Monday, April 6, 2009

Google Getting More Evil; Bad Indexing

Google, Evil, MonopolyDespite the iconic slogan -- "Don't be Evil" -- it seems to me that Google is becoming more and more evil. All the while, I think its search result quality is becoming worse and worse. (Image: Google) How is Google becoming evil? Simply speaking, I believe that Google has decided to buy everything and anything in order to create a monopolized web experience.

A monopolized internet? Impossible. In the truest sense it is impossible, but often we find ourselves resorting to a Google search to start our browsing. Google also controls YouTube; the site that draws in millions daily from the U.S. alone. Google is also involved in many other markets: AdSense and AdWords for advertising, Blogger for citizen publishing, Gmail for email, the Android operating system for cellphones, Google Earth, Checkout for online transactions, Analytics for web traffic monitoring, and those are just a few highlights.

Google has bought up many technologies; they were even in the running for FaceBook and Twitter, though neither appears to be for sale yet. Google has also been complacent in the efforts of China to lockdown it's Internet users from outside content. The list goes on. Google is a business. It is an extremely effective business. As such, it seems to be that they are seeking a monopoly, and getting it in the quickest way possible.

While they do all of this, I've noticed that their search quality is dropping. Maybe I'm going crazy, but I think Google has more spam beating its filter than ever before. Maybe it was bound to happen, like some would argue Windows was bound to get viruses due to its hold on 80% of the market.

In typical fashion, I decided to Goolge "is google getting worse." The results were a bit surprising -- they actually confirmed what I thought. Webmasters were angry over the amount of spam and lacking indexing efforts.

To me it seems that Google has lost focus on its core business (though advertising is likely its true core business). Even YouTube is getting worse: embedded advertisements over the video, automatic content removal, automatic soundtrack removal, and content region restrictions have all invaded YouTube. A company like Google could do good, but now the just seem to be doing evil.