Google Gone Wild?

If you’re like me you use Google products for email, to chat with fiends, to find news, figure out where to eat and decide what to buy. A former coworker and I used to joke that "Google is going to take over the world!", adding in our evil laughs.

Well, maybe it's not just a joke, and maybe it's not such a good thing. At least that’s what one Internet entrepreneur had to say at a Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon earlier this week:

Savage said his Internet company, Sourcetool.com – which listed and ranked several hundred thousand firms that sell industrial products – at first got along well with Google after it was launched in 2005.

Within the first year, it was making more than $150,000 a month. He was paid roughly a dime every time someone clicked an ad on his site. Meanwhile, he was paying Google about 5 cents a click. The difference was his profit.

By mid-summer in 2006, Google raised his rates to $5 from 5 cents, he said. Moreover, because his ads did not meet Google’s “googly” quality standards, Sourcetool’s ads fell off Google’s search results page and his ad traffic dried up.

Hold the phone. Or should I say dial-up.

I'm not sure what a Googly standard is, but maybe we do need to take a pause to make sure Google isn’t violating anti-trust rules to squash competition in the marketplace.

On a similar note, check out this video from a group called FairSearch.org.
Besides Google, who knew?

Lemonade from FairSearch.org on Vimeo.