Over the last week I’ve read a few negative posts about Google and yesterday I decided it was time to write a post outlining what I think is going to eventually happen.

First, Steve Rubel published a post in his Lifestream on The Google Jail …

1) We kowtow to Google like it’s some kind of moral authority. In exchange it would be great to see them be more transparent.

2) As the number of places for producing and distributing content skyrockets then duplicate postings will become the norm rather than the exception. It would be in Google’s best interest to guide us rather than let us just test them.

Last week Marketingpilgrim had a post on a looming Anti Trust case against Google in Google: Pay No Attention to the Behemoth behind the Curtain where Google was portrayed as”…convincing people (or the government) you’re no big deal is kind of a big deal when you’re one deal away from anti-trust proceedings.”

Then, the DOJ did pounce on Google even as TechCrunch gives us the news …as The DOJ Pounces, Google Makes Book Search Even Better with

….Google received some unfortunate news today, with the U.S. Department of Justice formally announcing the investigation of the $125 million settlement Google made with the Author’s Guild to pay authors a nominal fee for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web. The settlement has drawn its fair share of critics, including Jeff Bezos. But Google keeps on plugging away, making its book search better and better.

The next day, Johnon.com publishes an important post on how we’re all now been brainwashed by Google to be  SEO Tools (of Google) and I found much of the thinking on this post similar to many posts I’ve published over the last two years that have been critical of Google, except now, it’s coming from more and more authorities, supporting my own opinion.

” …..it is very clear that Google stifles innovation on the Internet so that it can control traffic flows and the profits associated with that traffic. It is very clear that Google acts as a censor for public dissemination of freely-published materials, and it is becoming more clear that the popularity of SEO is helping Google (and the other search engines) further their control and censorship at all of our expense.

Honestly, did you ever really believe that a commercial entity claiming to want to “organize all of the world’s information” would be unbiased, altruistic and benevolent?”

While risking invoking Matt Cutts “ere” that we all misunderstand Google and it has only the most benevolent intentions with the Webmaster Guidelines; I accept he has to take a supportive position on Google guidelines because still works for Google and, to a good degree, he was instrumental in coming up with many of the Webmaster Guidelines in the first place.  However, Johnon attacks many of the Webmaster Guidelines as self serving to Google and destructive to site owners, and to real creativity, and I believe he’s right.   Besides, Google, for all it’s “good” intentions, sounds to me more like one of those 9 foot tall Aliens from “To Serve Man”, that famous Twilight Zone Episode:

….. The spaceship that freely transports humans is taking them to be meals for their alien “friends.”

Ok, I’m having fun with this … consider that Google is, more and more, being seen as “seeking our own data” and using it for it’s own purposes.  That would be fine, if Google were just a private company with a much smaller sphere of influence, but doing it’s own thing and not affecting all of mankind with it’s ideas of “structured data” – but it’s the main player and  it’s totally unregulated.

Here’s a couple ways where the tide of opinion is now turning against Google – and I’m have a feeling that I’m  just scratching the surface.

Consider Keywords …

… the entire field of keyword research developed around search engines and their private, unilaterally imposed policies. If you are catering to search engines, you need an SEO and keyword researcher. But there is no reason why publishers (masters of language and communication, at least if they survive in a free marketplace) need a third party to tell them what words to use in their document.

Google corrupted the entire Internet with it’s concept of interlinking, according to Johnon:

External linking strategies only exist because of search engine’s corruption of the publishing process. Otherwise, external linking (and anchor text) is a free market innovation, outside of the purview of the content publisher (it is others, external, who make those links to your content). If you want to start to understand how Google stifles innovation, and recognize how Google is one of the worst web citizens the web has ever encountered, start with linking

Consider that many companies can’t get good links and end up buying Text Links and Text Link Ads – and it works (if you buy the right ones, so I’m told).    Links became important because Google needed a way to determine how important each page was in it’s search index – but links aren’t often “endourcements”, they way they used to be – and to have so much of the ranking “juice” tied up with links – that’s a Google thing.

Johnon.com suggests we stop using Google Chrome and Google Analytics, stop searching on Google and use Bing – (I won’t though, I still need them, but I can see, eventually leaving Google) if we really want to begin watering down their control.

Yesterday, Read/WriteWeb has a post on Carton: Search Engine Pessimized where

It’s happening to more and more of the blogs I read: the personality, quirkiness and unique voice that once made them so appealing to me are fading. In their place, an SEO-driven uniformity that puts keyword placement ahead of pretty much everything.

I noticed this phenomenon back in 2005, as Newspapers started to write for “Search Engines” – the text would end up being written as much for the Search Engine and it’s obtuse “ranking factors” as for the human beings that read the content.   As time has going on, the practice of optimizing text for search engines has been “dumbing up” content to serve  Google.

Finally, SocialMediaToday columnist Tacanderson writes that I Don’t Care What Google Thinks I Should do with My Content

When I asked Steve Rubel why he decided not to keep both his Life Streamand his blog his initial response was because Google penalizes you for duplicate content.

….. if Google’s not smart enough to tell the difference between good content re-purposed on a good site, versus good content scraped on a spam site then that’s their problem not mine.

My personal take is that I want my content all over the place. That’s why you’ll see this post on my life stream, on my blog and on the Thinkers and Doers blog. My blog is the main source, it’s why I wrote it but it’s also relevant to those other sites. You’ll also see this post on Social Media Today and My Venture Pad. Plus if you or your company is a subscriber to Lexis Nexis, Thomas Reuters or you have a Kindle, you can find my blog which is syndicated through Newstex.

I think what we’re seeing … the Internet is growing up and seeing Google, as a parent who hasn’t grown up and imposing rules that have more do with furthering Google, than helping the audience which they claim to want to serve.

In other words, popular opinion and conventional wisdom has started to turn against Google and in the future; requests for greater transparency on Google’s part will harder for Google to ignore.

According to SM2/Techrigy, with more than 300 results almost all of the opinions about Google are now negative in Social Media over the last 6 weeks:

The trend is gradually turning against Google – look at the 10 day moving average over the last 6 weeks

I used Techrigy because it would attempt to give me a positive/negative breakdown – even though it’s not that accurate, in this case, for the subject matter – figured Google is not as complicated an issue to have a clear opinion about, as some other subjects I’ve used SM2 for, and Radian6 doesn’t even attempt to do automated sentiment analysis (which is probably a good idea).

At the end of the day – I predict, Google is going to replace Microsoft as the big, bad company we all love to hate, people use Google, say they love it, but really, often, they hate and fear Google, instead.

However, bear in mind, I’m writing this post to provoke thought – there are many things I love about Google, like Google Reader, FeedBurner, Google Chrome (yes, I like it) and Google Analytics (believe it, or not).  As far as what Google is doing with the data – that is another story.