Google, Get Your Act Together
Posted on October 26th, 2005by Michael Gray in Google, Random Thoughts, SEM, SEO
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It’s been a while since I’ve given someone a dressing down here, and Google since you’re most deserving, brace for impact.
New Product Releases
Ok according to your investor relations update as of September 30th 2005 you have just under 5,000 employees. That’s an awful lot of Googlers out there who have to find something to do with themselves everyday. I think having all of those employees is part of the reason that you are putting out a new product every six hours. Here’s a tip, STOP. No really we’re all rather tired of the whole thing now. Even John Battelle thinks the whole thing is daft. Yes I’m very impressed you can do whatever voodoo behind the scenes to link into Orbitz, Travelocity, or Expedia if I type in [JFK to LAX] , but do I want you to (no), does it help me (no) and who is going type that into a Google search box and why would they? I can get to any of those sites, or Jet Blue on my own thank you. So stop polluting the first page of the SERPS and stop dumbing down the web. As far as Googlebase goes, first if you’re going to roll out a product DO IT RIGHT! None of this on again off again nonsense you’re worse than a woman in shoe store for heaven’s sake (no offense to the ladies reading). Secondly if you’re going to tell us what a new product is actually tell us what the heck it is and not dance around the subject.
Schizophrenia
You really are becoming a dysfunctional company lately. Part of the problem is you are growing to much too fast, the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. For example you have this sub-culture of “open source” knowledge is free group. They believe everything should be free and available for everyone. They are the same people who crawl our webservers unless we “opt-out” in our robots.txt file. These data junkies are probably the same group who came up with Google Print, and decided to scan every book, and feel that publishers should have to “opt-out” not “opt-in”. You’ve also got a sub-culture of capitalist pigs. They look for ways to monetize things, like adwords, adsense, keyhole, and who knows what they are cooking up with a micropayment or e-wallet. Then like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, you’ve got these all consuming data-miners. Using things like the google toolbar, web-accelerator, free wifi, google news, reader, gmail, google accounts, and possibly by the time this post is done, a google automatic underwear changer, you’re well … don’t take this personally, but you’re a little scary. The problem is when you give us a product we really don’t know which of you we are dealing with. Did the data miners convince the capitalist pigs to use the open source group to beta this product? Do the open source people know (or care)? It’s like I said you guys are really schizophrenic, you’ve lost you’re true voice, we don’t know who we are talking to, what they want from us, and quite frankly, you’re giving us the hee-bee-gee-bees and we don’t trust anything you say.
Captain Ahab and the White Whale named SEO
There was a time when you were pretty easy to game, and you’ve made it considerably harder lately, in fact many would say too hard. However like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick, in this all consuming attempt to keep the SEO/spammer crowd out, you’ve placed way to much emphasis on authoritativeness. In fact your SERPS are really starting to become incestuous lately. I’m tired of seeing Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, and Wikipedia for the searches I do. Where’s the diversity? I know where those sites are and I know how to find them, so again stop dumbing down the web for me.
Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls
It’s not to late to save yourselves, yes I know your stock is at an all time high, and your growth rate is double digit phenomenal, but how long can you keep it up, how much more room is there to grow, and do you think you can grow that much and still manage the process? You’re an arrogant teenager who’s just gotten his drivers license and first car. You’ve gotten behind the wheel, you’re revving the engine, you’re giddy and drunk with the power. You think you’re invincible, and that you’re immortal, nothing could harm you or bring you down. If you keep driving down the highway increasing your speed that little pothole that would have been manageable at a reasonable speed may very well send you careening off a cliff and burst into a fiery explosion on the rocks below. So please stop we’d hate to see you go bust in Bubble 2.0











February 25th, 2006 at 12:43 am
ShoeMoney SEM/SEO contest worth over $25,000.00
I have always wanted to host a SEO/SEM contest but I wanted to do something original… different… Now Don’t get me wrong, I love what seologs.com and v7n have put together AND I have donated to each, but I wanted to try a new approach….