Also to be considered…

Google has the high ground, so to speak. Maybe it’s the military in me, but as the dominant player in the field, showing any weakness is immediately visible and there to be exploited by any competition who sees it. The same goes for being a leader – sometimes you’ve just gotta act like you know what the f is going on to keep the troops on your side.

And while they’re focused on the big boys like Apple, little startups building steam can sneak in under the radar and fill in the cracks or exploit weaknesses in some of their services already out there – like me with FavTrip.com and their Panoramio.com.

Great article!

Thomas

Yes, they are all arrogant. The taxpayers paid for the development of the internet. It was given to these and all other companies for free. These companies should be giving back to the people who paid for its development. 100′s of billion dollars in “profits”. Really tired of hearing about their humble beginnings.

Any time any business is interacting with the public they are putting their best foot forward. If that comes across as arrogance then the issue is usually with the audience not the messenger!

In Google’s case, I would describe their goals as admirable. They want to deliver the best content to their users – indeed they need to do that if they are to remain dominant.

Many of those who get annoyed by Google’s approach or “attitude” have an agenda themselves. Some have gamed the Google technology in the past to manipulate search results in their favor and are finding it harder to do so these days.

From my perspective, until recently any time I did a Google search I would immediately go to page 2 as the page 1 results were filled with barely relevant pages which someone had optimized for my search. I find that I have to do that less and less now!

That’s something Google should boast about, and if their boasting comes across as arrogant to some – so be it!

There is nothing wrong with believing you are the best, especially with the amount of success they have demonstrated. Better to have confidence than to not if you expect to succeed in life. Confidence and arrogance can be viewed as one in the same.

I think this goes much deeper than arrogance…Google has been cutting off some very ethical, straight-up marketers at the knees so it can give PPC/Adwords positioning to companies with Madison Avenue-sized budgets.

The question immediately is, why?

Google’s own rules for PPC involve things like quality score, relevance, etc., so that if you have good and relevant landing pages that match your advertisements, etc., you pay less for a higher position than if you have pages that have nothing to do with your advertisements or little relevance.

It appears that Google is shutting down the small and medium-size guys in favor of the really big spenders who are irrelevant to the search terms but spend a heckuva lot of money in being so.

Finally, here is a reprint of note from a friend of mine from a forum that deals with Adwords marketing and the like…

“Thanks for the well wishes. It did NOT have a happy ending.

All of my Google Adwords accounts are now suspended indefinitely…with no recourse. I was told directly by a Google employee (I have a transcript of the chat) that any future accounts I create would be suspended as well and that they have “ways” of telling that.

Keep in mind, these are 2 niches that are NOT edgy type markets. One is the outdoors market… the other is in the self help market.

They cited a sales video in the outdoors market, and a sales letter in the self-help market that they feel had “misleading” advertising.

These are the same sales pitches/presentations I’ve had running since 2004.

I got that warning in early August, and I created new landing pages on an old trusted domain for one of the sites (the only one they warned me about).

All was good, the campaign started up again sending traffic to the new domain and landing pages.

They they hit a site in the outdoors market…so I fixed that as well. Now they hit another site in the outdoors market and institute a ‘suspension” which is really a ban.

The Google person I talked to said the only way I can come back in Google is under a different business entity and different “premise”.

So…after a few hours of sitting feeling defeated…seeing my income hammered by about 50%… I stopped blaming Google and started blaming myself for not diversifying my traffic sources sooner.

It was all in the plans, but I wanted to build out my products and sales funnels first, and I’ve been doing that for a few years…then I was going to work my traffic plan to expand my reach beyond google, etc…adding “fuel” to the conversion funnels I’d created.

Looks like I’ll start working my traffic plan a little sooner than expected.

Google is coming down hard…and I urge anyone who gets the majority of their traffic through Adwords to start building out your traffic sources NOW.

This hurts, and hurts bad. If/when something like this happens in your business you’ve got to press on. There’s a lot of traffic to be had…it just takes some work.

So my plan is to continue testing other ad networks (I’ve found some good PPC traffic in a few places…)… build out my affiliate tools pages and give them some training (specifically on how to advertise on Adwords) and other strategies as well.

Concurrently I’m going to work on creating 2 new LLC’s…and split these 2 business up. (yes, they’ve been under 1 LLC…)

And once the LLC’s are created, and I have new credit cards for them, I’m going to start to slowly come back into adwords with the most solid landing pages I can possibly create. on my trusted blogs which Google loves… filled with awesome content I won’t sell anything but the opt-in…and I’ll drive the prospects to my sales letters through email via white papers, special reports, my autoresponders, etc.

This should work, but folks, with google adwords, NOTHING is a guarantee, and this can all start happening without warning. I’m going to treat Google as “just another traffic source” once I get back in…and I’ve got no visions of getting performance like I’ve gotten in the past anyway…basically because my account “history” for automatic placements will be “reset” and I’ll be starting off as a new advertiser.

I always heard about this happening and figured I was immune because I’m not scammy/spammy, and I sell quality stuff with good direct response advertising… in a hobby niche and a little-known self help niche market.

If anyone wants to share some good PPC traffic sources, I’m all ears…I’m testing some and I give you my results as well.

Thanks for lending an ear….rough night sleep last night, as you can imagine.

Dan”

So, judge for yourself…is it arrogance…or worse, greed.

The question of whether Google is too arrogant is too narrow and probably an instigator. You have to remember that Google has (really quickly) gotten to be quite a large company and has many, many people working in it in many divisions. Naturally

hmm is Google arrogant?

Tracking and storing every little bit of info about you.
Tapping wifi networks to further their cause.
Slapping affiliate marketers around.
Selling out on net neutrality.

Don’t think I need to say much more..

I would also like to add, if I may, Google search still needs work. TWITTER and FACEBOOK has demonstrated GOOGLE, BING and YAHOO search was outdated, and very few people have written or even stated it. Now we witness an Instant Comeback. Perhaps, the Google search team should effectively look at the dates of their TOP 30 for most keywords. On the SECOND page of a “Google” keyword Search, you are into 2009 and 2006. How relevant and fresh is that? Not fresh news at all. Even keywords: Mother of the Year you get January 2010 and lots of 2009 results in the TOP 20. It gets worst in most categories. Google should PLEASE understand, some people optimise, blog, tweet, email and write full-time for private clients and Google to look good selling advertising space and fresh content. The least the Google search Team should be able to do is don’t stack old news on top of fresh news. At least past twelve months. I am sure advertisers will agree, they want FRESHNESS like quality newspapers and magazines do daily. That’s search engine effectiveness.

Dear Sir,
Today, I learned that your office is investigating Google