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Google does come in for a lot of bashing on this forum, and to be fair, complements as well.
However the complements sometimes are fairly obtuse and on fringe aspects - nice logos, "my sites going well so G must be good!".... ...And the complaints often revolve around "..my site is going bad so G must be bad", fears of monopoly, and google's anti-spam efforts which will always please some and not others, including those who have foolishly based a long term business model on an assumption that the current basis Web and its "rules" will always be the same.
Whatever happens in the future post IPO, I thought it was worth a look at what Google has really done substantively so far for the web, and maybe even business and society in general.
Here's my start, and feel free to disagree...
1. Google started the trend for clean fast loading front pages - the uncluttered look that has become almost mainstream for other search engines and even other web sites in general.
2. Almost by itself, it was the first search engine to supplant on-page text analysis as the sole, or maybe even the major determinant of SERP positioning. Others followed. Meta tag stuffing and keyword density, key techniques in the AV era, are now expiring their last breaths, though density may still have a few months/years left as a secondary technique.
3. It empowered small, amateur and non mainstream information sites with original content, who looked set for destruction as the big publishing monopolies such as AOL/Time Warner sought to buy over the web a few years ago.
Just as a small example.. as a small independent news site, one of our sites now gets 15% of it's hits from news.google. It comes up in keyword searches against CNN, BBC, and all major print newspapers.
There is no way we could get that exposure in the tied up money-monopoly field of non-web publishing controlled by a few major publishing oligarchies.
Another example, our small commercial site now competes directly with massive MNC's in our business area. Just by targeting, simple messages, and knowing the customer. Most of our new leads now come from the internet - there was no way we could compete with them by sending our paper brochures, turning up at numerous conferences and seminars and working rooms and all the other mainstays of traditional marketing and branding.
I do sometimes muse about how much of the AOL/TW demise may be due, in no small part, to Google's ability to direct users to non-mainstream sites who are not necessarilly part of the publishing, retail, or other oligarchies.
4. With adwords, though they were not the first, they enabled small advertisers with small budgets and niche markets to have their ads seen as well as the big players.
Google, to me has harnessed some of the real power of the Web - of targeting, niching, and page reputation based on content for example, while those who saw the internet as just another form of media with the same rules as traditional media have been frustrated.
No matter what happens in the IPO, personally I find it hard to argue that Google has not had an influence on publishing that will be seen in future as a major force of change in the late 1990's to early 2000's. Its influence in changing the way the Web works as media has been enormously significant, just as the Web was looking like drowning in a deep morass of banners, spin and unfulfilled promises.
OK there may be bad things - the encouragement of a mass of off topic reciprocal linking perhaps the worst. But its hard for me to damn a company for monopolizing market share just becuase it took risks on their view of the future and provides a hih quality product. And my feeling is that g! just now is at the very pinnacle of its influence that it will achieve at any time.
We have to be grateful for the real changes that G! has made to the internet I think, and weigh it against our other concerns on Google dominance and SERPS that sometimes don't make sense.
No matter how much i hate the term for its emotional nuances and vague definion, google has truly democratized the web in the end... all said and done, it has empowered the little guy with good ideas and good products.
It is the most important ship in the www ocean
and
it needs some good bashing once in a while, just to keep on track.
The 'Google Values' have been instrumental in slowing down the rush to an MSN type web, in which everything you see is directly paid for (and generally where the most relevant sites are buried). Consideration of the small guy and his free content site has been a key to success, and given Google a diversity that helps retain its own appeal.
My only hope here is that they retain those values, which must be under real threat if the IPO materializes. If they do retain them, and their existing attitudes/approaches, they will certainly retain my support.
What is the IPO?
This PhD inspired academic BS has basterdized the SERPS.
In my view Web sites should rise or fall based on their own merits not on links from other sites, many of which have questionable value themselves.
I do not intend to add a lot of links to my pages and I pay the price for it under current algorithms. However I do quite well
by just adding more pages to make up for what I consider a penalty. Even with a low PR pages can still get a lot of hits.
I suspect lots of webmasters take this tact and it
just results in a great number of unnecessary pages on the net.
You do what you have to do to minimize the impact of the over thinkers.
My 2c worth.
