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A decade ago I tried Google for the first time. Like everyone said, it was magic – the result I wanted was right there at the top. For someone who’d been using AltaVista for years before that it was a very pleasant experience. Anyone who was on the Internet before Google came along knows exactly what I’m talking about. Google just felt right. It got the job done.

It’s been a creeping feeling, growing over the years, but it sort of feels like pre-Google again. Search is a really bad overall experience. Travel searches, for example, are a joke, and startups like Gogobot are popping up to try to fix that. When I’m trying to figure out the best hotel for me when I travel I bail on Google entirely and head to Tripadvisor (shudder), and Gogobot.

Same for gadget product reviews. GDGT, Amazon and occasionally Consumer Reports seem to have the best collections of data, so I just go there directly and bypass Google. In fact, I use Google mostly for navigation, not discovery these days. Meaning I know the document I’m trying to find and figure out the best search query to locate it. But pure discovery? It’s a shit show of layer upon layer of SEO madness vying for my click.

Is there actual evidence of Google failing at search? Probably somewhere, but certainly not in the search share numbers. They maintain a healthy, almost monopolistic, lead in search despite huge efforts by Microsoft to compete. But then again, AltaVista had huge search share too, right before they suddenly didn’t any more.

And while I watch search startups like Blekko make serious attempts to fix search by thinking about the problem a little differently, it’s just too early to know if they’ll succeed.

So what is the evidence that search still sucks? Well, you know it’s true, just like me. And the fact that the mighty Google is suddenly taking every opportunity to toot their own search horn shows they know it, too. They tore into Microsoft for stealing data with just a little too much vehemence. In the end it felt like less of a gotcha moment, and more like entrapment.

And then today, with this JC Penney nonsense. For months the company gamed Google to get the top result in dozens of lucrative product searches. Google recently discovered it and shut it down. And then, as best I can tell, fed the story to the NY TImes as a sort of victory lap.

I say it should be an embarrassing moment for Google, not one to celebrate. In fact I did say it, here. Google’s Matt Cutts responded by lightly trashing Bing: “@arrington the newer/most recent spate of links happened in the last 3-4 months; not over a year. JCP still ranking on [dresses] on eg Bing.”

Which is fine. It’s always fun to slap Bing around a little, I guess.

Vanessa Fox, who used to fight spam at Google, weighed in as well, saying “@arrington – spam fighting will always be an ongoing battle at Google. Have to balance being aggressive in algorithms w/ collateral damage.” Earlier today she also reported on the JC Penney story.

When companies start to flail they nearly always do a couple of things. First, they trash the competitors. Then the talk about how hard the problem is and that the solution is a long term one.

Altavista did a lot of that in the late nineties. Right before a competitor came in and fixed the the AltaVista problem permanently.

Yes, search is very hard. But Silicon Valley is really good at doing hard things. The real problem right now is that there’s a perception that Google is untouchable in search. When a venture capitalist sees a pitch from a new search startup all they can think about is the Cuil debacle. And since venture capitalists are just about the most risk averse people in Silicon Valley, the funds just don’t flow.

But all the evidence suggests otherwise. Demand Media is worth $1.6 billion, and their entire business is based on pushing cheap, useless content into Google to get a few stray links. If Google was good at search, Demand Media wouldn’t exist. And Bing wouldn’t be making solid gains in search market share. And JC Penney wouldn’t be able to massively game search results for a few months, during the holiday season, without getting caught until months later.

We need to see a real competitor emerge in search. If only because it will make Google up its game, and make all of us a lot happier.

Early this morning people who have received a Google CR-48 notebook, and people who’ve requested one, got hit with 100 or more emails from a newly created Google Group.

Google sent out an email this evening apologizing for the emails and explaining what happened. Google was planning on launching the group next week for all users who have been selected to be in the program. But someone discovered it early and posted to it.

Says the email: “Unfortunately, we had misconfigured this forum to email every post to every member. Thus, the first post started an avalanche of responses…We have since deleted this group.”

The full email is below. The best part, in my opinion, are the step by step directions on how to delete the emails (select all, hit delete, etc.).

From: Chrome Notebook Team
Date: Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:21 PM
Subject: Apologies and an update on the Chrome Notebook Pilot User Forum

Earlier this morning, you may have received a large number of emails from [email protected] regarding the Chrome notebook Pilot program user forum. We apologize for this inconvenience, and you will not receive any more messages from this address. Instructions for deleting these messages are at the end of this email.

What happened? We planned to launch our Chrome Notebook Pilot forum next week to all users who had been selected for the Pilot program. Last night, around midnight Pacific time, a user discovered this forum and posted a message. Unfortunately, we had misconfigured this forum to email every post to every member. Thus, the first post started an avalanche of responses. Some messages were unsubscribe requests, others were thoughtful comments or questions, but all of them were emailed to every user. We have since deleted this group.

We’ve created a brand new user forum, which you can sign up for here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chrome-notebook-pilot

Rest assured: you will not be added to this forum unless you sign up using the link above.

The goal of the forum is to provide a centralized place for Pilot users to share their Chrome notebook experiences and tips. In addition, with a centralized forum, our team can more effectively respond to your questions and feedback.

If you are receiving this email and have not yet received a Cr-48, you should be hearing from us soon. Again, our apologies for the flood of emails, and we hope you will join us at the new forum.

Chrome Notebook Team

—-
How to delete previous messages:

Gmail
1. In the Gmail search box, type “from:chrome-notebook-pilot-users” and press Enter.
2. Click the checkbox to the left of the Archive button to Select All.
3. At the top of the search results, click the link that says “Select all XX conversations in Search results.”
4. Click the Delete button. You should not receive any more messages from this address.

Other email programs
1. Use the search function in your email program to find messages with the sender [email protected].
2. Select all the messages in the search results.
3. Delete the messages. You should not receive any more messages from this address.

“Freedom of speech is being denied [to] Luke Harding while Wikileaks and Julian are getting in to bed with these dictators; these enemies of freedom of speech…” – David Leigh

I’ve just posted my review of the Guardian’s Wikileaks book, co-authored by Investigations Editor David Leigh and Moscow Correspondent Luke Harding.

The book is full of frankly incredible revelations about the paper’s relationship with Wikileaks and Julian Assange. So incredible, in fact, that I wanted to ask the authors more about them.

On Thursday morning, I spoke to Leigh (who is based in London) via Skype. We talked about Assange, the Wikileaks revalations, whether Assange is a journalist or “just an IT guy”, the difference between the “mainstream media” and wiki journalism, Assange’s new-found friendship with the Russian government and a whole lot more.

The full video is below, followed by a few of my favourite quotes from Leigh…

David Leigh…

…on Julian Assange:

“As an IT guy [Assange] is a genius… as a journalist he’s an amateur… and a reckless amateur.”

…on citizen journalism:

“You put everything out there and the citizen journalists make sense of it… unfortunately none of that happened.”

…on Assange’s claims that the book is a smear:

“I’d like Julian to sit in front of me and say he didn’t say [that he didn’t care if Wikileaks caused informants to be killed]. He did say that.”

…on civilian casualties:

“[Assange] doesn’t have blood on his hands as far as I know… The point of this War Log stuff was to demonstrate how many civilian casualties there have been… because America decided to have two wars.”

…on the digital divide:

“For middle aged mainstream journalists like me, we had a lot to learn from Julian.”

…on Wikileaks vs Mainstream Journalism:

“They like to see us as the enemy. They like to see themselves as having some God-like virtue which enables them to behave in some pretty reckless and unethical ways.”

…on anti-Americanism:

“In fairness to Julian, I don’t think that he’s against America. I think he’s against everyone.”

…on pro-Americanism:

“When you look at those cables you certainly see America as a superpower throwing its weight around, maneuvering, sometimes bullying people. A lot of the time [though] you see it failing to get its own way, trying to do its best in a very difficult and dangerous world, full of people who are much more violent and vicious and alarming than the US State Department who are a lot of quite civilised diplomats.”

…on Assange “palling up” with the Russians:

“I’m quite angry with Julian about this. He’s being reckless and opportunistic. Because America is after him and because Sarah Palin wants him hunted down like Osama Bin Laden and so forth, he’s turning round to the Russians who are quite enjoying the discomfiture of the United States… he’s palling up with them and giving material to very unsuitable people.”

…on hypocrisy:

“[We have this] bizarre spectacle where Luke Harding is chucked out of Russia for quoting Wikileaks’ cables saying it’s a mafia state, so freedom of speech is being denied [to] Luke Harding while Wikileaks and Julian are getting in to bed with these dictators; these enemies of freedom of speech… This shows how shallow and reckless he can be as an amateur journalist.”

‘Wikileaks – Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy‘ by David Leigh and Luke Harding is available worldwide now (US, UK)

Two weeks ago, I reviewed the New York Times’ book: ‘Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy‘. It’s a remarkable work of journalism, combining the paper’s collected reporting on Wikileaks, with editor Bill Keller’s personal account of working with Assange.

For my money, Keller’s account was the stand-out highlight of the book – a behind the scenes journalism thriller, punctuated by details from the leaked documents themselves.

In fact, as I read through the bulk of the book, I found myself wishing that Keller’s style had continued throughout. Even in edited, compiled form, the revelations from “Cablegate” and the Iraq war logs are a lot to digest and it would have been wonderful to have Keller as narrator to walk the reader through them all. That didn’t affect my review, though: it was too much to expect the Times to publish that kind of comprehensive narrative so quickly.

You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to receive a copy of the Guardian’s new crash-published Wikileaks book and discover that it was all the things I wanted from the Times’ book. And more.

Authored by Investigations Editor David Leigh and Moscow Correspondent Luke Harding, ‘Wikileaks – Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy‘ (US, UK) tells the story of the Guardian’s relationship with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, from the moment Assange invited Leigh to a hotel room to show him an astonishing video of a US military helicopter killing ten Iraqis and two Reuters journalists – right up to the present day, with Wikileaks hailed for sparking revolution in Tunisia.

While the Times’ book was largely straight-faced (even po-faced) in its dealings with Assange, the Guardian’s Leigh and Harding don’t shy away from applying a very British sense of humour and irony when their subject demands it. Take, for example, the comic scene that opens the book: a paranoid Assange disguising himself as an old woman – Toad of Toad Hall style – to escape an imagined CIA tail. As British newspaper writers are wont to say – you couldn’t make it up.

The bulk of the narrative, though, is deadly serious, delivering page after page of incredible revelations. Those who hail Assange as an unalloyed hero might be given pause by his reaction when Leigh tries to persuade him to redact the names of informants in the Iraq war logs.

“‘Well they’re informants,’ he said. ‘So if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.”

To quote Keanu Reeves — woah.

Then there’s the sordid little twist of Israel Shamir: the Wikileaks collaborator who, we’re told, was paid €2000 by Assange for “services rendered – journalism” and who subsequently wrote articles attacking the two women who have accused Assange of sexual assault. Shamir is now Wikileaks’ official representative in Russia, where Assange has begun to cozy up with the government in order to get back at the American politicians who have called for his head. That story alone is worth the book’s price of admission.

One of the preemptive criticisms of Leigh and Harding’s work (this one from Assange’s new UK publishing partner, the Telegraph) was that it “outs” Private Bradley Manning as the source of the leaked documents. Obviously, the criticism is ludicrous: Manning himself took care of that when he confessed all to hacker Adrian Lamo. What the book in fact does to Manning is humanises him. Like many on both sides of the Wikileaks debate, I had initially been unsympathetic to the plight of a disgruntled soldier who took it upon himself to leak hundreds of thousands of secret documents. But Leigh and Harding’s account of Manning’s upbringing, career and subsequent breakdown persuaded me that the reality is somewhat more nuanced. Yes, Manning acted recklessly, but it’s clear from the evidence offered that Manning had some pretty legitimate concerns about his superiors’ attitude towards Iraqi civilians.

One episode in particular stands out: Manning was ordered to investigate the case of fifteen Iraqis arrested by local police for distributing “anti-Iraqi literature”. Diligently translating the literature, Manning discovered that the material was little more than a scholarly critique against government corruption. But, on reporting that fact to his superiors, he was told to “shut up” and ordered to “explain how to assist the Iraqi police in finding more detainees.”

As the authors put it:

“[Manning’s statements] make it clear he was not a thief, not venal, not mad, and not a traitor. He believed that, somehow, he was doing a good thing.”

Equally persuasive is the authors’ defense of the leaks themselves, and their contention that the world is a better place for their publication. Furthermore, for all the sound and fury from the American government, it seems pretty clear that – in redacted form at least – none of the documents published has put lives at risk.

When I last wrote about Wikileaks on TechCrunch, a number of commenters demanded to know what business a blog dedicated to technology had writing about Julian Assange. It was a frankly bizarre objection: this is, after all, a story about a disgruntled computer specialist leaking electronic files (some of which concern Google in China) to a hacker who uses encryption and p2p networks to publish documents on the Internet. As tech stories go, it makes the Matrix look like Ben Hur. Hopefully those commenters will be satisfied by the Guardian’s thorough account of the various technologies behind Wikileaks, as explained by technology editor Charles Arthur (disclosure: Arthur was my editor at the Guardian). Arthur’s description of how Assange and his collaborators used TOR (and what TOR is) is the best I’ve read. The contrast between that explanation and Leigh’s self-confessed technophobia are wonderful too, particularly the moment where Leigh has to drive across London in the middle of the night so that Assange can show him how to unzip a file.

It’s that same contrast of cultures – between traditional journalism and bleeding-edge hacker culture – that form the backbone of the book. Despite Assange’s  loathing of “the mainstream media”, he soon learns that “citizen journalism” has its limits. By any metric, Wikileaks’ helicopter video was explosive – and yet when traditional news outlets (including Reuters) stubbornly refused to buy into Assange’s “Collateral Murder” narrative, the story quickly faded from public attention.

Likewise it quickly became clear that, when thousands of documents are dumped online without context or explanation, even the combined efforts of a million amateur bloggers can’t begin to make sense of them. Yet, in the hands of a small team of professional reporters, those same documents quickly become coherent narratives and world-changing headlines. Those who believe citizen media – or leak-dumping, or crowd-sourcing – is going to kill traditional journalism might ask themselves why, despite Assange having threatened to sue most of his previous media partners, he’s still desperately clamoring for new ones – most recently the Telegraph (UK) and Russia Today (described by Leigh as ‘[an] arm of [the] Russian state’).

Indeed, while ‘Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy’ is many things – a thriller, a story of international diplomacy, a tale of greed and ambition and double-crosses; a comedy, a tragedy – above all it’s a manifesto for the future of professional journalism.

Like lots of kids who ended up as professional writers or reporters, I grew up reading and re-reading Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s All The President’s Men. The tools – and media – might have changed dramatically since Watergate but, as Leigh and Harding show, the thrill and skill of great reporting is just the same. As such, if Wikileaks is this generation’s Watergate, then ‘Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy‘ might well prove to be its All The President’s Men; educating a whole new generation of would-be reporters on the power and importance of the professional press.

…

Watch My Interview With David Leigh

“They [Assange and Wikileaks] like to see us as the enemy. They like to see themselves as having some God-like virtue which enables them to behave in some pretty reckless and unethical ways”.

On Thursday morning, I spoke to the Guardian’s David Leigh via Skype. I asked him about his relationship with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, whether he stands by some of the more incredible revelations in the book – and how it feels for a liberal Guardian journalist to be described as “the man”. You can watch the whole conversation here.