The tweet is attributing to Google a statement explicitly decrying placement of ads at the top of search results. This is not anywhere in the statement.
To make an untruth into a truth, it's necessary to zoom out and get fuzzy in words so the one thing kinda-sorta means the other.
So you can make things fuzzy by saying "ads on top" kinda sorta means "making ads look like search results" which kinda means it's okay to attribute a thing to Google that wasn't said.
I think the breakdown is this: people feel like this clarification is a challenge. When I say "google didn't say that about ad placement" people hear "Google has never done anything wrong with their search ads." And so it's a proxy for that argument.
Maybe. I think it's less fuzzy - the ads back then were clearly ads and harder to mix up with search results. So even if Google had ads on top of search results then, it wasn't as misleading. Or rather: The statement looked valid then, but doesn't anymore. That's what people pick up on.
To make an untruth into a truth, it's necessary to zoom out and get fuzzy in words so the one thing kinda-sorta means the other.
So you can make things fuzzy by saying "ads on top" kinda sorta means "making ads look like search results" which kinda means it's okay to attribute a thing to Google that wasn't said.
I think the breakdown is this: people feel like this clarification is a challenge. When I say "google didn't say that about ad placement" people hear "Google has never done anything wrong with their search ads." And so it's a proxy for that argument.