rbacal - 12:31 am on Feb 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

My point wasn't to generate any kind of sympathy, but to broach a subject that isn't just particular to the Internet. Business needs some level of stability to function within, and grow. Otherwise, if the rules can change on what appears to be a whim, the risk management problems become too high.

I find it ironic that on one hand, google adsense has revived a struggling sector while on the other hand google search algo's are so unpredictable that they can be dampening web development.

I use other methods of promotion, marketing, and I'm not going bankrupt no matter what google does. But neither am I going to invest my intellectual capital and time in developing high quality, high labor intensive material, when I might have to wait 6 months or a year to get flippin indexed, never mind ranked. I'll write a print book instead.

There's different sectors to the Internet world...those that build sights and consider themselves web entrepreneurs who's prime interest is making money, via affiliates, ad sales, etc, and who have dedicated themselves to that in such a way as that's there means of living (and perhaps their only one). They get off on the machinations of SEO. Great.

On the other side, there are people such as myself (and I might add a lot of companies who can use the Internet as part of their business plans PROVIDED there is at least some stability and predictability to it, AND they have some control over their own destiny.

It concerns me (and I don't think it's a good thing) that google twitches and businesses stop or go. The economic influence of google is huge, and all you have to do is read all the messages trying to figure out what google is doing, has done, and will be doing.

In a lot of businesses, you don't get slaved (unless you are foolish) to one company who can, on a whim, stop your customers from even knowing you exist.

I'm not google bashing here. What we do need is more competition, and the power distributed more, in some ways like it used to be.

Now, tell me. I can create content rich sites in a number of topic areas, which may be hard to monetize. And I don't even care completely about the money. What I do care about, and the point is, that if I want to create great helpful sites that are not money earning oriented, the only way I can do that is to put my own money in it, or be comfortable with the fact that my 100 hours or 200 hours of developing content could very well be wasted. It's like writing a book, when there are only three publishers on the planet, and they all act capriciously.

I don't develop sites for only business reasons. I develop sites so people can read, benefit, enjoy, whatever. But a site that's not built for revenue, and might not see any visitors naturally occuring due to a sandbox...why bother?

It's like we're going backwards, to the early internet days before any decent search technology, where it ends up that a lot of sites can only be found through word of mouth.