The Verge published an article that painted Google in a very bad light. When your motto is “Do No Evil” being accused of blackmail can be very upsetting. The article discusses certain findings by the FTC back in 2012. Apparently one of the findings was that Google lifted product rankings and placed them in their own search results for those products. When the companies complained to Google about the process, Google threatened to remove them entirely from results.
From the article:
In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission investigated Google to determine whether the company’s monopoly on the search market violated anti-trust laws. The Commission ultimately accepted a settlement with the search giant, but a confidential FTC report obtained by The Wall Street Journal reveals how deeply divided the Commission was over whether to sue.
As part of the settlement, Google agreed to make minor changes to its business practices and argued that the report did not show wrongdoing. But key FTC officials, after collecting nine million documents in the course of the investigation, wanted to take direct legal action against the company. The report reveals why.
Google “adopted a strategy of demoting, or refusing to display, links to certain vertical websites in highly commercial categories.
Read the full article on The Verge
Unless I’m mistaken, since that time Google has ramped up its spending on political campaigns and other ongoing lobbying efforts. They surpassed Goldman Sachs in 2014. I saw Google listed as #9 nationally somewhere.
It’s debatable what such expenditures really buy; but the next time around, if the FTC leans on Google, Google can lean on its politicians, and those politicians can ask the FTC to be nicer to their benefactor.
Democra what? Raise your hand if your vote outweighs such multimillion-dollar lobbying budgets!
It is our professional opinion that the FTC in its Anti-Competitive inspection of Googles many transgressions and violations of free trade practices, decided to back off Google, because they felt the fragileness of the economy at the time and a Google breakup would be to disruptive to the overall economy. It is now our opinion that with a strengthening economy theres a 90% + probability of a Google Break Up. JAS 3/22/15
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
The Online Business expansion is being held hostage by SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing. A Google break-up would propel our contries Online Business Expansion to unprecedented levels of prosperity.
Picture an infinite laned highway with only one entrance ramp? The one entrance ramp being in effect Googles search browser.
This in effect is the only option SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing supplies to businesses begging to be found in cyberspace.
Full Optimal Internet Expansion can never be achieved through SEO Manipulated Search Engine Marketing.More and more web businesses will be stranded and isolated in cyberspace, never to be found because of the Search Engines Foundationally and Fundamentally Flawed Achilles Heal, called (Market Saturation Obsolescence)
The SEO Manipulated Search Platform by its very design is the big problem. Any Business Locator system that has to be manipulated to find your business is not a direct and honest solution.
(Market Saturation Obsolescense) is caused by the massive amount of illegitimate SEO manipulated data that is dumped into the Search Engine Experience.It literally bastardizes information supplied to people searching for your business through a Search Engine. End-Users who trust being found In cyberspace through the Search Engine Centric Marketing Model, suffer the consequnences.
We are especially concerned with the whole foundational Dysfunction of ALL Search engines inability to efficiently locate Businesses legitimately. SEO Manipulators are just a part of this highly inefficient system employed by Search engines in locating businesses with their totally dysfunctional and by the way obsolesced Marketing Function. The SMART money will be going around them more and more, by employing .COM URL Centric Marketing.
( Bottom Line, Googles stranglehold on non competitive Online Internet Expansion, is a HUGE OBSTICAL to Online Business Expansion !! JAS 3/22/15
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Google have been very evil a long time with all their Wi-Fi Data Collecting
If you were speaking to someone and in conversation they told you they do not do evil things what would you think about that person?