More on the Google PageRank Debacle
October 25th, 2007 | by ScottIt appears that you're new here, if you like what you read, please subscribe to the news feed or sign up for the Leap eTips news and updates email list. Thank you for visiting :)
Disclaimer: I always want and encourage contacts, but I typically expect them to be civil–that wasn’t the case yesterday.
Yesterday I wrote that while I believe its Google’s right to conduct their operations as they see fit, there can be what I consider unintentional or even innocent victims who get squashed when giants stomp their feet.
I also talked specifically about the Open Source offerings my company has been making for the past 21 months, and funding via corporate sponsors as a way to prevent pushing any costs onto end users. How apparently our use of the word “sponsors” in acknowledging them on our web site led to Google including us in the penalties being dished out, which led to the immediate withdrawal of one sponsor already and the realization that gaining future sponsors will be much more difficult, if not impossible for us. Given this, we’re likely to eliminate the Open Source offerings all together, including all future developments and support for existing applications.
I didn’t write about that for sympathy or any emotional response what so ever, though some knuckle-heads who contacted me privately seem to feel I was pulling at “heart strings” in an attempt to change the “consensus” opinion online that this move by Google is a great one (their words, not mine).
I wrote about my specific experience simply to relay it isn’t only those who buy and sell links that are affected by a broad sword move like this. Every end user of our open source wares for example, will no longer be able to get upgrades or support if we do eliminate the offerings. And that’s not really a “choice” that we’re making because we “just up and decided” to create a fork in the road to prompt a choice, its a business decision that we’re forced into making as a direct result of another decision that Google made.
To be clear, this whole thing doesn’t financially affect my business in any way. The open sources were a break even venture that we kept up because we could without losing money. Its sad that we’ll probably have to end it, and I’m very sad for the loyal users of our wares in that case, but life and business will go on just fine here.
My posting yesterday didn’t rant against Google. Multiple times in my posting yesterday I expressed support for their right to operate as they want to. But for the brain-farts who felt warranted to flame me for having an opinion they didn’t like on the matter, lets put this move by Google into a little clear perspective:
- Google is not interested in preserving the dignity of PageRank, its an intangible value that holds no dignity
- Google is not working to protect and defend the purity of web linking
- Google does not have an All-Seeing-Eye that can clearly determine between honest and anything-else links
- Google is interested in controlling how and where online traffic flows
- Google has a financial stake in crushing those who barter online advertising outside of Google’s system
- Google has clearly shown the nature of their motivations for this specific penalty roll-out, which can be seen by simply looking at who the primary targets were (NOTE: while I’ve called this a broad sword move on Google’s part, the reality is if you look at the numerous lists of affected sites that are floating around it becomes obvious that this was in-fact a target-specific strike made by Google)
Let me close again by saying I’m making no moral judgments about Google. Its business, and I get that. I also still support Google in conducting business as they wish, even if I personally think their actions in this case were counter-productive to their long standing mantra of “Do No Harm”.
So don’t bother flaming me from fantasy high-ground stances and indignation because I don’t agree that this was long overdue and the best move Google could make, you only show what a twit you are with such private communications to me.
And yes, I do mean you, Joe/Dale/Drew/George/and-a-few-others.
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