About Me 0094: Making Money Online Forum

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

Techni
said...

I believe both:

1) Google did not knowingly downrank other search engines. It happened due to us preferring Google

2) Google has every right to downrank other search engines both because its GOOGLE'S SITE and because if other search engines really need Google/another search engine for their promotion, then they've already failed.

November 30, 2010 11:16 AM

pTAM
said...

+1 to point 2 @Techni

November 30, 2010 11:36 AM

jheaduk
said...

Personally I'd prefer it if you forgot all the bells and whistles and just made the algorithm better. The simplicity of the list was beautiful. The instant, preview blahblahblah gizmos just get in the way.

November 30, 2010 11:36 AM

Mikie
said...

I'm Irish (within the EU) so the results of these commissions impact me, in the past the commission has been very good at stopping anti competitive behaviour ( take IE being distributed with windows) however sometimes enough is enough.

When I search for something I don't want to be presented with a list of search engine listings as the results, after all if they force the point we would end up with result pages only leading to each other. In my opinion other search engines should be excluded from all results bar those with the term search engine.

After all it's Googles ability to weed out bad results that made it the leader in the industry it would be ridiculus and wrong to force it any other way.

November 30, 2010 11:48 AM

JNG
said...

I understand what Google is doing, but I also understand it is easy to run any kind of diagnostic/test to show that your "users" prefer your search result format, so cloaking it as providing a better user value is quite illusory.

November 30, 2010 11:53 AM

Colin Bruce
said...

How about levelling the playing field a wee bit: any internal Google product page that has a noindex tag should not be shown in Google's own main search results.

http://www.google.com/robots.txt

November 30, 2010 12:16 PM

Kurt
said...

I can't see why the Commission should care about the views of an American company, why players as Google or Microsoft are relevant who only reside in Europe to benefit from Irish tax dumping.

November 30, 2010 1:59 PM

Skyler Loth
said...

Like Techni said, other search engines are down ranked because people who are searching on google PREFER Google.
I don't think Google should have to be sued for how they portray competing products even if they do purposely downrank them (which I highly doubt they do) You don't see any references to Android on Microsoft's windows phone website.
Google isn't successful because its anti-competitive and uses dirty tactics. Google is successful because its products are better than the competition.

November 30, 2010 3:49 PM

john
said...

Your algorithm is getting greedy. Or is it the "algorithm"?

"Answering users' queries accurately and quickly is our number one goal."

Ha, Anyone whom has used adwords and delt with a low quality score (even though your website accommodates all of adwords recommendations). Knows better than that.

Not to mention that Google gives your keyword a fake quality score that instantly goes down, the moment you give your payment information.

Your algorithm is getting greedy. Or is it the "algorithm"?

November 30, 2010 6:59 PM

pg
said...

I am sure EU has a valid case. I noticed several times ShaadiKaroge.com was listed on 4th place on page 1 and suddenly next day it was on page 3 or 4 for the keyword "Shaadi" if you search from USA while Shaadi.com occupies first 3 places. Shaadi.com is funded by Sequoia Capital who also funded Google.com, I am sure Google manipulates results and I am also planning to file complaint with DOJ as I may have screen shots.

November 30, 2010 7:37 PM

naumeer1
said...

personally i would prefer google is the best amongst all google is for people what i like the most about google is google lets every 1 use their campaigns and tools like adsense, translator, google base and more are coming if any other search engine would be smart like google we would have used those but google = best in every aspect accurate, simple and effective great work guys keep up the good work

November 30, 2010 8:24 PM

Van Damme Dries
said...

Dear commission,
Don't like how Google works? - Stop using it and go waste tax money on some other dang investigation.

Seriously, i mean - what is even the ppint of investigating this. Even if they downgrade others, theoretically speaking the eu commission wouldn't be able to do a thing about it since bing and yahoo might be doing it themselves?

Don't like googles way of work? Fine, don't use it, but don't go wasting my tax money on this nonsense investigation.

November 30, 2010 11:08 PM

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