willybfriendly - 5:27 am on Apr 20, 2007 (gmt 0)

>>>OK, we can do that when you're willing to acknowledge that Google has the same rights you do in terms of sending traffic to third parties. (Do you allow anyone and everyone to demand unlimited referrals from your site?)<<<

There is a bit of a difference here. Google uses my site's content to make their money. Without my site ("my" in the global sense of "our" sites) Google would not have anything on which to piggyback their "paid links".

What was once a symbiotic relationship is becoming a parasitic relationship. Google, via their dominance, has twisted the "natural linking" of the Internet.

"Paid links" existed before Google. But, Google has turned virtually all links into commodities. Understand that. Links are now a commodity just as surely as eggs, pork bellies and operating systems. Google did not create links, but they have pretty well cornered the market on commoditized links, and they are using their market share in ways that are very much aimed at controlling others ability to trade in the commodity.

The no follow tag was implemented so that site owners could protect themselves from third parties placing uninvited and unscreened links on their sites by disincentivicing their placement. It was not intended to help Google clean up their SERPs (consisting of scraped content), nor to assist Google in monopolizing commoditized links.

Let's give up the myth that Google is just some young nerds organizing the world's information and freely providing a service the everyone. Google is the world's largest ad agency, and they are monetizing the the world's information for the benefit of their stockholders.

They are monetizing your information, and mine, and they are now taking active steps to interfere in our ability to monetize it for ourselves.

If Google did not have its current dominance, no one would care a bit that they were trying to stamp out paid links (other than their own). And, no one would pay much attention to their request (demand?) that people use a no follow tag. It is only because of their dominance that their demand carries any weight.

You seem to want to discount the relevance of: 1) Googles dominance, 2) the commoditization of links as a result of their dominance and algorythms, and 3) the fact that their business model is based on the parsitic use of other's content.

Your argument that my site and Google are identical in terms of rights to refer traffic lack merit due to the fact that you ignore such significant differences. If all things are equal, as you suggest, then I have a right to utilize Google SERPs to monetize my site equal to Google's right to use my content to monetize their site. Win/win. Everyone should be happy, right?

WBF