SEOMike - 7:39 pm on Jul 15, 2010 (gmt 0)

What government should control it? The US Government? The EU? The UN? China? Should each country have it's own government oversight committee and team of G developers to maintain completely different algorithms? There's just no good solution to this.

If someone's site gets banned because they were spamming / blackhatting that's just the way it goes. If they naturally drop in the rankings because of an algorithm update, it's probably because they were neglecting some aspect of promoting their business online. (like good content and deep links) Also, too bad. If they drop in the listings because of competition, too bad again. If they don't know how to promote their business online, hire someone who does. No reasonable person can expect to be able to create their own TV commercial and distribute it, why does everyone feel entitled to great online placement without any expertise? I get really tired of the "Victim-of-Google" mentality. It's not Google's fault. They aren't a mean entity trying to keep you down. They are trying their best to deliver spam-free, highly relevant listings. If you're not spam-free or highly relevant, it's not their fault.

I have no sympathy for a brick-and-mortar store that fails to promote and then goes out of business... why should I have any sympathy for an online business that fails to promote? Just because the promotion channels are different on the web doesn't mean online businesses "deserve" oversight to protect them from big-bad private industry.

NYT was just trying to get some attention by plucking the heartstrings of today's entitlement mentality. Newspapers are irrelevant now anyway and attacking Google is a great way to make it to the nightly news.