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The folks at Stone Temple Consulting did another really nice interview with Google's Gary Illyes and asked him some interesting questions. One thing Gary Illyes said was at the 51 minute mark where he said he hates it when news publications do not link out, he went as far to call that practice "stupid."
He said it makes him "angry" that they do not link out and calls it "stupid" because they are likely fearful that the link may hurt them for some reason. The internet is made up of links and not linking out is not how the internet works, he explained.
Here is a piece of the transcript:
I'm really angry at news sites in general for example because because of two reasons. But the two major reasons is that they don't link back anymore to smaller publications or blogs or whatever because they are probably afraid of linking back which is stupid. And I don't think is that they would know everything and my grandmother for whatever reason. Probably still because they are afraid of getting hit by something.The Internet is built upon links. Links are essential for the Internet. I was reading the news article yesterday night and there was, I don't remember the name of the site, but they only used the name of the site but they linked to it and after I searched for the site I realized that there are two companies are called the same way one is in the UK and one is in the US and and then I had to figure out which site they are talking to. Which is stupid because I could have avoided the whole searching situation by just clicking a link on the article itself.
Here is the video embed at the start time:
Truth is, it is Google's fault there is fear in linking out. :)
Forum discussion at YouTube.
