The Google Death Sentence

The ultimate question surrounding this whole “Google Death Sentence” that was handed down to BMW isn’t whether or not Google can legally do what they’ve done. Of course they can. That’s one of the beauties of having a TOS agreement, isn’t it? If you’re like me, you always skip straight past the terms of service for any application, be it Flickr or Digg or Google. I haven’t read a TOS agreement in, well, ever.

The question that everyone SHOULD be asking is why Google is now acting as a content editor. Chinese folks are getting Google Lite now, and because they gamed the system, BMW Germany is being blacklisted from search results. When you search Google, you’re not getting pure, unfiltered results; you’re getting what the Google people want you to see.

The major charm of Google to me has always been the ability to find what I want, exactly when I want it. The engine returns relevant results 99% of the time, and it often seems to know exactly what I’m thinking without me giving up too much information. Pure, unadulterated information — that’s what Google has always offered.

Now, though, it’s slowly becoming a different story. I’m not saying that Google is on the road to becoming a Microsoft (especially when it seems like Microsoft is on the way to becoming a Google), but I am saying that the playing field has changed. While Google might not admit it, the decision to go into cahoots with the Chinese government and present, for the first time, a moderated, filtered version of Google, was a poor choice. If Google wants to act like a media company, then fine, but they really need to stop pretending that they’re not. They’re a huge force to be reckoned with, the Do No Evil motto has been cast aside, and the playing field has changed from a cool little startup that made it big on the strength of an amazing algorithm to a monster corporation that has an amazing power to influence the world on a hourly basis.

Just ask BMW.