James Whittaker is a bit disillusioned with Google. He has good
reason – he used to work there.
At first, James was in love with the energy of the place – like so
many others, he was swept away by the hip new culture of innovation and
excitement that the company fostered within its walls. He drank the
search giant’s Kool Aid, and he became extremely passionate about Google
almost as soon as he began his post there.
James said the decision to leave his job at Google was not an easy
one. He was a keynote speaker, helped out from time to time by adding
content to Google’s developer blog, and did a range of other things
related to his position that anyone would consider “above and beyond”
the scope of his regular job duties.
James really did love what he did.
Then, something inside him shifted. He lost the love. According to
James, “No one had to ask me twice to promote Google and no one was more
surprised than me when I could no longer do so. In fact, my last three
months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain
to get my passion back.”
Back in March of this year, Whittaker wrote a blog post
about the whole experience that shed some serious light on Google’s
motives and true agenda. He offers up a disclaimer at the beginning of
the post: nothing he says in it reveals trade secrets. Bummer, but the
silver lining is much of the post does confirm suspicions that many in
the SEO community have had for years now.
“Google’s Changed.”
So, what changes sent Whittaker over the edge? According to his post,
Google’s innovative projects began shutting down one by one to make way
for more lucrative endeavors. He gave the example of Google Labs
shutting down. Then, he was alarmed to discover that App Engine fees
were raised as well. Whittaker was also discouraged by the fact that
APIs, which had once been free, were suddenly either deprecated or
offered for a fee.
According to James, Google’s new agenda was all about competing with
Facebook. To him, it seemed that Google was shelving everything to
singularly focus on fighting its greatest tech foe. This was the demise
of the old Google. The company was once all about creativity and
innovation, but it now had adopted a competitive new face. Instead of
listening to and encouraging employees to create, stakeholders and
corporate entities had the bullhorn, and they were screaming about
social.
This next part of James’ blog post is incredibly intriguing. It may
be best to use his own words here to achieve the fullest force of
impact:
“Officially, Google declared that “sharing is broken on the web” and
nothing but the full force of our collective minds around Google+ could
fix it. You have to admire a company willing to sacrifice sacred cows
and rally its talent behind a threat to its business.”
Wow. Powerful stuff. Google used its influence as a bully pulpit to
convince the Internet at large that sharing was fragmented; a broken
shell of what it could be (with Google’s help, of course). The company
needed to perpetuate this fallacy in order to introduce their social
network, Google+, and sell it as the answer to the “problem” they
conveniently created.
James said he hardcore bought into the hype. He said many of his
peers did as well – they wanted to be part of something great that would
better the Internet. He worked as a development director, and he helped
to create the Google+ we know and use today. However, he learned that
social networking wasn’t broken at all – people were (and are) using
Facebook and Twitter just fine, no Google intervention necessary. Google
simply wanted to dominate another corner of the Web that it was missing
out on, and James felt as if he was simply a pawn, something Google
used to help close the social gap and get in on the action.
Looking Out for #1
From James’ standpoint, Google created its social network for selfish
reasons. Google is an ad company after all, and mining personal data is
how the search giant keeps the lights on. What better way to convince
people to voluntarily offer up their personal data 24/7 than to build a
social network? Google saw Facebook doing it with wild success, and the
competition gene set in.
So, if you’re a webmaster, how does this relate to you? Bottom line:
Google is mining a ton of info from your G+ profile (if you have one),
and it’s using the data to sell to you in a much more targeted way.
Google’s so dead-set on enticing social networkers to use their service
that they’ve woven it into search. For example, Google Authorship is
tied to your G+ profile and appears in search results right beside
content you’ve authored. G also uses links you’ve included in your
profile to create a “map” of your presence online.
Believe it or not, if you’re a webmaster, it’s actually good to give
Google as much info about yourself, your websites, and your online
activities as possible. Some SEO experts even think advertising your
identity this way will even help you in the SERPs.
If you’re an everyday Internet user, however, the same rules may not
apply. If you choose to use Google+, make sure you’re aware of what
you’re selling in return for use of the service. “Free” may be more
pricey than you think.
Nell Terry,
Post from: SiteProNews
Ex-Google Employee: “Google’s an Ad Company”
