Are Google's Best Days In the Past?

rsmiller510 writes "For a time, everything Google touched turned to gold, but lately a slew of bad press is creating a negative perception about the search giant."

Not a great article

[Jim Hall]

I read the article (it's not that long) but let me save you the trouble: it's not a great article. In fact, it's pointless. You don't need to read very far before he presents his conclusion:

While Google is still clearly riding high in the general consumer market, it seems to have lost its innovative edge, the one variable that always seemed to help it stay ahead of the market. But whether the company has peaked or not is still an open question.

Emphasis mine.

So the tech writer (Ron Miller) doesn't know either. He presents both sides, and seems totally unsure about what he's talking about. To summarize the article:

• Facebook and Twitter got the tech attention during the Egypt riots, not Google. [Not sure what his point is, here.]
• JC Penney's tampering with their search results
• Google might lose ground to vertical search in the future
• Google dropped 1% in comScore

But:

• Google still controls 2/3 of the market, and 1% not a trend.
• Google doing well with Android
• Bing not a threat
• It's all about perception, anyway.

So yeah, this was a pointless article.

"Bad Press" == MS sponsored smear campaign?

[walterbyrd]

Political Games Against Google [techrights.org]

Re:Just because the "best days" are in the past..

[Kjella]

People need search engines. You can bitch about it all you want, but unless there's a different company that can squash SEOs better than Google, they'll still own the market. And looking at hitslink they have a very stable 85% of the market. Unless you're seriously suggesting it's so bad that people will not search the Internet at all?