Revenge

A loathsome computer scam crippled my laptop, and I wanted revenge.

Over the years, we've seen plenty of people get mad and sue Google over getting either dropped from Google's index, or simply ranked really low on certain searches. And, of course, for some there are always totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Google purposely "punishing" a company or individual it doesn't like. To date, however, there's been no evidence at all that Google acts in such a capricious manner when it comes to rankings. If the company did so, and it ever came out, the hit to Google's reputation would be something fierce. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that all of the accusations of such personal attacks seem to come from tiny companies -- hardly any kind of threat to Google, anyway.

That said, if you want even more evidence that Google's ranking decisions aren't personal, but actually are based on what its system feels will give the best possible results, witness the story of Google employee Jason Morrison, who recently discovered that his own personal site had be delisted from Google. It actually took him a few weeks to notice this, but once he did, and dug into the issue (using Google's public tool and his own site's admin tools) he quickly realized that he had made a mistake that caused Google's crawlers to believe that his site was no longer up.

Now, that certainly doesn't preclude the possibility that Google takes revenge on sites it doesn't like, but it's at least more evidence that the ranking system really is pretty algorithmically focused -- and even Google employees aren't immune to being delisted for screwing up. If your site gets delisted from Google, it's not personal.

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There's a lot of hostility swirling around Foxconn these days. First, Foxconn security dudes assaulted a photograph-snapping reporterin China. Now there's a report that workers at a Mexican Foxconn factory burned the joint down after being forced to work overtime.

Apparently at the end of the work day on Friday, supervisors at the Foxconn factory in Juarez, Mexico weren't quite ready to wrap up for the weekend, so they told the workers that the transportation trucks that take them home everyday were being held up at a military checkpoint. In the meantime, the workers were forced to keep toiling away without any extra compensation.

Well, that bit about the military checkpoint wasn't entirely true, and when the workers found out that the trucks were just being blocked-in in the parking lot, they expressed their anger by burning down the factory's gymnasium, the area of the building in which the factory's finished computers and cell phones are stored.

This reportedly isn't the first time the slimy managers at the Juarez plant had tried to strong arm their employees into staying overtime without extra pay, so the explosive reaction is not entirely surprising. Sometimes you just gotta fight fire with arson. [El Norte (sub. required) - Thanks Wilibaldo]