Comments on: Official Antitrust Investigation Into Google Launched #Europe

By: Jon Wade

Jon Wade — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 23:52:42 +0000

I admit, I have always been a little suspicious about Google adverts, i.e. the ones for itself. One of my sites is a local business directory, so it often gets Google Places ads appearing. Are they really paying more than local businesses who are targeting those keywords, or do they just have the highest quality score for every they do?
.-= Jon Wade recently posted: Excell Communications Go Into Administration =-.

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:58:27 +0000

In reply to JBestler.

I know what you mean, JBestler.

Maybe scale changes the rules of the game. Just like you or I would never be bailed out by a government but a bank, even a shadowy swindling one, might as long as they’re considered “too big to fail”. Likewise, you and I don’t get restricted by the rules a market dominating force like Google is expected to play by.

I found Edelman’s article terribly illuminating though.

By: JBestler

JBestler — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 09:02:36 +0000

This makes me sick. What happened to people putting up a web site and being able to make their own rules for their own site? If you dont like it, don’t use it… To me, it’s that simple. Just like with the Microsoft anti-trust hearings, if you don’t like it, build something better!

Where does this end? Does every website owner who places links on their web site have to bow down and allow every site that wants to have a link, have a link? Ridiculous!!!

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:37:27 +0000

Your article doesn’t mention ejustice.fr (one of the plaintiff). Earlier this year a French online newspaper reported about their story (Google filtering their results, them having no more revenue from Adsense and having to fire most of their employees) – the title of the article was along the lines of: “Google decides whether your business lives or dies” (good headline for the people who like the David against Goliath story).

What they didn’t say was that ejustice website was 90% cr*p (majority of their pages were framed Google Personalized Search and A LOT of auto-generated pages coming from an XSS vulnerability their site was suffering from). They cleaned the XSS pages but are continuing to generate pages mostly via iframed results from Google Personalized Search – no unique content to speak of (and any simpleton with the slightest SEO knowledge knows that Google likes that – doesn’t have to be Shakespeare – spinned content works – but has to be “somewhat” unique, not regurgitated page from Google itself).

Google “Do no evil” mantra is a joke, especially in view of their privacy policies and some of Eric Schmidt comments, but at least from ejustice point of view, the antitrust investigation should be very quickly resolved.
.-= Leo recently posted: Web Design for Hair Salon =-.