While I disagree with almost everything News Corp claimed, I do think this one has a ring of truth to it:<p>> willing to exploit [its] dominant market position to stifle competition<p>Google has, on multiple occasions, utilised its search engine to prop up or otherwise give an advantage to its own products over that of third parties. The most obvious example is Google+, however YouTube is also a prime example (the change to video search is fairly recent), as is Google Maps (which effectively wiped out the sometimes superior competition at the time), and Gmail (which was heavily advertised on Google.com).<p>While Google doesn't, as far as I know, "fix" search rankings to give themselves an edge they do sprinkle adverts for their products before search results (e.g. YouTube, Google Maps) or around the perimeter of the page (e.g. Google+, Gmail).<p>That all being said however: I'd take what Google does over what News Corp does any day of the week. Google might be a little corrupt, but News Corp is the poster child for abuse of position. Plus News Corp's lobbying has screwed up more than just their own specific market segment, it has had lasting effects on countries (and helped put innocent people in jail, literally).<p>At the end of the day as the internet stands in 2014, you have a great deal of choice. If you're tired of Google's shenanigans then hop over to DDG, Bing, or even Yahoo!
That was brutal. Demolished pretty much all of the serious accusations in the original letter with facts that could not be true if the accusations would be solid.<p>It was also wonderfully mean to ignore the News Corp CEO who signed the letter and reply to Rupert instead, implying quite a lot about the role of the current CEO.
LOL, News Corp bemoaning that someone's actions might "lead to a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society". I presume their objection to that is that Google is horning in on their gig...
This had me in stitches:<p>> Undermining the basic business model of professional content creators will lead to a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society<p>Newspeak indeed.
Google's contributions to making the web safer, faster, and generally more awesome cannot go upraised.<p>But as a small business owner under a rather crushing Google link penalty since 2011 I thought I offer my perspective.<p>First, it's important to note my penalty was absolutely not of my creation — I never bought, sold or traded links, and followed Google Web Master guidelines to the letter.<p>Unfortunately loads of spammy links I never created came home to roost in 2011 and I've been penalized ever since.<p>I've done my best to clean up but so far no relief has come.<p>So that out of the way my points:<p>1. People are certainly free to choose a different search engine and yes, plenty of alternatives exist. The problem is we don't appear to be using them anymore.<p>Although I'm just one example, last month's traffic numbers are quite telling:<p>328 hits from Google, 2 from Yahoo, and 1 immediate bounce from Bing.<p>Of the 328 Google hits, only 10 were for keyword searches. The rest we all for direct variants of my company name (rack forms, rack forms, and rack form).<p>The kicker: On Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo I'm page two or higher for keyword searches, on Google page 15 or lower.<p>Please let that sink in for a moment: despite being buried 15 pages deep in Google, I still got more keyword hits from them than I did from being a top result in three other search engines combined!<p>It was not like this just a few years years ago and it's frankly quite concerning.<p>Here's the rub: If you're a Google user, which over 98% of my potential users appear to be, because of my penalty you'll simply never know I exist, and if you're in the market for kick ass web form software that kinda stinks for you. I have a fantastic product!<p>Despite this living hell of a penalty I still believe in Google, and absolutely believe they mean well. I just really, really hope they can figure out a way to prevent spam without getting guys like me caught up in the middle of the fray.<p>For my business Google's market share is no longer academic, it's a tough reality that's becoming very difficult to ignore.
While they make many good points, they also show their cards by failing to substantiate their claims about search algorithm changes and Android Google Play lockin allegations.