Google once-upon-a-time claimed it would abide by the dictum, Don't Be Evil - riffing off the Dr. Evil character played by Mike Meyers in the Austin Powers movies.
It might try not being dishonest, as a start.
I just got a "report" from Google Analytics (sic) which tells me this web site had 32.1k visitors in January. This is a lie, which can be proved by referencing the fact that just one article - First, They Lied About the Range - that was published on this site last month (January 27th) received 34,303 "visits" - and that was last time I checked, a few days ago.
Unless all of the other articles published on the site last month - which amounts to something on the order of 30 of them, as I usually publish at least one new article every day, each day of ever month - had zero "visits," then the math - as the saying goes - doesn't add up.
So I decided to do some re-figuring. The five "political" columns posted during the final five days days of January - from the 27th to the 31st - all by themselves account for 10,593 "visits." This encompasses the following articles: Electric Wave Cresting (2,039 "visits"), Sound Police (1,752 "visits"), When Gas Mileage Mattered (1,875 "visits"), It's a Riot (1,790 "visits") Toyota Transitions (2,080 "visits") and The Problem with Policing (1,058 "visits"). During the same time period, there were also several additional articles published, including car reviews and features, along with a couple of radio spots. These account for several thousand more "visits" during the same five days.
Thus, the total - for the last five days of the month is in the neighborhood of 15,000 "visits." This is typical - average - for a five-day period. On that basis, this site had at least 60,000 "visits" in January. Not counting the 34,300 additional "visits" that one article - which attracted a lot-more-than-usual "visits" because it got picked up by several other sites that have even more "visitors" than this one has.
Thus, the total count for January is close to 100,000 "visits."
But Google doesn't count some 70,000 of them apparently. Probably because if Google did, it might have to pay for them.
This site does still have some embedded Google ads - hence the "reports" from Google Analytics. These are a legacy from long-ago, when the site was launched way back in the Jurassic Era of the Internet, back in the early 2000s. Thank the Motor Gods, the survival of this site does not depend upon ad revenue from Google, which is akin to the crumbs Stalin tossed at the feet of the chicken he'd just plucked.
Google pioneered the screw-the-publisher model of Internet advertising, which replaced the practice of paying a publisher "X" dollars per month (or issue, if we go back to the print media days) for the space used to advertise whatever it was they wanted to sell, with an utterly opaque "click" or "views" model. This enabled them to cut their advertising costs by probably 99 percent - increasing their profits by a like amount, while leaving the 1 percent on the floor, for the publisher to peck at like Stalin's chicken.
This makes it almost impossible to support a publisher's ability to publish. And it does something else, too. Google sends insolent "violation" notices to publishers, threatening to cut off the 1 percent left on the floor for the "chicken" to peck at, if the publisher does not remove the offending material. Which is considered in "violation" without any definition - beyond it being in "violation."
But we all know what is meant by "violation." It is anything Google does not like. Which is often synonymous with the truth and the facts (as Clover, this site's mascot, used to like to say). Usually, this exerts the desired editorial control over the publisher whose dependence on the scratch left on the floor for him to peck at is the tool used against him.
Thankfully, Google-Stalin has no such power here. Chiefly because of the people here, who support the site and so keep it independent of being dependent upon Google-Stalin.
And in a position to expose its lies.
. . .
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