Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me
http://gizmodo.com/yes-google-uses-its-power-to-quash-ideas-it-doesn-t-li-1798646437
I can speak to this bit:
"I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus.
The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers.
This sounded like a news story to me."
"I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes."
When Google Plus first came on the scene, they told a different story to those of us who played the Search Engine Optimization game. No, not using Google Plus will NOT affect your rankings. Most of us raised our eyebrows with an "Oh reeeeeeeallllly?" It was obvious from the get-go this was incorrect.
And this isn't the first time Google has said demonstrably untrue things, in their operational sense. In the early days of Google, many marketers would use what were called Squeeze Pages. These are simple brief and narrowly focused pages designed to offer visitors a gift or benefit, in exchange for getting on an email list. Nothing else would be on the page to distract the visitor, no other links, offers, etc.. Just the message, and an optin box. Google did what was called a "slap", when they would find these pages, they would shut down or ban someone's Google Adwords account for doing such. Google would assume to know better than the page creator what their audience preferred. Years later, Google comes around and starts using squeeze pages themselves to sell their products, while still keeping the new Standards as the Police of the Internet for the rest of us.
I love a lot of Google's products, they do an amazing job on so many fronts. However, their obviously subjective and slanted "Do no Evil" mission statement leads them to try to do the impossible and overbroad, to police everyone's experience on the web. And yet, even there, they are inconsistent, as when they went into the closed society of China, (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html) they throw that out the window to appease that oppressing system. Google eventually pulled out. ( https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0325/Google-out-of-China-Doing-no-evil )
Maybe it would be better for them to revise their mission statement to a target they can hit consistently, like a core technological goal such as simply "We deliver the most Relevant Search Results", rather than a cliche that nearly every peace loving human being strives for, just as flawed and inconsistently as Google does due to being, you know, no gift of omniscience.
It's admirable to have high standards, and reach for the sky, as Sergei Brin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin ) has attempted. Brin knows what totalitarianism looks like. He should be commended for taking his shot. It's also important to be realistic about how we humans can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, especially in large groups, and hamper true progress as we all march along in this life of eternal trial and error. Incumbent on that process that answers the question "How, then, shall we live?" is that we humbly and authentically self correct. Maybe Mr. Brin should step back in to the Google offices ( https://goo.gl/maps/4CSENyAZzqk ) , assuming he isn't already, and re-assert some focus. Google provides a service that has launched the Human Race to new levels of social and educational progress.
Read up on the Google Diversity Memo:
https://steemit.com/google/@rainmakerrep/google-diversity-memo-roundup-2