Musk’s Plans to Take a Chain Saw to Bureaucracy

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[00:00:33] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, February 28th. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg for The Wall Street Journal. Google has changed its rules around how product review sites appear in its search engine. And it's hitting a once lucrative corner of news media pretty hard. WSJ reporter Alexandra Bruel tells us what the change could mean for consumers. Then, why was Elon Musk brandishing a chainsaw on stage at last week's CPAC conference?

[00:01:01] And how did his meeting with President Trump's cabinet go? We'll hear from WSJ columnist Tim Higgins as we track Musk's first hundred days in the Trump White House. But first, have you ever Googled best boots for rain? Or which computer should I buy to edit my own podcast? If you have, then you've probably seen more than a few websites with product review lists.

[00:01:27] But Google's recent rule changes have had a profound impact on sites like CNN Underscored, Forbes Vetted, and BuySide from WSJ, which is operated by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones. Here to fill us in is WSJ reporter Alexandra Bruel. Alexandra, when we say Google changed the rules, what exactly did Google do here?

[00:01:49] Last year, Google launched this site reputation abuse policy, essentially prohibiting certain content created by what they call a separate entity from appearing in its search pages. They then later updated this policy to say that they will eliminate this content from the search engine, even if there's oversight from the host site or the publisher themselves.

[00:02:15] So if a publisher, for example, has a product recommendation site and is working with a separate entity, which Google defines as a third-party company that's operating the site or creating content or even freelancers who are considered separate entities, that they are potentially in violation of this site reputation abuse policy.

[00:02:39] So Google also, as part of this policy, launched a manual review process, which involves not just its technology and the algorithms that often detect content, but also humans. So human beings are now looking for these websites that are allegedly violating this site reputation abuse policy. Why did Google change its parameters for searches like this?

[00:03:05] Google says that it's aiming to improve the quality of its content. And it feels that there are times when publishers that own these product recommendation sites and other so-called affiliate websites are taking advantage of its search engine by using their established publishing brands,

[00:03:29] these well-known publishing brands, knowing that their publishing brands will rank highly in Google search to get these other sites that they own, these product recommendation sites, to also rank highly in their search. How important are these product review sites for news media generally? These sites in recent years have become more and more important for publishers.

[00:03:50] Publishers make money on product review sites when people go look at these products, click on links, and purchase the products on Amazon or wherever they're purchasing the products. So it's an e-commerce revenue stream. And for a while, these sites were growing, and they were growing thanks in large part to traffic from Google. Now with this policy, it's become nearly impossible for many of these websites to make money. How could this change impact consumers?

[00:04:18] Google would argue that the upside for consumers and for its users is they're getting rid of a lot of the content that publishers have no business making, and therefore that isn't genuine and that isn't high quality enough to rank highly in its search engine. So their claim is that they're improving the quality of the content that consumers see through its search engine when they search for best slippers or best headphones or whatever it might be.

[00:04:47] They'll get a real review from a site that has focused on this particular industry or area of goods. That was WSJ Reporter Alexandra Bruel. Coming up, Elon Musk says he's bringing a tech upgrade to the federal government. But what could that look like? Our Musk Doge update after the break.

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[00:05:49] Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is still in its early days. But over the course of a few weeks, Musk has recommended gutting US-Aid, pushed for sweeping job cuts elsewhere, and talked about getting rid of entire departments altogether. To catch us up on the latest in DC, our columnist Tim Higgins joins us now as part of our series looking at Musk's first hundred days in the Trump White House. Tim, let's start with the email Musk sent to government employees.

[00:06:19] That's what everybody's talking about, right? If you're a government employee, you got this email from Elon Musk saying, essentially, what did you do last week? On X, he's telling workers that if they don't respond, then they could lose their job. And this roiled everybody in Washington. And if you're a longtime Elon Musk follower like I am, you know exactly the origins of this kind of email. This was the infamous message that he sent the then Twitter CEO

[00:06:46] when Musk was investing in the company back in 2022. Musk had become unhappy with Twitter, and he sends a message to the CEO. What did you do last week? And ultimately, Musk really didn't care. He decided that he couldn't work with that CEO, and he was going to take that company private. And so this has become, in a lot of ways, his calling card. It's become a meme. You got to remember, a lot of people who voted for Trump were excited at the idea of Elon Musk

[00:07:14] going to Washington and doing what he did at Twitter to the government's spending, the government ranks, this feeling that there's just too much government. And that is something that Musk is trying to make a reduction of. Okay. And how have people reacted? It's not unheard of to reduce the size of government. It is not unheard of to do reorganizations, but they are generally not this flashy. They are generally not this loud.

[00:07:42] What Musk is doing is bringing his brand of corporate shakeup to Washington. This is not the way things happen in Washington. And it's also on a level of just publicity that some of this clearly is politics. Musk appeared on stage at CPAC last week holding a chainsaw. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw! It was given to him by the president of Argentina, Javier Millet.

[00:08:11] What's going on? Why was Musk waving a chainsaw around on stage? Well, it gets at this idea that he is taking a chainsaw to the government. Precisely what he yelled was, This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. And this is what Musk has been very good at in recent years of focusing attention on his ideas. He has made bean counting sexy. Think about it. We were talking about the idea of reducing costs and trying to reduce FTEs.

[00:08:41] And what Musk has done is pulled that from the boring category and put it into the drama category, which gets at this kind of other idea how Musk kind of creates momentum. And creates support for his efforts. He is there with a chainsaw and going after government. What about tech? What are the technological solutions he's proposed? Musk talked about how he was going to go to Washington and use AI tools to comb through the government's spending

[00:09:09] and comb through regulations and comb through bills. The laws that were passed to understand them, to target where they could easily make these cuts. And right now it's not really looking like a technological marvel. It's looking like brute force. For a lot of people, the idea that Elon Musk is in Washington using AI to improve the government is really the first and biggest public experiment with this new technology. Now, it's not even clear yet to what extent he's using AI.

[00:09:40] But the idea that he is is unnerving to folks. Well, there has been pushback. There are some lawsuits against some of Doge's actions. How are those lawsuits going? It's almost a daily fight at this point to pay attention to who's winning and who's losing. And it really is creating kind of an air of confusion and chaos. It kind of feeds into some of the critics feeling that Trump and Musk aren't being transparent about the way they're cutting things

[00:10:09] or about the way they're going about their business. They would disagree. They feel like they're telling everybody what they're up to. But there's definitely been a push by Democrats on the Hill for Elon to be more transparent, asking him to disclose his personal finances and what potential conflicts of interest there might be. The president has said that Musk will not involve himself where there could be a potential conflict of interest. There's just a lot of concern there among certain quarters. Of course, some of those quarters are Democrats, so there is that.

[00:10:38] But it is part of the thing that's circling all of this. This week, Elon Musk attended his first cabinet meeting hosted by the U.S. president, and they announced more layoffs. Even in that meeting, how did Trump react to people who pushed back against Musk? We saw Trump praise Musk's efforts, and then he asked the cabinet if anyone was dissatisfied with him, and nobody responded. And the president then says, is anyone unhappy with Elon?

[00:11:05] If you are, we'll throw you out of here, end quote. That's a huge endorsement. We just see kind of doubling down on having that Musk magic, if you will. That was WSJ columnist Tim Higgins. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Jess Jupiter. I'm your host, Charlotte Gartenberg. Additional support this week from Julie Chang. Jessica Fenton and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Catherine Millsap. Our development producer is Aisha Al-Muslim.

[00:11:34] Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are the deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.