SEO considered harmful

Companies go to extreme lengths to optimize their web content so that their pages show up on Google search. Showing up on top 10 of a google search will dramatically increases the number of visitors to your site. While this is all goodness, there is some real stupidity in Google's algorithms. For example, if your URL contains the search term, Google will rank you higher. This means creation of funny URLs that match the search terms. Add Long Tail keywords to the mix, you have the internet full of web pages with horrible quality content, but using right keywords in the URL and the text.

Google would argue, if the content is not good, they would see a higher bounce rate. Thats not true, if the webpage has links to other pages that promise to tell you more about the subject or cleverly designed adwords. Overall, the bouncerate is not a reliable indicator of page quality.

We are at a point where the content on internet is becoming mostly useless ( some would argue that it has always been the case). What needs to change?

1. Google should change their algorithm, so the URL words do not have much importance
2. Have human editors, randomly look at the content and aggressively penalize sites that has made up content. Perhaps, Crowdsource this effort.

There is no good fix for this issue though, a better alternative might be emergence of an alternative search engine that has different ranking mechanisms. I would love to see Google lose its marketshare, so the search monopoly is not impacting the quality of the content on the internet.

JavaEE app servers are slow

Not a single day passes without hearing that their JBOSS, WebLogic, WebSphere or GlassFish is runinng very slow. I see tweets or comments or blogs on this topic. One has to wonder why wouldn't these guys move away from Java EE app servers. Here are few reasons:

1. Political reasons - deal has been sealed at a golf course, and avg developer/IT ops guy has zero say or influence in changing that decision.
2. Resume Building - developer believes using a massive app server means more buzz words on resume.
3. Vendor hijack - Vendor tells that they won't support the app unless its running on GlassFish or JBOSS or WebLogic or WebSphere.
4. Leading Figure says Java EE is becoming simpler - I call this bullshit factor - these leading figures rarely write code or have to support production apps.

And there are many other reasons that continue to cause heartburn for developers and IT operations.