These days Google is showing “tips” to their product related searches. If you search query contains the term “blog” then you get a “tip” to use Blogger. And if you search for “photo sharing” you get a “tip” Picasa. See screenshots below.
There is a big debate going on in the blogosphere regarding this topic. When one side says that “Google is Pimping” the other side says “It’s delivering quality”.
I would like to stand by Blake Ross(Firefox Team) who expresses his concern over the matter in his post titled - Trust is hard to gain but easy to lose. In which, he says that -
But if that sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because Google already works that way. After all, Google is predicated on the idea that the democratic structure of the Web will push the cream to the top. Search for “photo sharing” and you should already get the highest quality services. According to Google, Picasa is not one of them. These “tips,” then, can only be a tacit admission of failure:
So, these tips are not helping the end-users at all. They are put in just because they aren’t the good services around probably? Even if they are, it leaves a negative impression on Google.
Matt Cutts, on the other side says that this(the tips) are only to help the users get better results.But that is not a clarification.
He says - when searching for images, if Google suggests you to use Google Image Search then, isn’t that delivering a good user experience. Yes may be.
But, suggesting it’s own products over competitors (which may be even better products) isn’t really a good idea.
As Blake puts it - What if Microsoft used it’s Windows users to use Microsoft Live search instead of Google? Why haven’t they done something like it earlier?
The answer seems obvious.
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