Of late, we have been observing the disturbing trend of abuse of Google platform by those having bad intentions and ill will. The same has taken shape of illegal search engine optimisation, artificial clicks to generate revenue, artificial clicks to increase page ranks, etc.
The latest in trend is to “flag” genuine blogs like Legal News and Views by its competitors and perverse minds. The process, though meant to sort out objectionable contents, has been misused in the past by many. We came to know about this fact when some of the Writers reported the fact that they cannot access their accounts due to “objections” by Google in this regard. Google system and process is also defective in this regard as a blog owner cannot report “review” of her blog when the account itself is “disabled”. The worst part is that Google is “disabling” the “administrator’s account” that is resulting in a complete chaos. Another fallacy with the Google’s practice is that if a single account is used for multiple blogs, all of them are blocked. This is very frustrating.
We have also “analysed” the search results of many key words and found no “relevance and connection” between the searched query and the end result. It seems the search engine optimisation has reached an ugly stage where the reputation of and trust in Google is declining. For instance, type cyber law in India and you would come across Google results at first page that should not at all be there.
We also analysed other search engines like Yahoo, MSN, etc and found them “more neutral and fair” as compared to Google. The results shown for queries were more “balanced and relevant” as compared to Google. It seems Google’s “reputation” itself is becoming a cause of misuse of its platforms. Of course, we cannot blame Google for the “unfair behaviours” of the end users except to the extent that there must be “fair and transparent” mechanism to deal with issues like these.
Google must not forget that “market forces and competition” may take advantage of these lapses in Google’s policies. Wolfram Alpha, a new "Computational Knowledge Engine" developed by British physicist Stephen Wolfram, is all set to revolutionise search with its amazing/innovative ability to give answers to questions directly - instead of directing to sources where the users "might" get the required information. It is going to change the face of search engines and other allied services forever.
Meanwhile, while our Writers have “formally notified” Google about these facts they have also decided to shift to Wordpress to avoid any such future misunderstandings and for better results.
AUTHOR: CATHY
SOURCE: TLNAV
The best part of a democratic setup is that in case of conflicting viewpoints both sides get their respective chance to put forward their version. A similar concept applies to cyberspace where both the sides of an aspect must be freely available to the public for their appraisal.
