Comments on: Demand Media Is Afraid That Google is Going to Compete With It

By: Paul Martin

Paul Martin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:39:03 +0000

Do Google have a duty of service to remove Demand Media content farm results from its index – not only for the poor quality for the content but also as a duty of care?

People trust the content Google delivers to them almost blindly and in the UK it seems the National Health Service (NHS) doctors even use results to help diagnose patients.

These results include Demand Media sites such as eHow.com and when these articles are factually incorrect, it is by proxy, potentially putting peoples health at risk!

See http://www.epiphanysolutions.co.uk/blog/nhs-show-support-for-demand-media-ehow-against-google-attack/ for the full article. Very scray stuff…!!!

By: Demand Media Faces Harsh Spotlight En Route to IPO

Demand Media Faces Harsh Spotlight En Route to IPO — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:38:18 +0000

[...] Meanwhile, questions have been raised about Demand’s traffic, which appears (based on some rankings) to have dropped sharply. According to an analysis by peHUB, which looked at Quantcast data, traffic to the company’s various web properties (which include the Cracked.com humor site and bike-racing star Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong site) dropped precipitously from more than 7 million daily visitors to less than 2 million. A glitch? Perhaps. Demand is in a “quiet period” mandated by securities regulators in advance of the IPO, and so can’t comment. But one of the concerns about the kind of content that Demand offers is that it is susceptible — as the company notes in its filing — to the whims of Google’s algorithm, which generates about 40 percent of the company’s traffic. If Google decides to devalue it, it is worth less, period. And there’s also the chance that Google will compete with it. [...]

By: links for 2010-08-11 » Wha'Happened?

links for 2010-08-11 » Wha'Happened? — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:03:29 +0000

[...] Demand Media Is Afraid That Google is Going to Compete With It (tags: demandmedia google) [...]

By: Students Circle Network

Students Circle Network — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:32:49 +0000

who is to blame when it comes to Google competing or buying off partners who they later turn competitors. Does Yelp ring a bell.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:14:50 +0000

Just to clarify, they weren’t listed in the IPO filing — they were listed as inventors in the patent filing Google applied for related to content creation involving search.

By: medlaw

medlaw — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:51:28 +0000

I’m wondering how employees of Google (Hal Varian and Matt Cutts) became involved with Demand Media. Are they just passive investors? Their names were used in the IPO filing. Hum. Did they discuss strategy with the principals of Demand Media? If so, it raises the question whether Varian and Cutts used knowledge gained while employees of Google to help Demand Media. Isn’t that the implied implication of listing them as investors in the IPO? If so, one would think the Google employment agreement these individuals signed has confidentiality provisions that prevents them from sharing inside knowledge gained through employment at Google with an acknowledged potential competitor. Maybe these two Google employees cleared their involvement with Google up front? Have no idea but the situation looks like a legal land mind unless Google has acquiesced.

By: desqjockey

desqjockey — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:07:54 +0000

In other news, water is wet.