Google: Don’t (Not) Be Evil

Google continued to ruin the internet as we know it yesterday.

But first, let me preface this with, “I am not an Apple fanboy.” I actually own zero Apple products. I have an Android phone and tablet. I’ve used pretty much all of Google’s products – Wave, Buzz, and was an early adopter of Gmail and Google+. With that out of the way, let me continue with my original intention of tearing into a company I loved.

“Don’t be evil,” Google’s infamous motto. But what they’re really doing is selling us out. We’ll get to yesterday, but first we have to do some history sleuthing.

Early last year, Google shook up the search world with what’s been dubbed the Panda updates. Essentially, this update (for the most part) increased the search rankings of sites with actual content and decreased the ranking of content farms and sites consisting mostly of advertising. This update affected a reported 12% of websites in March. It’s a great idea to push bad content down and original content up; or, according to Google,

Trust us. We’re putting the bad guys on one side, and the good guys on the other. -El Goog

Well, that sounds ‘not’ evil. Actually, it sounds really great. So what’s the problem?

Google launched Google+ in the middle of the year with Skynet-like plans to go mano y mano with Facebook. There were a couple of problems in their plan though. Their two huge social media attempts, Orkut (unless you live in Brazil) and Buzz were complete embarrassments for the search giant. Google+ essentially became their final stand. If Google+ failed, so would their hopes at having a social media beachhead, unless they bought Twitter. So, why not fudge everything around to ensure it succeeds. (Evil laughter.)

The way Google+ integrates the +1 button across the web ties it directly into how search rankings appear. The +1 became a factor in how a page ranked, though, we can’t be sure as to how much it affects it, but an early test showed that it plays a vital role. When word began to get around that it became an important tool for websites to rank better, brands and bloggers jumped on it hoping to increase their own visibility. Google, which dominates search by a huge margin (Google: 65.4%, Yahoo 15%, Bing 15% in December 2011), used their own product to plug another. We’ll get back to Google+.

Well, that’s kind of evil. But let’s start tying all of this together.

Google’s Panda update meant to punish people abusing the system – paid backlinks, paying people to write about how awesome Chrome is (publishing this through Chrome, actually), buying YouTube views. Yes, Google did all of these things albeit indirectly outsourcing their advertising to a company who then outsourced it again. Also, Google is currently facing an anti-trust suit because of allegations surrounding their promotion of personal products ahead of others. To remedy the situation, Google has punished Chrome by burying it in search results, as it would another company.

Some redemption, but Google does have bad ways of forcing people to use its products, as with Google+. Recently, Google has stopped sharing search results with website admins. Before this administrators could clearly see who was searching for what before coming to their site, now they’re increasingly getting more and more , [no data] or search results. We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of we’ve been getting. Google said it would only affect about 10% of results, but look at our search results for this morning and you be the judge. (We have no problem sharing this because, well, yeah..)

Of course, if you really wanted to know, you could pay for AdWords and see the keywords there. Um, what?

Here, the culmination of months of shrugging it off, knowing that Google really is working for my betterment, for a better internet experience for users like me. Google+ is now going to be deeply integrated into search. Let’s say you search for something. I’m in your circle. If I had posted something or follow a relevant company, there’s a good chance whatever I liked or shared from my Google+ page will show up in your search results. Of course, the effects will be compounded based on how many people in your circles shared the same thing or something similar. It will push big brands up and small ones down. Google+ becomes even more important to search. This is Google’s strategy to leveraging a social network base, by forcing it upon us.

Don’t be evil. But It’s not the first time we complained about Google being evil either.

Search has turned into Facebook ads. Search Engine Marketing will be dead because brands have a new set of people working for them—us. I miss a simpler time when I was only mad at Google for losing the real time Twitter updates.