Google Newspeak Glossary: Manual Action in Commercial Relationships

A man wearing a red hoody sweat-shirt stretching his hand forward with his palm open. He looks scary because you can't see his face and the hand seems to want to grab you.

Euphemisms are often made up words that are meant to hide the real (in most cases negative) meaning of existing terms.


Killing in the Name of

For example the thing the US government refers to as “targeted killings” is basically an assassination which in turn is simply murder.

As you’ll see there are often several levels of camouflage to make a horrific thing sound quite nice.

Such terms are often used by governments and corporations. The more obnoxious a government or corporation the worse the linguistic fall out.


The Google Overlords Who Rule the Web

You may have noticed that Google has also become one of the most active creators of euphemisms over the years despite being “just” a corporation.

World renowned author George Orwell called such language as “newspeak”. It is often difficult to notice and ultimately also hard to understand.

Thus I decided to provide an Google newspeak glossary for all those who want to grasp the real meanings behind the cryptic announcements by the Internet giant.

In case you still don’t know what manual action in commercial relationships means read on.

The glossary structure is as follows:

  1. first the Google euphemism
  2. what it probably sounds like for most people
  3. what the more official term was until now
  4. what it actually means plus an example of actual usage.
Google NewspeakWhat most people think it meansFormerly known asWhat it really meansExample
manual actionhand jobpenaltybanwe have taken manual action
commercial relationshipsprostitutionpaid inclusionpaid linkscommercial relationships ensure quality
paid linksprostitutiontext link adsads from Google competitorsReport paid links to Google
privacypornencrypted searchpay for dataenhanced privacy
sunsettingsex on the beachclosing downfailureGoogle Wave sunsetting
penguin[too many outrageous sexual meanings]over optimizationSEOPenguin update
removingtrashingdeletingcensorshipGoogle removes millions of links

Are there more Google terms we need to translate to make sure most people do not mistake them for sexual metaphors? Tell me in the comments.

Don’t forget to add the translation too! Btw. Do you also practice manual action in commercial relationships? You dirty rascal!