New Google Plus One search hurts small websites

Jan 17th 2012: This is not a moan, just a cold fact. I don't really care that much. But it is important. Recently Google decided to prioritize branded websites. In effect that means big websites. What I call the independents, individuals who build websites, were pushed back. That hurt millions of smaller websites.

Google Plus One was failing (+1 button). No one used it. It didn't work properly either on websites. So, they decided to force people to use it. Google is the major search engine. A couple of days ago they attached Google Plus One to their search results. The idea is to encourage people to use Plus One.

You can turn it off but people won't in practice. This will further erode traffic to the independents. Google are changing the face of the internet and they can do this because it is unregulated. Google regulate it. They are scared of Facebook and have decided that they have to step out of their own rules to force people to use Google Plus One as a social network instead of Facebook. Perhaps Facebook were thinking of starting their own search engine which further upset Google.

However, what they are doing is an abuse of the Google monopoly and their own policies. That is it, simple. And it undermines our trust in Google.

Recommendation: use Bing! It is better. Let's build up Bing.