How Long Until People View Google Like Microsoft?
From the Official Google blog 9 months ago
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
I expected a bit more class from Google. That would be like Microsoft publishing this
Could Google now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with ignoring copyright and establishing a virtual monopoly on text links? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Google has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- pushing the rel nofollow tag, telling people broking ads similar to Google's ads that they must mark paid links in a human readable way, then banning or demoting webmasters for following that advice, and paying criminals to steal their content and wrap it in Google ads.
It is interesting to note how much Google has changed in the past couple years: buying products like FeedBurner and taking the leading position in the feed reader market, buying YouTube and owning the video market.
And their network effects are starting to show up in their ad network / approach to their ad network:
- Google has begun selling itself ads for competing brand keywords.
- Google used their non-profit adsense ads to drive traffic to their maps.
- Google warned publishers of potentially lower AdSense earnings, then started advertising their new browser in their ad network.
- Google settled a copyright lawsuits with book publishers and authors for $125 million, in part giving in to the powers to be rather than standing for their principals, and perhaps in part to try to block competition. Back deal partnerships with the powers that be will only slow innovation. Harvard already dropped out of Google's book scanning project based on this new semi-porous partnership.
- Benjamin Edelman sued Google for funding typosquatting.
Google is finally getting to the size where they are starting to get market blowback from governments...
Google bought Russian ad network Begun, but the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service banned the purchase.
Today Google announced they were backing out of the proposed ad partnership with Yahoo!
However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.
Comments
In the height of the anti-microsoft "movement" people said that microsoft has presence in most pc's used and therefore will be able to push users more microsoft products. Google is in this stage now. most people use google and now we understand that pre setting IE homepage to msn.com does not enable microsoft to control our internet start page. Google now has control on how we consume our information and can track us while we consume it. What is more scary - one manufacturer making all the cars or one entity controlling all news outlets?
too true!
Google have had an incredible run, but one big problem has always loomed large: the vast majority of their earnings come from advertising. Now they're looking a bit desperate placing ads everywhere and paying AdSense publishers a LOT less than they used to. Not only that, look at how they're squeezing out "normal" organic listings from the first page in order to force people into advertising. They're squeezing as much as they can from advertising - these are the acts of a company desperate to report profit increases every quarter. Eventually they'll run out of room and (I hope) we'll see Google lose some share to other search engines (good for everyone but Google).
Do I smell "I'm a Google" commercials coming?
Unfortunately, I think that Google has a distinct advantage over Microsoft in that the barrier to entry in the search engine market is much higher than that of the browser and/or operating system market.
Google is definitely getting "too big" (whatever that means) and has morphed from it's humble beginnings, but I still think that they (like Apple and other "new money" tech companies) are much more altruistic than others. They are a far cry from Walmart, pharma, insurance, etc...
Or maybe I'm just swayed by the Project 10 to the 100thhttp://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html
When I look at that project I just think Google is good at public relations...rather than them being more altruistic. ;)
It's a little ironic that you're criticizing Google for compensating folks whose copyright it rode roughshod over when one of your main criticisms of Google is that it runs roughshod over people's copyrights...
That said, you make the point about Google having an outrageous dominance over online business and marketing, very well.
PR it is indeed.
Just take the case of Matt Cutts and how he came to DazzlinDonna's SEO Scoop blog and dealt with bloggers one-on-one.
www.seo-scoop.com/2008/01/24/matt-cutts-why-am-i-still-being-punished/
He exchanged messages, checked with his team, removed penalties and even restored Toolbar PR. Amongst the commenters there were Robin Good and Yaro Starak, who have a wide reader base. Just think if Matt hadn't come there, Yaro and Robin would have made posts that would have hurt Google's PR till date. However, after Matt Cutts counseling, both Yaro and Robin in fact did a favorable post for Google.
Also see Findlaw. They were caught selling links but still rank high for terms like 'legal professionals'. That, I think, because Google can't afford to be on bad terms with Thomson Reuters who control half the news supplied to the world.
So the day they start having PR Problems will be the beginning of their end (and I can feel that in some places).
Good examples there Affanlaghari...especially the Thomson Reuters one. :)
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