It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

There are many reasons why Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t perfect, and this unfortunate tale in the New York times  is a perfect reason why.   However, what’s really unfortunate is how people aren’t just gaming the system to merely line their own pockets, but who are doing so at the expense of others.  The delicious irony, of course, is that Google’s own reputation for service is beyond atrocious, one of the causes of these issues (can’t complain to an algorithm) leading Google to end up on the same complaints 2.0 websites as the one above.

Privacy advocates want more transparency from Google about how it plans to monetize the vast amounts of behavioral data it collects. Google could charge a pretty penny for this intelligence, which could help advertisers better target their pitches, says Court.

“Even though the company espouses that it doesn’t do evil, the potential for a lot of evil exists,” says Court. “It may start with simple ads  you get based on whether you like soccer or baseball, but the evolution of being spied on, not only through  your searches, but on all the files you create, that’s pretty frightening.”

At times like this, I like to remind myself that as tin-foil-y as privacy advocates sound (at times), Google has been known to add cookies that last 30 years long, was almost strong-armed by the government in handing over a ton of privacy related information, or how the Google van has been known to take photos of people without their specific consent.   Yep … sometimes, I’d like to refer to Danny Sullivan’s seminal article which is only two years old, but details a great many “tipping points” towards malevolence since 2001.

Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.

Linux has not fared so well in the Netbooks market and I don’t see anything here that makes me think Google ChromeOS will do any better. Where’s the secret sauce here other than the Google halo effect painted over with the browser and duly hyped by the SV Google lovers? Sure, I can see why Google might make subtle statements that people wish to interpret but the reality is no-one outside the Silicon Valley tech bubble gives a damn what operating system and browser they use. Many are still mandated to use IE6 as a colleague reminded me the other day. Simply having Google wave its hand is not going to sway hard nosed enterprise buyers – even if it is free. Which neatly brings me to another point

Google has said it wants to get help from the open source community. I’ll bet they do. All those drivers that Arrington dismisses with a wave of the hand WILL need to be served. If he thinks I”m wrong then a quick call to any of the major banks’ CTO offices should put him straight on that one. Better still, listen to some of the discussions at CloudCamps where the problem of driver capabilities in the Internet Cloud matter a great deal.

I haven’t an intelligent thought about enterprise-related issues as it has to do with … well, pretty much anything.  But the lusty failure of Linux as an OS for Netbooks (according to some accounts) for the lay-public (the Word-using, WOW-playing, I-just-canceled-my-AOL-subscription-6-months-ago public) is something no one should discount out of hand.

With the maturing of Google apps out of beta (just a few hours ago), and the announcement of Google’s own online OS just now, one wonders if the pieces are beginning to drop into place with respect to Google carving out its own niche — in earnest, this time — about the future of computing.  Sure, there’s always going to be a place for a desktop OS, just like there’s always going to be a place for desktop applications.  But in terms of The Future, one has to wonder where the proportion of where most people are going to spend there time — and productivity — lies.

I’ve written about the secret data centers and the dark fibre Google’s purchased over the years, and one wonders if this isn’t all part of one big plan that was conceived a long, long, time ago.

Today Google is about search.

Tomorrow … Google may allow others to own “Fun” (?)  and “Social” (Facebook? Twitter?) … but its pushing to own Productivity (of which search is only one part) on these interwebs.  Hopefully it’ll be as profitable as owning Productivity has been for Microsoft all of these years.

The broader question for me is why Google has been a laggard in pushing / encouraging / appealing for a greater uptake in its services — get people down the funnel, so to speak from free to fee — or even, for that matter, from Google search –> free apps –> pay apps.

I get that there’s something ideologically pure about not cluttering up the Google.com home page and its SERPs.  But I’m sure that I’m not the only one who considers it a tremendous opportunity loss, and a shockingly huge marketing ineffiency.

Then again, perhaps it continues to speak of Google’s happy reliance on the adwords / adsense Golden Goose, and who knows — perhaps an equal distaste for anything that smacks of commercial “aggression”.