If you’re a tech nerd, you’ve probably heard of the latest “atrocity” Google has committed by now. I say that in a joking tone of course, although I do think it’s a valid ding in their credibility.
In case you’re not familiar with the basics of the story, Google has been pimping out it’s own services at the top of search results that appear to be related to one of their products. I first saw it from WordPress developer Matt, talking about promoting Blogger in blog-related searches, but apparently they’re applying similar tactics to promote their calendar and photo sharing services as well. Firefox developer Blake Ross has a great article on this issue with lots more details and insight.
I’m curious what everyone else thinks about this. Is it bad, and if so how bad and why? Discuss…
5 Comments
You might have figured I totally disagree with this. He says in the article, “Yahoo and Ask already do this, but they didn’t build their businesses on the promise of being unconventionally trustworthy”, I still think the ad is still trustworty they aren’t at all modifing search results, they are ads.
Sure, but the main problem in my opinion is that Google is no longer being honest with themselves. I linked to Blake’s article because I think he says it best here:
In addition, I think that while it’s certainly fine for them to include ads for their own services, I don’t know whether it’s really ethical (or in Google’s terms “evil”) to apply different rules to their own ads than they apply to those in their adsense product. To quote the article again:
The final nail in the coffin for me is that I think everyone is giving Google WAY more benefit of the doubt than it would give any other company (like Microsoft) if they did the exact same thing. As Blake points out, Microsoft could easily detect any time a Windows user tried to load Google search in their browser and instead pop up an alert that says “Looks like you’re trying to search the web. Try MSN Live Search for the best search results”. I’m pretty certain you would not be OK with this, but it’s exactly what Google is doing here.
I agree that Google is geting more benifit of any doubt but that’s because they haven’t done anything as drastic as MS, specifically with the defaults of every MSN product in Win and the hoops to change them.
I also think it’s in our best interest to bring this up to keep them honest but as I said they really haven’t done anything “evil” just yet. This is just some dumb marketing “expert” convincing the real geeks to change how they manage the ads of their own products.
We went through this same thing when they moved Video to the main search page as an option bumping another.
Whether they’ve done anything “evil” or not is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I (personally) wouldn’t use the term evil to describe them, that was mostly just to play on their “don’t be evil” slogan.
I think there are several valid points in the article which I quoted and highlighted in my previous comment, and I haven’t seen any compelling counter arguments to them yet.
If you’re referring to the author of the article I linked to (Blake Ross) as a “marketing expert” I’d correct you on that; he’s one of the main developers of Firefox, which I think gives him plenty of “real geek” cred, as well as insight into Google as a company, since they have a strong relationship with them.
Marketing expert within google telling the “real geeks” of google…