I know there are quite a few of us who feel a bit uneasy about google's arguably increasingly questionable behaviors and desire to dominate the web.. Some nice writing today by FireFox developer..
Google is now displaying “tips” that point searchers to Google Calendar, Blogger and Picasa for any search phrase that includes “calendar” (e.g. Yahoo calendar), “blog” and “photo sharing,” respectively. This is clearly bad for competitors, and it’s also a bad sign for Google.
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The tips are different—and bad for users—because the services they recommend are not the best in their class.
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While advertisers compete to be first in a string of lookalike ads that are often shunted to the side, Google now determines the precise position and appearance of ads tips that are not subject to any of the same rules. Its ads get icons while others don’t, and if you think that’s small potatoes, you are not an advertiser
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And I think this hits on why i don't have a great feeling about google having such a monopoly on everything:
But we’re not there yet, and in many ways, Google’s new age “bundling” is far worse than anything Microsoft did or even could do. Microsoft threw spaghetti at the wall and hoped it stuck, and likewise there’s nothing wrong with Google’s arbitrary front page ads. The difference here is that Google knows what users want and can discreetly recommend its products at the right time. Microsoft can’t easily hide a program packaged with Windows (and doing so would defeat the purpose), but competitors can only discover Google’s bundling, which might be transient or limited to certain regions, through trial and error searching.
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Perhaps the most nefarious aspect of this feature is how it operates within our collective blind spots. Advertisers are happy that Google no longer invades the canonical Ad Results. Technology purists continue to see untainted Search Results. But does my mother make that distinction? How much does a result have to look like a Result to cross the line?
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Google promised not to be the type of company that needs to ask.
All of us are now using a search engine to search the web, which has a vested interest in sending us to certain sites and certain products. Google may be better than many companies, but they are now a huge beast which needs to be fed a constant influx of profits. They profit when they send you places with ads that you click on.
I for one am very much looking forward to the rise of the non-profit search engines..
from slashdot.org
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