Shooting at Bubbles

A while back I wrote a post called So why does Google get a free ride…. which got a really interesting rebuttal post from Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins over at Mashable in which he came to the conclusion that Google doesn’t really have what could be classified as a monopoly in the classic sense of the word.

In his well written rebuttal of my original post he said:

The bottom line is, though, where Google dominates markets is not where a product or service is being sold. Take search, for example. Search is not the product – you and your search queries are the product. Those, in turn, are sold to the advertisers. In the world of advertising (or even the world of online advertising), Google is not the sole competitor. There are many other very strong competitors in online advertising. While Google does own a significant portion (or even majority share) of a certain types of the online advertising market, it in no way can be called a monopoly.

On the face of his argument Mark is quite right however a recent piece by Chrispian on his blog Nothing to Say once more brings the whole subject of the power held by Google and whether they are using that power to manipulate the marketplace to their advantage – hence a monopoly albeit not necessary a monopoly in the typical sense of one.

In his post – Does Google Hate Webmasters – Chrispian outlines some of the things that Google has done recently that has had – in some cases some profound effects on bloggers:

Here is some of the shenangins Google has pulled lately:

- Link exchanges are bad
- Directories that link directly to you are bad
- Buying links is bad
- Selling links is bad
- Selling ads that directly link to the buyer’s site is bad
- Giving away a program, plugin, theme or software that requires a “link” is bad

And the list goes on and on. I’m not the only one that feels this way.

The simple fact is that Google with one simple statement and change to their code can literally wipe out revenue streams for bloggers. Yes there are a massive number of blogs; or splogs, out there that use every trick they can to play with Google and make loads of money in the process. While those types of operations definitely need to be brought to heel there are an equal number of blogs; if not more, who legitimately do the best they can to follow the ever changing rule book.

Google is the acknowledged leader in online advertising with its AdSense program driving probably 99.99% of all blogs out there. If Google sneezes we all catch a cold and nothing is changing that fact at this time. For blogs that are trying to monetize their work AdSense is pretty well the only game in town regardless of the number of competing ad networks that are out there.

Sure there are other networks out there like I said but for the vast majority of blogs they are in-effectual either because those networks don’t want to deal with small pageview blogs or they don’t produce a reliable amount of revenue. Whereas AdSense is the defacto standard for just about every blog that wants to run ads and Google knows that – we are a trapped customers with absolutely now alternatives or voice in how Google applies its AdSense rules.

That to me still smells of a monopoly .. even if it is only a monopoly due to circumstances.