Breaking Google’s Stranglehold On The Internet
The backlash against Google’s recent moves was amazing to follow last week, and it’s been rare to see such little support for their actions. One of my favourites is from One Mans Blog who suffered a Page Rank 8 to 5 Page Rank reduction, even though they were in personal contact with Google’s Matt Cutts.
I actually feel that Google have done me a personal favour this weekend by reducing my Page Rank from 6 to 3, as it made me realise how reliant I had become on google for the key services I use on the internet, and I’ve decided it’s time to break free and to only use Google once I’ve decided their services are actually the best, rather than just by default because the service is from ‘Google’.
When I was new to the internet everything was fun and I loved to experiment with new services, which was perfect as my job for the last 8 years has been to find new services and content to offer to ISP customers, by either building them internally or through partnering with existing providers.
I’ve only realised today how much I’ve bought into the Google ‘brand’ and how I use their apps for virtually everything. Take search for instance. In the past I used to constantly use different search engines. If I couldn’t find what I wanted on one search engine, rather than refining terms I’d try just move onto the next search engine. Now I just use Google for everything, and if I can’t find it on Google I just give up rather than trying Yahoo or AltaVista etc
This isn’t good as part of my day job is to understand the pros and cons of key online service providers, and just using Google for everything isn’t helping me professionally. Because of this and because the Page Rank debacle has left such a sour taste in my mouth, I want to find replacements for the Google services that I use personally. Even if Connected Internet can’t break away from Google’s stranglehold, then there is no reason Everton Blair can’t. I’ve worked with Google in the past professionally, and I will probably do so again in the future when I’m making decisions for my company where the priorities are different from my own. But, from today I will only use services from Google myself once I’ve proven that they are the best available.
The Google services I now have to find evaluate potential replacements for are:
- Gmail: I think I will switch to Yahoo! mail as I haven’t tried it since the service launched the Ajax client. Does anyone have any other recommendations? Key requirements are webmail, IMAP/Push functionality for my Nokia N95, a big mailbox and a way to manage multiple email addresses from one mailbox. I own the domains (x3) for all my addresses - maybe it’s time to run my own email server?
- Search: I’ve moved to Yahoo initially as they are doing so much work with Panama and other engine tweaks that I haven’t been tracking sufficiently, although I intend to try a few others as well
- Google Reader: A tough one as I love it, but then again, I haven’t even looked at another reader for around 18 months. Any recommendations? Again I need something that i can sync with my Nokia N95 i.e. fast and only shows me stories I haven’t read yet
Update: Martin has been having virtually identical thoughts this weekend
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Comment by Bloddard on 28 October 2007:
This is very encouraging Everton. It makes you sort of stand outside and look in, it give you perspective. I only use Google now because I have Adsense on my blog and also I do the occasional search. Aside from that, Hotmail and Yahoo are my best friends.
Comment by Marcus the Lover on 28 October 2007:
I wonder how switching to competitive services can help me and my sites. What matters is that 80% of humanity out there still fire up google for their data mining activities.
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Comment by Will Dwinnell on 28 October 2007:
I have been encouraging people to use multiple search engines for years now. I have nothing against Google, but there are other, perfectly good options. Some of my favorites are: AllTheWeb, Clusty and DevilFinder.
Comment by Everton on 28 October 2007:
@Marcus
*80% of the web (actually about 70% in UK, 50% in US) use Google because in 2001/02 the webmasters and techies of this world started telling the mass market that Google was the best, whcih was true, and everybody started using Google. Before that there used to be regular ‘battle of the search engines’ tests to find the best one - I haven’t seen one of those for years.
If those same groups start testing other engines and recommending others people will switch. We’ve seen it happen with Firefox - not quite mass market yet, but when you think of the progress is has made in an even tougher market with less competition it has done amazingly. there’s no reason that same community of trusted individuals can’t take down what they built.
Comment by Ankit on 28 October 2007:
@Everton
I can`t agree with you more. The difference between Google and Yahoo is not about relevancy, its about being more famous. I tried Yahoo couple of days ago, on suggestion from few of my friends. And I was really thrilled with Yahoo’s new features like Yahoo! Search Assist.
Just try some of new Yahoo! for few minutes and I am sure many more will be converted.
Comment by Everton on 28 October 2007:
Yahoo Search Assist is very useful - I love the almost realtime search feel
Comment by Ankit on 28 October 2007:
@Everton
No, I really mean it. Its nothing related to this Pagerank Mayhen. Yahoo Search Assist can be very very useful. I have written a similar post on Yahoo Assist as well.
Comment by Pranjal on 28 October 2007:
I just came back yesterday from the college trip and check my blog…. My PR had change from 3 to 4. But i didn’t gave a damn about it back then and still won’t give a damn. Google sucks, ever since they have virtually monopolized the web search space they started acting like a big fat capitalist. I always have preferred yahoo mail as it much better then gmail. GOOGLE SUCKS
Comment by Mark on 28 October 2007:
What about feedburner, who were acquired by Google? Or is that taking things too far, by using an alterative?
Comment by Everton on 28 October 2007:
@Mark
A friend at work did ask me why do people use Feedburner and I have to admit I struggled to find an answer. I do like their email subscription option, but you can get that elsewhere. I said that they can get interesting when you have over 500 subs as their site ads have high CPMs ($6-12), although the fill rates are pretty poor though. I don’t use their RSS ads though as I think the payoff is too low, particularly when RSS readers don’t want ads!
Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 28 October 2007:
Hey Everton,
For email, we highly recommend webmail.us. We’re not big for free email services, and this one does what we need. for $11/mo you can have 5 x 5GB mailboxes with IMAP access, so you can use your choice of desktop client - or iPhone if you have one.
Been using them for almost 2 years now, and they’re great. It’s email that just works.
On a related note, SO many people host their email with their web hosting provider, not realising that email hosting is the lowest priority for a web host, it’s just not reliable . Of course this is because web hosting providers offer this as a free add-on, so people don’t realize how bad it is.
Ponder this… unless your site is just a fun hobby, then if your website goes down for whatever reason, it’s kind of silly to have your email down too, don’t you think? Rant over.
Best,
D&J
Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 28 October 2007:
On the feedburner topic, we do still like them, but largely because they auto format the feed url to browser-readable for people who would click on it and get confused wondering that the crap on the screen is.
but we did go ahead and use our own domain per that feedburner feature (they offer that free now). so our feed is no longer at a feedburner.com domain, but rather:
http://feeds.askdanandjennifer.com/askdanandjennifer
- that’s actually a CNAME/alias for the feedburner server, set up in our DNS - their instructions are simple.
And here’s why this matters - it means that we can always move away from feedburner if we so choose to in the future. We’re very happy with them now, but it’s nice to have options.
Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer
Comment by Micah on 29 October 2007:
Yahoo Search Assist is pretty neat, and actually my homepage is set to Yahoo. But, I’ve got to admit, Google has better search results at the moment. But that’s just between the two biggies, I’m not so sure about Ask.com or others - I don’t really use them.
Comment by Sofna on 29 October 2007:
I like to switch it up. I admit google is usually the first one I try, but if I dont like what I see on the first page, I just go search in Yahoo or MSN. I think it will take quite an effort and lots of branding in order to get everyone to stop using google.
Comment by Joseph Plazo on 29 October 2007:
Give Dogpile a shot- not only does it include Google results- it throws in 11 other major search engines!
Comment by Tommy D Watts on 29 October 2007:
I’ve been Hot Mail and Yahoo! for years now and I like them very much. I recently signed on with gmail. I don’t much care for it.
The biggest thing that I like about Yahoo! is address management and endless storage. They make organizing your addresses so simple that even I can do it!
Comment by horisly on 30 October 2007:
comft.
though pr is down, i think your traffic will stay, so the money is stay.
Comment by Sofna on 30 October 2007:
horisly,
my traffic has stayed the same so far, but it doesnt make it easier to build links to your site when your PR is -3 and it is a fairly new site.
Comment by rutherford on 17 December 2007:
I wonder- how do some guys have 200,000 backlinks? When I run domain-pop.com I see some sites just PR5 having that many!