Give it Up for Google
Give it up for Google, the do no evil company has become bigger than everything. This brilliant little team of mathematicians created something that is now beyond human control. They have won you know…
Man I could not wait to get my Gmail account back when they first started up. People were selling invites on ebay and literally the day I was going to buy one, I got the invite. Oh Happy Days!
I had already achieved superiority by having discovered the fantastic features of Alta Vista moving on beyond the old stalwart search engine, Yahoo. Soon it was obvious that Google was very fast and seemed to return things that you were actually searching for, not just pages and pages of totally unrelated nonsense that occasionally would have a gem in it.
I had also mastered Excite and the metacrawlers, but now Google, well they just were the best, hands down. I had a genealogy website that had been working since the mid or late 1980′s and when I heard about Blogger by Google, well it was just no question. Build a blog on Blogger. It’s free after all.
Soon it was obvious that when you searched for something, anything, on Google that along with your search topic returns there were also some advertisements that seemed to be targeted to just exactly what you were searching for. My isn’t that clever, how they do that?
So fast forward to about 2007 and I learned about WordPress and started to build websites. Boy did I build em. I would just put up a site about anything, anything at all and stick some Adsense code on it and sit back and light up a Lucky. Soon the cash would be rolling in. Not.
I did not know anything about keywords or Adwords or prices of words that advertisers would pay Google for to have their ads placed in the best positions. After a year or more it was obvious that this was a bad business model and had to learn more, a lot more.
I looked at my pitiful AdSense reports and it dawned on me that the payout structure was based on how many people visited your site and how many clicked on the ads. So on sites where the word prices were low, or sites that people were just looking for free information, those page views counted against me. They were basing the final payout on the total views as part of the equation of payment. Not fair. Not fair at all, but it is the Golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
So I took all my AdSense ads down and started from square one. I decided to only put AdSense on websites that had high payouts for the keywords and worked on driving traffic to those sites. That is not an easy task either because for every scheme that someone comes up with to “help” the search engines find your site, guess who figures it out?
Some other real brainy things I did was to create multiple accounts with several hosting companies. I did not want the Big G to know that I owned all of these many sites. Ha!
There is nothing that you can do to get around it. If you use AdSense you have the same ID number. If you use WordPress you have the same Akismet API and the Yahoo API and other identifiers that are internal in each of your sites. Believe me they know who you are and where your kids go to school.
Just today Google came out with their own version of BUZZ. Cripes! I do not want all of my email list automatically added to any mass social media thing. I have many different personas and pen names that I write under. I certainly do not want people from my classic car business, knowing about my lefty green business, or the fact that I sell ladies brassieres! True, but its a long story.
At the bottom of any Gmail page there is a tab that you can use to TURN BUZZ OFF! By the way another tab can turn Google Chat off too if that annoys you. Any way to get to the reason for this post as from the start.
If the government ever wanted to collect any small percentage of what we freely and openly give to Google every minute of the day, there would be screams to high Heaven. Well 1984 is here forever.
Surely you heard about the gutsy move Google made in China. They are now partnering up with the NSA to take that problem to the next level. Ha! That should make it easier for the govt to just nationalize Google during the next crisis and guess what? It’s too late.
This will go right along with the 2010 census data. Did you know that when the census taker visits your home, and they will, that when they are at your doorway they click a little button on a little devise that sends a signal up to a GPS satellite that will pinpoint your doorway?
Now you take every single search that you have ever made on Google, they do still have it in their memory banks, and you couple that with exactly where you are at any moment, and do you see where I am going with this?…
Oh by the way, did you know that Google only indexes about 10% of the world wide web? The other 90% does not cause any advertising to be generated. Do a few searches about “The Deep Web.”
Well I for one no longer care. At times I feel like just running into Google’s headquarters, stripping off all my clothes, throwing myself down on the receptionists desk on my back, and shouting “C’mon Google! Have your way with me!


















The BUZZ got me good. Like so many other pieces of Google I never asked for. It’s starting to get like Microsoft Office and Windows OS – nearly unavoidable in BUSINESS environments. With innovation there is bound to be this effect; so where is the next Google? Where is the company we can trust, if only for another few years?
Yes, I hope BUZZ withers away just like the WAVE seems to be doing. There is no way to stop them from doing what ever they want but i am very glad they at least give us the option to turn all this crap off.
Thanks for the comment.
Rich
I enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
Sometimes I wonder if Google is trying to be too many things to too many people. Perhaps they should stick with what they are good at and leave the rest?
Just my 2 cents…
Ha ha, it was my pleasure too. Crazy what goes though one’s mind late at night.
Your two cents mean a lot,
Thanks Chris.
Rich
I really feel like Google is getting too big for its own good. They are becoming more and more similar to a sort of big brother persona. Anyone can now find a picture of your house with Google Streetview just by typing in your address and zooming in.
You can never put the Genie back in the bottle.
Thanks you for the comment.
Rich
So, if I tell you what I really think about Google, will they find out who I am and make my life more difficult? And what maybe a joke today, might become reality later.
Good post, a bit paranoid, but good. I enjoyed the ending. I don’t know much about how buzz works, only that it is there. I tend to move through and ignore what doesn’t concern me, then I read this and I feel a few hours of my life drain away as I try to get a handle on something else. Having a medical background, I am always as worried about some side effect as I am about the intended effect. My Dad who worked during the heydays of steel in this country laments that we don’t produce anything anymore. We do, it comes from companies like Google. We make information and some of it is about us. If you were making 7 or 8 figures from it, you wouldn’t say a word, just like Google.
Hi Tom,
Gee I don’t know, why don’t you tell us what you think about Google and see what happens?
Hey anything is possible. They hold all the keys.
I would not worry, I just like to vent once in a while.
Thanks for leaving a comment.
Rich
Hi Bruce,
Somewhere I read that a little paranoia is a good thing. LOL
Well your Dad is a smart man. we do not “manufacture” much anymore in this country. Companies like Google don’t really make anything, they are just scraping all of our data to use as their own. When we do something like that as publishers our posts do not get penalized, but they do get ignored.
The problem is I am trying to make 6 or 7 figures and primarily they are the fly in the ointment. Just sayin…
Hey thanks for the well thought out comment.
Best.
Rich
You know more about Google then I ever dreamed of knowing. Sometimes I think it is smarter to not be so smart.
It is like this not knowing so much about Google I don’t have to sit and worry about what they may be up to next. Maybe that’s not smart in some ways, but right now it is working for me.
Thanks for the info thought. It is appreciated
Debbie
Hi Debbie,
Just trying to share some thoughts that I have been having. It may sound like a rant but some parts of this post should be considered.
Hey thanks for the comment.
Rich
It was the case with me too, when i have starter with Adsense. I have understood all about the Adsense and the ways to earn out of it after a month of advertisement on my blog.
This is a wonderful article and you have covered many points here to uncover the truth of google and its benefits.
One more thing, i have turned off BUZZ only after reading this article. Thanks for letting me know how to turn it off.
To Google’s credit they did respond quickly and within a day or two after being flooded with complaines, they di change BUZZ to opt-in ranter than opt-out as it first was presented. BUZZ may turn out to be a perfectly wonderful and useful social network, but for me, we have too many of them now.
I can’t keep up anymore. Buzz is the latest and like you said, there are just too many of this sort of thing now. How many of these networks do you need, right?
I have no problem with more and more of these type things as I can choose to ignore them. The only thing that freaked me out is that Google just slammed this one down out throats on launch.
Yep, just like all big corporations, soon they get too big for their own good. Like someone pointed out, they’re on the warpath toward Microsoft, what with making their own OS and everything. Hopefully, they won’t make the same mistakes.
Till then,
Jean
Thanks for your comment.
Hi Rich,
I had a good laugh at your last comment. The mental picture of you naked on the Google receptionist’s desk was too much!
Yes, in this inter-connected day & age, one does have to seriously think about how much of their personal information they want to put up on the net.
A lot of people don’t care or understand, and for them, it’s something that WILL come around and bite them on the butt sometime in the future.
Can we trust Google?
I don’t know – I’d like to think we can, but I’m not 100.000000000000000% to be honest.
People being people, one day some unethical (or stupid) idiot in power at google is going to cross over to the dark side, and before you know it, the sith lords of Mountain View will be storming the Jedi temple, killing anyone & everyone in site!
My philosophy is that I try to not put anything online that I wouldn’t want my mother to see/read, and so far that’s working ok. Mind you, in my line of work (Internet Marketing Consultant), it’s a little difficult to avoid posting anything personal
it comes with the territory.
OK Rich, back to that Facebook Ads dvd & book I’m working on!
Speak soon.
Eran Malloch
Hey Eran,
Great comment! It beats me how people will leave so much personal information for the whole world to see.
I saw your message on BlogSuccess about the book you are writing on Facebook advertising. That is a great idea and let us know when it is ready.
Rich
I never knew anything about the “deep web”. I just did a search for it and read a little bit of the Wikipedia page on it. That’s pretty interesting.
It is an incredible amount of information don;t you think?
Thanks for the feedback Scott.
Rich
The TV project, according to the New York Times, is still under wraps, but that hasn’t stopped the details from leaking. The GTV will be based on the Android OS, and come in the form of both a set-top box and actual TV-sets. There will be regular television, of course, but also Hulu, YouTube and other web-video sources, as well as games and apps for social networking.
Well, I guess you just cannot ‘keep your cake to look at’, and eat it at the same time. We all love the utilities of Google and others, but little by little it strips us of our privacy, or anonymity as a way to pay our dues.
On the matter of searches though, I believe that Google recently promised the Federal Govt. that it would purge it’s databases of personal information of it’s users after specific period of time. Never mind! Whether they do or not is academic at this point. Once you are online, you are known!
Thanks for the post.
That is exactly right. we want everything and want to give up nothing. It does not work that way.
Thanks for the great comment.
Rich
Though anyone can register a Gmail account for free without an invite, some people are still selling Gmail invitations on eBay.
Did you know you can use Google to track your packages? Type in FedEx, followed by your tracking number, and you’ll get results. Type in the UPS number, you’ll get results. I love it! Google rocks! via Big Pink Cookie…
I don’t know what i would do without google at this point I use so many of their applications. It has helped me streamline so many aspects of my business. Google Rocks that is for sure!