And you thought Google is not Evil!

One thing that caught the imagination of a lot of Google lovers is that Google said that their motto was not to be evil like Microsoft. Google often spoke of the guarding against becoming another Microsoft, which means not to look at ways and means to kill the competition but just outperform them technically. With a number of Anti-Trust lawsuits against Microsoft for breaking rules to finish off Netscape, "Evil" was a word which became almost synonymous with Microsoft.

One thing that caught the imagination of a lot of Google lovers is that Google said that their motto was not to be evil like Microsoft. Google often spoke of the guarding against becoming another Microsoft, which means not to look at ways and means to kill the competition but just outperform them technically.

With a number of Anti-Trust lawsuits against Microsoft for breaking rules to finish off Netscape, “Evil” was a word which became almost synonymous with Microsoft.

Recently Google had become very aggressive with it’s marketing strategy especially when it comes to sponsored links and search related promotions.

I came across a great post by Aaron Wall at Seo Book who has also posted an image of the search results showing how Google has tried to hog all the attention to the extent the organic search results almost do not show.

The image shows that the Organic Listing of links by Google Search hardly shows up with the whole page almost full of either Google Ads, Google Map Promotion Ads and sponsored links.

google-serp-layout

Has Google become Evil?

So what do you think? Has Google become the Evil monster it so religiously tried not to become? Will all large companies become self-serving and become monopolistic? The temptation is huge for Google to try and make someone using their search engine to stay on a Google service or click on advertisement link. Let me know what you think about this with your comments. 🙂

10 Comments

Dnyanesh Mankar November 11, 2009

Everybody is evil in some or the other way.

renjith November 11, 2009

@Aditya
Google’s Local business search results are not paid ads and everyone is free to include their business listing as long as they can verify their phone number. Also these results are very useful to the users as it differs from town to town!

And yes, all corporates are Evil.

neophyte November 11, 2009

Microsoft’s business methods have been controversial from the beginning and now its Google turning evil!

Aditya Kane November 11, 2009

@Dnyanesh: I know, but the danger is the kind of power that evil has.
@renjith: Good Point, but it is a little disturbing to know that a lot of info we keep with Google has been out of Goodwill…:-P
@neophyte: I do not think Google has become like Microsoft. Microsoft stopped caring about development and only concentrating on undermining their rivals. Google has not done that as yet.

muja November 11, 2009

i dont agree with this point that google might be in the same row.. but ..yes they are on aggressive marketing strategy , but they are gettign the result and wen it comes to serving their customers/stake holders they will have to keep them happy as well .. lets hope google wont get the hatred .. that M.S got already .. 🙂
cheers.
and good info . 🙂

Nitish Kumar November 12, 2009

As renjith mentioned. I don’t agree that above snapshot proves something. Search patterns shows that if we search name of some place then mostly the intention is to find the location and so google is giving the results.

First one two line ads are with almost every search and others are google maps bookmarks created by people and accessed by people that’s why they popping up before organic listing.

Its true that when one organization gets monopoly then it goes eccentric, but if you look over facts then it happens when people started discarding its hard work and make issue of little harmless things only. Google is not evil right now, but look lik people are out to make one

nicky November 12, 2009

no
afterall oogle is providing us everything free
even that local advertisements are also free those location are also useful for users.

Taranfx November 15, 2009

Google is NO evil. You jsut can’t survive without placing ads on anything.
Look at the Research and Investment done on projects like Search, Maps, sTreet view, Mars, Email, Wave, and million of others. Where should they earn from ? Of course ads!

fireshots November 22, 2009

I agree with Taranfix, but i also wnt the ad placemnt to b taken care of subtly, it shudnt b in our face. unsuspecting, novice users get mislead wch again is harm to gogle’s reputation of bringin up correct options.