(I couldn’t resist, while I am on a roll I thought I’d post again….)
It would appear, and rightly so, that Google has remembered its informal corporate motto, “Don’t be evil.” – well with a little help from the blogspere at least. It seems that someone’s 20%1 turned into helping us all with tips (read prime advertising) at the top of certain search results on Google. Specifically targeting searches for software or services that Google has a competing product they handily suggested their software above the number 1 search result.
Well after the resulting booing and hissing it appears Google have taken note and, for the moment at least, removed these ‘handy suggestions’. Well done to all concerned, it appears that if we shout loudly enough, even companies tripping over the dollars take note (I couldn’t see anything on their blog about this though).
Interestingly if they had simply continued putting their products at the top of the paid advertising on search results for these terms it would have been far less obtrusive and significantly less noteworthy.
- Google engineers all have “20 percent time” in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about. Source: Google [back]
