I Attended Google’s Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral
I recently attended a funeral. It was called the Google Web Creator Conversation Event and took place on October 29, 2024, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Google invited some of the most vocal independent site owners who’ve been shadowbanned by their brutal updates of the last two years, and 20 of them came to pay their respects. We had no idea what the purpose of our visit was going in, but we knew by the time we left.
Google has never done anything like it before. After this account, they likely never will again.
Visiting The Google Campus
Danny Sullivan hosted the event. He may be the most knowledgeable and helpful person still left at Google, though he has no real power to effect change.
The day before, he led the group on a tour of Google’s biggest office during the busiest part of weekday work hours and seemed slightly embarrassed that at no point during the tour was anyone there. The building was empty, a shell designed as a hub of activity, drained of people willing to engage in being active.
Empty too, was the rest of Google’s behemoth campus. Their numerous buildings are surrounded by beautiful, park-like pathways with no one to enjoy them but the groundskeepers. They follow the paths with their lawnmowers, weaving between softly shaded employee parking lots, with no one to park in them.
Well, not no one. Continuing my aimless meandering, I encountered a large, mentally ill man in tight-fitting black clothing, screaming profanity and punching wildly at the air.
He didn’t seem to notice me, occupied as he was with fighting ghosts, and we passed amicably.
Buildings So Secure They’re Empty
We weren’t allowed into the large, high-security building where Danny held his Creator Event until we’d been given not one but two visitor badges and affixed them to our clothes. After they were handed to us, these were never looked at or checked. There was no one around to check them.
I did see many janitors and food workers bustling about the premises. I considered asking them to check at least one of my visitor badges, but didn’t want to distract them from the noble task of delivering crystal bowls filled with conference room M&Ms.
I saw only two Googlers out and about during my day spent in the building. They played ping pong atop a depressing, gray table in a tiny, fishbowl room deep within the bowels of Google’s labyrinth. They didn’t seem to be enjoying it.
Our Conversation Began With Reassurances
The event began in a conference room full of folding card tables and stackable chairs, the kind of room you’d expect to see available to rent in a well-appointed, midwestern Holiday Inn. Danny, kind and patient as always, assured us there was nothing wrong with our sites and that we wouldn’t have been invited if there had been.
Also in attendance were a number of Google Engineers and managers, including Google’s Chief Search Scientist. Others, we were told, were watching from an undisclosed location through cameras mounted in the ceiling and ominously pointed at us, the audience, instead of Google’s assigned speakers.
The idea that this might be a funeral, was put forward as a half-joke by one of the shadowbanned attendees during our first Q&A session, in which we asked questions and got no answers. Her funeral joke should have been funny. Only the Googlers laughed.
Most of these site owners seemed certain the funeral they were attending, was their own.
Google Sucks Us Dry And Throws Away The Husk
We spent the morning politely answering questions from Google, questions designed to help Google improve its search engine, questions that in no way benefited any of the shadowbanned attendees. After, we were given a chance (we thought) to get something useful out of the trip. We split into small breakout groups divided up by category.
We few Entertainment site owners rearranged ourselves into a corner semi-circle, and sat drinking mint lemon water from cups made of recycled Kale. We were joined by four Googlers, who began pumping us for information.
During this small group discussion, I and others tried to get our Googlers to address the biggest problem facing our industry: Google giving big brands special treatment. Each time a site owner brought up the topic, we were quickly steered in another direction.
I kept pushing, and eventually, our Googler (whose name I’m not allowed to tell you) wrote “diversity of results” at the top of the whiteboard he was using, as if to signify I should shut up and move on. Instead of addressing the only topic that matters, I was asked to explain how YouTube works because, somehow, none of the four Googlers assigned to our group knew anything about it.
When our group session was over, I left the room for a break. While I was gone, “diversity of results” was erased from the top of the whiteboard and rewritten at the bottom, in much tinier lettering.
During the lunch break, we were fed Tofu, cold pickled chicken breasts, olive bread, and bonbons full of alcohol. Most of us didn’t eat much.
Google’s Head Wizard Appears
Back together as a whole group, their Chief Search Scientist arrived and made himself available to answer our questions.
While we’d been “eating” Google had its quarterly conference call, in which they talked only about the AI they were using to steal content from our sites. When questioned about the content of the call, our Googlers acted as if they barely knew AI existed, and pretended it wasn’t impacting their search results.
Undeterred, we then asked the only question that mattered: Why has Google shadowbanned our sites? Google’s Chief Search Scientist answered this question using a strategy based around gaslighting and said they hadn’t. Google doesn’t ever derank an entire site, only individual pages, he said. There is no site-wide classifier. He insisted it is only done at the page level.
Many of the shadowbanned site owners attempted to politely push back and point out that the reason all 20 of us were there was specifically because our entire site was deranked from Google in a single night.
He continued insisting this didn’t happen and then looked confused that anyone would disagree with him.
When asked what was wrong with our sites, as if we were jilted lovers in an abusive relationship being kicked to the curb, one Googler actually said “it’s not you it’s me”.
Finally, someone bluntly asked, since nothing is wrong with our sites, how do we recover?
Google’s elderly Chief Search Scientist answered, without an ounce of pity or concern, that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do. Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared.
He’d gotten the information he wanted. The conference was over. I don’t think he even said thanks.
Instead, Google’s wise wizard of search science wrapped things up with a self-congratulatory speech about what great a job we were doing at helping Google improve so he can deliver better search results to his users.
Search results without any of us in them.
It was then I realized this wasn’t our funeral, it was Google’s.
And if you have a moment, say a prayer for hard-working Danny Sullivan. Pray he won’t be left there at Google, wandering their empty and decaying coffin, all alone, haunted by angry, invisible ghosts.
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