Phil Craven over at www.webworkshop.net had some thoughts on Google.

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When you think about it, Google has had a huge negative impact on the Web.

First they came in with basing the rankings on link text, which, when Google had become the #1 engine, destroyed the natural linking that existed before they came along. It forced everyone to organise links and link text. Web links were fine before they, and subsequently the other engines, ruined it. If you don’t get links, you don’t rank well. If others in your field get more link texts that you, they rank higher than you. They completely destroyed the natural linking of the Web.

Then they became the #1 engine, to the extent that, if you didn’t get traffic from Google, you didn’t get search engine traffic, and that’s still largely true. That would be fine if their results were consistent, but they’ve never been that. They screw with the results so much from time to time, that people have to look into having multiple sites, so that if Google screws one or two of them, there are others still ranking fine, and all is not lost.

Then they come up with AdSense and cause millions of garbage sites, usually with stolen content, to be created just for AdSense.

Does Google want us to organise links that wouldn’t naturally occur – no – they fight against it. Do they want us to create multiple sites for the same things, as some insurance against their screwing things up – no. Do they want millions of garbage sites – no. But they’ve pushed us into doing all of that – filling the Web with unnatural stuff – stuff that even *we* don’t even want to fill it with. Google’s impact on the Web has been mostly very negative. They’ve destroyed what the Web was, and what it was intended to be. They’ve come up with the odd nugget, such as Google Earth, but the nuggest are very minor compared to the destruction that they’ve caused. It’s hard to think of anything positive that they’ve done for the Web.

Are they to blame? No. They are just another business who are trying to make money on the Web. It’s a great shame that they are as successful as they are, because they’ve inadvertantly destroyed the Web in some ways.