Today's New York Times article on The Pangs of Two Becoming One (Google's 2.1 Billion deal to buy DoubleClick) suggests that Google faces a conflict of interest in providing search results (via it's search engine) while now owning a SEO Company, Performics, that helps clients improve those same results.

While I see the conflict - I can't imagine Google not selling Performics as soon as it can.

"…Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.

The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and I.B.M. and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google’s search managers.

But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick’s Performics division.

Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines."

The New York Times article then goes on to examine the possibility that Google won't sell Performics and how the leading Search Engine can co-exist with a leading agency that helps optimise for Search.

And personally, I don't see this as entirely out of question - while the writer, Dan Mitchell adds wealth and intelligence to the equation and looks for other examples of when two businesses that are contradictory where owned by the same entity.

"…essay shows that while things have improved since the turn of the 20th century, there is still a way to go. Back then, a maker of rat poison could get away with depicting a Chinese man in Confucian-era garb gobbling up a rat (to “exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats,” Mr. Segal explains). But as recently as the early 1990s, Stroh Brewery was peddling Crazy Horse malt liquor — disregarding the fact that the 19th-century American Indian leader Crazy Horse was a teetotaler who preached abstinence. In 2001, the brewery sold off the brand and apologized.

Well, Duh! A new study has confirmed what most of us already knew: Wealth and intelligence have little to do with each other."

Getting back to Google - Could Google really own an SEO Company - and the answer is yes - it probably could - but then they'd have to go back and change their stance on how to optimize for Google (now … if you really want to be sure your optimizing for US …. just go to our high priced SEO Company - Performics - and we'll take care of it all for you) which would make Google look more and more like Yahoo (in my eyes).

So…. I think Google will certainly sell Performics; it's much easier than changing it's established messaging about concentrating on content and not on ranking - and Google has been pushing that message for the last 10 years - I don't think they're going to change it suddenly now.

But…I have learnt to never say … never.