Rarely if ever has a company risen so fast in so many ways as Google, the world's most popular search engine. This is true by just abuot any measure: the growth in its market value and revenues; the number of people clicking in search of news, the nearest pizza parlour or a satellite image of their neighbour's garden; the volume of its advertisers; or the number of its lawyers and lobbyists.

Such an ascent is enough to evoke concerns - both paranooid and justified. The list of constituencies that hate or fear Google grows by the week. Television networks, book publishers and newspaper owners feel that Google has grown by using their content without paying for it. Telecoms firms such as America's AT&T and Verizon are miffed that Google prospers, in their eyes, by free-riding on their bandwidth that they provide; and it is about to bid against them in a forthcoming auction for radio spectrum. Many small firms hate Google because they relied on exploiting its search formulas to win prime positions in its rankings, but dropped to the internet's equivalent of Hades after Google tweaked these algorithms.

It's a long but fascinating story. Thus opens last week's copy of The Economist, which everyone should check out. The link goes to the story's leader, but if you can find a copy in print, the whole thing is worth the read. Especially for this crowd.

I've been reading The Economist for a couple years now; it's about 20 % finance related, 40 % world news, and 40 % really cool science and applied math. They write poetically about statistical methods of deciding which wild dogs - not wolves, wild dogs - to immunize against rabies to save the whole troupe. Maybe all Brits talk that way? Comments from Hirst?

So, I was pretty interested to see mention of SEO in general, and black hat in particular, in a magazine that usually focuses on "bigger things" and has been around since the 1800s.

Now, how would you answer the question the article poses? I tend to like them in general ... they send me lots of traffic, and their email application beats Outlook hands down. I find their guidelines pretty reasonable, but they're really nothing more than good but basic advice. But then people are concerned about privacy, about their diversification into so many different fields, not just book search but they have a basic version of Office. A lot of people are upset about the China thing. So ... what's your opinion of Google, all things considered?

I linked to that article a couple of weeks ago. It is pretty interesting. I think there was almost a companion piece on The Economist site from the same day.

I still use Google as my primary search engine and they still send me more traffic than any other source, but more and more I'm becoming disillusioned with them as far as the lack of useful information they share with webmasters and how they seem to be much more interested in helping the big companies stay big than they are in helping smaller companies gain visibility.

They're a different company since they started having to answer to shareholders. Understandable and expected, but they still try to spin the whole 'do no evil' thing, which has long since stopped being true.

Don't get me wrong. I still like Google, but not as much as I used to.

Great article, thanx for sharing!
I'm just slightly amazed at the idea that Google should allow the society to scrutinize its motives, it will make it vulnerable in the competition. Why don't they want top look into the motives of Yahoo! and MSN?

Because Yahoo! and MSN aren't the dominant search engine. Google is. So they're automatically subject to more scrutiny.

This is nothing more than a list of the problems that inevitably occur when a large organization has the unenviable task of trying to please everyone at the same time. It's just not going to happen.

Personally, I think Google's going to become weak (it's already started) when they should be taking an even-handed brutality stance on certain issues (specifically anything a blackhat would reverse-engineer).

Their censorship in China bothers me a lot. That Google should be a part of The Great Firewall of China is miserable. With apologies to Chuck D, "It takes a nation of 1.2 billion to hold themselves back?" And their answer to that criticism is the opposite of what sanctions are all about. Not having Google in China would have forced the "Communist" Party to confront the issue. But, they are in business to make money. And the truth is, China doesn't have a way for companies to appeal its rulings, like America does.

The thing about privacy (and people use "they have email they have calendars blah blah blah" to make this sound really scary) they're the only search engine that gets any users, that hasn't screwed up on the privacy issue. AOL published that poor old lady's searches. MSN and Yahoo fell over and gave Bush all the personal info he asked for, along with most phone companies. Google actually spent their own money to protect our privacy. And maybe if they could do the same thing in China, they would?

My wife's mom is so fat you can see her on Google Maps. For free. In the old days, you had to pay the circus for something like that.

That's true, and after a while, watching your mother-in-law swallow that elephant whole got really old. Not to mention the whole PETA angle behind it.

The funny thing is I really can't fault Google for much of anything, and they only send me like 8 visitors a month. So it's not even a conflict of interest thing like the green part at the end of the quote. 'cept I'm not sure why black hats get the green light?

Really interesting one!
Google is doing everything in its own way and people are free to love or hate google.

True dat.

For the record, they aren't stealing Verizon and ATT's bandwidth. Companies that built the infrastructure of the internet sell bandwidth out their their customers, people like you and me, and then we do what we want with it. If we want to surf Google Video, that's our choice, and I pay $45 a month for my choice.