions on ads that say “Just Google Pontiac” to get in on the zeitgeist.

And now, poof.

a billion soon-to-be-online Chinese will forever associate Google with lame and censored search results

One of the ways urbandictionary.com defines “sellout” is to alienate core fans by changing one’s style to appeal to a broader audience—and becoming what one’s fans were rebelling against in the first place. The U.S. government wanted search history to help fight child porn and Google said no way, to cheers from their Big Brother-hating constituency. But for its search service in China, Google caved to the communists, removing offending results for “Human Rights” and “Things that are Democratic.” Tough choice. Founder Sergey Brin is quoted by Fortune as saying, “it will be better for Chinese Web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it.” There will be no staring down tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Will it matter? Trust and cool are in the eye of the beholder. “Piano Man” Billy Joel never recovered from “Uptown Girl.” Rocco DiSpirito may end up as a waiter. Kevin Costner can barely get arrested in Hollywood since “Waterworld.” Heck, Wall Street analysts sold out to bankers, and look what happened to them. Then again, Sinatra, Springsteen and the Grateful Dead all sold out at some point, but kept their reputations.

Look, there’s a wrong way to sell out—rappers pitching for Chrysler, anything Vegas—and a right way. Puff Daddy’s soundtrack for “Godzilla” could have been a disaster to his fans, but he chose to do a hip-hop remix of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” providing someone else to blame for the sellout. Or the Jimi Hendrix strategy. Story has it that, despite using Gibson guitars on his albums, he signed a deal with Fender Guitars for cash and as many Stratocasters as he needed, as long as he appeared exclusively in concert and photos with Fenders. He took the deal, and with his unlimited supply of Fenders, began smashing them at the end of every concert, for fans who never knew he sold out.

Google could have kept their cool and trusted image if they’d just worked with someone else in China, someone they could smash. Perhaps Eggroll.com - powered by Google. Someone else to blame for those unsearchable keywords. Users in the West may not desert them, but a billion soon-to-be-online Chinese will forever associate Google with lame and censored search results - tools of the state. That just dumb. And totally uncool.

Mr. Kessler is the author of “Running Money” (HarperBusiness, 2005).

Comments

[Dan W]

Eggroll.com? Is this really appropriate as a phrase?

And you assume companies have a free reign in China. They don't. There's no democracy. The govt could, potentially, pull the plug on any operation, at any time.

Grow up. If you don't agree, blog me...

[Lynne Jolitz]

If Google is the sole source of historical information for an ahistorical audience, and no one person is responsible because it vends the results gleaned from automated search algorithms, properly optimized to provide only the "right information", who will remember that they sold out in the first place? :-)

Will the next "Winston Smith" please stand up?

Lynne Jolitz
Chief Technology Officer
ExecProducer / CoolClip Network

"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator." - George Orwell, "1984", Chapter 4.

[Joey]

Despite what the google sniffers might think, google will soon be just another piece of litter along the long IT road.

[John Furrier]

This is a prolific piece and it made it to the memeorandum. Excellent Andy way to go!

Smart guy -- predicted Google's earnings shortfall, while Wall Street sellside ANALysts remained extremely bullish: http://www.awadallah.com/blog/

[shaka]

Whatever the merits of this article the bit about Jimmy Hendrix is silly twaddle.

[Amos the Poker Cat]

Maybe I missed it, when did Madonna crash and burn? Not that I every cared about her in the first place. Just don't want to miss out on some prime schadenfreude.

Anyway, what happened to step 6 in the Google 10 step corporate philosophy, "You can make money without doing evil."?

Want to hear something surrealistic, in podcast #40, This Week in Tech (TWiT), (Steve) Woz(niak) defended Googles decision as respect for cultural differences. So much for the whole hippy dippy peace and freedom gig. Tiananmen Square, running over peacefull protestors with tanks. I guess I just don't understand the culture.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html

http://twit.tv/40

[anon]

The argument against the DOJ was nothing but a PR stunt to hopefully maintain and expand user base (smells like money here!) “Do no evil unless it pays well!” Do I hear: “To hell with human rights, freedom and democracy as long as we make lots of money”?

Other companies may continue to do business with communist and totalarian countries such as China, but at least they don’t hide under a nice motto or pretend to be nice guys.

No wonder Gates thinks this company resembles his own’s the most — the big difference is Microsoft has never vowed to “not do evil.”

The only thing that’s worse than evil is evil masked under a nice face, because you’re not prepared, and therefore, can’t defend yourself from getting backstabbed by a supposedly “nice guy”.

BTW, do you notice that the most evil people/organizations in human history always try to hide under nice mottos or propagandas while proceed to commit the most heinous acts? History also has shown that, their real, despicable characters and intentions will be revealed and despised/condemned, sooner or later.

Scary thoughts on Google vs. our privacy:

http://searchscandals.blogspot.com/

[john knight]

I do like China. always found the chinese, gentlemen to do business with.