As you can see from above, the ‘tip’. Can you believe that Google would dare do such a thing? They are punting their very own service. Whenever you type the word blog into the search engine they hand over an advert disguised as a tip! A TIP! A tip to sign up with Blogger. This is obviously generating HUGE click through revenue for them and gives them an extreme advantage over other blog providers.
From Andy Beal’s blog:
I find it deceptive on their part to call this a “Tip.” This is a blatant ad which I’m sure is getting some amazing CTR due to having the only other image on the page besides the logo.
I feel this behaviour is slightly capitalistic and semi-unethical, even though Google owns the search engine as well as the blogsite, which does actually make it 100% legit. I just feel that naming it a ‘Tip’ is deceptive.
2 responses so far ↓
Justin Hartman // December 21, 2006 at 10:33 pm
I couldn’t agree more with both you and Andy Beal. This is what I was trying to say in my post on my site that you don’t need to have click thru ads on a search engine. Google defined this model and it works but I’m trying to do something different.
Do you remember when Google said they will never have advertising on their website. Well that changed and with it opened up a new door for them to do what they like.
I believe that once you break one of your key principles what happens there after is a whole new story.
I don’t know if you remember the story about how Google were censoring their search results for China? China have strict content laws and when I heard Google were going to censor I flipped my lid.
Google is not what it used to be and to be honest they are no different to any other monopoly in the world today. The problem, and here comes the biggy, is that they basically own almost every piece of data in the world today. A very powerful tool to have?
Justin Hartman » Seriously, Google is starting to scare me // January 9, 2007 at 8:23 am
[...] Sessa recently blogged about Google’s latest Tip box being blatantly deceptive and in his post any search for the word blog in Google brings an advert [...]