Google Under Siege - Fair or Unfair?

[Brett_Tabke]

The Gmail outcry is huge. The Local search outcry is growing. The number of negative Google stories out there is a surprise.

It seems Google can't please anyone these days.

What is the root of it all?

a) The Florida update?
b) Big - just plain bigness (everyone loves to pick on the big guy)?
c) Poor management?
d) Public relations dept screw up?
e) Competitors planting seeds of division?
f) All of the above?

[Compworld]

Problem is that Google is preparing to make the big jump from private to public company. When this was originally announced, everyone and their grandmother came out to berate them. Another thing, Google main ideology was to build a pure productive search engine without much commercial interference, well now that the vulture capitalists was to make some bread, they have to turn into a fast cash money producing machine to look good for prospective shareholders and financial institutions. So, they are trying to handle too many things at once, as well as grow up faster than the company is able to. You know what happens then... Well, every mix water and oil together? Its a complete mess, and so is the Google infrastructure. It’s a company build on a deck of cards. Is hallowed up and has not structure. They had fallen back on their initial focus for the green. Its fine to make money, even make a lot of it.. But to go back on what the company was originally founder for, that's just despicable, and that is why Google is going to be another Paypal. Only they won't be in eBay's camp, they will either be in YHOO's or MSFT's.

CompWorld

[mquarles]

Google is also at that stage. It can no longer afford just to please its US audience but in order to be "the best SE" has to cater to global perceptions as to what is appropriate search results. China is the big growing market, and there Google is in competition with home-grown SEs like Baidu, not to mention Yahoo's Hong Kong holdings.

While I refuse to enter any European-American discussion, primarily because it's totally fruitless for all concerned, I do think this is a good point. Google's market is certainly not U.S. only.

I think a lot of the anti-Google stuff is inevitable when one player achieves total dominance. As a purely self-centered American who only cares about the effect on my wallet, I don't want any one SE to be too dominant (i.e. too important to my wallet). I think most of us all over the world get a little scared when one company has too much of the pie, and will try to tear them down. I am not convinced that anything Google does will be interpreted as "right" in these circumstances.

Google has probably set themselves up for this even more by building an image as a white knight--an image that I believe is unsustainable as they grow.

MQ

P.S. That scares me a lot about TrustRank as well. Is it a good idea to put the Google results almost entirely in the hands of only 200 sites? They would wield a scary amount of power. IMHO this is already a problem with DMOZ. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I do believe that power corrupts.

[trumble]

Google is just another Silicon Valley company, financed by venture capitalists looking to maximise shareholder value. They were never anything more or less than that. Goodwill, however genuine, is just a means to that end. Commercial pressures will always override.

Google is so dominant over search and context-sensitive advertising that their power is inherently bad. If they have competitors doing a better job, commercial pressures will bring them into line.

Whether you're a publisher or an advertiser, you need a competitive field where noone dominates. I think people should abandon this sense of betrayal and support Google's competition. We debate endlessly about whether Google is good or bad, but saying Google Google Google all day long only reinforces their brand, thus their dominance, thus their ability to screw us.

[Essex_boy]

Saying Google, Google allday long?

We call out their name in the vain hope that theyll hear us and change route.

everyone so cheesed off with them as we all have followed their ruls to the letter only to have the rules changed without warning.

It just sucks.

[willybfriendly]

It just sucks.

I remember as a kid reading the line, "There's no such thing as gravity - the earth sucks."

A cathartic expression of frustration may be good for the soul. After a while though it is time to give it up.

I still use Google as my primary search. One of my kids uses Yahoo, one uses Ask, and my wife usually uses MSN, simply because it is the default search in her IE browser.

We all complain about equally when we can't find what we are looking for.

Google got too big, and then tried to do too much in too little time. They might have thought they were forced to by market pressures, but it has created the perception that they have lost their focus.

Fair or unfair? Life's not fair. It just is, and the G's current lot just is too.

WBF

[cabbie]

No one (I don't think) gets bashed more by google than me.They are always dropping my sites with penalties and bans and yet i have never thought to blame google for a second.
They are aiming to do the best they can and I am too.
A webmaster's job is to get all the traffic he can to a site and I have seen so many successful websites out there that not only do not have search engine traffic but actually ban them with robots text.
You only have to look at alexa to see some of the top traffic sites have no ranks in the serps.
So obviously there are so many more ways to get traffic other than search engines and my take on it is that if we need to rely on search engines for our income then we aren't doing our job as webmasters.

[edited by: cabbie at 6:27 am (utc) on April 19, 2004]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

>>We're witnessing just how hard it is for an organisation to make the transition from giving away to selling.<<

This is true to an extent but was it really ever Page and Brin's long term plan to work for nothing? No one can blame them for trying to make a few bob but where it all falls down is that their public persona is still that of the Righteous Brothers.

WRT to the USA/Europe issue, I also believe that Europeans have a keener sense of smell when it comes to BS. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but we do tend to be more cynical. If Google had made a public statement that they were changing their mission statement the current situation would have been more readily acceptable.

This is why this and other threads sometimes degenerate into a Europe/USA p***ing contest. I think we (Europeans) would have accepted the fact that they (Google) were moving into profit generation mode if they had just said so. Barbie and Ken we are not. Just give us the facts and we'll have a look at them.

They still claim that their whole aim in life is to produce the best search results when we all now know that all their main aim is trying to maximise profit. Sure, there are still areas (non-commercial) where Google excels but it is obvious if you search for commercial keywords the results are now hopelessly profit driven.

Meanwhile Yahoo, who are an overtly commercial organisation, grow and grow and post record results.

(Google, if you need an advisor on European attitudes give me a shout :o)

[Hissingsid]

Back in October if Google had started selling shares and I'd had the odd $1000 kicking about I think I might have bought some shares. Six months on I'm not so sure I would now.

The reason why.

Not because they/it have/has become money grubbing and not because of proposed invasion of privacy, I just think that the guys steering the ship at Google seem to have let go of the rudder.

The core product has been messed with in a way that has made many folks lose confidence in it. Google search is serving me personally very well and I'm very grateful for that but I feel different about it and different in this case isn't better. Then they have all too rapidly changed the lovely simple Google I loved. This and all of the other changes make me worry that something far worse than Florida might happen.

It looks like the purchase of Applied Semantics, Inc. was the turning point. Applied Semantics, Inc. has a track record of introducing innovation before the World was ready for it and of practices that have been heavily criticised here at WebmasterWorld in the past. The technology should be basically good its just how it is applied that causes the problem.

I think that Google's aquisition of Applied Semantics is at the root of their current problems. What they had before may not have been perfect but it had a simple clean honesty to it, just like the interface.

I sincerely hope that one of the Google founders gets a firm grip of the rudder and pulls Google back on course for its own sake and for all of our sakes.

Best wishes

Sid

[Edit] reason, typo

[edited by: Hissingsid at 8:16 am (utc) on April 19, 2004]

[SlowMove]

we fund 95% of all research and development World-wide

I don't know about funding, but as an American I know that we Americans don't have 95% of the intelligence.

[percentages]

>I think that Google's acquisition of Applied Semantics is at the route of their current problems.

Thanks for getting back OT. I suspect they might have tried something similar even if they hadn't bought the "technology".

I understand the purchase, theoretically it seemed like a good idea. But, maybe the formula Google already had was actually better.

Back in mid-November the floor certainly fell out of their quality. Since then someone at the Plex has had the good sense to see it, and they have done an "about-turn" to some extent.

The bottom line is that Google got to be popular because its search algorithm was superior. If Applied Semantics could have done it better we wouldn't have "Google News" today we would have "Applied Semantics News".

The Google management largely ditched their own work, their own formula, and took on that of an that of an acquisition.......they were an acquisition for a reason!

Google Execs should have had more confidence in themselves, they had it almost right, now they need to write off Applied Semantics as wishful thinking and get back to the fundamentals that made them popular.