You
probably know Google's informal
company motto "Don't
be evil". Google is a
very successful company that knows
a lot about its advertisers and
users. In addition, Google has
a market share that would allow
them do certain things.
What could Google do if they
were evil? Note that the following
is only hypothetical:
Google could favor
its own products and websites
Google could prefer websites
from its own services in the
search results: websites that
run Google ads, websites that
use Google's payment service,
Blogger sites, Google Base,
etc.
All websites that pay Google
in some way could be preferred
in the search results while
others are downranked.
Google could punish
websites at discretion
If Google doesn't like your
website or if someone tells
Google that you're a bad boy
then Google can ban your website
from the search results without
any reason given.
You can find a lot of articles
on the web that discuss the
problem that Google removed
web sites from the index.
The main problem with these
removals is that Google usually
doesn't explain why a web
site has been removed so that
webmasters often are complete
and utterly at Google's mercy.
Google could use your
data against you
Most Google products now
use a single account. That
means that Google knows a
lot about you if you use their
services: your address, your
credit card number, the web
pages that you visit, the
web sites that you own, how
much you earn with your web
site (if you use Google's
analytics product), etc.
Google could sell this information
to other companies, the government
or any other person that pays
for it. If one of your web
sites causes a problem with
Google, they could ban all
of your sites. There's a lot
that Google could do with
the information they have
about you.
Google
could force webmasters to
advertise
Google could decide that
web sites that advertise on
Google get better rankings
in the search results. They
could also decide that companies
with big wallets don't get
high rankings so that they
have to advertise more.
Companies that use Google's
analytics software to track
their sales tell Google how
much they earn. That allows
Google to raise the advertising
costs based on the revenue
of the company.
Google could do most of the
things above and it would be
very difficult to prove that
they actually do it because
Google doesn't reveal the ranking
algorithm. Maybe you know the saying "Power
tends to corrupt and absolute
power corrupts absolutely." Let's
hope that Google can resist
the temptations of their power.
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