netmeg - 3:25 pm on Dec 14, 2011 (gmt 0)

Umm, anti-trust isn't the same as trust (as in whether or not you trust Google) - look it up.

Even without all the other stuff that Google has added, there have never been more than ten links on the first page. When someone falls, someone rises. It has always been this way.

As I mentioned in the e-commerce forum, you need to have the same adaptability online as you would need to have offline. Google stops sending you traffic - you need a plan B. Or the city rips up the street in front of your brick and mortar store for a year and you get no foot traffic - you still need a plan B.

Point to other search engines? They're not lily white either. Did you read about how Bing deindexed a bunch of Black Friday and Cyber Monday related sites a couple days before Thanksgiving, promoted its own BF and CM results, and then quietly restored the sites well after the shopping surge was over? If Google had done that, there would at very least be a NY Times article written by now. That sure *looks* pretty evil.

It's been almost a year since the first Panda, and it's time to get real. The government is not going to step in and run Google; people don't think the government can run health care, they're not going to want it to essentially run the internet. Moreover, it's international, so one government *can't* make these kinds of changes. Google isn't going to care about any one of us individually. Microsoft has all the money in the world and still can't seriously dent Google's hold on search, nor is Bing proving to be any kind of white knight either. And you can't *make* people not use Google if that's what they want to use.

You need to focus on what you can control. First look at your business model - even if it's been a good one, are a million other people doing exactly the same thing? Can you do it significantly (and visibly) better? If not, then find a better model, because you will be winnowed out.

And if you can't keep up, if you can't learn to adapt quickly, then you really have to question whether or not you're in the right business at all.

Yea, I said it.