Controversies
Gmail Accused of Misusing User Data
Gmail account is something indispensable for the majority of us and it will be a fact hard to digest that Google have been accused of sending emails to our contacts without our permissions. We can see questions raised by agitated Gmail account holders at the Google support forum.
The complaint from the users is Google is using their contacts to promote their own products. The user can see that mails are being sent to his contacts without a Gmail account to open a new Gmail account. This seems to be seriously irritating a number of users who feel that this is a breach into their privacy. You can see frustrated comments from the users like
‘Not happy Google’
‘Outrageous’
‘PLEASE EXPLAIN AND STOP THIS GOOGLE. Or I for one will close my account.’
The customers of Google service are really disappointed about this development, having said that they also seem to have lost trust and seriously considering other options. It’s a pity that Google forgot to mention about this in their recent privacy policy that’s all one can feel right. Yes and the Google employees were quick in their reply in the support forum as a user put it “Thanks for finally clearing this up, even if it did take over three months and a cNet article to get a response. :)”
What did Google say?
The reply came from Google employee Sarah the Gmail community manager and she puts it simple “These emails are generally sent when you invite a non-Gmail user to chat with you — I’ve attached a help article below.”
Maybe Google took 3 months to prepare the help article after all they are the company that cares a lot for their customers. Hard to believe? Check your emails 
SEO in Google’s View
Search engine optimization is what most of the websites like to have on their part and many accept that Google is one of the most preferable search engine by internet users. What Google thinks of SEO? Do it consider as a spam? Absolutely it is not a spam says Matt Cutts. He says it is a valid way to help users to find what they are looking for.
Also he explains doing white hat SEO techniques and quality stuff to your website will never be considered as a spam. A good SEO is that it should be both user and search engine friendly. For example, website loading time should be less and make use of the keywords properly without stuffing it more in your website. He Doesnt stop with this and he explains much more . Hear out his video below, you will get a clear idea.
Is Google Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?
We got quite a number of big shots who will be present at the hearing. Firstly Google will be having Eric Schmidt the executive chairman of Google Inc who will be presenting the view that Google are serving consumers and he would have to do this with conviction as the second panel outnumbers him.
Panel II
Jeff Katz
Chief Executive Officer
Nextag, Inc.
San Mateo, CA
Jeremy Stoppelman
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Yelp, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
Thomas O. Barnett
Partner
Covington & Burling LLP
Washington, DC
Susan A. Creighton
Partner
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, PC
Washington, DC
The prime accusation that all would have against Google is that they are trying to promote their own products, for instance one can say when you search for videos it’s highly probable that you would land in YouTube which is a Google product. Now what Google will say is that YouTube is the best online video site and it used to rank even before they owned it. So the second panel has to come up with more serious allegations.Nextag is a product search website and one of its competitors is Google with its product search built on similar lines and the senate would be questioning Google’s algorithm whether it’s been tweaked to promote Google’s own products.
Yelp is another website which has had a little complicated relation with Google, Yelp had always been the place for local searches for finding phrases like ‘where to eat tonight’ and it lists search results in your geography. Google came up with a similar idea trying Google maps and then moved to the next level with Google places, Yelp has an interesting accusation that the reviews were copied by Google in Google places from Yelp and it doesn’t comply with their TOS.
It’s going to be an interesting hearing with a lot of drama, to know the latest updates we have to be glued to Google!
Interview with Eric Schmidt
Bing takes a dig on Google
The war between these two search engines have been going for quiet some time but this is the first time Bing has taken a serious dig on the search engine giant Google. Its a known story that Google accused Bing of copying their search results and was pissed off big time with them.
Now in a reply of sorts on Bing on searching for “More Evil Than Satan Himself” you get the result as 10^100 numeric equivalent to Googol what Google is named after . Check the screen shot down
More Evil Than Satan Himself
Another word Bing have targeted is Hiybbprqag- the word was made as part of Google’s sting research on Bing now one can see the search displaying the result hiybbprqag (orcish) = whiner (common)
This is the screenshot
Hiybbprqag
So with the search engines at war, it will be of much interest to see both of their replies and innovations with the ultimate tool internet at their disposal
More at searchengineland
Google’s pissed off with Bing
Clash of the Titans – I love watching it in real time.
Google’s Webspam team head Matt Cutts gets into a heated up converstation with Harry Shum of Bing. Matt Cutts claims that they have done several tests to prove that Bing is piggy bagging the results as soon as google indexes it. To Prove this Google team created a few dummy keywords and dummy targeting pages in their index. Within 3 – 5 days Bing shows the same set of results for the dummy keywords which were specifically created by Google for testing purposes.
Google Vs Bing
here is a link to the post of the full story: Google Vs Bing
If you have quite some patience watch the complete video here:
Check out the snippet below: