Oh Google Where Art Thou?

There was some good news on the jobs horizon in the last week. Internet giant Google announced that it is to expand its workforce at its European Headquarters in Dublin, through the creation of 200 new positions.

Also, you may have noticed that The Job Seekers Blog is publishing again from it's Blogger platform. Earlier this year we notified you that Google (who own Blogger), had flagged our blog as spam and deleted it! (Pardon Me! Was I Spamming You?)

We'd like to be able to say that there is some connection between the two events - Google's expansion of it's Dublin operations and their decision to stop impeding the efforts of job seekers. Alas not however. The only reason why they restored The Job Seekers Blog was because we went on Facebook to argue our case, in a manner that they couldn't really ignore. (Is Our Data Safe in the Hands of Google?)

According to the Google representative who made himself know to us: "Automated spam detection is not a perfect science yet [our emphasis]." So presumably Google believes it will be a perfect science one day and they are working towards that lofty goal! Good luck to them is all we can say. Is that what the 200 new employees at the European HQ in Dublin will be doing?

One can't help but wondering why they have chosen that particular pursuit however. What about all the other ills that manifest on the world wide web? Also it bends belief somewhat. Search engine giants like Google built their reputation on the strength of claims, that their algorithms could automatically classify and return results relevant to the web user's search query. Are we now beginning to see an admission that this may not be the case? That they can't see the wood from the trees where spam issues are concerned?

Finally, while we are happy to have The Job Seeker Blog back (and indeed happy to be back on Blogger) there are many issues that remain to be clarified. As the Blogger Victim website points out:

Something in your Blog triggered the spam algorithm. You will not have been told what this was so cannot change it - or stop it from happening again and again. 

Each time, you will need to go through the protracted review process which can take anything from days to months, inconveniencing both you and your readers. The only good thing about getting your Blog restored is that you now have the opportunity to save the content. Please do so immediately. You're blog is marked from here on and sooner or later the algorithm is going to find you again. - see Blogger Victim (Frequently Asked Questions) 

With this in sage advice in mind The Job Seekers Blog will continue to publish from our new blogging platform on Wordpress; simultaneously with the original and now restored Blogger blog.

We wish Google the best of luck with it's expansion. Clearly Ireland's and Google's economic futures are somewhat intertwined for the foreseeable future. We do hope however that they will realise, that 200 new jobs will not make much of a dent on the now collossal unemployement figures that beset the country. There will continue to be a role for organisations like The Job Seekers Union for some time to come. Companies like Google can best help by not impeding.