Affiliate Genocide – SEJ Post 3-3-2007 – Comments
I know that this post is a bit off topic and I promise that it will not be like it was between May and July 2006.
I made a post at Search Engine Journal yesterday that causes quite some misunderstanding and a discussion that did not have much to do with the original post. That lead to an edit of the post which is available here and includes an Edit Note that points to the original post and comments at my family website.
You can find the original post and comments here.
The family site does not allow any comments so I post this article here at my Roy/SAC blog for the purpose of providing the ability to have people comment or ask questions to go deeper into the subject.
So feel free to add your comments regarding the original post and comments that are about the issue with Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust here. If your comment is about the issue with Google, nofollow and Affiliate Marketing, please comment at the current post at Search Engine Journal. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
“Godwin has argued that overuse of the Nazi/Hitler comparison should be avoided, as it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.”
Brian,
I pretty much never use the events at Nazi-Germany for comparison purposes.
The reason I used it in that particular case was that the things talked about in the post have severe negative impact (financially and personally) on a lot of people. Google does actively avoids to talk about to specify how and if certain things apply to affiliates.
They keep statements so vague that it seems to apply to affiliates as well, but leave out to the details what affiliates should or should not do.
This is not the first time. It happened multiple times in the past already. It would be less of a problem, if Google would not at the same time penalize in an unfaithful manner affiliates that play by the rules and do nothing different than other groups of webmasters who seem to be okay in Google’s eyes.
That p*sses me off to say it quite frankly. There is no rational reason for Google to do this. It almost seems like a subjective form of hatred towards affiliates for unknown reasons.
The comparison of METHODS used by the Nazis (and others before and after them) to the METHODS Google used and is still using are valid. The same PRINCIPLES are applied with affects that are generally speaking the same. The only difference between the two are the things that lead to extreme end results in the case of Nazi Germany and not so extreme ones in case of Google.
I don’t compare the end results that came about as a direct cause from applying these principles and methods and I am sure that they will not lead to the same results for Google.
The methods used by the Nazis are well known. The methods to manipulate, motivate or intimidate masses are very powerful and effective which makes them dangerous if used for the wrong reasons. A lot of them can be and are used for good purposes.
Let me provide you a specific example that shows the principle of motivating and unifying groups of people to make them feel as one and able to do extraordinary things because of it. No single hero’s being depicted. Everybody is the hero and did/does his part to succeed at the end.
The Example
The use of “Uniform” like apparel for everybody who is part of the group to wears, which is the same regardless of age, superiority, background, wealth and title.
Use 1.
Used by the Hitlerjugend – HJ (Hitler Youth) and Bund Deutscher M??del – BDM (League of German Maidens (or Girls)) in Nazi Germany.
EN
Hitler Youth
League of German Girls
DE
Hitlerjugend
Bund Deutscher M??del
Use 2.
Used by the Jungpioniere (Young Pioneers), Th??lmannpioniere (Th??lmann’s Pioneers, after Ernst Th??lmann) and the Freie Deutsche Jugend – FDJ (Free German Youth) in the former East Germany.
EN
Freie Deutsche Jugend
No entry for “Pioneer Organization” in the English Wikipedia. They are not to be confused with the Pioneers of the military)
There is an entry for Ernst Thaelmann, the person the organization was named after.
DE
Pionierorganisation Ernst Th??lmann
Freie Deutsche Jugend
Use 3.
Corporate Identity in form of company outfit (T-Shirts and that sort) and use of the outfit in mostly social events where the T-Shirt is worn by everybody in the company, the clerk, manager, VP and CEO.
EN
Corporate Identity
The same principle is used in all three cases and have the same effect. The purpose and end goals differ between all three though.
This also demonstrates what I compared in my post and what I did not compare.
Back to my example here. I obviously did not compare the HJ to the FDJ or HJ with any corporation that uses company t-shirts for corporate Identity with neither the Young Pioneers nor the BDM.
I hope this makes sense.