Defining Google

[mikmik]

It seems to me that a favorite pastime these days is criticizing and bashing 'Big Corporation', and especially if something doesn't work out the way expected. I see many, many people accuse Google of all sorts of unethical and petty favouritisms and/or penalizing.

As seems to me most often, the case is one where people refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions. Or maybe they just like being suspicious in general, as a matter of fact.

The irresponsible and negative attitude that pervades with people some days (I certainly don't mean most people, just the loadly vocal minority) is getting to be both irritating, and let's face it, predictable. Annoying, and boring.

Case in point is Google. I didn't know who they were 4 years ago but saw a news report item on an 'up and comer' company. I was impressed with the attitude and demeaner of the people interviewed, the atmosphere around their office, and the genuine fun they were having doing something they loved in a manner they believed was right.

They struck me as warm, fair, and genuine then, and I hoped they would make it big because if anyone deserved it, they did IMO.

Guess what! It DID pay off, and they did become succesful! That's nice to see for a change.

I am so impressed with the way they have handled difficult situationa, especially with the on slaught of so many thousands of selfish, unethical 'cheaters' trying to fool and game the system, or get special favor, for their own benefit.

To me, Google continues to practice with high moral standard, fairness, and openess and honesty wherever at all possible. Their AdSense is the perfect compromise between advertisers and surfers worried about intrusive adds.

I just wish a people would practice even a portion of the rigourous and relentless scrutiny of behavior on themselves as they do Google (or whoever they happen to have a bone to pick). Yes, we should always be vigilante, but sometimes I just want to say - "Oh, give me a break from your whining!"

From the CBS News: Defining Google

It is a real interesting report, starts:

(CBS) Has there ever been a brand name like Google? Non-existent six years ago, it’s now a part of the global language, as in, “I Googled this,” or “I Googled that,” or “I Googled you.” To Google, a verb, is to get an instant answer by using the company's super-computer to look up anything on the Internet.

What began as a school project is now worth about as much as Ford and General Motors combined, thanks to a stock that has roughly doubled in price since the company went public last August.

And for the first time since then, Google has opened its doors, to let "60 Minutes" Google them. Lesley Stahl reports.

and

When the Internet boom went bust in late 2000, says Battelle, Google was one of the few survivors: "Google was this odd company; it seemed like the Internet bust never happened. The lava lamps were going, they had a chef, they had parties, everyone was happy, everyone seemed to be enjoying their work. Now [for] most of the Silicon Valley, the opposite was true. It was smoldering wreckage. So they hired some of the smartest, best engineers they could find, during a time when they were so thankful to have a job."

There was something else different about Google: the company motto, “Do no evil.”

"We have tried to boil it down at some point to a code of conduct, so to speak," Brin says. "How do we make all our decisions. For example, we don’t mix our ads with our search results. We always label the advertising clearly down the side of the page."

To this day, Google has still never run a TV commercial. Their popularity has spread literally by word of mouth around the world, as people everywhere search for everything under the sun.

They hire 25 people a week, and sound like the type of progressive company I always wanted to work for. Seems the first way to get noticed is with good scores on some aptitude tests...

Google uses aptitude tests, which it has even placed in technical magazines, hoping some really big brains would tackle the hardest problems. Score well on the test, and you might get a job interview. And then another and another. One recent hire had 14 interviews before getting the job - and that was in the public relations department.

Once people do get hired, Google does everything possible to keep them happy.

I originally posted this here, at BoG.

[paulhiles]

Great post Mik!
Funny isn't it? as soon as someone / something becomes a market leader in their field there's a mad chase from the "competition" to catch up and attempt to overhaul their rival.

Seems like the quickest way is to slander and generally "bad mouth" the person / company until enough of the mud slung actually starts to stick!

Nice to hear the flipside for a change! :o)

Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?? ;o)

Paul

[scallihan]

Don't ignore the "cool" factor. I think that one thing Google has going for them is that they were first discovered by the college crowd when old fogies like me were still doing boolean searches at Altavista (which I still do, by the way) -- that gives Google the cachet of being "cool," which Yahoo Search or MSNSearch aren't. That Google has also become a verb ("to google") also doesn't hurt.

[cbp]

Good post

As I said in a number of other threads, it a waste if energy to blame woes on Google (or DMOZ for that matter!) - you either get all this negative energy or you get with the program and work with it. Funny how the ranters then want to accuse me of working for Google!!! ---- get over it! (I also apparently work for Yahoo!)

I have more reason than many to be very negative re Google - my major new site is majorly sandboxed .... but I will keep positive and understand why Google do this, bide my time, I keep adding content, keep adding links, so when it comes out of the sandbox --> the competition is dead meat!

CBP

[smo]

Originally Posted by mikmik

To me, Google continues to practice with high moral standard, fairness, and openess and honesty wherever at all possible.

This is not a new thing. Many companies says they are honest with high moral standard. But problem is maintaining these standards in difficult times specially when market is down. In google unlike others they keep these values high in all situations. This way they have earned the trust of the internet community. Today no one will say that by placing google ads on my site I will get a better rank even though no one knows their algo.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by smo

Many companies says they are honest with high moral standard. But problem is maintaining these standards in difficult times specially when market is down.

Very, very well said.
That was easy while being non-profit researching enthusiast team. And yes, they still do well.
But let's wait for shaking times, when masks fall down and corporate spirit comes above.

[Duncan Pollock]

I'm reminded of the saying: "Envy hates the excellence it cannot reach" -- and the anger with Google has to have this truism at its roots.
cbpand mikmik are correct in their judgement. Sure, Google isn't perfect and it does keep changing (to overcome, I'm sure, the ongoing attempts to manipulate its results), but its service to searchers is as unparallelled as it ever was.
Serious application of SEO principles and honest intentions will neither get penalized nor ignored by googlebot. All you need to do is to "reverse engineer" your competitors' sites that are doing better than you are and then overtake them by doing better still. There's no real magic to it. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You have only to objectively determine what it is that gets Google to do what you want -- and then do it yourself instead of bewailing something that really isn't broken.

Duncan