6 ms·
I like the Dark Google metaphor, but SEO agencies being Google's real customers makes no sense to me.
by _false 2y ago
I like the Dark Google metaphor, but SEO agencies being Google's real customers makes no sense to me.
- jonplackett 2y agoYeah I also didn’t get this. Can you explain what you meant?
- flpm 2y agoI think it's more a symbiotic relationship, they feed on each other and both benefit at the expense of the users
- jazzyjackson 2y agoMaybe one step removed, if I understand it right, the spam sites make money by offering ad space and traffic, and Google makes money by selling ad placement on those sites, so actually Google and Dark Google are on the same side of the marketplace. In a way, it's the other way around, Google is paying the spammers for providing billboard space for their ad placement services. The pervese incentive is that the harder it is to find what I'm looking for, the more ads I get served, hence all ad supported products trend towards becoming useless (see also: Amazon.com)
- marcus0x62 2y agoNot OP, but here's how I read it: the SEO operators are driving traffic to google's ad network, where google make's its money. They aren't necessarily paying google much: the ad buyers are doing that, but they deliver the eyeballs to google's ads. Its kind of like the US hospital system, where doctors are considered by the hospital, if not de jure then certainly de facto, to be the real customers of the hospital. Doctors don't pay the hospital much of anything -- the patients do, usually via their insurance company -- but without the doctors, no procedures happen (i.e., no "traffic.") Hospitals can't bill for room and board, nursing services, therapy, etc., where the hospital makes its operating income without the doctors, and in markets where multiple hospitals exist, doctors drive the patients to the hospital(s) of the doctor's choice. Ergo, the doctor is the "real" customer of the hospital. The hospitals can and have adapted to get a bigger share of the revenue pie by hiring their own doctors and buying up the clinics that drive a lot of customers to hospitals in the first place, just like Google has introduced products that are more vertically integrated, but the basic dynamic still exists where they are dependent on third parties to deliver customers.
- d0mine 2y agoHospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.
- lostlogin 2y agoThat doesn’t make sense - a sick patient costs the shareholders money.
- marcus0x62 2y agoSetting aside the previous commenters "the cure is a threat" thing, there's some precedent for this in the US healthcare system in the form of HMOs (particularly Kaiser Permanente.) Part of that is supposed to be vertical efficiency. Part is the idea that it is possible to avoid extremely expensive acute care services with proactive low-cost primary care.
- simonh 2y agoOnly if you treat the patient. Cures cost money to administer. Better to just deny cover in the first place.
- robertlagrant 2y agoThat's got nothing to do with cures. In that world administering a cure would be cheaper than treating a chronic illness, which is the opposite of what's being said.
- d0mine 2y agoOne would think so. Unless there are programs that pay you for sick patients (risk adjustment) and you control how much you are willing to spent on a patient. I've made a mistake of consuming healthcare related content due to the recent ceo assassination. Do not recommend.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- edgyquant 2y agoSEO agencies often onboard people to AdWords