From the Hacker News thread
> The funny thing is that if the people who worked on spam at Google were free to talk about it, I'm sure it would become evident that they know more about spam and anti-spam efforts than anybody else in existence. That may be true, but I think one of the good points made on the OP is that it might actually be cultural constraints that keep them from solving the problem: twitter.com/paulg/status/14777613354128…: > You might need to do a lot of manual spam fighting initially. That could be both the thing-that-doesn't-scale, and the thing that differentiates you by being alien to Google's DNA. (They must hate manual interventions; so inelegant). Google has some very smart and knowledgeable people, but the things they do have to fit into certain boxes, which means there are some problems they just can't fix, e.g. * Everything has to be automated at scale, which leads to consistent poor user experience (unappealable account closures initiated by inscrutable algorithms, SEO spam). * You get promoted by building new products, not maintaining existing ones, which leads to self-defeating churn outside of core areas (e.g. abandoning Google Talk and squandering their position in the messenger market). * etc.