What Do You Love About Google

[dannysullivan]

I've just posted my 25 Things I Love About Google (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060313-161501) article, a companion to my 25 Things I Hate About Google (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060313-161500) story. Things you love about Google? Please add them below. Things you hate? Got a separate thread for that: What Do You Hate About Google? (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=10514).

[GoogleGuy]

I love that Google arouses enough feeling that people tell us what they like and don't like.

Personally, I'm printing these out and hanging them up in my office. Heck, I may print out a few extra copies and hand them out to people when they drop by.

[BradBristol]

is that they care enough about me to put a 30 year cookie on my computer and they go to extremes to try to track my (and everyone else's) movements and actions across the WWW. It’s nice to know that google cares that much about all of us.

#2
I love the fact that google has ignored copyright so that they (google) could server up content to users. I mean if google did not ignore copyright how could google exist in the first place... and what would we ever do without google...

#3
I love the fact that google refuses to give information to the US government, those bullies at the U.S. Justice Dept. should just quit trying to use google to catch bad guys.

#4
I love the fact that google went along with the Chinese Government and is helping to censor information the Chinese people receive over the WWW. We need to keep those Chinese people uneducated and in the dark... I don’t want to have to compete with them.

#5
I love the fact that google can, at the seeming drop of a hat, change the fortune of thousands and thousands of small webmasters across the web by just the figurative turn of a dial. (I really do love this, the idea of all that Raw Power flailed around without regard for anyone or anything makes me feel all fuzzy and warm inside.)

#6
I love the fact that google has fought search SPAM as hard as they have. Without google’s diligence in fighting SPAM there are many here (and other SEO boards) that would have had nothing to talk about for the last several years. There are even a few ridiculous radicals out their that have made their fortunes off of taking a public stand on google’s battle with SPAM.

How could you not love google... ;)

[sem4u]

Google is still the best web search out there. It can have its problems but it is miles better than Yahoo! & MSN.

I like using Froogle and Google News. I especially like the fact that stores have not paid to be in Froogle, giving more stores the opportunity to be featured there.

Google maps and satellite pictures are really good too.

[Mel66]

I really can't add much to either of Danny's lists. Love search, Gmail, Froogle, Desktop.... I do want them to keep giving stuff away, though. :)

A couple Adwords "Hates": (1) Trademark restrictions in ad copy. (2) The expanded broad match debacle. (3) Adsense on blogs. The first 2 have been covered in this forum adequately, so I won't elaborate. The Adsense blog thing has been our largest source of questionable content clicks lately. I think a few bloggers have discovered that they can have their buddies click on the Adsense ads and make a quick buck at our expense. Yeah, we can dump them with Site Exclusion (although there are limits to the number of sites we can exclude); yeah, we can shut them down by turning off content and/or lowering our CPC - but that has killed an otherwise successful content campaign for us in some cases; and yeah, Google has been good about refunding our money when we've complained (even before the $90M settlement). However, when you've got 30-odd campaigns, hundreds of ad groups, and thousands of keywords, it's a time-consuming process to even find such "questionable" activity.

All in all, and I've said this before, Google is doing great things in the search and internet community, and I applaud them! Keep up the good work!

Melissa

[Discovery]

And it has a positive affect on all that Google offers to searchers and advertisers a like.

GOOGLE has not lost their focus, first and foremost,
THEY ARE A SEARCH ENGINE
pure and simple.

Unlike Yahoo, MSN and many, many others, they have not loaded their home page up with Hollywood news, tabloid junk, music downloads, stock tickers, pop up ads and thrown in a little search bar somewhere in the middle of all of that.

GOOGLE'S clean and unobstructed search page creates a true search centric experience and a damn accurate one at that. I'm here to search, I'm here to find, I'm here to buy.

The result? Searchers find what they are looking for without distraction, and advertisers get visitors who are actively seeking their service not passively stumbling over an ad.

To me as a searcher this means a time savings as an advertiser this means quality over quantity.

Discovery

[Carlos Chacón]

The only think I love about Google is: capability (capacity) to index pages.
That’s it!

[AussieWebmaster]

The thing I love about Google is the logo and the dinners they take me to.... oh and the fact that they have the largest traffic so I have something to really work with for conversion.

[Marek]

1. Clean UI.

2. Acuracy

3. Huge index if websites

4. Many of the new features - Google Labs

5. Google Reader for RSS

6. Gmail

7. And many more....

[MikeDammann]

I love Google's overall approach on business. The idealism that is still visible after all that success those 2 guys have managed to have. Google does provide more than search, it's a mindset that people respond well to. An openminded approach on search. Yes, there are some messes in there, but all in all Google inspires me. It's good to see people with a vision come to success and then be able to sustain what they have accomplished. Google rocks!

[Relevancy]

I love their ambition of taking down Microsoft.

I don’t like that they clam to not do Media advertising, but what's this?!? You will see convenient "Google this" or "Google Me" blurbs in the scripts of major movies all the time. Plus they will never do TV ads, but they will get other companies to attach a Google Ad on their own TV ad.

[MikeDammann]

There is just so much positive energy and idealism coming from Google. But I don't think that Larry and Sergey are active bloggers ;)

[grnidone]

I like that Google is relatively easy to manipulate so I can make money!

[Olney]

Google has really shown themselves to expand in the international markets well. Unlike so called international companies who say they are in the Japanese, or Asian market they really are only on the surface.

Yahoo US & Yahoo Japan almost operate as two seperate companies. MSN is the only search Engine that still is not IDN (International Domain Name) compatible just like their browser wasn't.

Google does well to launch services that are multilingual.

It's 2006 & Paypal still doesn't even have a Japanese interface. The service for Paypal is Japan compatible but NOT in Japanese. Does it make sense to you guys? Doesn't make sense to me either. Most people I know don't want to use it or never heard of it because it's not in Japanese, & these are people in web related careers.

If Google's wallet services launches in Japan it will go well.

[mc4210]

I like that Google is relatively easy to manipulate so I can make money!

Is it? Even with all these filters in place? I don't suppose you could elaborate on that...? (or even PM me about it.... :cool: )

Aaah, wouldn't it be nice if you could just reverse engineer the SEs like any piece of software in the good old days and find out exactly what's going on? ;)

[AussieWebmaster]

Yahoo US & Yahoo Japan almost operate as two seperate companies.

That is because they are two separate companies.

[Olney]

They are two companies but the same brand but services & especially technology is completely different.
This was my point.
Google is good at adding multilingual services.
Yahoo is actually still king of Japan though.

[econwriter5]

Have to give props to a company that has done it all its own way. Threw the book at Wall Street, in the process of doing so at DOJ while bringing information to the masses...for free.

Proof that they were never in it for the money, and the awesome people who work there (especially Urchin software support!) believe, heart-and-soul, in the mission of Google.

Props to a company that maintains, encourages and fuels the passion of its employess and the public, changing the way information is digested and exchanged, for good or bad - it generates dialogue few would otherwise attempt.

[gordman]

There is not reason to get emotional here but I guess Google makes me feel familiar, is handy and I know it as a companion. It's the first search engine I had contact with and it rarely disappoints me. I am not a heavy user, I guess this is it.

[sabinuta]

I think people who are banned from their Adsense program or have their domains banned are the most upset with Google don't you agree ?

[lc53gym]

I love the fact that Google allows me to get better results when I’m searching for content more than the other sites I’ve used. The information I receive is accurate, concise, more abundant that other sites, and easy to navigate.

[lbradleye]

What don't I love about google?? For starters google mail is the best free email account offered. Plus, as a student google makes my life so much easier; I have the answer to any question at my fingertips through google.

[Webnauts]

I love Google because they care about people with disabilities, and they are building an "Accessible Search" for them.

[markolopa]

I would like to add: Google is a powerful group that fight important legal battles that are a 100% in synch with my interest (and certainly with the interests of most users). For instance without google we probably wouldn't have youtube anymore.

Watch the interesting talk explaining trademark and copyright legal battles:

http:// youtube.com/watch?v=YxLTUZCudcw

markolopa

[jrozsa]

And it has a positive affect on all that Google offers to searchers and advertisers a like.

GOOGLE has not lost their focus, first and foremost,
THEY ARE A SEARCH ENGINE
pure and simple.

Unlike Yahoo, MSN and many, many others, they have not loaded their home page up with Hollywood news, tabloid junk, music downloads, stock tickers, pop up ads and thrown in a little search bar somewhere in the middle of all of that.

GOOGLE'S clean and unobstructed search page creates a true search centric experience and a damn accurate one at that. I'm here to search, I'm here to find, I'm here to buy.

The result? Searchers find what they are looking for without distraction, and advertisers get visitors who are actively seeking their service not passively stumbling over an ad.

To me as a searcher this means a time savings as an advertiser this means quality over quantity.

Discovery

Guess he's never set his Google homepage to use iGoogle just yet. Yea, they're just a search engine (that wants photographs of every address in the world to be a part of Google Earth, builds Google Desktop to compete with Microsoft, purchased Picasa for all of your search engine related photo management needs, etc.) Yea, good thing they never lost their focus. :)

[Discovery]

jrozsa - Take a look at my post, it was a year and half ago! I believe that pre-dates iGoogle. I always use classic home view anyhow.

But even with that you missed the point. You can have your landing page of Google as the nice clean search page. Yahoo does not offer this at all and neither did any major SE at that time. Fortunately since my post back in March of 06. Microsoft has followed Google with Live.com and Ask/Jeeves has also moved into a pure search page at ask.com.

Does this mean that they will not offer other cutting edge features and grow their business? Of course not, that would be ridiculous.

Google still offers the best of all worlds without losing focus on the importance of relevant results and clean designs.

Google in my opinion is moving into new arenas and doing most of them the right way. Sort of like Apple - there have been so many phones that have the same capabilities as the iphone even better, but when Apple does it, its a huge hit! Why? Because they do it right with a great combination of technology, design style and marketing. Same goes for Google, and Google's ventures into areas outside of simple search.

I think you must be a bit smarter than to think that Google would never expand...?

Discovery

[jrozsa]

I do apologize, I didn't notice the date of the post.

I was reading some others and stumbled across this one. I wasn't trying to rip you or anything as that is not my style at all. I actually thought you were being sarcastic in your post, because really, they did have several other things out there at the time of the post outside of search.

Sorry if you took that as criticism, and also for mis-thinking that was a current post.