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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?
That's a good question, Brett. I know that the atmosphere inside Google hasn't changed in any substantial way, e.g. become money-grubbin' or caring less about our users or their privacy--we're still working hard to give high-quality search results back to users. And if you go into Google on a Saturday like today, you'll see quite a few engineers there.
Hi Googleguy,
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
to see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An' foolish notion."
(SOURCE: Robert Burns: "To a Louse", 1786)
Google built its brand on two things:
1. Quality results
2. Free from a commercial skew
This fitted the Utopian vision of the Internet and both sides of the equation where as important as the other. There was a kind of trust built between Google and its users. Absolutely no doubt that Google results could be trusted. They were completely clean.
The complete destruction of the second part of this equation now threatens to destroy the first. I think that there is a very real danger that users will start to distrust results and become suspicious of Google’s motives. You see from an outside point of view Google has not just done a U turn and put its foot on the commercialism gas pedal, it has embraced its conversion to commercialism in such a strong way that commercial is its new brand image, oh and by the way the results are OK. Every new product that Google launches seems to be focused on making money from advertising further strengthening its single minded brand image of commercialism.
If you have got this wrong your golden goose will lay eggs like mad for a while and then whither and die. I wonder if the noise that motivated Brett to start this thread is an indication that the goose is starting to feel the stress of kicking out those eggs.
Personally I don’t see a problem with this commercial bias on its own it is simply the strength of the U turn that kind of grates a bit. It’s a bit like the Pope installing condom machines in the Vatican ;)
Best wishes
Sid
As a relative outsider I have to agree there is a lot of sense in what he says. The techies in our place are influential and used to love Google. No more.
Through whatever motive, around about "Florida", they became negative. Even I noticed quality falling, though at the time I had no idea that it was some sort of SEO issue. They lost a lot of their core, most important, support in a very short period indeed.
I too suspect that was the start of the ball rolling.
It's strange, because I feel like about two weeks ago we launched numrange search, images in news results, web alerts, the UI redesign, and a demo of personalized search--all of which I think of as non-commercial changes and improvements.
Anyway, time to head home for the night. Catch you tomorrow..
Since for many webmasters that's no longer Google, the Y word forms on their lips where it used to be the G word when promoting their favorite engine.
And the converse applies ... want to trash a search engine? ... the G word is uttered much easier these days.
I think most webmasters could care less how Google operates with GMail ... the grumbling has deeper roots.
Google will be an interesting test case, to see just how valuable the support of the webmaster community is to a search engine. Can losing the support of legions of webmasters send Google into an Alta Vista death spiral? Stay tuned for the next episode of Search for Tomorrow.
The bigger Google becomes the more search variations they are creating.
In theory they should then be making a larger number of searchers and webmasters happy. (more variation and more specifics on first page results)
As others say, I still have to see overall stats on the contrary.
>>....a good time to remind folks that there's other search engines out there and diversification plus keeping eggs in many baskets
In a way all the Google search variations/options/localisations mean the "other search engines". ;)
In Europe we've had Google localisation for a much longer time (the only results from France option). It makes more sense optimising for "only results from France option" than seeking Yahoo referrals for certain countries/languages..
Gmail is the logical step for Google in securing their core-business; search results for showing ads adjacently. Its just the rolling out and reaction of the Gmail program announcement that could have been better.
I'd say Google has one fear and that will be Microsoft in a couple of years and how they (are allowed to) implement search within the (non-browser)operating system. Meanwhile Google might overrush portalisation though..
"We've scoured the entire internet and found the perfect woman for you, born2drv... she loves corvettes, golf and she's jewish too... now just send us a check for $500 payable to Google, Inc. and we'll hook you up ;)"
When you throw privacy out the window, there are all kinds of other things on the net you can monetize when you think about it ;)
See if google were to make a dating site, and make the best search engine driven dating site out there, I have no problem with this. If they're going to take browser data based on the sites I surf to figure out what my interests, likes&dislikes are and feed this into their dating database to refine their search, obviously everyone would cry foul. I think Google is crossing that boundry now with Gmail.
b) big - just bigness (everyone loves to pick on the big guy)
e) competitors planting seeds of division
d) goto e)
;-)
The more preparations they make for IPO, the more people wake up.
The criticism is unfair IMO and just reflects the fact the gullible are upset at being proven to be naive.
I don't think they are doing anything worse than any other large company - its just that their power in the market makes it more noticeable.
The thing that strikes me about it all though, is that it appears like it is a bit of piling on to me. A bit of a feeding frenzy by the press. They smell a bit of blood in the water and are circling.
Journalism in no longer about the facts, it's about sensationalism, because that's what sells, so of course it is piling on.
Google is the engine people love to hate depending of course on where you fall in the serps for any given month. The month you rank well, Google is great, fantastic, blah, blah, then an algo tweak and suddenly you don't rank so well and all of a sudden Google sucks, horrible results, then your site comes back and bingo Google is God again.
Agreed 100%. I also think that this place is not the best resource to measure how the public feels about Google. We are a subset of the internet user population, and most everyone here has an agenda {now that I think about it... even me}
