Google

Nothin' hurts a man like a woman leavin' -- except maybe when Google spurns his website, causing his traffic to fall off a cliff. I wrote one of these for my wife when she left me. It didn't work on her, and I doubt it will work on an algorithm, but here goes.

"Come back to me, darlin' Google!"

It seems that somehow I have brought the wrath of the Google upon this site yet again. I can tell you something interesting about the Google algorithm (akin to the secret formula for Coca Cola) as it stands at the moment of this writing:

Google is currently the most powerful entity on the planet. So far, the company has worn a white hat. They have stood up for 'net neutrality, made many useful (and absolutely mind-boggling in the case of Google Maps) applications available to all for free, and done a bang-up job producing the best search results.

So what's in it for Google?

Why do you make me love you!

Every time you throw me in the doghouse, it hurts. I mean, it really, really hurts... like hell. OK, OK, so I might well be the biggest idiot in the entire blogosphere, but is that really so bad? I don't do nobody no harm.

So why do you do this to me? Why do you flick me in the trash like a used condom, making it so that nobody finds my sites? Have I ever spoken ill of you to anyone? Have I ever mistreated you? Dear God, why don't you love me anymore? What have I done to incur your cruel wrath?

Like any other website administrator, I check my error logs every once in a while. Lately I'm getting some strange errors that lead me to conclude that someone at Google is mean and nasty or at least extremely bored. Over the past month or so, the Googlebot has come by Chumpy's old site looking for stuff that was never there. Most of these non-existent pages are mean-sounding. It's a bit creepy. The logs don't lie. Read 'em and weep:

Using Google Earth to See Destruction - An anonymous reader writes "On Monday, an environmental advocacy group [Appalachian Voices] joined with Google to deliver a special interactive layer for Google Earth. This new layer will tell "the stories of over 470 mountains that have been destroyed from coal mining, and its impact on nearby ecosystems. Separately, the World Wildlife Fund has added the ability to visit its 150 project sites using Google Earth."

[Slashdot]

Major kudos and thanks to Google for this. Mountaintop removal is one of the most odious examples of the rot of corruption brought to you by the Bush Junta. Leaving aside for a moment the wanton environmental destruction this type of mining causes, this practice represents brazen proof that private and public property rights are gone, subsumed by the right of megadeath corporations to make money. The fact is, coal can be (and has been for at least 700 years) extracted in more environmentally friendly ways, but sending miners underground and leaving the surface ecosystem untouched is more expensive than using explosives to blow the tops off mountains, filling in the valleys with the toxic sludge that's left behind. Explosives are cheaper than people. The Bush administration has shown time and again which it would rather employ.