5 Things We Hate About Google

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11 Comments
December 29, 2008

Google is undoubtedly the best search engine, and in many ways an equally great company. It has an unchallenged marketshare that is steadily increasing. And it is always producing new products and making strategic acquisitions.

But enough with all of the accolades! Here are 5 things that we hate about Google.

Monopoly

By Malaurie Family

1. Search Dominance

Google has a near monopoly on search. Yahoo, Cuil, and Live cannot even begin to compete with it. And while Google has pledged to "Do no evil", doesn’t it make you nervous to think of what might happen if Google drastically changed? What would happen if Google started charging for inclusion or giving websites priority based on how much they paid to rise in the ranks? Of course, I doubt that this will ever happen, but the economy is changing. And as Google pulls in less revenue and its stocks dip, they might be forced to pass the buck on to their users.

2. Data Collection

Google collects a whole lot of data. They gather data from user search patterns. They gather data from Gmail, to display relevant ads as you catch up with your email. And they gather data from the use of almost all of its other products.

I wonder, what does Google do with it all?

3. Unscheduled Pagerank Updates

Probably the most annoying thing about Google, is that they don’t schedule their toolbar pagerank updates. And if you’ve ever experienced the anxious wait for the update, you probably agree that it’d save you a lot of gray hair if they just supplied a date.

4. Endless Product Betas

It seems like Google launches a new product ever week. And while I like most of their products — we faithfully use Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Translate, and Google Chrome — one thing that bothers me is that their products often stay in the beta stage for an extended period of time. And in some cases, some great products never leave the beta stage before the cord is pulled. Of course, the beta stage is useful for testing and getting the kinks out, but Google is known for their especially lengthy betas.

5. The Ever-Changing Algorithm

One of the most recent things that you might find frustrating is that Google’s index is more fluid than ever before. This means that your rankings for keywords are always changing; one day you may be on the front page of Google, and the next day you may be on the tenth. And the steady traffic that you might have depended on in the past, is probably fluctuating as well. These changes are making webmasters dig deep for new tricks and better SEO techniques to retain their placement.

So, what is your relationship with Google? Love, hate, or perhaps a combination of both?

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Tags: Google, Google Chrome, search engines

11 Responses to “5 Things We Hate About Google”

On December 29th, 2008 at 10:45 am, Jackie wrote:

Haha. Great image. I like Google but I hate that they just reorganized the products page that you see when you log in to your account.
On December 29th, 2008 at 11:03 am, Raju wrote:

I agree with you on every point other than the first one. Even if we assume that it might happen some day, people will just stop using it slowly. I can’t see a situation where in everyone will be ready to pay to search on a website! Theoritically it is possible, but practically…
On December 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am, Velvet Blues wrote:

@Jackie, yes I was also a bit confused by that change. In fact, I still haven’t gotten used to it. But I suppose the did that so to minimize the amount of scrolling that a user has to do.

@Raju, Thanks for your comment. Yes, I doubt they’d ever charge users to search, but they might charge websites to be included, or start charging for their other products and services (ie. premier levels of GMail – email without ads?, or something like that.)
On December 29th, 2008 at 11:57 am, Blog for Bloggers wrote:

Its a love hate thing with Google, one minute you love them the next you hate them.
As for Data Collection, they probably know more about you than any one else, even more than the grocery stores know.
On December 29th, 2008 at 12:49 pm, Velvet Blues wrote:

Haha. Yeh, it is really scary to think of how much they probably know.
On December 29th, 2008 at 8:27 pm, Ajith Edassery | DollarShower wrote:

Shirley,
Haha… I can understand your feelings. By the way, though it’s monopoly (like Microsoft in desktop OS and office apps market), they have managed to build a huge ecosystem around them that benefited big time from them. So basically the 12 or 15 billion revenues that they earned created perhaps 50 billion market for others.

As for the PR updates, one doesn’t need to go gaga over that as long as you have good search visibility (due to internal PR and not toolbar PR update). But they managed to sell that PR thingie so well, didn’t they? Many companies such as MediaWhiz (TLA) are surviving on that Google number.

And for the Beta programs, Yahoo is even worse. Yahoo Publishing Network has been in beta for over three years now. By the way, beta is still not bad as long as it delivers globally. Yahoo betas usually restrict the usage to only United States’ subscribers.

Even I felt (have written about in the past) that all the data they collect and the intelligense around the same should be better utilized for other purposes than just PR, Trends, Insights etc. May be Google Labs is working on it.

I liked your post anyway

Cheers,
Ajith
On December 29th, 2008 at 8:55 pm, Velvet Blues wrote:

Ajith, that’s a doozy of a reply!

Yes, Microsoft has a Monopoly w/ windows, and I’m not too happy with them either! I just haven’t gotten around to writing that article. lol.

PR, you’re right. You know, if the toolbar always revealed the current PR, then PR wouldn’t be half as important…

And finding a company that has even longer betas doesn’t make Google’s betas any better. But yes, you are right, IT CAN BE WORSE. haha.

And yes, I’m sure the mad scientists at Google are busy concocting some cool new tool that utilizes all of our data.

Thanks for your insightful comments.
On December 29th, 2008 at 10:19 pm, Kurt Avish wrote:

Agree with you for all the 5 points. And to better show it… Gmail is still in bete

Concerning private information submitted to google, I think they are the company having the most amount of private data about anyone in the world.

I heard that PR update is currently being done on a 2 months interval. I cannot confirm how far is this true however. If the 2 month interval is true then the next PR update should be by January? I am really waiting for this as I just bought my new domain for my blog and there are no PR assigned to it yet.
On December 30th, 2008 at 6:00 am, Velvet Blues wrote:

Kurt, welcome back. Yeh, I don’t know if its quite 2 months. In my experience I’ve noticed it to be a bit longer than that, about 3 months. But either way, I want it on a calendar! haha.

Hopefully you have accumulated some PR for your domain. You’ve been doing a bit of blogging, and the current toolbar PR is ’0′ instead of N/A. So I think that’ll turn into some pagerank when the update comes around.

Good luck.
On December 30th, 2008 at 4:54 pm, Make Easy Money Online with RemiVladuceanu.com wrote:

That is so true! Even though we admire Google for making an effort on providing it’s users the best search experience possible, I can’t help noticing the fact that the Google Slaps got somehow out of control and that Google successfully managed to install terror in the minds of thousands of webmasters and business owners who redundantly rely on Google.

Thanks for this article and I bet if we would do a survey about this, there would be more then 5 things we hate Google for.

Also thanks for commenting on my blog. I just bookmarked yours. I’ll make sure I’ll stop by more often

Take care and Happy New Year!

Remi Vladuceanu
http://www.remivladuceanu.com
On December 30th, 2008 at 8:18 pm, Velvet Blues wrote:

Haha. Terror indeed! You know, a survey wouldn’t be a bad idea. Thanks for visiting.

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