Google has just released another animal into the virtual plane that apparently terrorized small content-based websites. Dubbed the “Google Penguinâ€, this algorithm is programmed to penalize websites undertaking black hat SEO tactics and those with otherwise low-quality content. As usual, Google’s fight against web spamming has resulted in the unprecedented crash of established websites from their previously held rankings.
Affected businesses have already petitioned that Google pull back its penguin update on the popular petition site change.org. The petition has so far gathered an excess of 1,000 signatures. Jane Dorpish, the creator of the petition, views the penguin update as a monopoly on the part of Google to further protect the interests of multi-billion dollar online sites similar to Yahoo Answers, Amazon, WikiHow, and eHow.
Small business owners are not the only ones seeing this action by Google as a play of its apparent power. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has enlisted the professional services of Beth A. Wilkinson, a former Justice Department prosecutor to handle the FTC’s case against the internet giant.
Although there is still no actual case against Google as of yet, the hiring of Ms. Wilkinson is being viewed by many as a similar situation to when the government brought Microsoft to court 14 years ago, and strongly points to the likelihood of a case being filed against Google. Ms. Wilkinson, who is considered a world-class attorney, states “Working on the investigation will be a great challenge. I dont underestimate Google.â€
Looking back at the case of Microsoft years ago, the subject of the legal concern was whether Microsoft was monopolizing its market by bundling its Microsoft Windows OS and the Internet Explorer browser, effectively preventing competitors such as Opera, Netscape, Apple, Linux and others from gaining a significant foothold and altering their OS’s API in favor of the Internet Explorer. The judgement, issued by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, was in favor of the FTC. To keep Microsoft from continually monopolizing its market share, the judgement required microsoft to be split in two parts, one for the manufacture of its operating system and the other for the development of its software components.
Now back to the present. Has Google actually been using its power over search engine results to alter the outcomes of search queries? Is Google monopolizing its market share to benefit businesses to whom they are affiliated with? Considering how this can be easily accomplished by Google and covered up as another “algorithm update to promote high-quality content sitesâ€, the answer might be a resounding “Yes!â€. But, giving Google the benefit of the doubt, the web giant explains its recent update on its blog as follows:
“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. ...We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.â€
It will be interesting to see if a case is filed against Google, which is expected to still be months in the future, if it does happen. For now, affected businesses should concentrate on working on more higher value content and hope that the web giant doesnt roll out a Google Platypus update in the near future.
