Battelle gets on the horn with unnamed Google spokespeople who are whispering that Yahoo's PR claim of 19.2 Billion pages indexed is questionable.

Ironically, Google is the most secretive and manipulative company around when it comes to numbers. As a Battelle commenter points out, Google has constantly manipulated numbers about it's index, the number of servers it has, etc.

The whole secrecy game is tiresome. Here's the tortuous negotiation Battelle goes through just to report on the matter:

First of all, I agreed to review some of the Google information on background, agreeing not to disclose it save with permission. (I agreed to this only if I could tell you all that I did in fact agree to it).
...
The quote, which I can only attribute at this point to a "Google spokesperson," is as follows: "Our scientists are not seeing the increase claimed in the Yahoo! index. The data we have doesn't support the 19.2 (billion page) claim and we're confused by that."

Oh! the secrecy and double-agent intrigue just to talk to an unnamed rep who is "confused" by Yahoo's claim. Google has the press eating out of their hands, but you wonder if Google's moral compass has gone missing.

You also wonder who's running their PR? I mean this whisper campaign is only playing into Yahoo's desire for attention...

¶ 8/11/2005