Kudos to Google, They've Officially Now Done Harm

Kudos Google, You’ve Officially Now Done Harm

October 24th, 2007 | by Scott

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This is NOT another “bad Google” rant! They have every right to conduct operations as they see fit. Still, when a giant like Google makes a move someone is bound to get squashed, and its not always the intended targets who are in the path.

I haven’t had a chance to browse my daily reading list of blogs yet today, but I can guess what all the talk is… Google’s penalty roll-out against sites selling text links and paid reviews.

It had to happen right? I mean, it had to… because Google has been saying it did. Google is all about “do no harm” and we all know that accepting compensation for a nod of approval (such as a text link) is so very harmful to the web and end users.

Or is it always?

I haven’t had time for my daily reading yet because my entire day has been one long meeting with our programming and sales associates. See, in January of 2006 my company launched an offering of Open Source software applications, including the conversion of several commercial titles we had in our catalog to Open Source. For the first 3 quarters our Open Source division lost money, which we had anticipated because when we launched it we did so promising not to give away core applications and then charge end users for the plugins and add-ons that made them worth using (as many Open Source developers do). Our goal was to support our Open Source offerings via corporate sponsors and paid support.

Our Open Source division finally climbed out of the red ink in the 4th quarter of 2006, and for the past 3 quarters has remained just above even thanks almost entirely to businesses and several independent web site owners who stepped-up to support our software offerings.

Obviously we appreciated their support, and have shown so by listing them on our site as sponsors of our Open Source software titles so that users who enjoyed the benefits of having the free applications could see who was responsible for keeping the cost at Zero, and if they wanted to could return that support by visiting the sponsor’s site and using their services.

While not exactly a profitable model for us, not every business decision I make is driven strictly on profit margins and since we have been able to stay out of the red with it we’ve been pleased with the results.

Until today. Apparently Google rolled out a penalty today against sites for selling advertising and included our site, I assume for the use of the word “sponsor”.

I learned about it first thing this morning when checking my email I had received a personal message from one of our sponsors apologizing for having to do it, but saying they had to pull out of their sponsorship arrangement and request the link be removed from our site out of fear that Google may begin to follow links from penalized sites like ours and place further penalties against the target sites.

I don’t see that happening as it could lead to competitors manipulating the penalties by placing their opponent’s links on penalized sites… but I understand our now-former sponsor’s concerns well enough. He’s taking a “better safe than sorry” approach for his business and I can’t fault him for it.

Now, I’ve never been anti-Google in any way, in-fact I’ve used and praised their services for years and I sort of understand their positions on link sales (though I also believe there’s more than just ‘link purity’ motivating them), but this move “does do harm” to a lot of businesses and end users online.

I’m not talking about just businesses or people who buy and sell link advertising as their core business model, but I’m sure there are many situations like our own with the Open Source offerings which are being penalized by this. And the penalty isn’t just to us (who some may read this and feel we deserved it) as I’m about to explain.

In our case, as I mentioned I’ve been meeting with our programming and sales associates all day and while no official decision has been made–I’m holding off for a few days to see just how the dust settles–I have made it clear to them that the most likely decision is going to have to be to eliminate our Open Source offerings completely.

I’m not going to shift the financial costs onto end users, and its obviously going to be harder (if not impossible) to gain online corporate sponsors from now on. That pretty much leaves us with 2 options, continue the offerings and eat the costs ourselves, or do away with them. As hard a choice as it is, there’s just no future for us in assuming the costs internally.

As of yet no final decision is set in stone and maybe something will occur in the next few days to change our direction, but if not then as soon as next month we could be out of the Open Source scene all together. No more development and no continued support for existing applications. Its a shame, and sad for both us and the end users who’ve enjoyed the benefits of our software over the past 21 months, but its the only viable option we can see at the moment given this move that Google has made.

I still don’t think that I’m anti-Google and I do believe they are absolutely entitled to do this or just about anything else they want to in their operations, but when giants stomp their feet there’s bound to be unintended consequences. So while I’m supportive of Google’s right to make their own decisions and moves as they see fit, the bad taste from this one is sure to rise up over and over in my mouth whenever we’re deciding where to spend our future advertising dollars– Google, Yahoo or MSN–and which contextual advertising networks to run on the future web properties we develop.

Sure, Google’s AdWords and AdSense may still tend to be the most productive options available, but I still tend to base my business decisions on factors beyond just the bottom line–I guess only time will tell where mine and Google’s relationship really stands now.

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