December 22, 2005
Google gets slapped by public opinion
It's a "banner day" for Google. They stopped the unholy union of AOL and Microsoft search capability, but everyone and their brother is coming out of the woodwork to criticize the move. Paul Thurrott says that Google has sold its soul and Thomas Claburn calls the integrity of Google into question in terms of how they represent themselves.
It's certainly true that Google cannot continue to make the statement that they do not alter the order or "rank" of sites for money - because now they do. They also can't make the claim that they clearly distinguish between paid and unpaid links - because now they don't.
Of course, I'd be really interested in hearing what John Battelle has to say about it, but unfortunately I can't right now because somebody has secretly replaced it with Folgers or whatever. On the plus side, the site that is now impersonating battellemedia.com has some really cool Internet maps like the one below.
