Google's silent monopoly

Another "bad" comment for google comes this time from central desktop blog.

I am not sure how true this is, but this guy claims that google is keeping some of the top keywords from the adwords program to advertise their own programs.

Some of those keywords are : intranet, spreadsheet, documents, calendar, word processor, email, video, instant messenger, blog, photo sharing, online groups, maps, start page, restaurants, dining, and books.

I guess google has the right to do something like that, but on the other hand is total unethical to force their competitors to pay them huge ammounts to advertise their competitive products.

My opinion is that Google has just started to act like a monopoly - as it is monopoly for some years now - and this will propably let some competitor take their position in the future.

The reason is simple : competition = enemies. When you have enough of them, then it is sure that they will find a way to harm you. Right?

I noticed that if the site is about adsense, there is always an ad from Google

I think this guy is fishing, just tried these searches
http://www.google.com/search?q=intranet
http://www.google.com/search?q=email
http://www.google.com/search?q=calendar

no google ad to see...

Yeah but still he has a point, as there are google ads on many keywords.

Here at webdigity I see a lot of ads about adsense, which I think is not really fair as we anyway promote their program....

of course it is not fair but maybe it is part of their algorithm, showing the same ad not so often to the same people...I think it would be fair if they show only ads if there is no other from advertisers

It doesn't matter so much that Google owns the top spot in paid listings.  After all there is a lot of research that shows that the top organic result is more often clicked.

I can see that, if you are a website owner bidding on Adwords that you'd be concerned but really you could own the top organic spot with a lot of SEO work and link building.

Granted terms as suggested here would be difficult to rank for as it would likely take years of SEO effort to get top rankings for those phrases but how many sites actually need to rank for them?

The way I see it there are 2 viewpoints here.  You can cry fowl of Google's attempt to own the top ad spot or you can say "it doesn't affect me so I don't care."  Of course the latter could be a concern down the road if Google decides to enter your marketspace, but until then you are likely safe.

Also consider that Google isn't the only one doing this.  I can bet you'd find similar results on Live, Ask and Yahoo.  People just like to point fingers at Google because they are the biggest.

What about the publishers?

I mean what happens if for any click that you give on a google ad gives you 1 cent while there could be an ad with higher CTR (I guess that ads from google can't have high CTRs as everyone knows google) and better earnings?

I am thinking to put google.com in my adsense competitor filter :)

sounds good, do you tried that before?

can't believe that this will work

To be honest I am a little afraid to it, but I guess I will try :)

tell me if it works...

LOL, it works! Hope I won't get banned for that :)

just send the mail to G lol

no you get free ads on your site...

Hehe. BTW let me know if there are any google ads in the site.

I see an AdSense ad on this page right now...

yes me too (again) a second ad I think the filter will not work for Google...

Lol. They let you add the filter, but it simply don't work.

It seems that google deserves their new nick name : "Web Marshall"