Last week, I was reading The Huffington Post, and one of the articles I read was entitled “In Antitrust Battle Against Google, Smaller Rivals Say Web Giant Is ‘Trying To Kill Them'” by Bianca Bosker.
Google has been accused of cheating by manipulating search results to steer users to Google-owned sites and making it more unlikely that users will have reason to visit “third-party sites”.
Google responded by saying that it ranks search results to deliver the best answers to its users and that it does not take action to hurt specific websites for competitive reasons. Other CEOs and entrepreneurs have described Google as “big traffic generator”. These CEOs and entrepreneurs also said that they’ve benefited from Google launching products that would compete with their own.
I don’t necessarily agree with those who are accusing Google of having anticompetitive behavior and manipulating the search results; however, I am biased because I blog via Blogger, which is owned by Google. Like some of the entrepreneurs have said, Google has been a huge contributor to the traffic to NIA SPEAKS. Thanks, Google!
But still…I can see why some people question whether or not the corporation is trying to become a monopoly. Google plays a significant role in the Internet world. I mean, the word “google” has been added as an informal verb to the dictionaries! Seriously. There’s a plethora of information I probably wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for Google. It’s the “main street” of the Internet, and it would be naïve for me to say otherwise. Almost all of the “real estate” of the Internet has been taken over by the corporation. Google powers two-thirds of all searches in the United States of America and claims three-fourths of all search ad-revenues.
I’ve been interested in Google’s size, success, and effects on competing companies such as Bing, Yahoo, or Ask for a little while now, and this article has shown me that not everyone sees the company’s dominance in a positive light.
What do you think? Do you think Google is too big?
Thanks for reading!
Majority of this information taken from huffingtonpost.com
Picture citation: google.com
11 Comments
inmyhansonshirt 30 September 2011
It's a tough call….personally, I love Google. I love how easy and effective it is.
http://the-creationofbeauty.blogspot.com
The Queen of Hearts 1 October 2011
Google is too big but that is the nature of the capitalist beast. Until another company comes along with a search engine more effective than Google, then Google will continue to reign as king. I'm pretty sure I read a case in law school that concerned a lawsuit against Google for the very same thing the article discussed. Google definitely employs some fishy algorithms for determining which sites the searcher is "looking for."
TheQueenoHearts
Kyla Callista 2 October 2011
lovely blog 🙂
http://welcometotheupworld.blogspot.com/
Miss Mellie 2 October 2011
This post is so interesting! Its hard to decide if google is too big. Good question. Thank you for your comment and I'm definitely following you:)
joy to the world 2 October 2011
Thanks for stopping by my blog!
I am now following you 🙂
http://joytotheworldblog.blogspot.com/
xx
Bonnie 2 October 2011
Truth: Google is huge.
However, I don't think they are purposefully directing people to Google-owned websites. It goes by the top hits and most relevant search results. People just want to stir trouble.
http://www.glamkittenslitterbox.com/
Twitter: @GlamKitten88
Noah Homola 3 October 2011
Google is too big, but it's okay for the time being because they're the only company big enough to take on other companies that are stagnant. All in all, they're an asset because they're competition.
Noah Homola 3 October 2011
Also, nice blog, following!
ChicBrie 6 October 2011
I told my sister the other day that Google is the smartest thing in the world! lol. Thank you for stopping by! Lovely blog! I really enjoyed going through the posts! I followed!
~Crystal
azu 13 October 2011
I'm really not surprised by this. When I heard (and read) about youtube censoring videos (by manipulating the view count so that certain vids wouldn't be seen by many more people) I thought that was shocking. It's a love-hate relationship I've got going with google 😉
Love your blog! And thanks for your comment. I'm now following.
http://www.ravenhaireddoll.blogspot.com
Anonymous 16 January 2013
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