Sometimes people amaze me with their ability to delude themselves. In most cases I'm probably not privy to delusions, but when it comes to online marketing and SEO in particular we get a chance to hear those delusions loud and clear.
One of these popular delusions (it's quite viral) is that somehow, search engines are out to get web publishers. Now I'm not here to bash those marketers who use an anti-search engine (or anti-SEO) stance to pay their bills, but there's a point where this search engine bashing (or rather, Google-bashing) stops being actual criticism and transcends into raving madness (that point comes, on average, after 5 seconds).
The anti-Google phenomenon just seems to be a variation of people going up in arms against the dominant force in society - but since this isn't about social behavior and how we are way more predictable than we like to believe, let's look at search engines in general and what they are actually here for. Perhaps we'll understand if they're actually evil or not?
Let's start with an often-asked question: what do search engines want?
World Domination? Perhaps, but that doesn't help us much. In the interest of keeping things short, I'll posit two answers - money, and users. You might think that one thing drives the other and therefore we can just pick one, but for the sake of argument let's keep the two separate.
Now just because a business wants to be profitable does not mean that they're going to cheat you to get there - it's convenient (and when a person gets emotionally involved, it's the only alternative) to blame, say, Google, for cracking down on paid links because they want their own brand of paid advertising to be the only game in town, but that's just bitching, and bitching doesn't help you at all.
As a sidenote, it was interesting to read about the WordPress Marketplace and the hue and cry against them monetizing WordPress.com - all the time when this had nothing to do with WordPress and Matt cracking down on sponsored themes.
And while we're on it - Wikipedia is not evil, just woefully flawed (like all of us). Please get over it.
Whether you like it or not, it's a safe bet that the people at Google (and Automattic) have higher ideals they are following than scamming users for short-term gains. I could be wrong in assuming this, but the people running organisations are smart, and would work on long-term gains instead of short-term profits that just burn through the brand. Feel free to disagree.
So search engines want to make money, but not by screwing you over. They want to do it by fulfilling a need the best way possible, and that involves serving search users and the advertisers that want to reach those users. Sometimes these objectives will cause search engines to act against the interests of certain businesses, especially those businesses who rely on some extent on these search engines for their livelihood. It's not malicious, it's just business - everyone's on their own and it's up to you to protect your future, not someone else.
Can we please get over this ridiculous paranoia that just because someone does something that happens to impact us in a negative way, it must be with an agenda to harm us? Last time I checked, self-interest is the overwhelming driving force behind organisational behavior. Couple this sense of injustice with a social tendency to oppose that which is powerful and it's quite simple to see how Google, the media darling just 4 years ago, is now vilified as a greedy monster.
Effectively, Google has grown, improved its search engine, diversified its services, become better at monetizing its assets. But in the minds of many people, Google is now out to 'get them'.
Amazing, really, how people can still react in fear and paranoia when they should know better.
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