Cuirithir, I see you're a new member. Welcome.

I think your analogy is flawed. Besides, if you look at Google's filing with the SEC for its IPO, they disclosed click fraud as their Achilles Heal.

As a matter of fact, Google has lost a lot of business because of click fraud. Their internal memo (accidentally released on the internet...DOH!) that mentioned their revenues had stopped growing and were sliding pretty much summed it up. Their competitors are chipping away at them.

Click fraud has been a thorn in their side since day one. They have done little about it, except to claim it wasn't a big problem. $90 million sounds like a big problem to me. It also sounds like the tip of the iceberg.

The number one complaint about AdWords is fraudulent clicks. The number two complaint is poor ROI. Google went public and their organic SERPs went downhill. Coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences.

Opinion:

Google was simply trying to make their sponsored offerings more appealing by diluting or de-tuning their organic SERPs. They thought that by doing so it would drive both searchers and site owners to their AdWords. AdWords picked up some advertisers, but the big surprise (to Google) was that searchers moved to other SEs. Most notably, Yahoo.

Now, we see mistake after mistake by Google. Rookie mistakes at that. What you have is a company that took itself far too seriously. They're going in a dozen different directions at once and can't figure out why they are failing. The answer is simple: Focus. They have lost sight of what brought them to greatness.

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