Brett_Tabke - 3:33 am on Dec 23, 2009 (gmt 0)

>because then they would be accused of being uncaring, of not contributing.

No, the issue is that they tied a yearly contribution to charity (which they have done for 10 years straight) to a vendor swag programs. This was not about charity, it was about discontinuing a program that vendors had come to look forward too.

Lets review:
- Google retracts almost every webmasters/siteowner outreach program it had in 2009.
- They left the trade show circut. Other than what they had contracted a year earlier, they eliminated their participation in trade shows.
- Left their own speakers to pay for their own way to industry conferences. (denying expense receipts).
- Eliminated AdWords account support.
- Layed off hundreds (thousands according to some reports) temp advertising support reps.
- Canceled the Google customer support party (Google dance).
- Eliminated the vendor appreciation programs for AdSense and Adwords.

Everything Google has done in the last year has screamed, "AdSense and AdWords markets are maximized or tapped out. Put it into maintenance mode and lets go see where else we can make money."

And so 2009 was about Chrome, Google Docs, Android Mobile, and now Android Desktop. Google's support and money is going into those projects and no longer into programs such as vendor appreciation programs. 2009 was the year Google came to the realization that search is no longer its future. (I must give a nod to Google that I didn't think they would have the nads to come to that conclusion - let alone start to take action on it.)