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Should Google Be Regulated?

Posted by Karen Rubin on Wed, Jul 15, 2009 @ 09:30 AM

One of the things that makes planning for HubSpot.tv easy is that Mike and I are lucky enough to get content suggestions from the HubSpot team all week long. Today, in preparation for Friday's show, @BradfordCoffey brought this fantastic article on TechCrunch to my attention. 

 

 In it, an unidentified, but "well known executive at one of the largest sites on the Internet" argues that the search engine optimization and marketing industry needs to be regulated. He/she urges us to imagine,

 "that the entire Internet is contained within a single continent. That continent is filled with countries, states and cities. Each jurisdiction is autonomous, relying on visitors to cross on to their turf to engage in commerce. Now, imagine if the only way to get into this continent involved just two methods: SEO and SEM. Let's further imagine that the borders to this continent were controlled by a single company."

The argument goes on further to say that as a result of controlling organic and paid listings and by not disclosing how the results are displayed on these systems, Google is effectively deciding what business succeed and what businesses fail.  

 The author comes to the conclusion that the solution to this problem is requiring that search engines disclose how their algorithms work. Further stating that this is the only way by "which all businesses can compete freely in the organic and paid search marketplaces."

I would love to discuss this on HubSpot.tv on Friday, but I am not sure if I agree or disagree. I would love to know what you think. Do Google (and other search engines) have to disclose their magic in order to have a free market on the internet?  

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COMMENTS

Wow, I hadn't thought about Google ever being regulated, but they do have a disturbing amount of power. And even though they pledge to "do no evil", the folks who've taken that pledge won't be with us forever and there's no guarantee that the future Google will be so egalitarian. 
 
I work within another unregulated industry, life and business coaching, and as long as everyone plays nice, it's much better not to be regulated. Problem is, there always seem to be a few bad apples who take advantage of everyone else. 
 
My concerns about regulating Google are that 1. there is no guarantee that the regulators will be any more trust worthy than Google 2. Revealing the algorithms will just make it that much easier to game Google, and 3. bureaucracy is never pretty. 
 
My 2 cents.

posted @ Wednesday, July 15, 2009 9:44 AM by Julia Stewart

I would not recommend regulating Google unless a serious showing of market power is established. And, by "market power", I mean the author's thesis must be proven. The author assumes that businesses rise and fall upon the whim of Google's ad algorithm. This is probably overstating things. As HupSpot knows, there are a multitude of methods to advertise/market a product/brand/service. Google is not the only means, and as a result should not be subject to this type of regulation. 
 
Imagine another scenario where all commercial advertisers must obtain a license or permit from a company (or agency) before conducting marketing campaigns. This restraint on commercial information would clearly be unreasonable because it would imply a single point of entry to the marketplace. 
 
My hypothetical is what the author assumes Google to be, but he/she appears to be overstating the influence of Google as an entry point for consumers. TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, other search engines, other banner ad suppliers, billboards, commercial websites, signs on a subway, and skywriting pilot planes remain viable alternatives to market oneself apart from a highlighted Google recommended response.

posted @ Wednesday, July 15, 2009 12:16 PM by Jake Schneider

I don't think any search engine should be regulated, if you don't like their results, just move on and use another, I remember using dogpile.com before google even existed. 
 
The argument that they should disclose their algorithms is absurd, Goggle has invested time and resources to develop them and by opening their doors, it will generate a gray market for SEO where the one that will win, is the one who has the best resources to reverse engineer those algorithms.(Big Companies) 
 

posted @ Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:12 PM by Ramon Trujillo

Humm, not sure where I stand on this one. But is it not too long ago, we were saying Microsoft should make Windows open source, Office open source because we were all afraid of Microsoft and started looking for other cheaper solutions. History could repeat itself (looks like it might be happening already) and this time it would be Google's turn. 
 
The latest Wired Magazine has an article on how DOJ is looking deeper into Google's business practices. Google was forced to bail out of the Yahoo deal because of anti-competitive practices. It is so funny that moment you grow in size, you are the target (for good reasons or not) and everyone wants to size you down. Last resort competitors have? Sour grapes?

posted @ Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:45 PM by Gopal Shenoy

Thanks for all the great comments folks. Your insights are fantastic. We'll be discussing this tomorrow on HubSpot.tv! 
 
Karen

posted @ Thursday, July 16, 2009 9:18 AM by Karen

The current "modern" thinking is that companies/individuals with excellent products that come to dominate markets should "share" the goodies through "regulation" so they don't get too powerful/influential. Think Google, Apple (iPhone, iPod) and Microsoft in the tech world. At least in the tech world this is silly, the goodies just do not last. We are currently watching Microsoft become IBM. It won't be all that long before we see Google become Microsoft. Apple of course, lives forever!

posted @ Thursday, July 16, 2009 6:50 PM by David Roy

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