#google 2012

Google Year in Review 2012

This has to be the worst year for Google so far. Here's a brief review of the top stories from around the web.

Chrome paid links scandal

In summary: Paying Bloggers to write posts about the Chrome browser. In direct violation of it's own policies.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/02/chrome-sponsored-posts/

Google+ Outcry, (Google + force feeding = Search Plus Your World)

In summary: Recommendations from people within your circles, or people you might know, now appear front and center in SERPs, (Search engine results pages). Autosuggest skewing towards G+ pages and in perhaps the worst abuse I've seen, looping content from third parties into G+ in can what only be described as, "Brand Arbitrage". See an example query for the, "New York Times".

See: http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+times&adtest=on&hl=en&gl=US&pws=0

Is it really what users want when they click what appears to be an article link to be fed into G+? Hard to defend.

Twitter is the most vocal of all opponents:

http://techland.time.com/2012/01/12/is-googles-social-search-anti-competitive-ftc-complaint-looms/

Caught stealing unauthorized third party data for sales calls, (Too much Kenyan coffee)

In summary: Google allegedly selling services into a customer base of Kenyas largest business directory without authorization in a, "Scrape & Sell" operation. Scrape is a little harsh though as it does appear to be a team of humans.

http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/01/13/busted-google-gets-caught-scraping-kenyas-biggest-business-listings-database/

http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/