Reevaluating Google is the best theory
It is undeniable that Google has a tight group on many areas on the Internet with search being probably the most obvious one to most users followed by control over the mobile operating system Android.
While Google's services are mostly good and at times better than anything else that you find, too much power in the hands of a single company is often problematic.
That's the main reason why I have started to look at alternative services. Everton wrote about this the other day too after his blog got a Pagerank reduction from six to three.
I was one of the first adopters when Google released their search engine while all of my friends and colleagues were still using Yahoo or local search engines. I believed in Google, that it was the best and told and convinced many that they were the best. The error that I made was that I never looked back, I did not check other search engines to see if they would deliver better results or offer better search possibilities.
I believed that Google is the best and had little reason to look elsewhere because of that. If you believe something is better than anything else, there is little reason to look elsewhere.
Well, I honestly do not know if their search engine is the best still, as critics have become louder in recent time claiming it is no longer. It is a fact that spammers do concentrate on Google because most users use Google and not another search engine.
So, what I want to do is the following: I will look at other search engines from now on and use them to see how good they are. Unlike Everton however I do not use a lot of other Google Services. I have a Gmail account but that is not my primary account.
The fact is. Google relies on its dominant market position as a search engine. That's why they make billions of Dollars every quarter because everyone is using them. I don't want them to disappear, I just want that the market share is divided fairly among several search engines, not just one, and the best way to achieve that goal is to try others and let others know about them.
While I won't be able to make a dent in Google's search engine market share, I think that every bit or in this case user counts.
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As a whole Googles PR drop targeting certain bloggers has, at least in my eyes, devalued not the bloggers themselves, but instead Googles PR system. In essence it bites the hand that feeds it in this move as we are the ones that made Google by word of mouth promotion. I only see this as a huge mistake on their part in that they damaged their reputation of being impartial.
Hmm.. It’s really interesting to watch how suddenly happened this transition from “Wow, Google rocks!” to “Aww, it actually sux.” and I mean in general, not only here.
(Though, I understand PR drop doesn’t make anyone happy)
Maybe we should think more about our way of thinking, about how quickly we get used to things and think they’ll remain the same forever.
Although I’ve never really prefered Google over Yahoo and others, I got used to this search engine’s simplicity and trustworthiness. And I must admit I used it much more often than the other search engines.
What I’m trying to say is:
Let’s not simply switch to another “coolest” search engine and prefer that one everywhere on the web. Let’s have differences, alternatives, different views of the web.
Let’s not make the future look like “Wow, Yahoo rocks now, Google’s definitely out!”
Be yourself.
@Alter Falter!
First of all, I am not angry at Google. Why should I be? But since this post was about Re-evaluating Google, I presented my opinions.
I am only saying Pagerank is a useless metric. And I am not either sure, if people still sell or rent links on basis of Pagerank. Anyways It seems you have a deep fetish for Pagerank. Good for you.
Hi Ankit,
why are you so angry with Google? You don’t have to use it.
Google doesn’t like that people cash in on high pageranks.
Period.
Pagerank is dead. Period..
Pagerank is more dead than a rotting corpse, more dead than any teenager in Friday the 13th and more dead than those zombies in Resident Evil.
Does Toolbar Pagerank decide your search engine rankings? If this was true, then Engadget, Forbes would have seen at least 20-30% traffic drop by now. None of the sites which have their PR decreased have reported their rankings being dropped.
Will Google devaluate the link passing ability of websites with lower pagerank? Again if this happens then it will be Google itself who is going to suffer in the long run, because we all know Google’s alogorithm is solely dependent on backlinks. And punishing authority or strong sites, means gaming its own algorithm which I doubt Google will do.
And third for readers. How is this Pagerank important? Engadget has a Pagerank of 5 and Gizmodo has a Pagerank of 7 or 8 (Sorry I don`t have Toolbar installed). Does this means for a reader Gizmodo is way ahead of Engadget. I am sure this is something even the Gizmodo editors won`t agree to.
So the Pagerank is rendered useless for all three; webmasters, advertisers and readers. I would suggest people who still follow pagerank to please see the right picture, and move on.
I really don’t care that much about Pagerank as long as it is not affecting my sites ranking in the Google Search Engine.
Pagerank was useful to sell links, was useful to get paid review. I never quite understood why companies like Text-Link-Ads and ReviewMe used it in their algorithm though.
Alter Falter! says,
Grateful to Google!!!!
Can you please enlighten me, why anyone should be grateful to Google?
Is it because they gave us BS Pagerank metric, which was nothing but a marketing gimmick, or we should be grateful to Google that they are policing the web, and have emerged nothing more than a dictator.
If for anything we should be grateful, it should be beacuse, this time they showed to the world the real importance of Pagerank. Pagerank is official dead now. I was in the impression that Google’s job was to provide relevant search results and if they are going to penalized sites like Forbes, sfgate, engadget then only thing they will be compromising is their relevance. And IMHO, it’s going to hurt Google more in long run.
I don’t think Google have ever really realised that it was the recommondation of first adoptors like you Martin, saying ‘they were the best’ that got them where they are now.
My experience was exactly the same. I had just agreed a contract with Overture (now owned by Yahoo) for a pay for performance search contract, but the techies were adamant that Google were better. I didn’t want to use them and I was adamant that even if they ‘were’ better at search, they didn’t know how to monetise it as ‘Google was for the geeks’ – I was sick of hearing from techies how good google was. Eventually I relented, but it took a year. Now they are biting the hands that fed them, which I think is going to be a big, big mistake. Not quite ‘doing a Ratner’, but it might come close as it’s making people like Martin and I go into the search market for the first time in years looking for better search engines which we will start recommending.
You could be a little more grateful since Google reevaluated your site with PageRank 5 again, don’t you think? ;-)