Patterico's Pontifications

5/13/2011

How Are Google and Its Related Services and Products Looking After the Company’s Rank Mistreatment of Ann Althouse?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:12 pm



When I was having all those outages a while back, a friend suggested I return to Blogspot (which is where I started). He actually cited Ann Althouse’s experience as a positive. And until today, that seemed like good advice.

Now that they have shown that they can simply mark your blog as “spam” and whisk it away from you without notice . . . I don’t think I’ll be going back.

I think I know how Ann feels. I had my domain stolen once by 1&1. The level of corporate “fuck you” attitude from 1&1 was very similar to what Ann is experiencing today. By the way, this is about the level of service I have gotten when I have submitted a request to join Google Ads. I simply get a rejection — and when I ask for an explanation, I get nothing.

Twisting the knife, the “support” person called “nitecruzr” apparently said:

“I’m going to treat you with courtesy and patience, as I ask Blogger to review your blog. This is in spite of your huge blog with over 20M posts and over 25M visitors a day – not because of that.”

In spite of? What?

Not only has that quote been deleted from the support thread . . . they’re already trying to wipe evidence of this off Google.

Moments ago I searched the phrase:

“Ann, I’m going to treat you with courtesy and patience, as I ask Blogger to review your blog. This is in spite of your huge blog with over 20M posts and over 25M visitors a day – not because of that.”

The search showed the quote in a number of places, including at this link (Ann’s support thread) from which it has been removed, but also at the Save Althouse’s Blog Facebook page and elsewhere. I followed the link to the Facebook page, and when I hit the back button . . . all the links were gone.

Gone.

Now the only result I see is my blog.

I’m not going to lie. I find that creepy.

[UPDATE: I think I figured it out. The problem was that one search started with the word “Ann” and the other didn’t. I note that the search without “Ann” still shows that the phrase was used in the support thread, and has been removed. So I still wouldn’t put it past Google to cover their mistakes . . . but I can’t prove it’s happened. Sorry for the false alarm.]

One comment I still see at the support thread, but can’t find any context for:

Shoot – can’t you find at least 200 faithful readers?

I’m not sure what that means, but it is dripping with hostility. Plus he keeps talking about how she can appeal it, ONCE! — but after that she has zero recourse and can basically go to hell.

If all this has nothing to do with her union coverage I’ll eat my hat.

Someone needs to find out who “nitecruzr” is. I suggest using a different search engine than Google. They (or he) may have wiped that information clean.

In unrelated (not really!) news, Google has introduced a new gadget today, which Aaron discussed earlier: the Google Chromebook. It’s like an iPad — only without the hard drive! What a great idea that seems like today! You simply access all your stuff through the cloud. Unless . . . the cloud goes down. Like Blogger did. Or the Playstation Network did. Or . . . they decide that all your data is spam, perhaps because they don’t like the political content of your data, and tell you that it has all been removed without notice and there is one appeal which you will lose and that’s it.

Yeah, no thanks to that either.

Google is not helping itself today. If nitecruzr still has a job tomorrow, that company is doing something very wrong.

UPDATE: Someone finally came on the thread and told Ann they’re working on getting it back. OK, fine — I sort of expected that would happen. But they still need to address the incredible rudeness of this nitecruzr guy. They deleted his comment about the 200 readers — but not before I got this screenshot:

If so, that is good reason to get the hell off of Blogspot.

UPDATE x3: Dustin found the Bing cache for that comment nitecruzr made. Screenshot:

That “don’t attack here” link goes here, to a post where nitecruzr explains that “Justice Is For The Poor And The Weak – And Blogger Justice Is For The Owners Of Small Blogs.” Well, yeah. It’s also for the owners of larger blogs, too.

I get the impression that nitecruzr got upset that Ann pointed out that she has a blog with a large readership — and treated her worse as a result. In other words, his veneration for the right of small blogs leads him, not to improve service for those blogs, but to equalize matters by giving equally shitty service to the larger blogs.

Well done, Google. Well done indeed. Where can I buy my Chromebook now? Yes, I’m kidding.

UPDATE x4: Apparently the Amazon Affiliates program is not the issue, since Blogger is specifically integrated with Amazon Associates. Thanks to Dustin.

UPDATE x5: I have the full story including all deleted bits of the Google employee’s abuse towards Ann, here.

79 Responses to “How Are Google and Its Related Services and Products Looking After the Company’s Rank Mistreatment of Ann Althouse?”

  1. Wow, I’m glad I quoted that “courtesy and patience” quote in the comments of the other thread so it didn’t go completely down the memory hole.

    I’ll be honest, I haven’t linked to my blog as I’ve posted comments here today because I fear retaliation by Nitecruzr. Which is disturbing that I should even think that way.

    At Ann’s Facebook page someone has come up with a name — Chuck Croll — and photo for “Nitecruzr.”

    Laura

    Laura (9d1bb3)

  2. It’s easy to find out who nitecruzr is.

    http://hoystory.com/?p=7070

    He’s a little thug.

    Hoystory (d0fa8a)

  3. google is an obamawhore company what had a business model of censoring results at the behest of the oppressive chinese government

    their creepy-nice homogeneous myers-briggs-selected autobot employees call each other “googlers” it’s just about the gayest thing I’ve ever heard my whole life

    I don’t think this douche what is harassing Ann Althouse, who is smart and pretty, is a google employee per se – he’s just creepy he’s not creepy-nice like they usually are

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  4. Laura, I updated the post. I think your quote started with the word “Ann” and the other places I saw it quoted did not start with her name.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  5. Thanks for the additional info! All this bears continued watching given what’s been going on today.

    Laura (9d1bb3)

  6. As Althouse notes, Google’s support actually went out of its way to mock Althouse’s predicament. A huge amount of work must have gone into her blog, and they took way too long, and had way too much hemming and hawing about it.

    Obviously, it’s not google policy to just screw with people for no good reason, or to publicly be jerks. But it IS their policy to be lazy about their customer service and reliability with blogger, and probably their other products.

    I won’t rely on them for anything critical. Sure, it’s great to use free stuff that doesn’t always work, but that won’t do sometimes, because this is what you get.

    BTW, nitecruzr wrote a wikipedia page about himself and calls himself a champion of free speech. They deleted it, though.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  7. I wonder if the prohibition on “affiliate marketing” means she can’t use Amazon’s search box on her page.

    That’s a good reason to leave Blogspot right there.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  8. Dustin,

    You should be taking screenshots of all this stuff. It would be epic.

    I would LOVE to have had screenshots of his previous taunting.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  9. Ann’s blog header is now back up, but there are no posts…

    Also, Glenn Reynolds just posted something a few minutes ago about the rudeness of Nitecruzr:

    http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/120688/

    Laura

    Laura (9d1bb3)

  10. happyfeet, I admit this problem seems petty compared to the problems a Chinese dissident would have with Google.

    I think companies that have a motto of ‘Don’t be evil’ are pretty damn suspicious. Either they think the natural order is to be evil, or they are insecure about their morality.

    Anyway, the Althouse blog is back, but there are no posts. I think Google woke up.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  11. he cruises the night for his googly googly obamawhore overlords?

    This is not normal behaviour.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  12. You should be taking screenshots of all this stuff. It would be epic.

    I missed my chance, because I usually don’t think that way until it’s too late. Fortunately, there are some screenshots at the facebook ‘save althouse’ page.

    It’s always great to see liars and bastards fall on their ass because people produce a record of their BS. Althouse seems to have a hell of a lot of fans. I really doubt Althouse will stay on blogger, given that she said her main reason to be there is that she wanted to be sure her blog would be around for posterity.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  13. I don’t know what to make of it Mr. Dustin I think the google pathology is spreading – facebook is at least as douchebaggy and even more blatantly obamawhorish

    In what America is it that Microsoft comes off looking like the upstanding decent fellers in the room?

    Barack Obama’s I guess.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  14. In what America is it that Microsoft comes off looking like the upstanding decent fellers in the room?

    hahahah

    You have a way with words.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  15. bing has the comment in the search, but i can’t figure out how to show the cache that surely has it.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  16. Google is like The Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s “1984.” It reserves the right to airbrush its own statements, even direct quotes of its own statements from history.

    Nitecruzr is Winston to the extreme.

    Corky Boyd (202337)

  17. Laura, I also posted outside of my blogger site and outside of my gmail address. I moved to yahoo. I wouldn’t put it past google, the media, and their employees to “Joe the plumber” me in some mundane way. I fear the information monopoly. lol

    jd (fc8318)

  18. UPDATE: Someone finally came on the thread and told Ann they’re working on getting it back. OK, fine — I sort of expected that would happen. But they still need to address the incredible rudeness of this nitecruzr guy. They deleted his comment about the 200 readers — but not before I got this screenshot:

    Patterico (c218bd)

  19. Dustin

    > BTW, nitecruzr wrote a wikipedia page about himself and calls himself a champion of free speech. They deleted it, though.

    Even wiki has standards.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  20. as i said to patrick in email, nitecruzer’s comment does show up if you search on bing.

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22is+in+spite+of+your+huge+blog+with+over+20M+posts+and+over+25M+visitors+a+day%22&form=QBLH&qs=n&sk=

    if we could pull out the cache, somehow, we could nail this f–ker.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  21. There are a couple of posters on the facebook site for save Ann’s blog that took a lot of screen shots. I posted there and asked them to ship them to you

    jd (fc8318)

  22. Actually, I did get the ‘In spite of’ comment from this cache link.

    I’m so familiar with google’s search that I never learned the special commands for Bing.

    I emailed you a screenshot, though.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  23. Well, nitecruzr is certainly a rude little piece of work.

    Jim,

    No confusion is necessary. All that you need to know is that your blog will be reviewed, and that you can post here – in this discussion – for questions about your blog being reviewed.

    There is no need (or benefit) to open additional discussions, to post in discussions started by others about their spam reviews, or to copy and paste other discussions here.

    You may read the posting guidelines, if you wish.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  24. About a year ago, when Google began using “Autopagination,” resulting for a period of time in half of each month’s archived posts being inaccessible (before they came up with a fix so you could page through using “older posts” buttons), I spent time on the same Blogger help site trying to understand the situation.

    Nitecruzr was posting back then — hard to forget his name — and he tended to be rude and impatient with people who didn’t understand “dynamic” blogging (which is the phrase he kept harping on). My impression even then was he was not what you might call “solution oriented” or “customer service oriented,” but had a superiority complex.

    Laura (9d1bb3)

  25. UPDATE x2: The support thread says they may mark your blog as “spam” for the violation of “affiliate marketing.” Does that mean you can’t have an Amazon search widget, as both Ann and I have?

    If so, that is good reason to get the hell off of Blogspot.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  26. UPDATE x3: Dustin found the Bing cache for that comment nitecruzr made. Screenshot:

    That “don’t attack here” link goes here, to a post where nitecruzr explains that “Justice Is For The Poor And The Weak – And Blogger Justice Is For The Owners Of Small Blogs.” Well, yeah. It’s also for the owners of larger blogs, too.

    I get the impression that nitecruzr got upset that Ann pointed out that she has a blog with a large readership — and treated her worse as a result. In other words, his veneration for the right of small blogs leads him, not to improve service for those blogs, but to equalize matters by giving equally shitty service to the larger blogs.

    Well done, Google. Well done indeed. Where can I buy my Chromebook now? Yes, I’m kidding.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  27. nitecruzr sounds like a rapist name

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  28. This is an immense PR bungle on Google’s part. Not the behavior of a smart outfit as Google is usually perceived as.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  29. Lines from so many famous movies are useful. I vote for

    Ann: My blog is down. I’m important! Help me!

    Google: HA HA HA You ****** up, you trusted us!

    ErisGuy (4af683)

  30. Eris

    insty calls it the flounder principle. heh.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  31. Sigh. I’ve got to get rid of Google now.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9c6b56)

  32. I see several people misrepresenting what Ann was writing. She was not initially writing Google that they ought to pay attention to her because she was “important”, she was addressing the specific supposed “standards” of Google for what was a spam blog and pointing out that her large, long running and heavily read blog was obviously not spam.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  33. Ah, no my link in 28 doesn’t actually show his mockery very clearly. He just notes the count of commenters who don’t agree with him. Before, he had said something to the effect of ‘why not 100?’ and later ‘why not 200?’

    Though the link does show a photo of the twitter user Nitecruzr (who seems to be the same guy).

    You’d think a twerp like this was 14, but he looks like he should have better things to do. I don’t have a taste for outing losers on the internet, so I’ll leave it at that.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  34. In other words, his veneration for the right of small blogs leads him, not to improve service for those blogs, but to equalize matters by giving equally shitty service to the larger blogs.

    That’s quite an insight. It would seem crazy, but that’s actually exactly what he’s trying to say with that comment.

    How dare one person succeed more than others!

    Dustin (c16eca)

  35. SPOR, I read that and thought the nitecruzr was so convinced her blog was evil that he couldn’t see that. An illness of the left. Nitecruzr probably never digests counter thought.

    jd (fc8318)

  36. Dustin, he will probably disappear from google. and show up in the dilbert forums.

    jd (fc8318)

  37. see several people misrepresenting what Ann was writing. She was not initially writing Google that they ought to pay attention to her because she was “important”, she was addressing the specific supposed “standards” of Google for what was a spam blog and pointing out that her large, long running and heavily read blog was obviously not spam.

    Comment by SPQR —

    Thanks for explaining. I also misunderstood, but this makes perfect sense. I suspect nitecruzr was too busy linking his own blog (which he must have done a dozen times in that thread alone) to realize Althouse was trying to lay things out on Google’s own terms.

    Isn’t it pretty amazing that Aaron’s blog didn’t get deleted during the drawing contest? But you have no idea if that will come in the future, do you?

    Dustin (c16eca)

  38. I did a search on Bing for his name.
    Which brought up this link:
    http://www.nitecruzr.net/
    Which links to his personal blog, on which I found this:
    http://musings.nitecruzr.net/2010/06/anybody-want-ice-cream.html

    In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor – “Barocky Road”.
    Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.
    The cost is $100.00 per scoop.
    When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but after you pay for it, the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you at no charge.
    You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

    [I’m posting the full thing so no one needs to there and give him more hits or links.]

    Which suggests he’s not a mad leftie, but an arrogant tech jerk, in tune with what Laura and Patterico have posted in the comments here.

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  39. btw, i discovered also that they deleted MY comment on the subject. but i kept the screen cap.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  40. and i should add, i put the screen cap on my post on the subject. feel free to put it in yours patrick

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  41. kish, wow that is actually racist, too.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  42. Unless there is some actual crime in a comment I think people should leave threads up in whole. the value of an online thread is low if every other comment is deleted. zombie wrote a few years ago of how the San Francisco newspaper online forum deleted his comments but did do by letting him still see them. No one else could. he logged into a different account and saw they had been deleted for the world. It should be one of the robotic laws of the internet. Thou comment shall not be deleted.

    jd (fc8318)

  43. And the post preceding that one, btw, he records how he bought a bagel from a street vendor, and it seems he had to make a tremendous effort to use what the rest of us would think of as common courtesy.

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  44. Which suggests he’s not a mad leftie, but an arrogant tech jerk, in tune with what Laura and Patterico have posted in the comments here.

    Comment by kishnevi

    Actually, one of the three links he has is to “progressive thinker”. And his other commentary suggests some dumb strain of modern ‘let’s help the little guy vs the man’ progressivism.

    Frankly, I think he doesn’t want to show much political thought, perhaps because he wants to be an authority on blogging decorum (seriously) and finds political commentary to be politically incorrect. Often, the default politics in an environment like that eventually tends towards some kind of progressive-lite thing, though.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  45. I see that up at #2 hoystory linked to his own blog which has a link to nitekruzr (Chuck’s) full Blogger profile– complete with his picture and his interests. I agree with the commenter who suggested Chuck is old enough to have better manners.

    elissa (310d0a)

  46. SPQR #35:

    Here is the way Google’s nitecruzr defined spam:

    Spam Appeal Guidelines – April 2011
    ***
    – Affiliate marketing.
    – Content created with scripts and programs, rather than by hand.
    – Content or links referencing GPT, PTC, PTS, ‘Make money from home’, ‘Make money fast’, or other referral-based activities.
    – Content scraped from other sources.
    – Copyright Infringement.
    – Large blogs with multiple, unfocused / unrelated subjects.
    – Links to Illegal Downloads / Streaming / Torrents.

    How was Althouse’s statement that she’s a law professor a meaningful response to that?

    DRJ (fdd243)

  47. Comment by Aaron Worthing — 5/13/2011 @ 7:20 pm
    It didn’t strike me that way, but re-reading it I can see why you said that. But to add more tartness to the mix, in the bagel post he quotes a heavily Yiddish accented man as calling him “schvatzer”.
    So he’s a really rude black racist.

    (BTW, I couldn’t find out the photo Dustin was referring to comment 36.)

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  48. How was Althouse’s statement that she’s a law professor a meaningful response to that?

    Ann Althouse is smart and pretty.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  49. as indicated in my post on the subject… ann is back.

    i think the blogosphere’s reaction collectively shares alot of the credit in that.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  50. Oh, wait, found the photo on the Blogger profile. I guess he’s simply a really rude white racist.

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  51. Kishnevi, I had to go back just to read this bagel story you mentioned.

    Lame. I imagine he’s quite bottled up in person, and vents by exploding online about minor things (like someone asking for help with a computer).

    Anyway, I noticed a ‘Of course, Comments will be moderated. Spammers, kill yourself.’ (paraphrase) message.

    This man sure loves minor types of power. It never occurred to him that the most power a blogger gets is having your POV survive a hail of unmoderated dissent, the way Althouse runs her blog.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  52. He doesn’t really look like a nitekruzr, does he, Kish?

    elissa (310d0a)

  53. How was Althouse’s statement that she’s a law professor a meaningful response to that?

    That was Althouse being Althouse. She believes that she is important and her blog is important and she is going to tell you that. And I think a lot of her identity is wrapped up in that blog. Take it away and it’s like you’re cutting out her heart.

    Put all that together and you get the reaction she had. And if you look at the guy who she was dealing with, she is the epitome of what he hates, so he could not help but taunt her.

    I would have handled it differently, I think, and put less of a focus on how important I am. But I would have been royally pissed off by that guy and his attitude.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  54. DRJ,

    What do you think of my idea that the Amazon Affiliate marketing was the problem? I can’t seem to get anyone to respond to that.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  55. What do you think of my idea that the Amazon Affiliate marketing was the problem?

    I don’t think that’s it.

    OK… maybe that’s it because some pissant decided it was spam anyway. My guess is that people were reporting her blog as abuse because they don’t like what she has to say. Just a guess though.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  56. happened to us on wordpress. If you can’t afford a self-hosted blog, you probably aren’t going to be missed anyway. She had 25million hits a day and she was still hosting on BLoggers servers? Weird.

    docweasel (3914b8)

  57. The Blog is back.
    Including a post transferred over from Althouse2–it seems the complaint that caused the trouble was about comments on her post asking for opinions regarding the three finalists for law school dean at her school.

    The full post, which is not really easy to summarize, is here:
    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/05/relocated-from-althouse2-so-your-blog.html#more

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  58. I think saying ‘I’m a teacher’ or ‘I’m a chef’ or whatever is a way of saying ‘I’m not some automated spam crap, I’m a real live person with a good blog’.

    Does Althouse’s job make her blog better than other ones? No, her blog makes her blog better. She’s probably earning blogger a fair amount of money from her years of work. There just aren’t that many major blogs left there. If I were in her shoes, I’d feel like blogger owed me special treatment. Althouse is a major component of blogger’s limited success.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  59. happened to us on wordpress. If you can’t afford a self-hosted blog, you probably aren’t going to be missed anyway. She had 25million hits a day and she was still hosting on BLoggers servers? Weird.

    I don’t think so. 25,000 uniques a day, maybe. Not 25 million hits. She has maybe 38 million for the lifespan of the blog.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  60. She had 25million hits a day and she was still hosting on BLoggers servers? Weird.

    Yeah, I agree. She responded to a suggestion she host her own blog with this:

    Ann Althouse I’ve always resisted doing that, and it wasn’t because of the money. It was because I liked Google and trusted Google. I believed it was Google that would be around, keeping things going, long after I am dead.

    She thinks it will be tricky to ensure her blog is online for posterity unless she relies on a company’s blog like Google’s Blogger.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  61. UPDATE x4: Apparently the Amazon Affiliates program is not the issue, since Blogger is specifically integrated with Amazon Associates. Thanks to Dustin.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  62. Yet another illustration of how your commenters are smarter than you. At least collectively — and in many cases, individually as well . . .

    Patterico (c218bd)

  63. I was too quick off the mark. The old posts are not up (at least not so far).

    Comment by elissa — 5/13/2011 @ 7:38 pm
    Not sure about that, but he does look like someone you don’t want to meet on an unlit street at night.

    kishnevi (46fd97)

  64. she’s a fantastic blog service-based blogger not unlike other fantastic blog service-based bloggers you may know such as IOZ or Simply Breakfast or Mr. bour3’s Things Wot I Made Then Ate

    Plus Ann Althouse puts you some knowledge.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  65. 20M and 25M are like banker’s terms for 20,000 abnd 25,000. When bankers want to say million they say MM. Each M is three zeroes. Learned that practicing real estate law.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  66. Patterico

    > Yet another illustration of how your commenters are smarter than you. At least collectively — and in many cases, individually as well . . .

    Well, only if you don’t count a certain stalkerboi…

    lol

    I like to think we had a small hand in this…

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  67. Ann sent me the full thread. I am working on putting it all together.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  68. Dude sounds like your typical Internet Guy With Power (On the Internet). He probably either pisses his pants or gets angry when a woman directly engage with him. Well, not either. In real life he ruins his shorts, over the interwebs he acts tough.

    deepelemblue (4c78cb)

  69. “…tricky to ensure her blog will remain for posterity…”

    This is why bloggers should begin lobbying the Library of Congress to start selecting notable blogs, legendary blog-threads, and various other online phenomena to be permanently archived by the Library, in the same way that every year notable films and recordings are selected for permanent preservation.

    This is already being done in a few other countries, notably Australia.

    Eventually there needs to be created an American Academy of Online Arts and Sciences to encourage excellence through formal recognition of same.

    Any internet busy beavers out there, looking to demonstrate Leadership Skillz?

    d. in c. (1e48bc)

  70. I have the full story including all deleted bits of the Google employee’s abuse towards Ann, here.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  71. According to Prof. William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, Blogger had a system-wide failure that affected his blog:

    For those of you who have wondered what is going on, Blogger had a system-wide failure beginning sometime yesterday, which froze blogspot.com blogs as reader-only.

    The failure resulted from a maintenance upgrade on Wednesday. (Small quirk of fate, the blog manager at Google who was responsible for the maintenance upgrade was a high school friend. I realized this when checking Google’s entries on the outage. So the silver lining is that I may reconnect with someone who knew me when.)

    Google reset the system to just before the upgrade, meaning that all posts and comments from around 11 a.m. Wednesday were taken down. Google says that it backed-up that data and will restore the posts and comments, but that hasn’t happened yet.

    I don’t know if this had anything to do with Althouse’s issues but it seems she wasn’t the only person, let alone law professor, with problems.

    DRJ (fdd243)

  72. Is this the guy?

    http://twitter.com/#!/nitecruzr

    Kel (83ba28)

  73. What an incredible blogospheric event. How long are people going to keep calling this dude a google employee? How long can we keep making partisan connections to this?

    Bruuuce (f450ba)

  74. How many consecutive comments will Bwuuuuuce be mendoucheous?

    JD (d48c3b)

  75. As long as you keep on getting your jollies from playing with little boy parts brucie poo.

    DohBiden (15aa57)

  76. Comment by DRJ — 5/14/2011 @ 10:06 am
    But she was the only one (we know about, at least) who lost their blog.

    From what I have read, someone didn’t like the comments on a post she made requesting comments on the three finalists for the post of dean of her law school, and reported her as some sort of abusive blog to Blogger/Google, which acted on that complaint without further investigation. The fact that this happened at the same time as the system wide failure may have been complete co-incidence. At the very least, she lost far more, and was blocked far longer, than anyone else we know about.

    Blogger/Google may have been receiving complaints from people who didn’t like her for her coverage of the public employee brouha and that may or may not have had something to do with it; but I’m sure the person who did complain about her wasn’t sorry to see all those posts lost (as it seems) forever.

    I would assume she still has the original photos and videos she posted, and therefore hope she’ll post them again, at the very least at an alternate site beyond the capacity of the Google bots to destroy.

    kishnevi (510a0a)


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