Has Google Jumped the Shark?

March 14, 2012 by

Google has some pretty typical tech giant roots.  What began as a fledgling start-up, has grown into a behemoth tech company.  Or, it was a tech company.  Not so very long ago, Google was a search engine that was hell-bent on creating better search, and increasing the user experience of it’s search engine.  Slowly (or not so slowly, depending on who you ask.), the user experience of search, and the quality of their search have taken a back burner to the more profitable parts of the company.

James Whittaker has a really good post on why he quit Google, and the loss of direction by the company.  Directly, he mentions the transformation of the company.

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Google, even from the inside, is no longer a tech company with a great product, but an advertising company.  The once shining star product of that company, a search engine, has become beleaguered with a proliferation of the new product, advertising.  For any search that you perform on the site, the first several results are sponsored results.  Once, those sponsored results stood out from the rest of the results and were easy to bypass and move on to the “real” results.  Now, those sponsored results stand out far less, and with the integration of Google+, it’s unclear what is and what isn’t a real, relevant result.

Add on top of all that Google’s new privacy policy, and you have a company that is dedicated more to advertising than anything else that has an incredible amount of your usage data.  That same policy basically says they can use your usage data however they so please across most of their services.  Ironically enough, Google Wallet won’t be sharing in the new privacy policy.  Why?  Because the privacy regulations for services that perform monetary transactions like Wallet does require more stringent policy policies.  My question?  How much do you value your internet usage statistics?  What do they say about you?  And, shouldn’t your usage (along with purchasing/shopping habits) be just as valuable as your monetary data?  In an era where identity theft is at an all-time high, and personal privacy is being infringed upon at every turn, shouldn’t you do what you can to protect whatever personal data you can?

Ask.com anti-Google campaign on the London tube © by Lars Plougmann

Has Google jumped the shark?  I don’t think you’ll find it any secret that I think they have.  They’ve always been borderline with me, but there comes a time when enough is enough. While I doubt that I’ll stop using all of their services, I think it’s time to start finding some alternatives to their products.  Unfortunately, in a world where the verb “Google” is synonymous with searching for something on the internet, I don’t think that we can completely write their search off, but we can certainly start supporting their competitors (chiefly, Bing and Yahoo), until such a time that the situation changes. I’m walking with my wallet, and my data somewhere else.

What about you?  Are you O.K. with Google collecting data and using it to maximize their advertising revenue?  How much of the data that Google has on you would you be O.K. with potentially becoming public should your account get hacked?

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Microsoft and Yahoo from a SEO/PPC/OnlineTrepreneur Perspective

April 11, 2008 by

Much has been said about the potential merging of Microsoft and Yahoo.  The talk has been exceptionally heavy in the last month or so.  I’ve talked about it here once or twice and probably will again.  But most of the talk has been around the technology ramifications of the merger.  The changes that would occur in search market share and what it would mean for Google.  But what about us?  What about the online entrepreneur? 

We do SEO, PPC and various other things that could be affected by a merger of Microsoft and Yahoo.  What changes can we expect from this merger if it were to happen?  Here’s how I see it going down.

In the world of SEO, it narrows things down a bit.  Instead of everybody trying to do the SEO for all three of the search engines, they only have two major ones.  Of course, I’m of the camp that thinks that you follow a few tenets and don’t worry about what any one individual search engine wants, so that doesn’t change much for me. 

From a PPC perspective, things will (regardless) change.  Even without the merger, things are changing.  Yahoo maybe in talks to test out using Google for search advertising.  I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen as it would be a major blow to Microsoft and when was the last time Google passed that up.  And Yahoo is unlikely to pass it up just out of spite.  If, however, the merger were to go through, it would form a viable competitor to the Google advertising engine.  Suddenly, choosing between the two would become a little less obvious.  Some don’t choose now, but there are many that only use one of the engines. 

As an Online Entrepreneur, the merger could mean several things.  The most obvious is a healthy alternative to anything Google.  For those that would actively rebel against The Great Googely Moogely, a merger could be very good.  Another, less positive, way to think about the merger would be the elimination of choice.  Instead of three engines, we would only have two.  There are many that can’t stand either Google or Microsoft and actively try to use Yahoo and others whenever possible.  The merger would cause there to only be two large choices.  The rest would be table scraps and not push enough traffic to worry about.

In the end, I can’t say whether the merger will go through or not.  Yahoo doesn’t seem to be very receptive and also seems to be getting quite a bit of help in thwarting the “attack”.  Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn’t seem all that willing to give up.  And let’s face it; Microsoft usually doesn’t give up.  They’ve lost a couple of times, but rarely do they give up.

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Let Sleeping MSFTs Lie

February 22, 2008 by

Google’s Sergey Brin seems to think that he needs to speak out against the MSFT/Yahoo! merger that may or may not happen in the near to distant future.

“The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies. And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving,” Brin said.

I had to chuckle a little when I read that. I agree with Brin, but that could just as easily describe Google as it does Microsoft. The only real difference is that Google doesn’t have a retail version of the GooglOS that they run in the Googleplex. They certainly control some browsers. Just as many as MS does with IE I’d wager. And as far as tyeing up the top web sites, take a close look at the Digital Point forums next time Google does an update of their PageRank. When you tie up 60%+ of the search engine traffic, that affects the top Web sites much more than a simple difference in browser engines. And lets not get started on manipulation that is possible.

All of this is a play on people’s fears of a Microsoft Monopoly. The problem with the logic is that a merger of MSFT and YHOO doesn’t create a monopoly. It eats into one. It creates a very valid competitor in the search venue. And after a few years of Google encroaching on Microsofts territory (see Google Docs), it scares Google to see the giant awakened.

You see, the old business folks know that if you find yourself toe to toe with a competitor and you don’t possess the tools to fight that competitor, you partner yourself with someone who does. Microsoft has been struggling to keep up with Google and other online innovators for quite some time. The problem is that Microsoft had been mostly content to leave Google in it’s place of power for search and go about their business struggling to move into that arena. Then Google started getting into Microsoft’s neighborhood with Google Docs and next thing you know, Microsoft is on the attack.

If you ask me, Google should have just let sleeping MSFTs lie.

Disclaimer: I own MSFT shares, but not enough to care…

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