Some fun facts about Google.
Number of employees: 12,238
Revenue in 2006: $10.6 billion
Profit in 2006: $3.1 billion
Share of the U.S. search market: 53.7 percent
Global unique users in March: 528 million
Market capitalization: $143.5 billion
Current Stock Share price: $461.47 (kinda makes you wish you bought some shares when they opened at $83 in 2004)
Source: Google, Chronicle research
Google will take in 32.1 percent of all U.S. online ad revenues in 2007, according to eMarketer. In search advertising, the company’s share will be a more daunting 75.6 percent.
(Jeeeeeez!)
Great article on Google > The first line reads “For a company that pledged to not be evil, Google makes a lot of enemies.”
As a webmaster we are pretty much slaves to the Goog and it’s only gotten worse since they went public in 2004. I found a good thread titled “Today’s Webmaster & Their Relationship with Google” that has some very good points. Google’s control is more clear if you were around in 2001 and have watched them this whole time. As a webmaster doing SEO I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Google. It seems more hate then normal lately. Not because of how my sites are treated in the serps but about some of the things they are doing. I’ve never liked Matt Cutts, in fact I think he’s pretty lame. I don’t read his blog accept for when another blogger links to one of his posts. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon it but someone was talking about how you can now report other websites for text link advertising.. meaning if you see a site that looks like it’s trying to gain ground in the serps by buying links you can report that site to Google. So basically Google is allowing webmasters to police the internet. Only webmasters who study SEO can spot when another site is buying text links,, because what normal internet user goes around noticing things like that? There is so much that is wrong with this it goes to show that Google can be pretty evil. It reminds me of a Neighborhood watch program, which essentially turns all it’s neighbors into suspects.
So are you afraid yet?
Instead of being Anti-Google maybe its better to be Pro-Microsoft merging with Yahoo to compete. I don’t want to focus anymore energy on Google. As they say, “Things grow where the attention flows”.
I totally don’t like that they allow people to report sites.
I can’t agree with you more about the law of attraction : “Things grow where the attention flows”. just manage to find this old post while you talking about myspace worth. pretty interesting stuff you got here.
“I’ve never liked Matt Cutts”
Whenever I think of Cutt-sie a few phrases come to mind; trojan horse, decoy, wolf in a lambs clothing. I generally find what he says is pretty inconsistent with what SEO authorities say. He is a decoy to blow smoke over confusing issues in SEO.
As for reporting links Google sells advertisements on their SERPs and make billions of dollars from it. Also, what is to stop me from turning evil and buying links for my competitors and then reporting them? This policy should be removed for the same reason you don’t get punished for your inlinks, only for your outbound links.
It seems to me Google is happy for you to buy links provided they are their links.
Hey Demonz, you are exactly right. Google doesn’t want anyone making money unless they have a part. It’s only in their shareholders best interest to dissuade anyone from doing otherwise.
Some people don’t realize that because Matt works for google, he will say stuff that benefits Google. Of course he’s going try and sway webmasters and SEO’s in favor of doing things that ultimately benefit google… Like scaring people into thinking you’ll be reported for buying or selling text links.
One thing everyone should learn from that whole thing is that if Google doesn’t want you buying text links it’s because IT WORKS!
Google was aware of how they could control the industry long ago when they first invented Pagerank, the only visual reference for people who want to see how popular their site is. Once they did this everyone had to reference Google to see how they fared…
Google created the entire SEO industry just as they created the whole “Made for Adsense” spam problem.