My point was not to say that no one has a valid point about Google’s capricious penalties that somehow coincide with their financial interests.

What’s best I guess is up for debate: a list of credit card, shoe, jeans, loan…companies or a comparison service that Google now calls thin but stuffs their theirs on top each time a user searches. That comparision service can’t be that bad, or Google wouldn’t pot it on top of each page right? Best for the users philosophy and all :). What would *you* like on top when you search for insurance? Or loans?

It’s easy to say but the page is (all of the sudden) thin, too dark or too green when you have a competing service and each click puts money in your pocket. Google is gaming results broadly, by making it extremely rewarding to be an advertiser (brand) and of course they control close to 50% of ad market and the other 50% is fractured in a million pieces.

Unless we’re talking about the surgical moves in specific niches that Google has entered. Trust them them to be impartial?

What do you think will happen to your traffic with Google+? If I search for “Google facebook social search” I might have gotten this story on top or near the top because it covers it pretty well, from a reputable source and so on. Now, or soon we will get Google+ pages that have snippets–maybe your snippet–or casually mention it on top, mark my words. You lose traffic to Google, and that is their goal, since ads will be added there very soon. Not everyone will click on them but given the images, logos and other bells in the listings, more than enough people will click on the top links, even if they are not as relevant.

I do stand by my ‘Siberia’ comment though because I’ve read the lawsuits closely and the legal theories in MyTriggers, SearchComet, ShopCity, etc are pretty thin. I just don’t think Google feared these low-quality sites as competitors and decided to rig their results in response. These cases are also suspicious because the businesses in questions have ties to a gold-plated law firm that works for Microsoft.

Keep in mind too that these antitrust lawsuits may also have an ulterior motive of reaching the discovery stage in order to get access to some of Google’s confidential documents.

For now I don’t think that Google is gaming its results on a widespread basis. But I do think it’s playing with fire by entering other verticals.

Jeff you are being careless  here. Google has been accused by small mom and pops and small honest business owners for being booted to Siberia so BRANDS (guess who spends most at Adwords?) can take the top spots. Panda was about shallow content right? Yeah, ok. Check Google’s earnings and see that clicks on ads grew tremendously. Moral of the story: don’t lump all of them together. 

And it’s true that Google has banished travel, credit card comparison, financial comparison, local listings and others for supposedly having thin content that “users don’t like”. It’s not thin when Google puts their own stuff on top of search pages though.

Could we all just pay $1 per year to Google or facebook and be done with all this commercialization?  Could internet services be considered utilities like gas and electric and we can simply be billed rather than having the integrity of the service compromised by annoying attempts to make money?  Suppose if every time you went to plug something in an outlet, a commercial played?   At this point, internet services such as Google search are as vital as electricity.    

In the bigger picture, I find Google’s practices no worse (and often better) than its competitors. And I admire the company for its overall transparency and its unwillingness to stoop to the dirty tricks practiced by others.