Are emotions running high against Google? All of a sudden, everything is going against the search giant, except of course, the big-moolah. Sample this:
- Who's who of IT industry questioning Google's monopolistic move to buyout DoubleClick - the list is getting longer everyday.
- $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom for YouTube's alleged copyright infringement.
- Privacy International placing Google dead last in its evaluation of Internet service companies in terms of consumer data protection, labeling it hostile to privacy.
- Came under the scanner for keeping a lifelong record of every search query of each of its users, along with the IP address the query was executed from and a cookie ID to link together queries from a user's computer even if the IP address changes - a direct link to the point preceding this.
- Allegations that Google underestimates click fraud rates even after it paid a $90 million settlement in a click fraud case in March of last year.
- Amazon deciding to use M$'s Live Search over Google's to provide search results on its site.
- Today's news that prompted this article, Microsoft replaces Google as the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising on Digg.
If the above seem more like the IT industry players standing up against their arguably biggest comptetitor today - then the mood among the users isn't all that forgiving too! Recently, when Google filed an antitrust complaint against M$'s Vista Search, people's reaction was, like: Google is the new bad-boy(girl ;)) - it was surprising to see people's sympathy with Microsoft (in a new role i.e. of a victim).
The higher one gets, the more visible one becomes to the public eye - hence more prone to public criticism. It's apparent celebrity status brings with it public scrutiny - but, at the moment it seems emotions against Google are at an all-time high which may be disastrous because when Microsoft used to be criticized, it didn't have a powerful competitor to gain advantage but in case of Google, it has a powerful foe to contend with, and it's ironically, Microsoft!
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