The Texas AG goes Rodeo on Google: How Abbot is trying to rope a Big One
Let's start with a real fact: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is running for re-election in Texas
. Like most State Attorney Generals, they serve at the whim of the people, and in that type of service they often need to make headlines. While I would not want to doubt the intentions of the Chief Legal Officer of the State of Texas, we all need to be aware of the political truths. Taking on Google will make headlines. Claiming things like anti-trust against Google will even make headlines especially when the media loves writing stuff about Google's possible (well, not really) downfall. Very few of these media outlets have actually looked into the truth of these allegations beyond the headlines. Google's Anti-Trust investigation well, BS.The Texas Attorney General's office is investigating whether or not Google is manipulating its own listings to exclude competitive search products from having higher Google rankings. The claim, according to three parties, Foundem, myTriggers and SourceTool is simple that because they are a percieved competitor, they are having lower search rankings in Google. They are obviously quite ticked off, because their revenue went down when they had lower rankings. So they have complained that Google purposely did this in order to create unfair competition.
While it's always en vogue to take on the top-dog in an industry, and probably there are more than a few people who delight at the idea of Google having some anti-trust issue, we need to look at this for what it really is. There is no doubt in my mind that Google has disqualified and lowered the rankings of these search engines, not just because they are a competitor but because they are search engines and directories. The claim by all of them is that using Google's normal algorithm; they should have higher rankings based on the content of their site, plus the number of users. They want essentially, that when we search for a product on Google, that we get listings from their search engine or directory.
This in itself is absurd. We use Google as a search engine, because most of the time, when we search, we get content-based searches about the topic we are interested. I think there are very few people who Search Google for a product, a service or topic that want appearing in the searchmore searches. Google, no matter what you think about it as a company, has been successful because they developed one of the easiest, most relevant search products out there. I'm not saying that every time we search, we always get the best content or the best product, but instead that most of the time we get a wide variety of choices of products. I am not searching Google in order that I may go to another search engine, and then use it to find what I asked Google to find me in the first place. Can you imagine researching cars, finding the car company that you feel has the best rankings, the safest sedan or the coolest colors and when you go to the dealer at that point he gives you a bunch of brochures of competitive companies and asks you to do some more work? Users use Google to find the most relevant searches, not to ask them to search some more.
What makes this all more absurd is that all the companies involved, seemed at one time had very good search rankings because of the very reason that they manipulated their rankings by providing third party content feeds that "tricked" Google into thinking there was real content on the page. None of these companies actually have content or provide a real service beyond being a search. SearchTool is probably the worse example, and they have absolutely no ground to stand on, because as a company they are nothing more than a free directory listing of companies but even more importantly, they have no paid services and their ONLY revenue model is placing paid Google Adwords on the site. SearchTool's complaint then is nothing more than "we want you to list us on high rankings, so that people who do searches will get our pages, go to it, and then be able to click on more Google adwords. What the hell? If you take a look at their "content" at 1280x720 resolutions, the entire page is dominated by Google Adwords, meaning that if Google actually allowed them have high rankings most users would be presented first with a list of Google advertisements. Are they serious about complaining, they should be happy that Google hasn't kicked them completely out of Google and Adsense for violating the terms by providing no real content to users and being nothing more than a way to arbitrage Google Adsense.
The last absurdity in this claim by these three companies is that from my limited testing of Bing, owned by Microsoft, who seemingly is funding these lawsuits, shows that their listings are somewhat the same. I googled "Adult Diapers Sourcing, Boyshirts Manufacturers and Business Sourcing" and Search Tool didn't show up anywhere relevant in Bing, even for the main topic of the site. I did this also for myTriggers, seeing if I could get it to show up in any search on Bing, from "comparison shopping" to specific products. While I'm sure there must be a few that showed up on the first page, I couldn't find a single result. Foundem was similar results, but strange enough under the term "uk vertical search" Google actually put Foundem at #1, but Bing put them at the #4 spot. Neither one of them had these sites ranked significantly for just the term "vertical search." That's because Bing uses some of the same systems that Google does, where actual content comes first.
I think the real issue despite all this remains: the purpose of a State Attorney General is to serve and protect the people of that State. I doubt any of the citizens of Texas want their tax money wasted on asking whether or a UK-based vertical search company is having high enough search rankings. Also, in all honesty, does anyone think those companies, one of them run in a family basement are real competitors of Google?
Nuff Said.
The Texas AG goes Rodeo on Google: How Abbot is trying to rope a Big One
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