Google - Now With More Google in Your Google TM

Ben Edelman did it again :)

This time he highlighted how Google hard codes their search results:

[When] we roll[ed] out Google Finance, we did put the Google link first. It seems only fair right, we do all the work for the search page and all these other things, so we do put it first... That has actually been our policy, since then, because of Finance. So for Google Maps again, it's the first link. - Marissa Mayer

If they gain certain privileges in the marketplace by claiming to not abuse their power and that their algorithmic results are neutral, but those algorithmic results may be pushed below the fold, then is it "only fair" for them to put themselves in a default market leading position in any category they feel they can make money from by selling ads in? Or is that an abuse of power?

As Google adds features, collects more data, puts ads everywhere, and pushes into being a publisher on more fronts, at some point there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. Big money is paying attention and the list of "evidence" grows weekly. Sometimes they still think like a start up. And that will lead to their demise.

It might not be anytime soon, but eventually they will hit a whammy.

Published: November 16, 2010 by Aaron Wall in google internet

Comments

hugoguzman
November 16, 2010 - 2:58am

Loved that game show!

Google's setting their sites on the TV frontier right now. That's where the real money is (and where the potential whammy you're referring to might manifest itself).

danielw
November 16, 2010 - 5:58pm

Only a few years ago Google went on the war path nuking all those web/business directories that showed up in the serps. Now here we are seeing them push their own business directory into the search results, artificially ensuring "Google Places" is at all the best positions so they can display more ads. "Google Places" is not subject to the same impartial algorithm as other websites are and that is a complete sham. Yell dot com and others cannot hope to compete. This is what can happen when a company becomes a monopoly or has a very strong market position. Greed and more greed by a business that cannot stop itself from pushing out the edges of the envelope.
I am sure that as I write this now, Google employees are scribbling on their white boards, trying to figure a way to squeeze that extra percent of cash from the search results - at the expensive of established businesses who cannot compete because whatever they do they will almost certainly be placed below Google's "places" directory on the prime keywords.

Google does indeed have an "impartial algorithm" It just a sham(e)that they do not subject their own creations to it.

November 17, 2010 - 12:11am

Yup. Some of the yellow pages / business directories are fresh out of bankruptcy and headed right back into it again shortly.

warner444
November 17, 2010 - 7:00am

There was a time when people would pay more than the value of a house for one tulip bulb, such was the speculative frenzy at the time. Human nature never changes, you wish it might but it never does.

You said they are still thinking like a startup, interesting point, lots of companies have failed when the people who started it try to keep running it after it became a mature business. Not all of them, but plenty of them.

CureDream
November 17, 2010 - 5:54pm

Everybody does double keywords in the title, but the triple keyword is a masterwork... ;-)

November 17, 2010 - 5:57pm

It was intended to be overly clever, Monty Python inspired, and a bit too self-referential. :D

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