Ten States Sue Google
Ten states have brought a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of “anti-competitive conduct” in the online advertising industry including a deal to manipulate sales with rival Facebook — ABC NEWS
I have been selling Google Advertising services for nearly 19 years including Google Ads and Search Engine Optimization.
Here’s my take on the recent news:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Google is using its “monopolistic power” to control pricing of online advertisements, fixing the market in its favor and eliminating competition.
He continues…
“This Goliath of a company is using its power to manipulate the market, destroy competition, and harm you, the consumer,” Paxton said in the video posted on Twitter.
A lot of digital marketers kiss the big G’s backside, but not me. I couldn’t agree more with Attorney General, Ken Paxton and I hope the lawsuit against Google is successful. As a capitalist, I generally don’t feel that the Gov should get involved with private enterprise, but sometimes — enough is enough.
Google is getting too big, and they are involved in too much. They’ve got too much control and they are killing businesses daily through cross-market acquisitions. Take the acquisition GrandCentral on March 11, 2009, Google took the services offered by GrandCentral and made them free through Google Voice ultimately eliminating telecom competition.
That being said, I think AG Ken Paxton is missing the bigger picture. Organic Search. Over the years, SEOs and business owners alike discovered that traditional online advertising can support search engine visibility efforts. After all, a link is treated as an endorsement and if you advertised on the local papers website, you’d get SEO benefit from it. That’s when Google decided change it’s rules and said if you’re paying for advertising, the advertising cannot contain a ‘do-follow’ link. Do-Follow links allow for the passing of PageRank (Google Juice) and help with SEO efforts. Now, if King Google catches you paying for advertising that passes PageRank they can, and will penalize you which is where a Google on the ‘search quality team’ manually removes you, or demotes your business in search ultimately destroying businesses overnight.
Sure, there are hackers and spammers who get caught, but so do the small businesses who unknowingly buy advertising on websites that inadvertently violates Google Webmaster Guidelines and attract penalties.
As much as I am thankful to Google for indirectly creating a career for me, they are without a doubt destroying good businesses daily. It’s far more serious than the alleged paid advertising schemes.
In time, this will be sorted out in the courts and King Google will no longer be, King Google.