Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
The king of search rules the Web -- but now some of the natives are growing restless.
Jun 25, 2003 | When Robert Massa, the owner of a small Web company called Search King, decided to sue Google in 2002 after the search engine lowered his site's ranking, he knew the move wasn't going to win him any friends online. Back then Google was worshipped by practically everyone on the Web; not only did the search engine produce the finest results, but the company that ran it was also regarded as modest and affable, a refreshing thing in the tech industry. Massa was right: People immediately started saying nasty things to him. "'They ought to wipe you out of business.' 'They should sue you!' -- that kind of thing," Massa recalls. "It's scary that those kinds of people are sitting out on the Internet."
Massa's lawsuit didn't get very far; Google insisted it had the right to do whatever it wanted on its own site and pointed out that Massa had even been publicly boasting about gaming Google's PageRank system. On May 27, 2003, a federal judge in Oklahoma, where Search King is based, agreed with Google and dismissed Massa's suit.
Massa is surprisingly upbeat about the loss. He says that he's conferring with his attorneys about what to do next. But he doesn't think further litigation against Google will be necessary, for the simple reason that nobody believes, anymore, that Google is an angelic, big-hearted firm with only the Web's best interests at heart.
"To be honest, I feel like I made my point," he says. "There's been a perception that Google is something special, something bigger than life. My point is they're just a search engine -- they're a damn good engine -- but they shouldn't be above the law. I accused them of having tremendous power and having no accountability. And now people are starting to question their motives."
Massa may be according himself a bit too much credit, but he's essentially correct -- Google's halo is beginning to tarnish. Much of this has to do with the influence the firm now wields in virtually every corner of the Web. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, by a huge margin; when you count the people who use the Google site as well as other sites that employ its technology -- including Yahoo, AOL and EarthLink -- the company may handle as many as three-quarters of all search requests online.
But the company does much more than run a good search engine. Google is also, by its own proud reckoning, the world's largest advertising network. More than 100,000 businesses currently advertise with the company, many of them small companies for whom Google is a primary driver of customers. In February, Google purchased Blogger, making it the biggest blogging company, with more than a million registered users. Google also hosts a "product search" site, a paid-research service, and Google News, which is fast making most news editors, if not reporters, superfluous.
The fondest rumor in the tech industry is that Google will soon go public and, just as Netscape did in 1995, ignite a long-running market boom. But even if it doesn't launch an IPO, one look at the dozens of jobs the firm has available leaves little doubt about its plans for expansion.
(Representatives of Google were unable to comment for this article.)
Is Google's growth provoking a backlash? Industry observers are beginning to think so. A few years ago, they note, it was difficult to find anyone who didn't worship Google, but now many people have a beef with the firm. Some of the complaints are obviously self-serving and maybe even dismissible -- such as those from the Chinese government, say, or the Church of Scientology. But the ire of other groups has more heft. In recent months, the question of how Google should index blogs has become a hot topic online. Google has been attacked by some critics who say the search engine gives blogs too much weight, and others who say it's not giving blogs their due. Then there are webmasters and people in the "search engine optimization" industry, folks whose livelihoods depend on ranking well in Google. With so much riding on the whims of one firm, these people are constantly, pedantically, obsessed with and irritated at Google, sometimes, as in Massa's case, to the point of litigation.
To be sure, millions of people still love Google. When they step up to a Google query box, Web users are expecting one thing from the search engine -- to be quickly directed to the one page that can solve some momentary, pressing mystery. Google provides such pages with remarkable consistency, and that accounts for its success -- but it also points to a vulnerability. Google is so good that it's now seen, in some ways, as an arbiter of truth, a kingmaker. What Google says about a particular subject, from "Iraq war" to "bookstore," can have real political or economic import. That's why so many people fight over Google's results, and why, as the company grows, concerns about its influence will only get louder.
Google's influence also makes it a juicy target for rivals. The company's position on top is by no means guaranteed. Yahoo once seemed indomitable, too, notes Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch and perhaps the foremost observer of trends in the world of search. But things on the Web change very quickly, and Yahoo's lead didn't last long. "Has the world become so different that things can't balance themselves out with Google, too?" Sullivan asks. The question is not rhetorical. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Overture, and -- perhaps most distressingly for Google -- Microsoft are all determined to make a play for a bigger slice of the search market.
Can Google outmaneuver these rivals? It very well might. But there's a more interesting question: Now that Google is no longer a plucky underdog, will anyone root for it?
Get Salon in your mailbox!