Why Everyone is Mad at Google - Everyone Depends on Google for Business
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To those of us who depend on Google to find things on the Internet, the company is a search engine. To those of us who have businesses that we hope web surfers will find on the Internet, Google is an advertising company with a very special relationship to our most important advertising medium. It doesn't matter whether you're big or small; you probably owe more of your business to Google than you're really comfortable with.
The first example of this that comes to mind is KinderStart. I wrote about the childcare-related website's attempt at a class action lawsuit against Google recently, so I won't go through all the details here. It's pretty clear even from a cursory glance at the website in question that KinderStart earned the penalty Google awarded it, and that KinderStart's lawsuit has no merit. On the other hand, it says something that being penalized in Google's SERPs could hurt a company's business so badly it would feel it had no recourse but to sue the search engine.
If you think KinderStart and other small to medium-sized businesses are the only ones that could suffer badly from a "Google death penalty," think again. The German website for Mercedes Benz received one not too long ago, and the auto maker moved quickly to correct the problem that caused it to be delisted. Many observers said at the time that the move was more of a publicity stunt on Google's part than anything...but if that's true, why did Mercedes Benz act so fast?
It's not just the organic listings that matter, of course. Many companies buy sponsored links. I tend to not pay much attention to them, but other searchers must, or else companies wouldn't buy them. Take eBay, for instance. I don't know about you, but if I want to check out what the online auctioneer has to offer, I type the site right into my browser. But it has plenty to offer surfers even when they're not thinking of finding it at the world's largest ongoing garage sale; that's why eBay bids on up to 15 million keywords at the major search engines, including Google. That's not the most comfortable position for eBay to be in, considering some of Google's new services threaten to compete with the auctioneer.
The subject of competition brings us to Google's biggest search rival, Yahoo. eBay recently made a wide-ranging deal with Yahoo, which should reduce its dependence on Google. But even Yahoo has been rumored to be doing business with Google by running ads for some of its own services on Google's network! If that doesn't show the strength of Google's position in the field, I can't imagine what would.
It reminds me a little of how many companies struggled to get some kind of advertising bundled with Microsoft's operating system, whether it was an icon on the desktop or a preloaded link on the IE browser. It also reminds me of how, no matter what kind of business you have, if you use computers, you almost have to do business with Microsoft in one way or another. You might simply use Microsoft's software (because everyone you deal with does and you need to be compatible), or you might build software that has to be able to interface with Microsoft programs (because everyone uses Microsoft programs, so you need to ensure you reach the widest market), or you might need to make sure your hardware is compatible with Microsoft's operating system (because...well, you get the idea). It's pretty easy to see the parallel with Google here.
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