Google Could Do Massive Pump and Dump

 September 16th, 2011
google, ideas, stocks
Imagine google were to:
  1. Preferentially display bad news about a company
  2. Buy a lot of their stock
  3. Preferentially display good news about them
  4. Sell stock

They could do this for a large number of companies at once. And randomize it so it wasn't obvious to others. This would be a variant of pump and dump. I don't know if it would be illegal, though it would definitely hurt them if it got out they were doing it.

Mostly this shows how vulnerable we are in treating google as the source for the relative importance of pages on a given topic.

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Raffles

I think that raffles are kind of silly, because when you enter a raffle and you don't know what you're going to get, or if you're going to get anything, what's the point? If you pay for your raffle ticket, and you could pay the same amount…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts September 13, 2026

Air Filters in Schools

My dad went to a conference recently, and when I asked him about what happened there he said it was a conference for people in biosecurity. When I asked him about the different kinds of biosecurity stuff that the different groups did, he said one did air f…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts September 12, 2026

The One That I Want Another Sister

I want a baby sister or brother. Because I want to play with another kid, and I don't want to play with Josie because she is in preschool and I won't play with her very often. So I want to play with someone very often who is not just two people. …

via Nora Wise's Blog Posts September 5, 2026

more     (via openring)