This is just a random question that arrived in my bonce by way of coffee and having nothing to write. It is complete nonsense and I am not trying to provoke anyone, it's just a bit of fun, to see what people think of the world's favourite search engine. My premise: For me, Google has way too much control, and way too much say in where advertising money goes. What would Google do, if every website in the world added the instruction to their robots.txt to disallow Google from crawling their site? The way I see it, Google is like a bank. A bank can only survive if it has investors, customers like you and I who leave our money in its care. I see Google as being like that, in that it cannot function without websites to index. Google minus websites to crawl equals no Google, doesn't it? And if that is the case, why do Google get to call the shots? Why are they so strong? Are people too afraid to "take back the web"? The stranglehold that Google has on the web is about as tenuous as the stranglehold the bank has on its customers. By closing accounts a bank becomes weaker. By disallowing Google access to our sites, Google becomes weaker. I know, if it isn't Google it will be someone else. I guess it begs the question: is there a better solution than a search engine as we understand it now?
Wouldn't work, we can block all google's domains as referrers via htaccess So even if a site is indexed by google it wont be accessible through their SE, hence no traffic for them nor for us from them. Still a very interested user will be able to manually copy/paste a single URL that is indexed from their results into a page/tab of his/her browser
Would a user be able to get the URL though? I've tried copying Google SE links with the right click context menu and when you paste it in you get a weird, what I assume is a tracking URL or maybe even a cloaking URL employed to stop people using cURL or whatever.
Most of the people that use the Internet love Google and see it only as helping them, they do have way too much power over the Web right now though. If they get too greedy people will hopefully start to look for something else
We're competing with each other on every niche, if I noindex my site, my competitors will take advantage. That's how it works!
I really can't for the life of my figure out what encourages this mindset! Why do a lot of marketers think that they are owed some sort of entitlement? What stranglehold do you speak of? when I want to visit Facebook, I type in the url, same for Digital point and most websites that I have the addresses to. I visit google for certain things by entering a search query and every time I type a query, they have not put me in a full nelson so what is this stranglehold that you speak of. The ones that complain that Google has to much power or that they are not fair, are the same people that try to manipulate their ranking by finding loopholes in the algorithm. Wake up and smell the coffee people!
I assume that your website / web based business is doing well in Google's rankings, yes? We work our little socks off only for Google to move the goalposts again, that's my problem. Its almost the same as how monarchies work. They come into power by simply TAKING it from weaker people, instead of being put there by popular consensus. I don't remember ever giving Google permission to go ahead and index the web before telling me how I should put my house in order, in order to get noticed by people. Google is basically saying "SEO must be done in such a fashion, in order for our crawlers to even fart in your direction. If not, you'll need to be spending money on our ad platform (that we built and designed, strange huh?)." Its a gross abuse of power, and a flagrantly monarchistic establishment.
You assumed wrong! I moved away from SEO a long time ago. Yes, Google is trying to force marketers to spend more money on their ad network (PPC) but they're not the only fish in the sea, there's Facebook ads, POF, 7Search, Bing, Guest posting, PPV and a number of other traffic sources out there. I understand that they're unreasonable many times but it's their house and they make the rules if you're going to enter through their doorway, you have to go with the flow or go somewhere else and that's what I did a few years ago, screw SEO. That is your choice if you want to stick with seo and deal with all the headaches or you can find alternative traffic sources and live to fight another day.
You do not have to make your site invisible for google in this case. What you need is a total addblocker action from the visitors, all over the world
I am wondering what percentage of new AdWords users they've gained in the last year or so. I bet it's a huge one. I, for one, have been using AdWords a whole lot more lately.
If we wouldn't have to sustain and support bills, mortgages I guess that would be one of the thing that I would test and try other engines but right now Google sends me 99% from the traffic on my sites. Again, you are right they are actually a virtual bank, but they are also doing good things - hire people, sustain communities when it's possible. Google is important now. They become influencers and right now they are #1 company in the world who pay the biggest salaries and for some specializations.
"Google's demise"? I suspect Google might reply with a quote from the immortal Mark Twain: "The reports of my recent demise are greatly exaggerated."
Well, try to picture this. Why do most countries have a government? Why are bosses in charge of all of their employees? Why are there laws and people who tell us what to do? In my mind, the answer is quite simple. Because they can. Now, I am not trying to bash any agency, government or even search engine (in the case of Google), but I am mainly stating that the only reason a company can control what’s under it is because of the fact that they are allowed to. Now, why have someone in control? You said it. If it’s not Google, it has got to be someone else. This is simply because of the fact that as a species, we haven’t evolved enough in order to be capable of adopting anarchy. See where I’m going with this?
Excellent reply. What I would say is that more and more people are becoming enlightened to the fact that "Google does not a profitable website make", should they wish it to be so. Also, people don't always necessarily have a full understanding of what anarchy truly is. On the web I would actually liken anarchy to a series of electronic communities all trading with each other independently of republican or authoritarian rule (in this case, the big G). To put it bluntly, no-one really needs Google once they understand what the internet can really do.
Google is a publicly traded corporation offering a service (primarily, search results). Likewise, Xerox offers copy machines, and Nike offers sporting goods. If customers conclude that Bing ... or Canon ... or Adidas ... is offering a better value in their product or service, they will switch their loyalties. That's how it works, and it's quite simple. Every customer is free to make his or her choice. If/when Bing produces notably better search results, they will increase market share and Google will decrease. That's the way free-market economies work.
Thanks for the Economics lesson, however its not what I'm trying to get at. In any free-market economy one must expect tangibility and transparency in that "I can hold the product in my hands" and "I can call up and complain or indeed compliment the company on the tangible THING they provided to me". In the case of a Google and others, tangibility stops at the keyboard and trying to contact them is like trying to catch a fart in a tornado. When I say they have too much power, I mean they are monopolizing the free web, without license and without permission of those who inhabit it and without recourse to the law of monopolies. They are exploiting what is basically uncertainty on the behalf of lawmakers as to what the internet actually is in regards to trading jurisdictions and what constitutes monopolistic behaviour in digital terms. I heavily disagree with this practice.
Thankfully, the free market is self-correcting. Command economies, run by the government, are not. Years ago, IBM was a dominant player in the personal computer market. Nowadays, they are no longer competing (for whatever reasons). No company — Google, IBM, Acme Buggy Whips — is guaranteed market share in the free market. Today's giants may be tomorrow's historical memories.
Hm... Yes you're right, countries have all governments. However which one of those countries performs the best? Switzerland. Where government is only there to abide by poeple's "votations" (rules, votes, no law is voted without people's consent). There is a big trend in the US: "it's their house they do what they want". There's a big trend in any democracy: "even though I'm a consumer, at times, I am a customer and the customer is the king". The latter works better because it uses the actual meaning of democracy.