What if Google started charging people for acceptance in their search engine?

I think this would be a worst-case-scenario for anyone who relies on Google for a huge amount of their traffic. What do you think would happen if this were to occur? Would people stop using Google? Would there be protests in the street?

 

People would stop using it.
There are alternatives.
The big companies and the spammers would use it, but all the hobbyist blogs, mom and pop stuff - which makes up more of the internet than a forum like this reflects - wouldn't.

 

surely quality will fall and as a result people will gradually stop using G

 

In the short term Google would start making a lot more money because people would pay to get in since it is the such a major source of web traffic. A short while later Google would totally lose all credibility and people would stop using it because they know that the search results are nothing more than paid placements. Finally, Google shareholders would lose their minds and storm Google HQ because their stock will be worth about the same as Yahoo's is now!

 

Yeah, just look at what happened to Yahoo... lost credibility, lost visitors, lost value...

 

It would just kill Google off....

 

.... Google will not to do that

 

it would reduce the quality and amoutn of pages - small comanies would not pay for that..and hobby sites surely won't as well...

Furthermore if Google would ask for money from the webmasters (who actually provide their "content") there surely would also be some webmasters who would ask google to delete all the data they have stored from any website they own...so in the long run google would have only few websites + spam...
consequence would be that people use some other search engine...

 

Since the mission of Google is to index the world, they would basically have to abandon that.

Google would still remain a solid entity and probably the dominant engine for the majority of users but the face of search would change. Mom-and-pop shops would find that it wouldn't be worth paying to be in Google's index if they weren't ranking for major phrases (depending on the indexing fee of course) and so major portals would start to receive more attention from the smaller companies as they could affording the inclusion fee and would thus have the advantage.

Just a guess there. Of course, it won't happen but an interesting question to be sure.

 

well for a short while, they would make more money then any company in the world. But after a while, it would slowly disappear.

 

It would die.
Really look at all the adsense/payers for business on google and if google was to do that of course there would be less visitors.

 

Google walks a very fine line between keeping its street cred for giving good search results and its monetization process. I think it walks too fine a line sometimes, but they've kept themselves going well.

In fact, Google is a fine example of their own creed--- content is king. If they don't serve good content, nothing else will matter because they will eventually be overtaken by someone who will.

 

People will just stop using it and it will eventually die.

 

One day or the other it may happen. Monopoly is what Google is looking at (almost withing arms distance) and then who knows....

I am not sure if you have read (Why a Google monopoly is bad for search marketers) it but if you haven't please do read.

 

Don't worry, the way they are ramping up their aggressiveness with monetizing Adsense and playing yoyo with the SERP's and penalties it's going that way already. They are just doing it little by little.

 

Google motivation not in the direction of accomplishes to facilitate.

 

they have enough sources to Squeeze people off [ adsense, adwords, etc etc..].
So it doesn't make any sense to get into this for them.

 

Google will fall from it's 1st spot...and definitely millions will stop using it.

 

I'd be the first

 

they already do in the form of "adwords".